5 ways to tell if someone is lying
(
Spiritual Living : Simple Life)
life lesson,
simply life,
Liar,
Liar, liar, pants on fire. A pair of flaming trousers (or a growing nose, a la Pinocchio) isn't the only sign that a person is spewing falsehoods. Here, five expers teach you how to smoke out a fibber.
1 A person's demeanor or voice radically changes.
As an investigator, I try to assess how someone normally speaks. To do that, I begin an interview by asking questions that I know the answers to, like "What's your full name?" or "Where do you live?"
Some folks are naturally animated and talk fast; others are more subdued.
Once I know which type of talker a person I start asking him questions that I don't know the answer to.
If his manner shifts abruptly -- going from calm to agitated or lively to mellow---chances are he's not telling the truth.
GREGG MCCRARY is a retired FBI criminal profiler and a crime analyst in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
2 A person avids saying "I"
In my research, I've discovered that when people fib about themselves, they tend to use I and me less often than people who are being truthful. Instead, they'll speak about themselves in the third person ("This is a girl who loves to ski") or even truncate their language ("Really into listen¬ing to jazz") -- anything to give themselves psycho¬logical distance from the lie.
JEFFREY HANCOCK is an associate professor of com¬munication at Cornell University who studies online lying.
3 A person has an answer for everything.
Ask most people what they were doing last week
and they'll have to pause and think about it. That's even more true of teen¬agers' who generally don't have the capacity to tell an elaborate story on the fly. So when I call a child into my office and he seems totally rehearsed-there's zero hesitation before he answers a question-well, that's a dead giveaway.
JULIA CHUNG has been an educator for 16 years, first as a high school teacher in Los Angeles and now as an assistant principal in Westchester County, New York.
4 A person fidgets and fusses for no reason.
If someone keeps perform¬ing a random physical action that seems unnecessary-cleaning her glasses excessively, retying her shoelaces, or dusting off the (clean) table in front of her-she may be lying.
The guilt and anxiety make her restless. That can be particularly true if she is lying to somebody she loves. When a person fibs to a traffic cop, she won't neces¬sarily fidget a lot. But if she is deceiving her husband, she won't be able to sit still.
BARBARA MITCHELL has been a relationship therapist in New York City for 34 years.
5 A person proclaims his honesty. Repeatedly
To sell us on the integ¬rity of their answers, liars often use phrases emphasizing the validity oftheir statements, like "to tell the truth" and "to be perfectly honest." These verbal tip-offs frequently invoke religion. Think of expressions like "I swear on a stack of Bibles" and "as God is my witness:' Most truthful people don't need to go that far.
JOSEPH BUCKLEY is the president of John E. Reid and Associates, in Chicago, which trains law-enforcement investigators.