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A lot of effort has gone into trying to develop ways to detect deception -

Medieval torture devices, polygraphs, blood pressure and breathing monitors, voice stress analyzers, eye trackers, and infrared brain scanners have all been developed to try and tell when someone is lying. However, there are issues with all of these methods.

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None are completely reliable -

One issue is that we don’t often have access to this equipment, and although some have worked in certain circumstances, none of them are foolproof and none are reliable enough to be admissible in court.

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Communications science -

But there is another major tool we can use to help detect whether someone is lying: communications science. 

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Analyzing lies -

Instead of outrightly determining whether something is a lie or not, this method aims to analyze the lies themselves.

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We mostly lie to paint a better picture -

In part, we lie to paint a better picture of ourselves, connecting our fantasies to who we wish we were, rather than who we are and how we have behaved.

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There are many signals -

While our brain is off dreaming up who we could have been while we are spilling an uncalculated fabrication to someone, we often let plenty of signals slip by.

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A lot of communication is unconscious -

Our conscious mind only controls about 5% of our cognitive function, including communication. The other 95% occurs beyond our awareness.

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Lying is hard to get right -

Here’s the catch: stories that are based on imagined experiences are different from those of lived experiences. In short, it’s hard to dream up a situation in the same detail as it would exist.

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Interrogations -

This is why a common tactic that detectives use when they interrogate a suspect is asking them very unusual questions about a story, or asking the same question in different ways.

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It takes the best authors to imagine something that feels completely real -

Because it’s very difficult to imagine a full picture (some authors might be able to come close), criminals will often have not accounted for certain details.

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Language patterns -

What happens is that a different pattern of language use emerges when a person is lying.

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Linguistic text analysis -

A technology called linguistic text analysis has been developed to help identify the kind of way people use language when they’re being deceptive.

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When people are lying, they disassociate -

When people are lying, they reference themselves less. They tend to speak about another person to distance and disassociate from a situation.

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Example -

For instance, after a teenager spills wine they shouldn’t have been drinking on a rug, their alibi might be that “there’s not even wine in the house,” instead of “I didn’t spill wine on the rug.”

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Liars are negative -

Liars tend to be more negative because they may feel guilty about lying on a subconscious level.

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Someone else is to blame -

They might therefore say that they’re running late because the bus was late and go off on a rant about the transit system. Personal responsibility doesn't really factor in.

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Simple stories -

Also, when someone is lying they will tend to tell a story in very simple terms because our brain struggles to come up with a complex lie.

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Long-winded sentence structures -

Even though the actual details of what someone is saying can be very simple when they’re lying, they can also tend to say it in a convoluted way with a very long sentence structure.

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Padding -

People tend to add a lot of details that sound factual to pad the lie. Someone might say “there was nobody here, man or woman, who ever thought about, or even came close to considering, setting foot in, near, or around the property.” In this case they could have just said: “None of us went there.”

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Stalling -

When people are trying to come up with a deceptive answer, they tend to stall. One common way of doing this is by repeating the question they are asked.

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Defensiveness -

Because lying is often a form of protection, someone who is about to lie may reply with a suspicious answer or even a suspicious question.

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Overemphasizing the alibi -

Often people won’t use contractions in their sentences when they are lying, overemphasizing the point.

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Strict chronological structured stories -

People will also often tell a story in very strict chronology when they are lying, because otherwise it would be hard to remember. This can be imagined as similar to a child trying to lie by telling a story very simply and step by step.

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Their language will be soft when they refer to the offense -

When someone is lying about something, they will often change the language of the 'crime' they have committed to something softer. For example, they will say they didn’t “take” the wallet when they’re asked if they stole it.

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Overemphasizing how honest they're being -

Another way people give away that they are lying is by trying to overemphasize that they’re telling the truth by using language like “honestly” or “to tell you the truth.”

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Skipping large events in a story -

When someone is lying, they might build a huge intro and then skip over big events. It’s a tactic to build credibility.

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Specific denials -

When someone is lying, they will give very specific denials to not implicate themselves, whereas people who are being truthful won’t have a problem giving categorical statements like “I was never there.”

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Liars will hedge their bets -

When someone is lying, they hedge their bets. People often do this by saying things like “as far as I remember,” “from what I recall,” or “if you think about it.”

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An important note -

These indicators are only that: indicators. They are the types of behaviors that professionals will often detect when someone is lying. But just because someone is stalling for time doesn't mean they're lying, and so on. These are the types of things people do when they're lying, but it doesn't mean that because someone is doing them that they're lying. Keep this in mind before making a final judgment.

Sources: (Time) (Parade)

See also: Signs that you are in a toxic relationship

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