The Lies
The Lies That Tell You They Face You, My Friend
Some people are so good at lying that they have built a career on their lies.
Kim B. Serota and other University of Michigan psychologists followed 1,000 US citizens and studied the number of lies told in 24 hours.
The bizarre study found that there is a 1.2% (one point two percent) of people reporting more than 20 lies a day (when ordinary mortals say an average of 2 a day).
It is not difficult to imagine what kind of work this 1.2% of individuals do.
Joking aside, how to defend oneself from this "elite of serial minds"? fortunately, it is possible to uncover a lie, even when it is well guarded.
Here's how.
Uncovering lies is a matter of practice
Mark Bouton has worked in the FBI for thirty years.
When you spend all this time chasing the world's worst criminals and interrogating them in government dungeons, at some point it becomes spontaneous for you to unmask lies.
And Bouton knows so many tricks.
It is no coincidence that in his book "How to Spot Lies Like the FBI: Protect your money, heart, and sanity using proven tips" he explains several of them down to the smallest details.
These techniques are used by the US Federal Police.
In general, it is about observing the movements and reactions of the face of those who speak to us in order to draw deductions.
The good news is that you too can use this knowledge in everyday life.
Here are the ones I found most interesting.
- Alternate important and unnecessary questions to see how face muscles react
It would be as if real life were like the tale of Pinocchio, who saw his nose lengthened to every lie he told.
In practice, we could go down the street and understand immediately by whom to stay away: it would be enough to arm oneself with a ruler.
This is just a fantasy, but it is still possible to deduce something of the face of those in front of us.
Just focus our attention not on the nose, but on facial muscles.
You have to know, in fact, that our face is a complex device, whose main purpose is to communicate emotions.
There are 36 muscles on the human face that can contract in many ways to generate as many emotions.
The first advice that gives Mark Bouton is to analyze the behavior of the suspect during a friendly conversation.
He studies his facial mimicry when he is generally relaxed (because he is not asked any accusatory questions) so as to understand how he moves when the subject is sincere.
Ask your partner little questions ("How was the journey?") and remember how it is expressed.
Having done this, ask the questions that really interest you, the ones you want to understand if you are lying or not ("Is it true that last night you slept at your friend's house?
If you notice a clear difference in the whim of the suspect's face when you ask him more difficult questions, he's probably lying to you.
- The duration of the look
Some people think that people who do not look straight in their eyes are lying.
This is not entirely true.
Many liars, in fact, look directly into the eyes of those who accuse them, almost as if they want to challenge him to believe their lie.
What to do, then?
What we need to focus our attention on is not the direction of the speaker's gaze (if it is directed towards us or elsewhere), but its duration.
Usually, when a person discusses, the eyes go from the interlocutor to other objects, from top to bottom.
These are all normal movements!
Instead, we must be suspicious when our eyes remain fixed for a long time.
This is unnatural, however. That is, of course, a forced action.
Why are you dealing with that?
The answers are two: probably either he wants to intimidate and dominate you, or he is lying to you.
- A beat of eyelids too much (and too intense)
Bouton says that, in general, people generally slam the eyelids 5-6 times per minute.
However, when they are energized or telling a lie, the frequency increases.
In addition to its frequency, it also pays attention to the duration of closing the eyelids.
According to the Harvard University Database, a natural blink (i. e. a closing and opening of a human eyelid) lasts from 0.1 to 0.4 seconds (i. e. from 100 to 400 milliseconds).
This means, according to Bouton, that when a suspect speaks and closes the eyelids for more than 1 second, he is behaving unnatural and therefore potentially lying.
Obviously it is up to the sharpness of the observer to understand when this information is useful.
The suspect may also have a momentary irritation of the eye, which may lead us to misinterpretation.
- The false smile
When a smile is false, the skin around the eyes remains relaxed.
As the psychologist Paul Ekman reveals in his book "Down the mask. How to recognize emotions from facial expression ", the only clue that reveals a sincere smile is the skin between the eyebrows and the upper eyelid.
When you smile, this skin moves downwards, creating small wrinkles.
You have to know, in fact, that that particular muscle that creates those wrinkles around the eyes is not directly controllable by man, but only activates when a genuine smile escapes.
Do you want to see the difference between a real smile and a false one?
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, suggests that we imagine meeting an unwelcome person and sketching the best possible fake smile.
While you do this, take a picture.
Compare it with other photos in which you were immortalized with a genuine smile: what do you think is the difference?
Exactly the right: wrinkles around the eyes, as shown by these two photos (left an authentic smile, right a forced smile).
- Escape touches
Beware of fleeting touches, especially when involving the face.
The liars are used to touch the face because of itching caused by chemical reactions that are triggered when you mind.
Redheads, increased sweating and an unusual tingling of the limbs are further signs that something is wrong.
Roger Strecker, an analyst of human behaviour and former federal agent, says:
Not everyone knows that, when the human brain is under stress, the brain increases its temperature and this affects the dermis of the forehead and all that part of the face above the upper lip.
Touching the face, therefore, is an unconscious behavior that we use to reduce the stress that the brain feels, such as when building a lie.
Conclusion
The science behind lies is fascinating, but one must always keep in mind that we speak of "probability" and never of absolute certainties.
On the other hand, unlike what you can believe, the machine of truth does not exist.
The so-called "polygraph" (the technical name of the truth machine used in the past - and now banned - in American courts) was easily deceptive.
This means that at present neither man nor machines have the power to have certainty.
Beyond this, it is always useful to know some tricks that could prove useful, such as when we are about to conclude a deal with a person who from the beginning gave us reasons to be suspicious.