Behaviour Matters June 2015

Inside Jez’s
Brain
Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire
Just last week I was sat in a meeting watching
someone lie through their teeth about how
they had not only completed a project but also
done a significant amount of research for it, too.
Only the completed project wasn’t with them because – and here
comes the emotional tug on the heart strings – there was a computer
problem and then an incident with a cat and some coffee and a baby
crying and a family breakdown and then an argument and then
something else about the baby and then a problem with the fish. It
was heartbreaking. It was Oscar-winning. It was all lies.
The others around the table bought into the story and extended the
deadlines, made a lot of calls to rearrange the workload and enable
things to continue without the required details and content from the
project. I was put in a compromising position because I knew that
the individual had made all but one of the things in her story up (the
cat really did knock over the coffee cup). How did I know? Because
truth detection and the science of uncovering untruths is a personal
interest of mine and over the past ten years or so I’ve read a lot of
literature, attended quite a few lectures and befriended quite a few
specialists in the field of lying – years ago I used to give a lecture
about how to spot a liar – and how to flush one out!
Contrary to popular belief, liars tend to give themselves away more
through what they say rather than their body language. Their normal
speaking pattern will be different, so look out for changes to the way
in which they speak; either sped up or cautiously forming sentences,
for example. Most liars will commit less, say less and speed up
There are subtle tell-tale signs that our
bodies do, which give us away, too.
when lying, so as to incriminate themselves as little as possible and
to get the lie over with as quickly as possible. Listen to elements of
discomfort, too: regular breaks in the voice, a less uniform tone and
changes to the words that they use. For example, in the famous lying
studies, most subjects spoke about other people or things more than
themselves, when they were lying.
There are subtle tell-tale signs that our bodies do, which give us
away, too. Our feet often subconsciously point towards the exit in the
room, our fingers fiddle and there is an increase in facial touching.
When we smile naturally, responsively, as a result of feeling happiness
or sensing something amusing, our smiles appear quickly and
symmetrically. The muscles instinctively and automatically create
that visual response – take a look for yourself the next time you make
someone laugh: their smile appears without reservation. However, a
false smile is slower and lopsided or crooked; it’s not natural.
Where you can consciously control your heart rate, your bladder and
indeed your brain, the movement of your eyes (pupil dilation and
rapid eye movement, for example) is one of the few reactions in your
body over which you have absolutely no control. Our eyes give us away
more than you could ever possibly imagine. When we are nervous
our eyes often move rapidly and as we grow more uncomfortable
with the lie we are telling, our heart rate increases and as a natural
response, our pupils dilate. It has also been observed that people’s
eyes will often dart towards the exit of a room as subconsciously they
want to remove themselves from the lie and thus the environment
they’ve found themselves in.
Despite a lot of pop psychology information written on lying to
the contrary, and despite the fact that most of our registered
communication is actually non verbal (a whopping 55% of the way
that we relate to each other is via body language: facial expressions,
posture and gestures and 38% is attributed to how what we hear
sounds; the volume, intonation etc) the very best way to catch out
a liar is to listen to what they say. The math whizz readers will have
calculated that just 7% of how we relate to each other and effectively
communicate is down to the words that we use.
The important point, before you start brandishing people a liar for
simply scratching their nose, is that all of these points need to be
taken in context. It’s unlikely that you’ll see any one of these signs in
isolation (which does help with our itchy nosed colleagues).
Don’t Forget...
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