How To Tell If Someone Is Lying

August 7, 2012

Interview with Maryann Karinch, author of the book How to Spot a Liar, Revised Edition: Why People Don't Tell the Truth...and How You Can Catch Them

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Mike Carruthers:
How do you tell if someone is lying to you? Well it’s a process.

Maryann Karinch:
You have to look for deviation from baseline and that’s the key. We look for what people do normally and then we look for signs of stress which are sometimes associated with lying.
 

Maryann Karinch, author of the book How to Spot a Liar...

When people act a little differently when whether it’s the way they answer a question or the cadence of their voice or their eye movement or some little glitchy behavior if it’s different from how they usually present themselves that could be a sign and then you probe after that.

How people move their eyes is a big clue.

As we baseline we figure out how people’s eyes are moving when they’re remembering things and how they move when they’re imagining things. So let’s just do something quick here, “What’s the 5th word for the star spangled banner?” You may have moved your eyes – most people do.

If you moved your eyes up and to the left that means that’s where you look for memory.

Now let’s just say I ask you where you were last night and you don’t want to tell me. And you make up something you’re going to probably be looking up to the right because if left is your memory side right is going to be your imagination side. I see that in you and all of a sudden I think you know maybe I should probe this a little more and that’s when I go in with the questions.