It’s fortunate that liars’ pants don’t really catch on fire. If they did, much of the world’s population would be ablaze at any given moment. “People lie most days,” says Kevin Colwell, a professor of psychology at Southern Connecticut State University who researches deception. The majority of fibs are the sorts of harmless white lies that don’t hurt anyone. (You don’t actually like Aunt Mildred’s new haircut? She’s not going to be any worse off believing otherwise.) “Lying is a very important social skill,” he says. “It greases the wheels of society and makes our relationships work better.”
More harmful lies, however—those that are intentional misrepresentations of material facts—have the opposite effect. Being lied to or about can deteriorate someone’s mental health and lead to a ripple effect of outcomes in their life, Colwell notes, including destroying their relationships. That’s why many of us play detective, trying to separate fact from fib.
So how can you tell if someone is lying to you? The key is to enter the conversation without assumptions, says Colwell, who has trained law enforcement officers and investigators with groups like the National Counterterrorism Center in deception detection. “You have to not go into it assuming they’re lying to you, because if you do, it’s going to change how they interact with you,” he says. “You have to be engaging and connect with them in a way that makes the conversation easy for them.”
You won’t always be able to tell for sure. But here’s what to look and listen for if you’re trying to figure out if someone is lying to you.
There will likely be physical signs
To know whether someone’s lying, you must have a baseline understanding of what’s normal for that person, explains Jim Clemente, a former New York State prosecutor and retired FBI special agent. The more time you spend with them, the better you’ll be able to recognize changes in behavior and communication….
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