How to Spot Liars

Summary: Liars are all around us. While some lies are not damaging, many are, so here are some tips to be able to pinpoint liars.

Many consider lying to be an innocent part of life. Sixty percent of people will lie at least one time during at ten-minute conversations. Even 80 percent of women admit that they occasionally tell what they consider are harmless half-truths. The truth about lying is that it always catches up to you.

Some of the most important times when it is best to be honest are when people fib the truth the most. Cover letters and resumes are one place that people frequently lie with 31 percent admitting to it. Thirty-two percent say they “stretch the truth” when giving personal information to their doctor with 30 percent lying about their diet and exercise routines.

One of the most common lies is “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.” In order to spot this type of behavior, you need to be prepared to know what to look for.

• A liar will often repeat words you use when asking them a question. “Is there something wrong?” “Nothing is wrong, I am fine.”
• Liars often speak without suing contractions.
• A liar will often avoid “lying” by making indirect statements with implied meaning.
• A liar will speak more than is necessary to try and sound more convincing.
• Liars will leave out pronouns and inflection when answering a question.
• A liar will often muddle, garble, or stammer throughout a sentence.

The body language of a liar is easy to spot. They will have stiff body movements, avoid touching their chest, will avoid eye contact, and will touch their ear, throat or mouth often.

The emotions of someone that is lying will often be delayed, excessively prolonged, a contradiction between the emotion and their response, a gap in time between their emotion and verbal response, or the emotion is only from their mouth and not their whole face.

Someone that lies will often be defensive, uncomfortable facing whoever is questioning them, and will place an object between themselves and the accuser such as a glass of water.

The eyes are a good give away. Not only do they avoid eye contact, the direction in which someone lying looks will tell you the truth.

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