Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles How many times do you think did you been lied to today? Go ahead and take a guess because the answer might shock you. Studies show that on the low end, that number is somewhere around ten times. And on the high end, that number could be up to two hundred times in just one day. You are being lied to constantly and what's worse, your lie detection capabilities are definitely not 100%. In fact, studies show that they could be anywhere from 50% wrong to 75% wrong. This video is meant to put the odds back in your favor because there are things that you're probably not taught that can help you become a human lie detector or at least a better one. And I want to cover those four things plus touch on some examples of some masterful liars getting caught in the act. So let's start with first thing, that one that everyone wants to know, which is - what is the body language that indicates lying? Now, unfortunately, there really isn't one thing that is going to 100% of the time telling you someone's lying. When you're looking to detect lying in terms of body language, what you're looking for are tells of stress with regards to particular subject or topic. And what that means is that reading stress in the body is actually much easier than reading deception. Stress comes through in a lot of different ways and you can see it in pacifying behaviors. So that might be rubbing of the arm. If they're sitting, you can see people rub their leg. You'll see people start to touch right here - that's a pacifying behaviour. And when a few people cue on their lip, cross their arms, purse their lips, (exhales) give you one of those - all of these things create a lowered, like, trying-to-call-yourself-down response and we do that in response to stress. Now, there's one thing that is just classic when people feel stress and it's called blocking - that means putting anything between themselves and the thing that is causing them stress. So that classic line example of blocking would be this - blocking the mouth, could be covering the eyes, or could be an object, right? And right at the time you're asking them if they're lying, they got to whip their phone out. Or they simply move something in between you and them on the desk. Blocking is very common and I want to show you two videos of blocking. The first one is a little boy doing some physical blocking with the hands. And the second one is a little girl moving herself in between an object to create some distance between her mom who is grilling her. Who got the paint out? Brother did? Wait, let me see that again? You didn't do that? Speak up. Uh, I didn't do this. You still didn't do this? I know you did. I'm not lying. Now, I mentioned earlier that there isn't just one body language motion that indicates a lie. But actually, there is one that comes close and it is the micro-expression of a smile within a story that otherwise doesn't warrant a smile and this is called "duping delight" and what this is... First off, a micro-expression is when some sort of expression registers on someone's face for less than a second and is quickly contained. And the reason that this happens is that the part of your brain that is responsible for emotions - happy, sad, whatever it is - that moves a fraction of a second faster than the part of your brain that is responsible for lying. So when you tell a lie, there's actually this visceral joy in getting away and getting what you want which registers for a second as a smile but then the part of your brain telling a lie kicks in and goes, "Don't do that," and quickly shuts it down. So it looks something, I'll try my best, like this - you finish the storyĂ– Ă–and then people often purse their lips. So I want to show a quick example of that and better than I can do which is, again, another young girl master liar here whoĂ– the context of this is that she wants attention from her mother and for months and months and months, she has pretended to have these crippling foot cramps so that her mom will come rub her feet and give her attention. Pay attention to her face as soon as her mom starts to touch her feet and she gets what she wants. Oh, Teddy, can you give it a rest, hon, please? Let's play cards. Can you rub my feet? If you start to see some tells of stress and maybe some duping delight on someone's face, you're going to want to follow-up with them verbally and ask very directly, "Hey, did you do that thing that I asked you not to do?" and in this case, you want to listen very carefully to their verbal response because people don't like to lie. And the third thing that will help you catch a liar is that they often redirect direct questions to some other topic or they half-answer them. For instance, if I go up to someone and I say, "Hey, did you take my money?" they might respond by saying, "Oh my god, I'm not that kind of a person" or "how could you even ask that of me?" and then pull out their phone and immediately block, right? These sorts of things are called redirects. Do they immediately indicate guilt? Absolutely not but what we find in liars is that they try to tell as much of the truth as possible until they are pushed to the brink. Will they flat out lie? Absolutely. But sometimes, they'll even add qualifiers on the end of their denials. So I say, "Hey, did you take my money?" they'll go, "No I didn't take your money out of your wallet," when really, they took money off of the kitchen table or whatever it was. So, I've got another video here. The context is that there's this young boy who has clearly made a mess and his dad asked, "Did you? Who did this?" and he answers a completely different question. It seems exaggerated but the truth is kids have the same strategies as adults. We are just better at masking them and telling more elaborate stories. Stretching. You know what happened? I just stretched. You were stretching? Uh-huh. How did this cabinet fall? I can put it back up. How did it fall? I can put it back up. How did it fall? I can put it back up there. I believe you but what happened? So at this point, let's say that you've seen the tell, maybe you've seen that duping delight. When asked, they've said, "How could you even ask that of me?" Now you're kind of put in a pickle. So when it comes down to it, you can always go with the, "Listen, I'm having a hard time understanding what happened. Can you tell me?" And then the fourth thing that you're looking for is to see if this person can recreate the events of what actually happened out of sequential order. Liars, whether their making it up on the spot or they've rehearsed it, often have done this before and they've done it chronologically