How many times do you think did you been lied to today?
Go ahead and take a guess
because the answer might shock you.
Studies show that on the low end,
that number is somewhere around ten times.
And on the high end,
that number could be up to two hundred times
in just one day.
You are being lied to constantly
and what's worse, your lie detection capabilities
are definitely not 100%.
In fact, studies show that
they could be anywhere from 50% wrong to 75% wrong.
This video is meant to put the odds back in your favor
because there are things that you're probably not taught
that can help you become a human lie detector
or at least a better one.
And I want to cover those four things
plus touch on some examples of some masterful liars
getting caught in the act.
So let's start with first thing,
that one that everyone wants to know, which is -
what is the body language that indicates lying?
Now, unfortunately, there really isn't one thing
that is going to 100% of the time telling you someone's lying.
When you're looking to detect lying in terms of body language,
what you're looking for are tells of stress
with regards to particular subject or topic.
And what that means is that
reading stress in the body is actually much easier
than reading deception.
Stress comes through in a lot of different ways
and you can see it in pacifying behaviors.
So that might be rubbing of the arm.
If they're sitting, you can see people rub their leg.
You'll see people start to touch right here -
that's a pacifying behaviour.
And when a few people cue on their lip,
cross their arms, purse their lips,
(exhales) give you one of those - all of these things create
a lowered, like, trying-to-call-yourself-down response
and we do that in response to stress.
Now, there's one thing that is just classic
when people feel stress and it's called blocking -
that means putting anything between themselves
and the thing that is causing them stress.
So that classic line example of blocking would be this -
blocking the mouth, could be covering the eyes,
or could be an object, right?
And right at the time you're asking them if they're lying,
they got to whip their phone out.
Or they simply move something
in between you and them on the desk.
Blocking is very common and
I want to show you two videos of blocking.
The first one is a little boy
doing some physical blocking with the hands.
And the second one is a little girl
moving herself in between an object
to create some distance between her mom who is grilling her.
Who got the paint out?
Brother did?
Wait, let me see that again?
You didn't do that?
Speak up.
Uh, I didn't do this.
You still didn't do this?
I know you did.
I'm not lying.
Now, I mentioned earlier
that there isn't just one body language motion
that indicates a lie.
But actually, there is one that comes close
and it is the micro-expression of a smile
within a story that otherwise doesn't warrant a smile
and this is called "duping delight"
and what this is...
First off, a micro-expression is when
some sort of expression registers on someone's face
for less than a second and is quickly contained.
And the reason that this happens is that
the part of your brain that is responsible for emotions -
happy, sad, whatever it is -
that moves a fraction of a second faster
than the part of your brain that is responsible for lying.
So when you tell a lie, there's actually this visceral joy
in getting away and getting what you want
which registers for a second as a smile
but then the part of your brain telling a lie
kicks in and goes, "Don't do that,"
and quickly shuts it down.
So it looks something, I'll try my best, like this -
you finish the storyÖ
Öand then people often purse their lips.
So I want to show a quick example of that
and better than I can do which is, again,
another young girl master liar here whoÖ
the context of this is that
she wants attention from her mother
and for months and months and months,
she has pretended to have these crippling foot cramps
so that her mom will come rub her feet
and give her attention.
Pay attention to her face as soon as her mom
starts to touch her feet
and she gets what she wants.
Oh, Teddy, can you give it a rest, hon, please?
Let's play cards.
Can you rub my feet?
If you start to see some tells of stress
and maybe some duping delight on someone's face,
you're going to want to follow-up with them verbally
and ask very directly,
"Hey, did you do that thing that I asked you not to do?"
and in this case, you want to listen very carefully
to their verbal response because people don't like to lie.
And the third thing that will help you catch a liar
is that they often redirect direct questions
to some other topic or they half-answer them.
For instance, if I go up to someone and I say,
"Hey, did you take my money?"
they might respond by saying,
"Oh my god, I'm not that kind of a person" or
"how could you even ask that of me?"
and then pull out their phone
and immediately block, right?
These sorts of things are called redirects.
Do they immediately indicate guilt?
Absolutely not but what we find in liars
is that they try to tell as much of the truth as possible
until they are pushed to the brink.
Will they flat out lie?
Absolutely.
But sometimes, they'll even add qualifiers
on the end of their denials.
So I say, "Hey, did you take my money?" they'll go,
"No I didn't take your money out of your wallet,"
when really, they took money off of the kitchen table
or whatever it was.
So, I've got another video here.
The context is that there's this young boy
who has clearly made a mess and his dad asked,
"Did you? Who did this?"
and he answers a completely different question.
It seems exaggerated but the truth is
kids have the same strategies as adults.
We are just better at masking them
and telling more elaborate stories.
Stretching.
You know what happened?
I just stretched.
You were stretching?
Uh-huh.
How did this cabinet fall?
I can put it back up.
How did it fall?
I can put it back up.
How did it fall?
I can put it back up there.
I believe you but what happened?
So at this point, let's say that you've seen the tell,
maybe you've seen that duping delight.
When asked, they've said,
"How could you even ask that of me?"
Now you're kind of put in a pickle.
So when it comes down to it, you can always go with the,
"Listen, I'm having a hard time understanding what happened.
Can you tell me?"
And then the fourth thing that you're looking for
is to see if this person can recreate the events
of what actually happened out of sequential order.
Liars, whether their making it up on the spot
or they've rehearsed it,
often have done this before
and they've done it chronologically
so it can make sense chronologically.
But when you ask them,
"So wait a second, how is the money over here at the end"
and then "when did you walk in to the room?" and
"what happened later?"
When you take them out of order,
you can oftentimes trip them up.
So, of course, another little example of fun one here
which is really easy to bust
because he's a five-year old boy.
Here's a boy who took cookies
out of the cookie jar
and blamed it on the dog.
And watch as this story unravels
as different elements don't add up.
Did she get the cookies upstairs?
Um...
I don't know. I wasn't watching her.
How did she open the lid?
Unless they would really, see,
opened it with their teeth.
She opened the lid with her teeth ó
Yeah.
ó when she ate some cookies?
How did she put the lid back on?
She jumped on it.
She jumped on a bowl of cookies
to put the lid back on.
So there you have it.
That is how to spot a master liar of any age.
Now, obviously I had some fun
picking out the videos today.
They entertain me and I hope they entertain you as well.
But the truth is kids and adults lie in the same way.
So the same four things that I gave you today
will work across the age group.
First off, you're paying attention for any sort
of pacifying or blocking behaviour
with regards to a specific subject.
If it differs from their baseline
and all of a sudden they start blocking or pacifying,
pay more attention.
Second, duping delight -
that is the quick flash and then the containment
of a smile with a story that shouldn't have a smile on it.
Third, difficulty and outright denying
that they did something wrong.
Any sort of verbal jiu-jitsu,
that means you need to dig deeper.
And then of course, fourth, you're paying attention to see
if they can reconstruct their version of events
outside of chronological order.
If they think about it here, it's fine
but it needs to make a logical consistent sense.
So, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this video
and maybe we'll start detecting some of those two hundred lies
that you might be hearing every single day.
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