Post No.: 0935
Furrywisepuppy says:
We’re typically overconfident regarding our ability to detect deceits. But people who’ve played party games like Mafia or Werewolf, or poker, will recognise how difficult it is to detect deception! Many liars get away with it and many truth-tellers are distrusted.
There are numerous misconceptions regarding how to detect liars, like increased anxiety isn’t a reliable factor, nor are any specific body language cues, sweating, fidgeting, long rambling or unstructured, jumbled answers. Lying doesn’t always make people stressed or nervous, although it usually taxes people’s minds. Lying involves having to think about what others already know or could find out, what’s plausible, and what fits in with what’s already been said.
Therefore liars do things that correspond to thinking hard about a fabrication. So they might suddenly become static, cut down on gesturing, move their limbs less, repeat the same phrases, give shorter and/or less detailed answers, take longer before starting an answer, use more ‘ums’, ‘ahs’ and pause and hesitate more in comparison to how they were before.
Thus to help you detect such potential shifts from truths to lies – you’ll first need to establish a datum ‘baseline of honesty’ (as in know how they behave when you’re sure they’re telling verified truths so that this acts as a reference point to compare any deviations to) before asking the possibly incriminating question. So start in a relaxed mood with questions that should elicit honest answers, and listen to and observe their words and body language in this state. Then suddenly ask the trickier question and detect if there are any shifts, whilst pressing for an answer.
So a key way to detect when someone is lying is spotting pattern breaks e.g. if they were staring into your eyes while talking fluidly with you but then suddenly their eyes dart all over the place and they go silent, they’re probably trying to think up a deception before coming back to you. It’s not the particular directions those eyes go to, or whether they’re maintaining eye contact with you or not, but the pattern break – a deviation in behaviour from when you know they were telling the furry truth.
However, even if you do detect any pattern breaks, they’re not always foolproof signs of deception because the reasons behind them can be ambiguous e.g. the real reason why they suddenly tensed up is because your question revives a sensitive memory rather than because they’re suddenly attempting to conjure up a plausible fiction. So dig deeper for context, cross-references, contradictions and most preferably concrete evidence.
We’ll interpret someone’s body language, vocal tone, and ultimately intentions, in light of the current context, our own prior experiences with the other person, and our own current mood and prior experiences in general.
Although assessing specific behaviours without comparison to a baseline isn’t reliable, liars may attempt to distance themselves from their falsehoods, which causes their language and tone to become more impersonal – resulting in using fewer words like ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’, and using more words like ‘his’ or ‘her’ instead of people’s names. (Maybe close your eyes and just listen to the words and pauses?) There could also be an increased evasiveness – trying to avoid answering a question or at least trying to buy some time while they think of an answer e.g. by pretending they didn’t hear you properly, switching topics or asking a question of their own to change subjects or turn the tables. When you’re going down the wrong track, liars won’t try to stop you – they’ll try harder when you’re onto them. So listen more carefully and press for an answer immediately.
Another potential sign is bringing a hand up to the face, perhaps to stroke their chin or touch their nose, almost as if they want to hide the words exiting from their mouth. Glancing down could indicate checking one’s feelings too – a possible indicator of guilt.
To gauge whether someone might be trustworthy – ask if anything has made them feel guilty in the past? If they’re unable to feel responsible and remorseful about a wrongdoing (and we’ve all done wrong things before) then they might be remorseless about lying or cheating again?
Try to get ‘into the shoes’ of the other person – maybe even literally try your best to act out what they’ve said and exactly how they said it to detect what their mental state might’ve been?
Like in art – observe the negative space as well as the positive space to get the whole picture. Look beyond where your attention is most drawn. Think about the sides you don’t see as well as the sides that are presented to you. The world isn’t just in front of our eyes and ears or in our own minds. Think of the absence of evidence for our own hunches as well as the existence of evidence for alternative hypotheses.
Think not just about what’s added but what’s subtracted (like painting versus carving). But do note that the absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence e.g. prehistory is revealed through what survived as fossils, stones or other things that endure preserved, but many things that existed weren’t preserved, like those organisms that didn’t leave fossils, leaf prints or get trapped in amber, or the bamboo tools used by prehistoric Oriental cultures compared to the flint tools used by prehistoric European cultures, for instance. We somehow have to account for these unknowns, this absence of evidence, if we want the full picture of history. So take a step back, look beyond the surfaces, assess things as they really are, and try to analyse the fullest picture.
…All deceptions are essentially about looking for shortcuts to getting what we want. And we’re always performing to an extent really – how we self-censor profanities or how deep our voice is, for instance, depends on whom we’re speaking to and what context it is. But if our behaviour appears inauthentic then it can seem jarring, insulting or deceptive. If we unconsciously detect someone copying us then we’ll usually like them more (we’ll experience greater rapport with them), whereas if we consciously detect them copying us – perhaps because their imitation of our accent is atrocious – then we’ll likely assume they’re intentionally trying to mock us!
