BS Detector
Studies suggest more than 50% of doctors would lie to insurance companies to obtain treatment for a patient. A consultant to some of America’s largest public corporations says his polls reveal 20-30% of middle managers have presented fraudulent internal reports.
How can you tell when you’re being deceived?
Dr. Paul Ekman cautions against attributing too much meaning to shifty eyes or squirming for two reasons.
First, even though this kind of nonverbal communication reliably signals emotion, that emotion could just as well be fear of being disbelieved as fear of being caught lying.
Second, pathological liars excel at making their speech and body language sincere.
Ekman: “The most common vocal deception clues are pauses and speech errors. These occur either because the liar may not have worked out his or her lie ahead of time, or because even if they did expect to lie, they did not anticipate your particular question.”
Ekman’s tips:
Know their baseline behavior. Many years of research have proven that it’s incredibly difficult to know if people are lying unless you have prior exposure to their baseline behavior and know how they normally act.
Avoid entering into agreements over the phone. Studies show people are most likely to lie via telephone.
Establish rapport.
Ask for minute details. Liars hate to give detail and often are evasive.
Watch for “false” facial expressions. Even the most practiced liars are unable to produce the minute movements in the upper part of the face that naturally come when certain emotions are felt. For example, if someone truly feels fear or sadness their forehead will crease. And when people are genuinely happy, their eye muscles will be involved in their smile. A sign that someone is feigning an emotion is that the facial expressions or onset or offset of the emotion is too abrupt.
Give them an out. Make it easy for them to tell you the truth. Leave a way out so they can recant their words and tell you the truth.