How to catch a liar has become another very important skill for people in this era, an era where it is difficult to find the truth. In reality, no one wants to be lied to, and lying and deception have become something that we all have to face in our daily lives. We ourselves may be the ones being lied to or the ones lying to others.
“Because every day we have to deal with lies, and we’d rather lie to someone we just met than to a coworker at the office.”
In a day, we tell anywhere from 10 to 200 lies. We lie about 3 or more times to people we’ve met for the first time within 10 minutes. We’re definitely more likely to lie to a first-time acquaintance than to a coworker at the office.
- Outspoken people may seem like they are extroverts, right? But the truth is, they lie more than introverts and private people.
- Men tend to lie about themselves more than they lie about others, while women tend to lie more than defend others in a conversation.
There is probably no one who would dare to deny that “I have never lied” or “I am a very honest person.”
We ourselves may think that we never lie and we are very honest people, which is not wrong because sometimes lying is a good thing because humans are social animals. Have we ever heard this funny sentence in some movies or dramas? For example, “The truth never dies because the person who tells it dies instead.” Could this be one of the reasons why people choose to lie?
How to Spot a Liar
Although we say that most lies are good lies, sometimes the listener does not always want a lie. Or what if it is not a good lie? The listener may become a victim of hearing the wrong thing. It may lead to misunderstanding in some matters. The result is anger, sadness or resentment from these lies.
Or, a more serious example might be when we believe that the murderer did not kill anyone because of his lies, until we or someone close to us becomes the next victim, then we understand and know that we have been lied to.
So, how to catch a liar might be a good method or skill to turn us, the prey, into the predator in this matter. How great would it be if when we listen to your husband’s words when he comes home late and tells you that he got off work late, but in fact he secretly went out with another woman, and you immediately know that he is lying, or catch the lies of your friends at work or even your boss’s lies?
A lie can be worth more than a billion dollars.
If we were to assess the price or value of a lie, some might say that the price is 12 baht, which is equivalent to lying that you didn’t steal a soda at a convenience store, or that a lie might be worth 100 baht when you sneak a notebook and a pen from a stationery store and say you didn’t do it.
For example, in the United States, there was a major fraud in history when someone was able to use lies and deception to steal more than $997 billion. Of course, this crime was not only about money lost, but also about national security lost.
In our country, there are many examples as well. Let’s take a case of lying as an example, one of the historical cases of the fraudulent scheme, which is the Mae Chamoi share case of Mrs. Chamoi Thipso, a former employee of the Fuel Organization, who deceived people into investing in buying oil tankers in 1984. She deceived people into investing with lies, resulting in more than 16,000 victims with total damages of more than 4.5 billion baht.
A lie has power only when people believe it.
Clapping with one hand doesn’t make a sound, right? It’s the same theory. Lying is not something that can be done alone. It is a collaboration between the speaker and the listener. While the speaker chooses to tell those lies, the listener does their job by listening and believing those lies. And that’s it, the lie is done.
Lying has become part of human culture.
Lying is an action that has been in place since before we can even say “Mom” or “Dad”. For example, a baby pretends to cry to get attention. At 1 year old, a child starts to hide his mistake by pretending to cry so that his parents won’t pay attention to him because he doesn’t eat his vegetables. At 2 years old, he starts to show off the toys in the box that his parents bought him. At 5 years old, he starts to lie by telling his parents that he’s sick because he doesn’t want to go to school. Or at 9 years old, he starts to learn to compliment his mother on her beauty so that she will buy him snacks. You see, children can learn to lie.
As we get older, we start lying to teachers that we took out a book to review at home and forgot to bring it to class today in elementary school, or lying that we finished our homework but forgot to bring it in high school. Research has shown that the worst kind of lie people make is that college students will lie to their mothers at least once for every five conversations they have with their mothers. As we get older, the most common lie we tell our parents is probably “It’s okay.”
We call this the “post-reality” world. Let’s go back a little bit beyond the time when we were babies. Studies have shown that humans evolved from apes. The story of Coco, a female gorilla born at the San Francisco Zoo, is about how Coco learned sign language and communicated with humans through it, and became beloved around the world. What’s interesting is that Coco had a little kitten that she loved and was very attached to. One day, Coco accidentally pulled the sink off the wall. When a staff member came in and asked who did it, Coco chose to point at her beloved kitten instead of admitting that she had done it.
“Lying has become a part of our daily lives.”
Lying is filling the gaps that we lack.
If quitting lying was as easy as giving up a cup of bubble tea, we wouldn’t have crime news on TV anymore. People use lies to fill in the gaps, such as lying that we pick up our kids from school every evening because we want to look like a good parent, when in reality our kids have to take the bus to school every day. Lies are used to make ourselves look better, smarter, richer, and make our hopes seem truer when someone chooses to believe us.
“Everyone is willing to give us what we want when we give them what they want.”
A husband may just want to be treated with care, sweet words when he comes home from work, and another woman can give him what his wife cannot, so he is willing to give her wealth and property. Or our boss at the office may be a useless person at home, but when he comes to the office, he makes us feel powerful, capable, and admired, so he gives us a bonus or a promotion, etc. A successful lie is like an exchange or working together for the benefits that we want.
- Lie detectors can catch more than 90% of lies, while the average person can only catch 54% of lies.
Liars are both good and bad liars. Most people tend to use the same techniques that worked in the past to tell the next lie. The secret to catching a liar is to try to keep an eye on 2 main points that people often use to tell a lie:
- Irrelevant Denial : In this type of lie, the liar usually uses formal language. Sometimes they will begin by repeating the question, answering with more detail than necessary.
- Body language: They tend to look into our eyes for longer than usual, their upper body hardly moves at all. We may think that a warm smile is a sign of sincerity, but we are completely wrong, because our cheek and mouth muscles can be controlled. What you should focus on to find the truth is the eyes, because they cannot lie.
“Because people often rehearse telling lies, but rarely rehearse how to lie.”
Blinking with a different rhythm, turning your feet in the same direction as the exit, putting something between yourself and the other person, speaking in a lower voice – these may be changes in the behavior of a ” prone liar “. We cannot immediately judge him/her as lying, because these symptoms are only warning signs. We have to try to look and listen more clearly. We may ask more difficult questions, or have him/her tell the story backwards. But remember, aggression or violence will not help in finding the truth.
The difference between a truth teller and a liar
A truthful person or an innocent person will be eager to help you find the truth. They will side with you fully, willing to do anything. And when he is wronged or suspected, he will be angry, furious, and furious all the time. And at the end, he will offer the most severe punishment to the liar because it is not him anyway.
On the other hand, a liar will be flustered, look down, speak in a low voice, and try to tell a lot of information, but it is unnecessary or not relevant to the question. Of course, after he has said everything, hours later, try to tell the story from the beginning to the end, he will definitely not be able to do it.
Conclusion
We never know when we become victims of liars and when we become liars ourselves. If lying fills the gaps in what we lack,
So first of all, what do we lack? Not only to avoid others from taking advantage of our lies, but also to stop our own lies and allow ourselves to live with the truth.
In today’s world where technology has become a part of life, many people reveal their stories through various channels and media online. But ” being very open does not mean that they are honest ” because in the world of social media, we all choose to be anyone through typing, taking photos, and recording videos. So in a world where revealing is easy, it has become a world that has led us further away from the truth.
If we want to survive in this world, we must look carefully and listen to what they are doing, what they are saying, and observe their gestures or their actions because “even if a person intends to lie, he cannot keep a secret, not with his mouth, but with his fingertips.
Source: TEDGlobal 2011:
How to spot a liar – Pamela Meyer
