How to Know When Someone is Lying

Being lied to is one of the worst things a person can go through. It plays on the individuals mind and what’s more they are in a no win situation. If they confront the individual without clear evidence of the deception they will appear untrusting and petty. However, if they are indeed being lied to and don’t approach the subject they will look and feel like a fool. This is why learning how to know when someone is lying is so important.

Before we delve into these signs you should ask yourself some questions regarding your suspicions. The first is do you really want to know why someone is lying? Sometimes finding out someone is being deceitful can mean uncovering something someone is embarrassed about. With this in mind, make sure its something that you really need to find out about rather than a case of just being nosy. Uncovering an embarrassing secret about a friend should not be the main motivation about finding out if someone is lying to you or not.

The second is to ask the question why someone might feel the need to lie to you? Sometimes people accuse others of lying because they are mistrustful of them in general, without any particular evidence relating to the matter in question. Many relationships are ruined this way because of jealousy and unreasonable accusations, so be careful to get your facts right. If you really do have solid grounds for believing they are trying to mislead you then ultimately you will need to ask the question, is this someone that you really want to be friendly with? After all, no enduring relationship can be build upon a bed of mistrust.

How to Spot Lies

So if you have noticed someone acting strangely and you feel it really is important you find out whether or not they are behaving dishonestly, then you should look at these tips on how to spot lies:

Inconsistencies from the truth – Lies can be picked apart very easily because one big lie usually requires a few very small lies to be present as well. If you suspect someone to be lying to you, ask them a little more about the issue in question. If they aren’t lying they won’t mind answering the questions,. If, on the other hand, they are lying then they will be visibly uncomfortable as they are forced to weave further lies on the spot. If this is the case it should set the alarm bells ringing. However, if they appear calm and answer your detail in a cool and relaxed fashion then in all probability it was all just a misunderstanding and you have skilfully avoided the need for a false accusation.

How to Know When Someone is Lying

How to Know When Someone is Lying

Suspicious behavior – When someone is telling lies consistently their behaviour normally changes. Typically they will either become very friendly with you, almost “sucking up” (particularly if they feel bad about the lies they are telling). Otherwise they may become a lot more distant towards you. This is more likely if they do not feel guilty about the lies. They may rationalise their actions by convincing themselves the lies are justified, perhaps because of some ill deed on your part. They may also feel that by distancing themselves from you they are less likely to trip over the web of lies they themselves have spun. If you are close to the individual then this should be highly apparent. Of course if you weren’t previously that close to the individual anyway then it becomes that much harder to evaluate their new behaviour.

Body Language Changes – When someone is lying their body language may also change. Someone who isn’t lying is generally comfortable and under no pressure. Someone who is lying on the other hand, tends to feel much more under pressure and their body language will change. They may fidget and struggle to make eye contact. Again, in order to analyse this body language you must first know the individual reasonably well, otherwise you have no point of reference. After all, we all act very differently in even honest circumstances. Some people naturally fidget or appear uncomfortable in social scenarios, so without prior knowledge of their body language this judgment becomes near impossible.

Notice stress levels – A person lying is typically more stressed than one who is not. By evaluating how stressed a person appears can provide you with a clear indication of whether or not they are lying. Now a small lie would not cause significant increase of stress levels. A much larger lie, however, which goes on for a little longer, such as cheating on a partner, would probably cause a noticeable difference in stress levels. Again, on its own increased stress levels can be due to a number of different stimuli so it is important not to read to much into this single factor.

Avoiding a subject – some people will try to avoid the truth. In their eyes they do not see it as a lie but in reality the avoidance of the truth is just another method of achieving the same ends, deception. This happens when people don’t want to address a subject and will generally try to avoid the subject in conversation. Steering away from a topic can actually be a very hard thing to notice if a person does it discretely. It is usually very obvious after the 3rd or 4th time of trying to broach a topic though. If you suspect a person of doing this just keep steering the conversation back to the subject and see where it leads.

It is important that if you do accuse someone of lying that you do it diplomatically. 9 times out of 10 you will not get anywhere by blunt accusations as that will only serve to exacerbate the problem. By slowly bringing it up without being aggressive, the individual is much more likely to come out with the truth. Alternatively, if it becomes an ongoing issue, you may have know choice but to be more direct. Just make sure you have thought the situation through and are not acting on impulse. Always sleep on such a decision and give yourself time to think rationally.

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