Recognizing Lies-Hacking the Human Mind

Many times in life you must have wanted to distinguish lies and truth. The ability to judge the truth is a very rare asset in professional life,political life, social life as well as in family life. In fact,recognizing a truth and a lie can perhaps be said to be one of the most important skills for you. The human mind is always like an open book It emits the inner messages via posture,eyes,expression and body language even when one doesn’t use verbal language.

As such, I have prepared below a small list of signs that indicate that the person exhibiting them may indeed be lying. The important point to note is that,for a more accurate analysis of the truth, you must take into account as many indications as possible. So, here we go:-

(1) Awkward behavior towards simple questions:-

If you suspect a person of hiding the truth, ask them a simple question regarding the particular issue without explicitly stating the intent. A diverted gaze and delay in answering are possible indications of lying.

(2) Avoiding personal pronouns:-

Many people have a habit of reducing their usage of personal pronouns like “I”,”me”,”mine”,etc.  By doing so, these people tend to create a psychological distance between the guilt of the event and themselves.  If you know the person well, then it becomes quite easy to spot the reduced usage of personal pronouns compared to their natural way of speaking.

(3) Creating physical barriers:-

Let us suppose you are sitting across a table facing the person you suspect of lying. When you accuse them of lying, they are very likely to pick up any object lying nearby- books, erasers, pens, cups, etc., and place them inadvertently in between you and them.  They do this unconsciously. In reality, the human mind unknowingly lets an important clue to slip-it puts up such barriers so as to ease the psychological discomfort of lying by putting up a sort of defense against accusations.  If you keep a lookout for such behavior you can easily identify the liars.

(4) Voice pattern and breathing rate:-

Pay attention to the pitch and pattern of the person’s voice. Any change to the normal voice pattern and pitch as well as the rate of speaking (i.e. speed of speaking) are indications of lies. Also pay careful attention to the breathing pattern and rate.  If the person suddenly starts taking deep breaths, short breaths, rapid breaths etc., for no apparent cause, it may indicate inner turmoil and  lying.

(5) Look out for their smile:-

Keep a sharp lookout for the smile. Particularly look at the lips and the eyes while the person is smiling. When smiling look for agreement between the lips and the eyes-whether both eyes and lips exhibit the smile. Also notice whether there is any delay between the reactions of the lips and the eyes while smiling. Such delay or disagreement are indications of lying.

(6) Observe the eyes:-

You must have heard the expression-“The eyes are the windows to the soul”. As such, these “windows” can provide us a glimpse of the inner mechanisms of the human mind. Look at the eyes of the person. Oftentimes, a lying person can’t look directly into your eyes for a long time. However,an expert in lying can evade such signs and maintain proper eye contact! In addition,look at the eyebrows. If the eyebrows rise up for small time intervals then it is indicative of lying. The psychological reason behind raised eyebrows is that the person appears larger or more intimidating to the accuser thereby reducing the chances of exposure.

(7) Listen to their story carefully:-

Perhaps, this is the most obvious and common methods of detecting lies. Listen to the story carefully. Ask the concerned persons to repeat certain points of their story tactfully,without letting them know your intentions. Any discrepencies in alternative stories indicate lies.In addition, observe their way of speaking-if they don’t use words like “but”,”because” etc., it is oftentimes possible that they are lying as such words require careful complex thinking for usage.

By a careful application of all or most of the above techniques, you can thus identify the truth from the lies. All these techniques however require a little bit of observation and practice. So,go ahead and be a Human Lies Detector!