Scott Taylor, a former FBI agent and lead interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, has revealed the most obvious signs someone is lying to you. The 51-year-old trained in 'facial micro-expressions, deception detection, influential behaviours, and statement and word analysis', meaning he can often spot a fib from a mile off.
According to Scott, there's no one thing that gives a liar away. Instead, a combination of 'subconscious' cues can indicate you're not being told the whole truth.
Three 'really obvious' signals
Three signals you might notice are 'really obvious', said Scott. These are fast blinking, licking lips and hard swallowing.
Speaking about the eyes, Scott told FEMAIL: 'We blink 12 to 14 blinks per minute, and people under stress and duress, their blink rate spikes.'
Previous research found that when telling a lie, people sometimes blink less, before blinking more as soon as they've told the lie in a 'compensatory effect'. So even if they seem to be blinking normally while speaking (in order to seem truthful) awareness of how their eyes react afterwards can be important too.
Stress responses and body language
Next, Scott said 'lip licking and hard swallowing' are major signals of deception.
'When people lie we release cortisol, the stress hormone, and it dries out our mouth and slows down our saliva,' he explained.
Without knowing it, the person might display additional behaviours that suggest they're worried or afraid of being found out. These include touching 'along the lines of their face' and protecting 'power zones' like the chin, stomach and groin.
Scott said: 'They dip their chin or angle their body slightly away to remove your access to that ventral area so that becomes quite obvious once you look for that.'
Language patterns and context
The person not telling the truth may also go too far in trying to convince you otherwise, using language that seems forced.
'Truth tellers convey and liars convince, so you don't need to say, "I'm 100% definite" or "certain" if you are definite or certain,' Scott said. 'These people are selling not telling, so they give you additional filler or additional eye contact because they think, "I want to be more convincing".'
They may also expand their contractions, for example switching 'don't' for 'do not', try to get you on side with assuming language like 'obviously', and look around as if they're searching for the story they need to remember in their mind.
The fact is, though, all of these markers need to be part of a wider pattern to mean much. In some cases, your own judgement can be clouded by your thoughts about the person – or perhaps they're just a particularly skilled manipulator. In others, they could be nervous for a different reason or generally be a twitchy person. They may even just need a glass of water, so try not to jump to conclusions before getting the facts.
