5 Sure-shot Cues to Spot Liars

5 Sure-shot Cues to Verbal Deception that Make You Lie-Proof

People don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say. James Patterson, author of The Day America told The Truth, interviewed over 2000 Americans and found that 91% lied regularly at home and at work. It seems as we live in the world of lies. Everybody lies but nobody likes it when it is done to them. While it’s true that you cannot stop people from lying but you sure can stop getting fooled around.

Making right decisions in life is critical to one’s success. People base their decisions on the information they have and on the way they interpret it. The cues to verbal deception will empower you with a leverage that most people don’t have. You will learn how to read other people’s mind and get the message beneath the word. When you know a person’s intent you will prevent yourself from being taken advantage of and will be able to take more informed decisions. You will have the power to control the situation.

From casual conversations, to interviews, negotiations and interrogations, the cues to verbal deception listed ahead will provide you with an extra edge to enhance and advance your business and personal relationships. It will save you time, money, energy and heartache. Most importantly it will prevent you from being taken advantage of.

Cues to Verbal Deception

1. Avoids Answering Straight

Generally the guilty one gets on the defensive. He tries to find ways to avoid the topic or the question which deals with a situation in which he is guilty. He may use any of the following ways to circumvent:

• He may just offer his belief on the topic instead of giving you the details. For instance, he may say: This is something which should be taken seriously.
•  She may use humour or even sarcasm rather than giving a straight answer. For instance, she may say: What kind of man would do like this?

2. Narrates Spiceless Stories

A lie made up to look truthful sounds a lot different than truth. Cover-ups would reveal a lot less than something which is real. Some of the characteristics of false stories are:

• They are not elaborately detailed.
•  Miss out on the point of view of others. They do not incorporate how other characters in the story felt about things which were going on. This would otherwise involve more thinking and consequently more time.
•  Rarely include negative details. In order to make their alibi sound convincing they just include positive details while forgetting that under ordinary circumstances the negatives go hand-in-hand with the positives.

3. Camouflages to Buy Time

When caught unawares people need time to think out the lie. However, they can’t be very overt with it too. If they can gain time by talking around they’ll get time to think on the side and come up with plausible justification. Some ways to buy time are:

• Come Again: Easiest way to buy time is to ask the other person to repeat the question over.
•  Counter Question: The second best thing to do is to ask a question about the question to delay answering. For instance: Why would you think I’ll do a thing like that?
•  Uses Fillers: If you ask a suspect, “We terribly missed you yesterday. Where were you?” and he says something like, “Ummmmmm, I waaaaas actually visiting my relatives” and then adds glibly, “I had no plans but they called up and you know I couldn’t say no….” All he is doing is making up things by filling the gap with ummmm and waaaaas.
•  Similarly the liar might just repeat the language of the question with the added yes or no response. This way the reply will not get delayed and he doesn’t have to use any of his own words. In the meanwhile he can devote his mind fully on his cooking dish.

4. Number Bummer

The strange thing about numbers is that most people have affinity to a particular number. If you ask them to choose a random number and note their response you will be able to find out which number a particular person is inclined to. But what makes it interesting is that majority of people are just unaware of this fact. When people lie they have to make up numbers too. What they end up doing is stating numbers which are same or multiples of one another.

5. Seems Over-concerned

A liar would be over-conscious. He would be concerned more about how believable she sounds and appears. She’ll go on cross-checking to see if you really understand and believe what she has to say. For instance she may say, “You don’t trust me on that, do you?” On the contrary, a person who is telling the truth is not fear-oriented and expects not to be suspected. She’ll tell his side to the story and then go off to sleep. In her stride to make sure you believe his story, the liar may put on an ostentatious display of friendliness sprinkled with excessive laughter.

Information is like energy. It is neutral. It can be used for both positive and negative purposes. The intention behind eliciting this information is to educate people to prevent themselves from getting deceived and take more informed decisions.