Contents
Life in society taught a person to distort reality in their own interests. Simply put, we are used to lying in order to present events in a more favorable light. Psychology, in turn, has studied the signs that betray this distortion. We tell you what you should pay attention to so as not to become a victim of fraud.
“Everyone lies,” the protagonist of the popular TV series “House Doctor” is sure. Sadly, there is some truth in this — deception really accompanies our entire social, and often personal life. Faced with it once, we begin to subconsciously expect a repetition of this in the future. We are afraid that we will be deceived by a business partner, loved one, employee or manager.
When communication is especially important for us, we “test” the incoming information. Usually this happens unconsciously and almost always — haphazardly. From this, the result may turn out to be the opposite: either unjustified suspiciousness is turned on, or the principle “I myself am glad to be deceived” works, when deliberately false information is skipped for the sake of calming the psyche.
But there is good news: lies are recognizable. This is due to the fact that it is not inherent in human nature as such. A child is not born with the ability to lie, he adopts this skill from adults.
In the social world, lying is associated with the desire to avoid punishment or gain an advantage. But at the same time, the liar has an internal conflict between the perceived reality and the distortion that he broadcasts outward. This conflict, in turn, manifests itself in certain behavioral signs, which in psychology are called «expressive behavior». Here they serve as indicators of probable lies.
One of the main signs of disharmony that occurs in a liar is incongruence, a mismatch between the information that a person transmits through various channels. There are two of these channels: verbal (speech) and non-verbal (bodily).
The most common form of incongruence is when «body language» contradicts the content of speech. This is due to the fact that our culture, educational and upbringing methods are colored “left-brained”: they give priority to the development of speech, logic and analysis. The left hemisphere of the brain is predominantly responsible for them.
From childhood, we learn to control speech. Naturally, when it is time, first of all, we automatically take control of this particular channel, trying to keep track of the plausibility and consistency of our version of events. At the same time, the body continues to live its own life, involuntarily exposing us.
The vast majority faced similar results: someone will remember the sad face of a colleague congratulating him on his promotion, and someone, as an interlocutor, agreeing verbally, barely perceptibly shook his head negatively.
If we try to control the body, then this affects the quality of speech: it slows down, pauses become more frequent, more errors and reservations appear.
Incongruence can manifest itself within each of the channels separately. The main components of non-verbalism — facial expressions, gestures and posture — are often out of sync with each other, because the liar simply does not have enough resources (attention, self-control) to coordinate them.
It is known that any intrapersonal conflict (and lies are its special case) creates muscle clamps. The deceiver unconsciously tries to localize this clamp at one point, and this violates the organicity of his plasticity. For example, he gesticulates with one hand in a sweeping manner, while the other is fixed. Or a typical example from the training video: the speaker sits on a swivel chair and at the moment of deception begins to actively move the lower part of the torso while keeping the upper part motionless.
Often the clamp is manifested in the voice: the timbre rises sharply, acquires a shrill tone. In common parlance, this is called «give a rooster». And vice versa: sincere, «kitchen» conversations, where sincerity and confidence of the interlocutors are high, as a rule, take place in lowered tones.
The «lie detector» problem
It would seem that since we know the symptoms of the disease, why not create a universal cure? Why not develop an accurate algorithm by which it will be possible to accurately recognize fraud?
Not so simple. It is no coincidence that leading psychologists have been criticizing the method of using a lie detector for many years, and in court, polygraph readings are considered circumstantial evidence. Verbal and non-verbal deviations from the norm can have different causes, and lying is only one of them.
For example, a person may worry about a heightened sense of responsibility or fear of being misunderstood. Thus, a young lecturer, speaking to a large audience for the first time, will lose his voice, and a witness, who is in court for the first time, will become confused in the facts. But none of them will be a malicious deceiver.
After all, it is easier for a “professional” liar to maintain his composure when checking than for an honest but impressionable person. In addition, any data from the same lie detector is just material that needs to be interpreted. And the interpretation is always carried out by people who may have their own shortcomings, weaknesses, prejudices.
How do we do it in life
So far, we have looked at the situation from the height of scientific theories. But how do ordinary people in the “natural environment” behave when trying to recognize deception? It turns out that they behave in exactly the same way as professionally trained specialists. Both are guided by the specificity of the information received: the more details, the more trust. On this basis, the message is tentatively evaluated as true or false. Depending on this, a further verification strategy is selected.
Suspecting lies, we focus on the content side — the details and the logic of the story. In turn, we look for confirmation of reliability in the behavior of the interlocutor: we evaluate his confidence, sincerity. The problem is that we all tend to rely on personal experience in these assessments. Therefore, if the deception is consistent with this experience and the familiar picture of the world as a whole, we are more likely to accept it as the truth. By the way, there is also the opposite effect, on which the well-known propaganda principle is based — «the more fantastic the lie, the easier it will be believed.»
Setting up sensors
But again, it’s not all bad. There are several scientifically proven effects that suggest how you can reliably verify the dishonesty of the interlocutor.
«background effect»
It demonstrates that a liar is more likely to give himself away in cases where we are familiar with his usual manner of communication and behavior. If he suddenly, without obvious external reasons, begins to deviate from this manner, there is every reason to assume that he is insincere. But if you met a person for the first time and do not quite trust him, try to turn the conversation to neutral questions. Or ask about something you already know. Then it will be possible to compare whether his behavior changes when moving from the topic that is suspicious.
This effect was confirmed by studies in which all participants first told neutral facts from their biography, and then some of them were drawn by lot to fictional stories. At this moment, the narrators noticeably drew themselves up, began to speak more measuredly. This behavior is intended to compensate for the unreliability of information. But the difference in the style of presentation betrays a lie.
«The Dialogue Effect»
One-way communication (think of a podium speech by a politician or a monologue by a seller of some «miraculous» drugs) makes it easier to hide a deception than a conversation between several participants. This, in particular, is due to the fact that lies are often prepared and develop according to a pattern. If this template is knocked down by unexpected questions or clarifications, then the whole structure can “float”.
The most important thing is to clarify specific details in the dialogue, this is the most vulnerable part in the structure of lies. Even in Soviet times, investigators were advised to ask the same question several times, return to the same situation and follow the description of secondary details. It is on them that the criminal will sooner or later “cut off”: he will confuse the color of the fence or the brand of the car.
Lie detection is not an easy technology, but it can still be mastered
The main thing is not to rely on a single sign: rubbing the earlobe, looking into the upper right corner. Instead, it is worth monitoring the words and behavior of the interlocutor in a complex, paying special attention to unnaturalness or sudden changes in them.
You can often hear stories about how a wife “at a glance” learns about her husband’s deceit, and parents instantly notice the cunning of a child. This family «intuition» is actually the result of constant observation, which allows you to capture and evaluate such signals that a superficial glance would miss. It is clear that in most life situations we have much less time to look at the interlocutor. However, the general principle is the same: observe, peer, note specific details. And each time the signs of a lie will be revealed to you faster and more accurately.