There is a lot of fascinating research on how to spot a liar–and such research has amped up in the last ten years with the increase in security consciousness. I’ve done a fair amount of reading of the literature and will discuss various aspects of the research over a few posts. I’ll start with the overview: what do all researchers agree upon?
Contrary to popular belief, there is no single, simple way to detect a liar. Shifty eyes, guilty look, halting speech–these may or may not reveal a liar. What all liars have in common, though, is that lying causes an increase in mental processing and cognitive dissonance as the liar tries to keep two contradictory idea in mind at the same time. This increase in mental processing and the disquieting nature of the cognitive dissonance are what the lie-spotter is really detecting.
This takes training, for most people. People in general are pretty bad at spotting lies, even if they think they are good at it. Judges and police officers don’t fair much better than average, although there are a few really good lie spotters. There is a technique to detecting lies, and I will get into that in future posts.
Of course, any increase in understanding about how lies are detected allow people to adjust their behavior to lie better. But no one can lie perfectly because there will always be increased difficulty involved in concealing something.
So here is one simple bit of advice: cross your fingers. What does this do? Lying, especially for people who consider themselves honest or feel bad about lying, makes people feel a little bad. In people unused to lying or concealing, this tends to show up (in stereotypical ways I will get into later). Crossing fingers behind your back brings relieves some of that guilt. The idea is that crossing your fingers is a “socially accepted” way of lying (more for kids than adults, granted). There is the feeling that the deceived would understand that it wasn’t really lying at all because the fingers were crossed. Although this is not terribly logical, it make it easier and less troubling to lie, and so less apparent.