How good are you a spotting a liar? Most people think they are above average, but the research clearly shows that we are no better than 50–50 — a flip of the coin, pure chance — at detecting lies. We may be better at spotting the lies of someone we know well, at least we’d like to be, but again there’s no evidence to support this, just a pious wish.
There’s an assumption in my question that the way you spot a liar is to detect something in the non-verbal behavior that gives away the lie. The words say one thing, the body language another. And when those two ‘conversations’ are at variance, we always believe the body language. When you ask your partner if she’s upset about something, you don’t spend a lot of time parsing the words “I’m fine”; rather, you listen for the tone of voice, look for the folded arms, and so on, to see what the non-verbal conversation is telling you. If all of that is negative, you assume she’s not fine.
There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this behavior. We all spend a fair amount of time detecting how people around us feel by the clues they send us through body language, and quickly determine what we think their real intent is.
And given how important intent is to human conversations and connections, you’d think we’d be better at determining it in general. That there is a practically foolproof way to…
