Psychology professor debunked the myths of recognizing liars: one must be honest in understanding lies

Creating lies is deeply woven into society

A psychology expert has revealed several effective methods for detecting deceptive behavior based on verbal language and other visual cues. According to a specialist, as soon as a person focuses on sound signals, he becomes the best lie detector.

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Lie — it is a complex behavior that every person experiences at some point in their life, whether it is the one who is being lied to or the one who is telling a lie. Historically, detecting a liar has been a difficult task. In lie detection work, psychologists establish a baseline and then look for specific signals that deviate from that baseline. And these cues are typically verbal.

People think they can tell when someone is lying by visual cues in body language, such as eye movements, gestures, facial expressions, and more. However, in a recent conversation with the British Broadcasting Corporation, psychology professor Richard Wiseman dispelled the myths.

One of the most interesting tests Wiseman mentions is — this is one in which the audience's ability to detect lies using verbal language was superior to the audience's ability to recognize lies in the absence of visual cues. Contrary to popular belief, verbal cues can be more informative than nonverbal cues. Wiseman also emphasized that looking up and to the right does not indicate that you are lying, saying there is no evidence to support this theory. However, he notes that the true sign of lying can be found in a deviation from a person's usual pattern of behavior. Hesitations in speech, distance in answers and a decrease in the number of personal details in speech — Here are some of the signals you should pay attention to.

«You are trying to drop the words "I", "my" and «me» like them, because lying is cognitively difficult. When you lie, you have to think about what the other person knows, what might fit into my story, what I already said, and all this affects the interlocutor’s consciousness,” — explains the psychologist.

Regarding the effectiveness of lie detectors, Wiseman is also skeptical about their reliability, noting that physiology can be an imprecise indicator, especially given the stress that testing can cause. “No technology can solve the problem that suspected signs of lying also appear in suspects who tell the truth. The effects are so small and unstable that they practically do not help to recognize lies,” — the professor thinks. According to him, the differences between liars and those who tell the truth can only be discovered in research and are not suitable for practical lie detection.

When it comes to the ethics of lying, the British psychologist takes a balanced point of view. Lying in certain contexts can strengthen social bonds, such as when you feign enthusiasm for an unwanted gift to avoid hurting the giver's feelings. He emphasizes that lying should not be seen as a one-dimensional behavior, but varies depending on circumstances, and understanding this is important even when teaching young people.

Can you become a good liar? From a psychological point of view, there is a kind of arousal theory. The idea is that when a person lies to someone, he feels guilty and therefore begins to sweat and move more actively.

«However, if you have repeated this lie quite often, or you are don't really care much about lying, or even if you're lying for some greater good, you might not feel as guilty about it,” — the psychologist concludes.