How to Catch Those Lying Liars

How many times a day do you think you get lied to? Ten times? Fifty? More? According to Pamela Meyer, the correct answer could be as much as 200 times a day. And some of those lies can seriously impact your business.

Meyer, the founder and CEO of the social-networking company Simpatico Networks, worked with a team of researchers to develop a series of exercises and tests to determine when someone is lying to you. Her work is presented in the new book, Liespotting (St. Martin's Press). And she took part in an email interview with Portfolio.com:

Portfolio.com: What is the biggest lie spread in today’s business world on a regular basis?

Pamela Meyer: Actually there is one: It’s the big lie we tell ourselves.

It takes millions of forms, depending on our particular Achilles heel, but all forms of self-deception make us vulnerable to the scam, the con, the false promise, the bad hire, the unwise promotion, the faulty new product. Whether our greed leads us to fall prey to an oversold and ultimately costly investment, or whether we hire someone based on his good looks and verbal dexterity, or on his bristling but overstated confidence, or his falsely inflated resume, or his devastating but false smile and bonhomie, we have let our own wishful thinking and our own delusions lead us up the garden path to regret and self-recrimination.

In my book I stress the value of knowing oneself, just as the ancient Greek philosophers did, and part of that is assessing our weaknesses and learning to protect ourselves against them.

Our own delusions generate self-deception that can in turn prompt us to believe someone when it’s foolish and against our own best interests to do so—like a mother refusing to believe that her teenager filched money from her purse to buy drugs when she knows, based on previous patterns, that the teenager most likely did just that.

What’s the most common lie, if it’s different from the biggest lie?

Let’s discount “I’ll call you,” “I’ll call you right back,” “I’ll call you for lunch,” the ubiquitous “Your check’s in the mail,” and Wimpy the deadbeat’s eternal response from the old Popeye cartoon: “I’ll gladly repay you on Tuesday.” Let’s also discount the world’s most common nonverbal lie: the fake smile which is easily detected by the lack of engagement of the muscles surrounding the outer corners of the eyes—the crow’s feet that signify a sincere, real smile.

Again, the truth is that there isn’t one most-common lie. Lying and deceit have reached epidemic levels in business, and no one can make a broad and definite assertion as to which lie is most common.

Liespotting is both a skill and a craft modulated with artistry and improved with practice. The skill and craft of liespotting is not a game. It’s not even a serious recreational business game like paint balling. It is worlds removed from parlor games like charades or healthy crony competitions like liar’s poker.

It is a management tool requiring the absorption of a body of knowledge such as that contained in the BASIC system laid out in my book: a five-step system for getting to the truth. Research has shown that we all hear an average of between 25 and 200 lies per day, so there are scads of common lies. I’ll use one here, but sincerely: “Trust me." There is no most-common lie.

Has the nature of lying changed over the years, or have the lies themselves changed?

Had Henry VIII, on wife number five, announced that he had lusted only in his heart, as did our President Jimmy Carter, it would have led, at the risk of a beheading, to a loud guffaw from at least one member of his court. And old Henry likewise could not have said he was flying to Vegas for a quickie divorce, thus sparing one of his outgoing wives her head, either. Things change, but human nature doesn’t. Romeo and Juliet could not have each lied to their parents and said they were going to the piazza in town to buy flowers and then jetted off together to Mexico for a civil wedding ceremony.

Things change, but as the French claim, the more they change, the more they remain the same. Though you couldn’t lie in the Renaissance on Facebook or hook up on the Internet for sex in Victorian England, there was always the bordello if you were so inclined in those days.

So, yes and no. Lying has remained the same. As I noted in my book, check the Bible, Dante, and Shakespeare: Lying has always been around as a byproduct of human nature in its less than flattering aspects.

Yet it’s also true that lying has also changed, mostly because technology has increased its opportunities for dissemination. Email, IMs, tweeting.

Then there is the decline in old-fashioned religious adherence and in ethics in general. Values have suffered in our modern times. Sportsmanship, too: witness all the instances of cheating. Steroids come to mind. Moving your golf ball. Claiming a tennis ball is out when clearly it was in.

Whether apocryphal or not, the story went around after 9/11 that a chap in a hotel room with his mistress answered a cell phone call from his wife. She asked where and how he was. “Fine,” he replied. “I’m in my office.” She said, “That’s odd. Your building just collapsed. Turn on your TV.”

The cell phone strikes home, literally.

New technology will do that.

What’s the biggest single “tell” to spot a liar?

There is none. Then again, there are some.

I’m not trying to be mysterious or deceitful.

Some of the good “tells” are these: Detecting contempt—an asymmetrical sneer, from the interviewee is bad news. This should put any liespotter on red alert. Also, a false smile. That is, a smile that shows no crow’s feet around the eyes and is really all false and all “mouth,” no “eyes.” Then there are telltale verbal clues like repeating the whole question to buy precious seconds to formulate a lie. Or offering irrelevant and copious details when recounting an alibi in strict chronological order. Honest people tell stories that are out of chronological order, but are usually emotionally correct. Not liars. They tend to stick to chronological order. That’s the reason skilled liespotters often ask the subject to tell his or her story backward.

Still, you can’t rely on any one aspect of body language or verbal usage. Liars usually use uncontracted language, as in “I did not have sex with that woman.” Rather than “I didn’t have sex with Monica.” Note the liar’s trick of using distancing language: “that woman” instead of “Monica.” Then again, what if English is a second language for the subject and their English is a little rough around the edges. In other words, it’s too formal because that’s the way the subject learned it in English As A Second Language classes in Romania. You have to consider the rainbow of colors as a liespotter and not fasten on any one hue.

What if you note that your subject is sitting rigid and holding their upper body still? This is a giveaway often that the subject is lying. But what if it develops that he or she wears a brace for a bad back? In the same vein, what if the subject has a facial tic and you conclude it’s a sign of nervous lying. Dead wrong again. We’ve all heard that liars won’t look you in the eye. Total myth. This is almost always wrong, as research has shown—deceptive people will often overcompensate and look you in the eye too much—far more than the comfortable 60 percent of the time that honest people look you in the eyes.

A great “tell” is the relief shown on a subject’s face at the conclusion of an interview. Trained interrogators call it “post interview relief”—But what if the subject has to hasten to the hospital to check on an ailing parent or a child operated on that morning and is extremely private and hasn’t shared that information in the office at all?

Liespotting is not painting by numbers. The numbers can be unreliable and even misleading. You have to learn color theory, brush strokes, perspective, human anatomy, and all the rest of the tools and knowledge painters employ to get the correct and full picture.

What should you do if you catch someone in a lie?

I treat this specifically and in detail in my book. First of all, don’t get emotional and make an accusation. That is the worst thing one can do.

For several reasons: First off, you’ll “lose” the subject’s cooperation. Hostility will cut short any chance you have of learning anything new. Or of getting the full story. Once the subject becomes defensive and goes into a combative mode, you have failed.

Instead stay calm, and maintain rapport. Betray no conclusions. Your job is to extract the full story, no matter how embellished or ridiculous. Then you must consult with your superiors, colleagues, and advisers to determine the best and fairest and most prudent way for you and your organization to handle the situation, whether it calls for a reprimand, a demotion, an expulsion, probation or simply a conversation.

This is important. Any other course of action except the one recommended is loaded with pitfalls. You could end up injuring your own status and reputation within your organization should you mishandle this situation, which can be explosive, and might well wind up in court.

For more information about Meyer and Liespotting, click here.

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J. Jennings Moss is editor of Portfolio.com.