Blogpost 3: Liar Liar! Pants On Fire

Uh-oh! If I think someone is lying to me, I try to observe him/her by how he/she speaks. I ask him/her questions I already know. I know he/she is lying when he/she talks too fast and stutter, turns red and doesn't look straight into my eyes. But I swear, sometimes it's hard to tell whether he/she is lying or not. It still depends on the person you're talking to though. Because some are already a pros in lying. 

So how can you tell if someone is lying to you? Here are legit ways to know if a person is lying. I read this article titled, "How To Tell If Someone Is Lying To You" by Amanda L. Chan. At first I thought that when a person lies, you see it in the change of his/her behavior. WRONG. You will only obtain about an accuracy rate of 54 percent. Experts say that it's possible to tell if a person is lying based on his/her behavior but scientific researchers said that nonverbal behavior isn't a good source at all. All those ideas I've said in the first paragraph of my blog are false. In a study in the journal Psychological Science, it shows that we are more able to detect lies when we're unconsciously doing so. There are clues and strategies on how you can detect lies. It is called the "unanticipated question approach." You use this method when you think someone is trying to cover up or hiding something from you. It is a method wherein the liar will take time to plan their stories. 

"The classic idea that people, in general, believe -- and that ... many of these so-called experts propagate -- is that liars give themselves away by gaze aversion, not looking you in the eyes; that they fidget, they change their posture, they pick on their clothes," Hartwig says. 

That's what I thought at first. But after reading the article, I learned that not because they act like that means they're already lying. But for some people, every time their behavior changes, they really are lying. Complicated, I know. It depends on the person, really. 

Another similar topic is about how to determine if a person is lying to through text or online. In this article by Elizabeth Bernstein, titled, "How To Tell If Someone Is Lying To You In An Email." Now, how do you tell if a person is lying to you online? Text? Or maybe an email? We are left with fewer clues because it doesn't involve body language, gestures, facial expressions and tone of the voice. Question is, how do we detect if a person is lying?  To begin with, pay attention to what the person is saying. When a person repeats the same thing over and over again in different ways, now that's when they're lying. Another technique you should watch out for is when you asked a question and he/she didn't answer. Pay attention to vague answers. That's it. 

Noncommittal statements are red flags—"pretty sure," "probably," "must have" and, my least favorite, "maybe." "These words leave the person an out," Ms. Cohen Wood says.

YUP, EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE NONCOMMITTAL STATEMENT - "MAYBE." We love saying "maybe" only because we don't want to reject or hurt other people's feelings. One good example everybody is guilty of is when a person asks us out and we don't really like to hang out with that person that much, instead of saying "no", we say "maybe."