How effective are you in detecting lies?
Did you know that most people cannot spot a lie in real time when interacting with someone who is lying? Researchers, Bond and DePaulo, found that the average person here in the Western world is roughly 54% accurate in discriminating lies from truths when judging the liar’s behavior at the time when the lie is being told.1 That is pretty much like scoring a wild guess!
Beyond the Appearance
Human minds are often automatically inclined to judge lies based on peripheral cues, which are superficial factors. Attention is swayed by things such as incorrect stereotypes about what a liar does, or looks like. Less often, people look to the inconsistencies in the liar’s message. The trick here is that the mind is designed to make you operate most efficiently, and chooses actions that save time and energy. The autopilot within your mind happens to be a terrible lie detector.
Don’t Play Yourself
Highly blinding effects of emotions, desires or accepted social norms can also work against you. There are countless stories of intelligent people who were assumed to be highly diligent but ended up losing big money because someone has been able to talk them into a bad investment. Even top-level spies have allowed themselves to be fooled, or seduced by the enemy!
Diligent, Not Fearful
Remember, there is a difference between caution and fear. Caution facilitates productivity, and fear facilitates negativity. You can easily steer favor to your side by reminding yourself of the golden nugget you just picked up here, and that is the understanding that in an interaction with people who could be to some degree deceitful, your mind will automatically lead your focus toward peripheral cues – the external things such as appearance, tone of voice, body language, or even the passing time. It is up to you to step in, and look deeper at other things such as inconsistencies in the story, or emotionally manipulative tactics.
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1 2Bond, C. F., Jr, & DePaulo, B. M. (2006). Accuracy of deception judgments. Personality and social psychology review : An official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, 10(3), 214–234. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_2
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