“I’m on my way!” “I missed you.” “Your email never arrived.” “I am innocent.”
Every day, a person is exposed to between 10 and 200 lies, from family members to complete strangers.
People usually lie to preserve their dignity by presenting an idealistic version of themselves. How many times have you told a friend that you were late because of traffic, rather than the truth that you overslept?
Over the centuries, people have come up with different ways to reveal the truth. Medieval society used torture to get confessions out of suspected criminals, while modern-day police often use polygraphs to monitor a person’s physical reactions.
While a person’s lie is often given away by body language, this is not the only way to determine truth or falsehood. Scientists studying human behaviour have found that stories based on lies can often be distinguished from truth based on words alone.
1. Lack of self-reference
When a person lies, they might bring others into the narrative to avoid talking about themselves, and eschew using personal pronouns to distance themselves from the bluff.
Despite this, the use of personal pronouns is not necessarily an indicator of truth. A person who confesses something will keep the spotlight on themselves, even though many confessions have been known to be false.
2. Negative wording and defensiveness
Lies tend to be phrased in the negative because most people do not feel good about lying. For example: “I’m sorry I’m late – I hate Malaysian traffic.”
Sometimes a person might use defensive words. Consider which one sounds more truthful – “I didn’t cheat on you”, or: “There was never any cheating going on here, ever!”
It should be noted, however, that some people – particularly those with sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies – have less or no guilt about lying.
3. Oversimplification
People tend to describe untruths in simple terms because it takes time to come up with a more elaborate story. Facts and important instances tend to be left out for the sake of keeping the lie short and sweet.
The less detail there is, the less likely you are to mess up!
4. Too much detail
Ironically, more often than not, a liar adds unnecessary words or pointless details to pad up their story and make it sound more convincing.
“Believe me, there is absolutely nothing terrible going on with the plane and there is absolutely no reason to panic” is one lie you probably never want to hear.
“I got up at 4:30am intending to go to the market to buy fresh items for the food bank but in the end it was raining so I decided to go back to sleep” is a long-winded way to explain why you were late for work.
What does it matter?
Not everyone believes that honesty is the best policy. Fortunately, for most people, the untruths they hear are white lies that are harmless and can be overlooked.
Still, there are benefits in being able to tell how truthful a person is being.
Being discerning could stop you from being misled by fake news – a common phenomenon in this pandemic era – or scammed out of large amounts of money (also common).
It can help you uncover an unhappy relationship, an unrewarding job or a misleading advertisement.
Being able to pick up on the subtle cues that someone might be trying to pull the wool over your eyes can be a good thing – though ultimately, it would be nice if everyone could look for the good in people and believe that others are trustworthy.