5 Easy Ways To Spot A Liar
Hint: It’s not body language. (The FBI says so).
For years, experts said that, if you wanted to ‘out’ a liar, you should watch their body language. Not so fast, say psychologists today. The problem is that humans have such a diverse lexicon of body language that watching a person’s movement isn’t a good barometer of whether they are fibbing or telling the truth.
As Thomas Ormerod, a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex, noted in an interview with BBC:
“There are no consistent signs that always arise alongside deception. I giggle nervously, others become more serious, some make eye contact, some avoid it.”
In other words, nervousness, a supposed telltale sign of dishonesty, isn’t such a good indicator after all. As former FBI special agent Joe Navarro notes, the idea that crossing one’s arms, looking away, touching one’s mouth and other physical lie indicators is “nonsense.”
Contrary to popular belief, what a person says and how that person says it is a much better indicator of whether they are telling the truth than their body language. There’s actually a geyser of knowledge on this topic, but I’m giving you the compact version here. That is to…
