Do you think you’ve got what it takes to spot a liar? well sorry to disappoint but chances are, you can’t. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the average human’s ability to spot a lie is nothing but a mere chance.
So if you’re wondering why your significant other has been acting out lately or your best friend seem to be hiding something from you, then I’m here to tell you that there’s a science to telling if a person is lying.
Now to spot a lie, you have to first have like a baseline of what the person acts like in normal mode (i.e when they’re telling the truth). Take for an example, your best friend is a talkative, it means rambling and blabbing is their normal, a sudden silence or quietness would be suspicious.
But that doesn’t straight out mean your best friend is lying or hiding something from you when they’re quiet, people can be quite when they’re sad, think or tired.
But most times you’ll notice more than one of the eight (8) signals we’re going to be listing below on how to spot a liar.
8 ways on how to spot a liar
1. They smirk or frown instantly.
Yes. you heard that right, those little micro-expresions that don’t last so long is a signal someone might be lying to you. Their facial expressions doesn’t usually match what their saying.
Say for example if a person just lied to you and thinks you bought the lie, you might see them give out a little laughter or a smirk.
2. They keep looking at the exit.
This one is kinda a huge red flag when spotting liars. You’ll notice they keep looking at the door or they’re so focused on the ticking clock. It indicates they’re eager to get out of that situation because they’re lying to you.
It not just their eye you should look out for, sometimes their legs or torso might be pointing towards the exit.
3. They take longer than normal to respond.
Here’s a sad truth most liars don’t know, when you’re lying you’re usually juggling between two stories, the actual truth and your formulated lie.
Now this process of back and forth thinking requires a lot of brain juice which causes long pauses and slower responses to very simple questions.
Sometimes they might try to stall or cover up that time by repeating your question with details you never asked for, pause, stammer or use filler words like “ah,” “um,” or “uh.”
4. They try to fend-off a direct answer.
A basic question such as “When did you go to bed last night?“, a simple response would be “at 10pm.” But if such a person says “what are you talking about, I went to bed the same time I do always.” then that a red flag.
5. They force honesty on the conversation.
It quite logical that liars would want to make you believe their telling the truth, and one way they do that is by talking about honesty.
If you hear these words “honestly speaking,” “if I’m being honest,” or “honestly,” then you should keep an eye out because they want you to believe the lie they’re about to tell.
6. They exclude themselves from the story.
Liars try to abstain from words like “me,” “I,” or “me,” basically any word that seems to include or implicate them in the story.
7. They say words they’ve never used before.
Swapping vocabulary is a common red flag to spot a lie. Let take for example a person says I bought a new “cars” last week, and a few more sentences later he uses “vehicle” not car anymore.
That a sign that they’re filtering and thinking through their words too carefully to avoid mistakes in the lie placement.
8. They can’t tell the same story twice exactly.
Most liars formulate their lies dynamically on the go, so it can be quite difficult recalling a lie because it never happened. But we can use what called a reverse order narrative. what is the reverse order narrative?
Asking a liar to tell a story straight forward chronological order would be easy for them, but asked them to tell the same story in the reverse chronological order and you’ll realize they say the same story in a different order.
A liar re-telling a story would be quite noticable because you’re forging stories on the go and it never happened. That because when someone’s telling the truth, they are simply recalling something that happened.