How to spot a liar?

Published under Living

Article by Roberto Fuzzy
Staff writer
Man in his best years (you know, for men the best years last and last and last). Writer, beer drinker, interested in anything cool and nothing whatsoever.

Many of you have seen the TV series, Lie To Me. But as with every TV series, it's all over the top and if you wanted to learn something from it, you could learn some, but not enough.

So how can you spot a liar? The truth is that none of the techniques work 100% of the time, maybe not even 80%, but depending on a person you're focusing on, you might get a rather good idea of how full of crap the person is. Or isn't.

There are a number of signals or signs that you should be looking for when trying to determine if the person is telling the truth. One of them is definitely eye contact, which as a myth is considered to be a sign of a person telling the truth. However, too long eye contact might actually be sign of a lie.

If a person has an over or under-production of saliva, it could indicate a lie, same with fake mouth-only smiles.

In normal conversations, people usually take a moment to answer something. However, if the lie is rehearsed, the answer comes more promptly. And in case of an unexpected question, it takes a lot longer time than normal to answer.

Look at the person's eyes - allegedly, a nonverbal sign almost impossible to fake is pupil dilation. People who are lying, have often larger pupil size. Also the blinking rate can be slowed down (followed by a really rapid blinking).

Rubbing your nose before lying is also a sign. But it can also be related to simple self-defense mechanism when the person simply feels himself uncomfortable in certain situations. I have seen that happen to be quite often. When I'm not lying. Also increased feet movement can be a sign of a lie.

I think one of the most important signs is the non-agreement between the person's words and gestures. Nodding while saying no and signs like that. The person might not definitely be lying, but at least there seems to be a conflict of some sort.

Did you get any smarter from reading this? As a rule, probably not. It's rather difficult to read most of the people. However, in case of a few people, these simple things can make it very easy to spot a lie.

How to spot a liar?

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