When it comes to spotting a lie, there are literally hundreds of variables that need to be considered. What you’re really trying to do is combine the info you get from all the tricks that will soon be up your sleeve, to make the best possible educated guess. Any expert will tell you that no method is fool proof, but they’ll also admit that roughly 80% of lies can be caught if told to you face-to-face.
Begin with the knowledge that some people are very subtle liars, while others are much more obvious. If a question as innocent as, “Did you see that cash I left of the coffee table yesterday?” causes the person to answer, “@#$% YOU! I don’t need to stand here and be treated like a thief! I didn’t touch your crummy twenty bucks anyways – God!” while sweating and scratching nervously for no apparent reason, you can rest assured something’s probably afoot.
For the subtler liars, you’ll soon find that their body language might tell an entirely different story than what’s coming out of their mouths. People who are lying often subconsciously make their bodies more compact as they spin their yarns. Instead of stretching out, their hand and leg movements tend to be directed more towards their own bodies, almost like they think the less space they take up, the less transparent their fibs will appear.
Liars will also frequently touch their mouth, their face or their throat while lying. Nervous tics such as those associated with lying are typically directed towards the head. Conversely, liars will usually avoid touching their chests or hearts.
Eye movement is also a huge indicator of untruths. When your brain processes certain things and searches for information, it usually corresponds to the eyes moving in very specific ways. For example, just because a person has to think about the answer to a question for a spilt-second doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lying. Tests have shown that people who are racking their minds for accurate information tend to look up and to the right. People that are rummaging about for an appropriate lie tend to look up and to the left, down at their feet, or basically anywhere but in your eyes.
Speech patterns and tone of voice can be great helps as well. If you notice a person is speaking more slowly than they normally would, this could be because they are trying to think up an appropriate lie as they go, and it’s taking them a moment. “Where have you been?!”
“I was……at the…BANK...”
Sneakier liars sometimes like to think up an iron-clad lie in advance, but because they’re reciting a predetermined response to an accusation, it might come out sounding mechanical, or in an unnatural flow.
The words themselves can even – outside of how they’re said – be enough to help with your intuition. If you ask someone a question and think they might be lying, pay special attention to see if they repeat your own words back to you in their answer. For instance, “Did you accidentally lock the cat inside the refrigerator?”, “Did I lock the cat in the refrigerator? No, I did not lock the cat in the refrigerator!”
Again, all these tips do is tell you what to look out for as you try to make an educated guess, but if used correctly with a little intuition, you can guarantee that more often than not, you’ll be able to spot the lies coming from a mile away.