I had a friend who was a pathological liar. We called her BS Sue. BS Sue would invent illnesses to provoke sympathy and attention, and she lied to turn people against each other. She was so cunning in weaving her lies that we believed her. It caused havoc among our friends.
I just wish someone had told me back then how to deal with liars. Here are 6 clever ways you can spot them.
When a liar can focus on their story, they are more convincing, so if you want to expose them, give them less time. A new study suggests that if you suspect someone is lying, one way to catch them in a lie is to distract them while they’re telling the story.
Lying is more mentally taxing than telling the truth. It requires increased cognitive effort, and distracting the liar with another task prevents them from focusing on their made-up story.
However, you must make the secondary task equally important as the lie for it to be effective.
“Our research has shown that truths and lies can sound equally plausible as long as lie tellers are given a good opportunity to think what to say.”
Lead Psychologist, Aldert Vrij, University of Portsmouth
If you want to know how to deal with liars, just listen to them. When a person lies, their language changes. They swap ‘I’ pronouns for third-person pronouns; they use shorter words and are more negative.
One study analyzed President Donald Trump’s tweets over a three-month period. It found there were systematic differences in the language used when he posted factually correct tweets or factually incorrect tweets. This study confirms previous research that showed:
Examples of Donald Trump Tweets
Factually Incorrect Tweet
“Only fools or worse are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE and this will be changed. Also our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!”
Factually Correct Tweet
“Congratulations @ElonMusk and @SpaceX on the successful #FalconHeavy launch. This achievement along with @NASA’s commercial and international partners contiunes to show American ingenuity at its best!”
Researchers found Trump’s language was so markedly different they could predict a lie with over 70% accuracy.
Pär-Anders Granhag is Professor of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg. He doesn’t believe you can tell a liar by their body language but suggests you should listen for verbal cues.
“If a person changes their story when you present parts of the background information that you hold, you’re on your way to catching a lie.”
Pär-Anders Granhag
The police know how to deal with liars. They pay attention to changes in the narrative. You often see suspects in police interrogations changing their stories when presented with indisputable facts. Or they’ll ‘suddenly’ remember an important detail they left out.
Someone who is telling the truth will say, “I don’t know,” if they are unsure, but liars need the fill the gap. Liars are more likely to offer additional details because they’re trying desperately hard to sell the lie. To catch someone in a lie, ask questions that you already know the answer to, or ones you could check later.
How to deal with liars? Keep them talking. There’s an old saying about giving someone enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves. The more they talk, the more likely they’ll forget their previous lies. Look out for conflicting facts or details that have changed.
We already know that lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth. The liar must remember the details of the story, the order in which they happened, and make it sound believable at the same time.
When a person is telling the truth, it’s easy to remember events along a timeline, but, a liar memorizes the lie in forward time, and while they may have rehearsed and anticipated certain questions, it is much more challenging to recall it in reverse.
In one study, Dr. Edward Geiselman asked participants to recall a truthful and a fabricated story in reverse.
“… this technique is scientifically based and appears to be the quickest and easiest way to provoke indicators of potential fabrication—‘red flags’ or ‘hot spots’ that should prompt you to investigate further what someone is telling you.”
Dr. Edward Geiselman
Red flags include shorter recollections, a lack of details and context, justifications for their actions, and broken speech.
As well as differences in speech, liar’s body language changed. Liars tended to press their lips together and look away, as if they were concentrating.
Their hand gestures were different also. When a person is truthful, they tended to gesture away from their body. Liars tended to gesture towards the body and use more self-soothing gestures, such as stroking their arms or hands.
“The most diagnostic differences between truth tellers and lie tellers occurred in plausibility, immediacy, directness, and clarity.”
Aldert Vrij et al
How to deal with liars? Ask yourself:
There’s no one magic formula that can reveal a liar, and it gets even more difficult to spot one if they are a loved one. But once you know a person is lying, how do you deal with them?
Ask the person why they had to lie? Was it a white lie or a lie of omission to spare your feelings? Did they do something they were ashamed of and were too scared to tell you? Or did they lie to cover up something they knew would be a deal-breaker?
If you get to the reason behind the lie, you can deal with it and prevent it from happening again.
If you suspect a person is a pathological liar, approach them differently. Do they lie to everyone or just you? Is this person gaslighting you? Are they a work colleague who lies to get ahead?
Gather the evidence beforehand that proves the person is lying and present it to them. Be direct but unemotional. Let them know that lying is a deal breaker for you and that they need to rebuild your trust.
People lie for many reasons, and detecting their lies can be a challenge, especially if they are gaslighting you on purpose. Using the tactics above can help you detect liars and prevent them from lying in the future.
