According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, the best way to detect a liar is to stop looking at them and instead listen carefully to what they say and how they say it. In his famous MegaLab Truth Test, Wiseman found that people were better at spotting lies when they only heard the soundtrack or read a transcript, compared to watching a video. Visual cues, he argues, distract from verbal inconsistencies, and good liars can easily control their body language but find it harder to control their voice.
Wiseman identified several verbal cues that indicate deception. Liars tend to drop personal references such as 'me', 'my' and 'I', possibly to minimise the risk of incriminating themselves. They also say less – in the MegaLab test, politician Robin Day spoke about half as much when lying as when telling the truth. Another tell-tale sign is a longer response latency: the pause between the end of a question and the start of an answer.
Perhaps surprisingly, Wiseman’s research shows that our nearest and dearest are the most able to deceive us. Partners and friends of twenty years are often very confident in their ability to detect lies, but in reality they are particularly bad at it. The better you know someone, the easier it becomes for them to lie to you undetected.
