THE key mistakes everyone makes when trying to catch out a liar have been revealed – and some are not as telling as you may believe.
Research suggests people lie once every day on average, ranging from little fibs to spare your feelings, to serious deceit by cheating partners.
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It turns out our ability to spot liars isn’t all that good, with little over half (54 per cent) of us able to pick up on a porkie.
And the reason is because we’re looking out for the wrong signs, Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University, told The Sun.
“There are no telltale signs of lying per se,” he explained.
“There are indicators of planning in speech when you’re making something up.
“And there are indicators of negative emotions.
“A lot of people feel shame or guilt or embarrassment when they’re lying.
“But some people don’t, which of course makes it more complicated.”
Here are some of the biggest misconceptions about spotting a liar.
Eye contact
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Eye contact is the biggest telltale sign that people seem to believe in.
The problem is, every liar knows of that trick and will do everything in their power to stop themselves from avoiding eye contact.
How close you get to a person can unintentionally affect their eye contact too, making it appear like they’re lying when they’re not.
“My mother always said she could tell when I was lying, she said, because you just can’t look me in the eye,” explains Professor Beattie.
“She would lean forward when she’d ask the question and research has shown the police do exactly the same thing.
“You’ve got somebody, you think they’re guilty, you lean forward.
“Well, the point about eye contact, it’s also affected by interpersonal distance.
“So if you’re sitting very close to someone and they lean forward, you look away.”
Fidgeting and movements
Another misconception is that fidgeting or excessive shifting is a sign that someone is lying to you.
If anything, you need to look out for less movement, Professor Beattie says.
“They think people are going to be nervous and therefore they move more,” he continued.
“All the indication is that people move less when they’re lying.
“So, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to dampen down behaviours to give less away.
“The best indicators of lying seems to be that people make fewer hand movements and fewer foot movements when they’re lying, not more as people expect.”
However, gesture-speech mismatches could be a sign.
Often when people speak they tend to move their hands to emphasis what they’re saying.
For example, if someone is talking about a long journey they might stretch their arms and hands out.
“If they don’t dampen down their gestural movement, occasionally they will say something and the gestural movement doesn’t match what they’re saying,” he adds.
HOW BIAS CAN AFFECT LIE DETECTING
Our bias can also send us in the wrong direction when it comes to lying.
“If you think that someone’s not trustworthy and you think they’re a liar, then you kind of look out for cues that you wouldn’t look out for otherwise,” Professor Beattie continues.
“And if you like someone and think they are trustworthy, then you miss the cues when they do appear. And that’s called confirmation bias.”
Smiles
A liar may use a smile to mask their emotions – but how long it stays on their face matters.
Those telling a porkie tend to smile and it fades quickly, whereas those with not lying have smiles that fade a lot slower from their face.
There’s also something called micro-expressions, which are the really brief expressions that start appearing just before you get the masking smile in place – but they’re so quick most people miss them.
“If you play the videos back in slow motion, people can say, oh, there’s something quite strange there or I didn’t notice that,” Professor Beattie says.
“There’s a kind of look of fear or look of sadness which they didn’t pick up.”
Professor Beattie has published a book on the subject called Lies, Lying and Liars: A Psychological Analysis.
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