The ability to BS well is a requisite trait for salespeople! We’re most vulnerable to being duped when we’re in a hurry or are otherwise desperate for something. So never rush into a major decision – wait, seek for more information and be patient if possible.
Politicians can waffle on with sheer confidence and charm without saying anything useful that answers the questions asked! Repeating a question back, or even complimenting the question, buys some thinking time. A common technique is to ‘pivot’ by answering something related to the question asked but not the actual question asked.
Comics, wealthy buffoons, cheeky types or people with ‘big personalities’ can more easily get away with saying or doing all kinds of nonsense or creepy stuff because if they say something ludicrous to test the waters, if the public find it absurd then they might dismiss it as ‘oh it was just their banter and they didn’t mean it literally’. Alternatively, if the public agree with the sentiment then they may reason that these people are ‘just being honest and speaking what we’re all thinking inside’. Their buffoonery distracts us and allows them to brush off their gaffes or lewdness as jokes (well, up to a limit). It’s also sometimes a shrewd move to play the fool because one will appear non-threatening. However, we mustn’t mistake them as disguised geniuses who know exactly what they’re doing!
So be aware that some political personas and brands of charm aren’t accidental – they know it works for them. Dictators and ideologues are typically charismatic. So don’t let your guard down around charming people, even though charm is precisely disarming. These people can often be the most manipulative.
And it’s a seriously twisted logic to say that we know someone likes ‘bending the truth’ (i.e. lying) and therefore we know what we’re going to get with them, and that’s a positive trait about them! That’s like saying we can trust someone because we know they’re a groper(!) Thus being honest isn’t enough to be an honourable person e.g. someone who’s honest about being misogynistic!
A highly influential person with a huge following might forward tons of contradictory statements and then, with the benefit of hindsight, claim to have been percipient by pointing to the occasion they said the right thing, whilst dismissing all the wrong guesses as just ‘banter’ if they’re reminded of them.
People typically crudely equate ‘rich’ with ‘successful’, and ‘successful’ with ‘smart’ (the halo effect), and thus worship and grant power to the rich by listening to their opinions more. But they’re not always right, even with predictions related to their own business ventures or investments! Similarly, we often assume big companies are always trustworthy and won’t go under. But of course there have been umpteen high-profile scandals and large companies do occasionally go bust. Such assumptions may work fine most of the time but we shouldn’t mistake them for working every time, hence we need to always be careful and use whatever consumer protections we can.
The ‘cult of personality’ arises when a government and/or society creates an idealised and heroic image of their leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. This especially happens in authoritarian regimes. Narcissistic individuals can think of themselves as geniuses, and think they should play by their own rules too.
Overconfident individuals are frequently overrated by others, and vice-versa, thus the most truly highly competent candidates may not land the biggest jobs, rewards or accolades. Instead, overconfident, and therefore risk-prone, people tend to get promoted into more high-responsibility positions; creating problems at the top of organisations and nations.
People who are able to deceive themselves may find it easier to deceive others because even they themselves believe in their own deceptions. And we can frequently find it easy to deceive ourselves because we can rationalise our unethical behaviours away, such as by believing that ‘everybody does it’ or they’re victimless lies.
And once we cheat and justify why we cheat – we become more likely to cheat again. This is in contrast with if we don’t cheat – here, we’ll be more likely to come up with reasons for why cheating is deeply wrong and those who cheat should be severely punished! This just shows us how morality is malleable, and we’re biased to serve arguments that support our current positions, whatever they happen to be.
Well we didn’t evolve to care about the truth as much as to survive and reproduce. And if deception helps one to attract more mates and success generally then this trait will be selected more. Gossip increases one’s status and popularity because one becomes a fount of social information about the members of one’s tribe or wider world, and if BS creates the best gossip then this’ll be spread more. If you claim to know that conspiracies are happening when others don’t, and others are convinced by your claims, then you’ll have power and influence over your listeners. This is why BS persists and there’s what some call an ‘epistemic tragedy of the commons’, whereby BS is bad for all of us collectively as a whole, but if we can personally gain from spreading it then we’re incentivised to spread it.
Because people tend to intuitively trust in appearances and use mental substitution, like answering the question, “Does he/she look diligent?” when really trying to answer, “Is he/she a diligent person?” – humans have evolved to cheat via appearances, such as by spending more time and care on how they come across to others rather than on their actual fluffy deeds in private. So those who are less shallow are less likely to be duped by surface pretenders and exaggerators.
Woof!
Comment on this post by replying to this tweet:
