I don’t often lie, but when I need to – cough cough, ‘needed’ to go to a Harry Potter convention but told uni my cousin was getting married – I make up all the information around the lie to support it before I tell them, littering it freely with the truth and getting all the details fixed in my mind. Then when I have to tell the lie, I only tell them a tiny bit more than they asked for – not so much as to make them suspicious – and then if/when they ask me further questions (like, so where is your cousin getting married?) I can quite happily and confidently answer, and give the same answer to everyone (in the church near m grandparents’ house, so my grandma doesn’t have to travel too far with her sciatica) and not get caught out later.

Of course, this takes a bit of prep time, but not a huge amount. It depends on the extent of the lie. Usually I can do it in a couple of minutes, and then I repeat it to myself in my mind to fix it there.

I have never been caught out.

Moderately related: a friend of mine has no adrenal gland, and has to take adrenaline just to keep his heart beating regularly. He was falsely accused of stealing by a grocery store, and placed in a small room with many people yelling at him. The fact that he never got excited, raised his voice, or freaked out was held against him, though it’s pretty imnpossible for him to get upset, or at least manifest it physically. He was eventually allowed to leave, and never went back.

First, as a caveat on all this, some people are such good liars they actually convince themselves the lie is truth – they are almost undetectable, because there won’t really be any tells. The “tells” – eye contact, pupils, breathing, pitch, pulse, blood flow, etc… – none of that will show if the person is: (1) believing the lie; or, (2) psychotic/compulsive.
Now, for the rest of us, there are tells. And those tells are different for everyone.

Many times, the lie is told differently than the truth – with someone who is generally fluid in their delivery, sometimes the lie stumbles or a word choice is off. If the person sometimes hunts for words, sometimes the lie is too well-rehearsed or flowing.

Many, many times I say the truth is in the pauses – and in the deflections. When someone doesn’t answer a question fully, or directly, I usually zero in on the deflection. I find with many people the information I need to know most is in the pauses between their answers.

But, all that said, there are some good liars, and those people you only trip up in examining the details and seeing if every facet of the lie can be proven true- usally some small detail, maybe even as small as time or place, falls away, and then the story unravels. Becuase (generally) people don’t lie about little things unless they are trying to hide bigger things. So, sometimes someone lies about some stupid thing, and that derails an otehrwise well-concocted lie.

There are some great articles on jury seletion out there, and they are studies in psychology and reading people. Some of that technique would work for detecting liars, too.

Here are some pretty basic sites talking about some of the techiniques and tests (although, they may be too shallow, if you’ve already been researching):

http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/liars/

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/bob8.asp

What it comes down to very much is focussing on the person totally and watching for the thing that makes you wonder if the person is lying – the loose thread to unravel the lie is there. Even over the phone, even in written letters, the thing that makes you pause and wonder, to hesitate, your instincts are picking up on something…so pull at it and see what falls apart.

Just some quick thoughts… emily

Showing the inaccuracy of polygraphs:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044177/

Preliminary info about brainscans and lies:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21552376/

Don’t be silly. Why would you know about an interview conducted almost two years ago? I posted the link cause I thought you might be interested and because it confirms your supposition that Mr Green does indeed know a vast deal about lying.

But more importantly, I *wanted* to believe him–which brings me to the moral of my story: all you really need to be a successful liar is a gullible target–or, more accurately, someone who *wants* to believe you. If you’ve cheated on your girlfriend, you can probably get away with lying to her about it because she doesn’t *want* to believe that you would do that to her. You have to figure out what someone wants to hear, and then you have to say that. It doesn’t matter how crappy your performance is, how completely it contradicts all available evidence; people will believe it because the alternative means looking like an ass. And everyone hates feeling stupid.

Jane Volker: I already did.

So there you have it – ask your mate!

On a more practical note – a good lie (for good – read convincing) should always have some truth attached. Then if ever found out the author of the lie can claim they misunderstood the situation.
A good liar should have a great memory.

in high school, i lied and sneaked around all the time, and i usually got away with it. i learned a couple things from this. one, if you’re generally trustworthy and people know that there are certain lines you won’t cross, then you can easily get away with other, less “serious” things. two, even if you know you’re lying, you can still pull it off as long as you feel that the lie is justified. i rarely felt guilty about lying back then. but everything flipped in college. i stopped feeling justified, so i stopped lying. for me, that seems to be the key. it also helps to be able to come up with relatively believable stories on the spot. if you have to stop and think, that’s the first and most obvious clue that you’re not telling the truth.

on the opposite end of things, i’m utterly crap at reading other people. it doesn’t matter if they’re lying or pissed or whatever, i only seem to see what’s on the surface. i’m the same way when reading “great” literary works. i never see the underlying meaning of either one until someone else points it out to me. hmm, maybe that’s the fairy i need.

it never fails. and if for some odd reason, you do fail, and someone accuses you of lying, you can say (without lying) that you weren’t lying, you just didn’t tell them that certain aspect of the story.

Also, if someone thinks your story doesn’t make sense, instead of coming up with a complicated explaination, act as confused as they are.
Pretending not to understand the question is a good way to buy time to think of an answer.

I feel dirty.

Apparently, they didn’t think through the security so very well, and there was a series of break-ins in which someone went through the dropped ceiling into the bank branches to steal money after-hours (the grocery stores were open 24-7). They suspected an “inside job,” and I’d worked at every branch that was hit, so I was asked to take a polygraph test.

I didn’t realize at the time that my normal blood pressure is quite low. For some reason, that and the fact that I was completely calm (I knew I didn’t have anything to do with the robberies) screwed up the test – there was no real difference between me saying one of their “test lies” and saying, truthfully, that I knew nothing about the robberies other than what little I’d heard at work. The guy doing the test got really mad at started yelling at me for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately for him, it was obvious to me that he presented no physical threat, and I’d been yelled at (and worse) by a 6′4″ Marine for most of my life. I didn’t freak out. When he told me to get the hell out of his office, I did. My manager told me later that the guy was certain I’d done SOMETHING wrong, but I had awfully good alibis for every time they’d asked me about. In fact, I’d been singing in front of an entire congregation during several of the robberies.

I figure it’s a really good thing that was before I took biofeedback training.

The most convincing liars I’ve ever known are those who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders. Whatever they’re saying is the absolute truth to them while they’re saying it.

As I recall, the culprits did have an accomplice in the bank, but it was someone much higher up the food chain that I was. I made a point of not knowing the combinations for the safe at any branch, since I wasn’t a regular at any of them, but there was at least one person who had access to all of them.

i think it all stemmed from the need to avoid confrontation, whatever the cost.

don’t know if this helps at all.

oh and i could usually tell when he was lying–mostly because things didn’t fit together–like the fact that his mother died three times and was very much alive when i called her after that.

Be yourself! If you weren’t lying, how would you respond? Do that. If you need to cry, think of something sad. Like that lady who asked you for money to buy food. Or the time your dog was run over by a car. Cry real tears!

If you’re supposed to be happy, think up one of those jokes that always set you off for ages!

Lying is powerful though. It can be used for good… or EVIL!!!!! Good: “She’ll be late to class, Mr. so and so. Her locker is jammed.” okay. Thats sort of evil. Evil: “She’ll be late to class Mr so and so. She’s making her daily trip to the bathroom. Yeah, she goes everyday after lunch.”

Not that I would ever do that. Seriously.

Couldn’t they have lied on occasions that you didn’t find out about?

I was innocent and when asked to take the test, of course did so willingly. I was told what some of the questions would be on a general level. I learned that some questions that were going to be asked had nothing to do with the missing inventory but about something else I was being accused of. Although I was innocent of it at the time, when I was much younger and stupid, I had done these things.

I find that if there is some truth in the lie, then you can get away with certain things. For example, if you are asked, “Have you ever taken anything from the store without paying for it.” If I had, by simply saying yes, I have taken things like paper clips, office supplies, etc. you are telling the truth without telling the whole truth.

I don’t know if any of that makes sense but I did pass the test and I was innocent of what I had been accused of. And the missing inventory ended up being located in the shipping and receiving room.

If you don’t believe your own lie, no one else will believe you either. Haha, that sounds terrible coming from me………but I don’t lie very often.

I can tell when my friend lies because she tries to sound likes she is older than she is and knows what she is talking about.