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Wouldn\u2019t it be nice to know how to tell if someone is lying?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going to\u00a0see what the research has to say on detecting\u00a0lies, avoiding deception\u00a0and more. And this is the industrial strength package. We\u2019ll look at how to avoid being deceived by the pros in this arena: con artists.<\/p>\n
To get the real\u00a0answers, I called an expert.\u00a0Maria Konnikova<\/a> is a contributing\u00a0writer at The New Yorker. Her wonderful new book is\u00a0The Confidence Game.<\/a><\/p>\n Maria has insights from research on how you can get better at spotting lies and dodging fraud. She even sat down with real con artists to see how they think and act.<\/p>\n First, a warning: detecting lies is hard<\/em>. Don\u2019t think there\u2019s a magic bullet. There isn\u2019t. If there was, everyone would use it. And most of what you think you know is wrong.\u00a0Here\u2019s Maria:<\/p>\n There\u2019s no Pinocchio\u2019s nose of lying. There\u2019s no telltale sign no matter what we might think, nothing that always signals a lie no matter what. There\u2019s so much folk wisdom about how you spot a liar. They avert their gaze. They sweat. They blush, all this stuff. In truth, when you\u2019re talking with good liars, it just doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So\u00a0what can<\/em> we do to detect lies and avoid being scammed? Here are answers\u2026<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0Use \u201cCognitive Load\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Telling lies is tricky. You need to balance the truth, the falsehood and try not to get caught. That means your brain has to work overtime.<\/p>\n Via The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life<\/a>:<\/p>\n Lying can be cognitively demanding. You must suppress the truth and construct a falsehood that is plausible on its face and does not contradict anything known by the listener, nor likely to be known. You must tell it in a convincing way and you must remember the story. This usually takes time and concentration, both of which may give off secondary cues and reduce performance on simultaneous tasks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So if you want to make a liar reveal themselves, you want to increase<\/em> their cognitive load. The more they have to think, the more likely they are to make a mistake.<\/p>\n How can you do this? Police detectives<\/a> ask open-ended questions that make them keep talking.\u00a0Unexpected questions<\/a> they\u2019re not prepared for are the best.\u00a0Anything that mentally exhausts<\/a>someone is good.<\/p>\n Maria also suggests trying the reverse of this: decrease your own cognitive load<\/em>. Good liars will attempt to distract you from the facts.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t let them. Ask questions to keep things simple so you can focus on what\u2019s important.\u00a0Here\u2019s Maria:<\/p>\n Our cognitive load affects our ability to spot deception, so when we have a lot of things going on, we stop being able to notice as much. What we can do is try to avoid the cognitive load ourselves because they\u2019re going to try to cause cognitive load for us. They\u2019re going to start saying all of these things that disorient us and so we become more reliant on emotion rather than rational reasoning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m not going to lie; increasing cognitive load isn\u2019t always easy in an informal situation. And this method also has a bigger problem \u2014 it doesn\u2019t work on professional liars like con men and psychopaths.\u00a0Here\u2019s Maria:<\/p>\n Unfortunately, when we\u2019re dealing with con artists, we are dealing with a lot of those types of people for whom there is no cognitive load because they live this. This is who they are. They\u2019re not lying to you. They\u2019re not trying to juggle anything. They really live their identity as a con artist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (For more on how to use cognitive load to beat liars, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n So\u00a0reducing your cognitive load and increasing theirs can help you detect lies with amateurs, but like Maria said, this won\u2019t work with pros. What will?<\/p>\n For that, we need to use one\u00a0of the con artist\u2019s own weapons against them\u2026<\/p>\n