Catching Liars

By Guest Blogger Liespy

*Liespy is a regular contributor to David Matsumoto’s blog. She honed her deception detecting skills as a fraud investigator for the insurance industry and employs these skills to analyze the world at large.

We’ve blogged about how learning to read facial microexpressions of emotion can help you see hot spots. If you don’t remember, hot spots may be an indication that someone is lying.

So let’s pretend for a moment that you’re as good at catching liars as say, Dr. Cal Lightman from the Fox TV series, “Lie to Me”. Humintell founder Dr. David Matsumoto participated in much of the research and basis material for the Lightman character.  From Dr. Matsumoto’s work one can glean insights and greater understanding about the realities of lying, liars and the tell-tale signs.

You really can catch someone in the act, lying to your face.

Are they automatically the bad guy?

Only on TV it turns out.

Generally speaking, we don’t like liars. When people lie, we feel as though they’ve betrayed our trust.   We have an underlying expectation that people will treat us the same way we treat them (“do unto others…”) We expect people to be honest.

But here’s the truth: everyone lies. We start lying as kids as soon as we’re old enough to understand the power of language. Children learn a lot about lying by watching their parents. They lie to get out of trouble. They lie to get stuff they want. As we get older, our reasons for lying may change, but the behavior persists.