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Better and worse ways to spot a liar

bbc.com

51–60 of 152 posts

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#51

This seems to me like the technique that is already employed by Israeli airport security agents. They have a normally-flowing inquisitive conversation with every passenger boarding flights to or from the country, and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable.

Except I am bad with names, so when they ask somebody's name and you can't remember it then you get pulled aside for more questioning.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#52
Seems to bear a lot of similarity to standard deposition/examination technique. Because a lot of important things are decided on a paper record the standard techniques involve asking open ended questions and drilling down to details, often going back to cover the same ground again, hoping to elicit testimony that's implausible or contradictory.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#53
There are ways to work around this. The key is to not lie, but to tell a different truth. I used to do this in high school, when my parents were grilling me.

Friday night: go out with quiet friends. Saturday AM questioning: "How was your evening?" "Fine". "OK".

Saturday night, go out with less quiet friends. :) The Sunday AM questioning was rather more rigorous.

So I described what I did Friday. There were telling hesitations, of course. But 90% of the questions had immediate and honest answers. Just with the day changed.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#54
post #32

"Thomas Ormerod’s team of security officers faced a seemingly impossible task. At airports across Europe, they were asked to interview passengers on their history and travel plans" It is so sad that nowdays it is not seen as absurdal that some kind of policeman is asking passangers about their travel plans. The journalist get excited that new methods of catching "cheating passangers" are beind developed. Apparently i…

What do you mean nowadays? 20 years ago if you wanted to drive from Poland to Germany, the Policeman would spend no less than 20 minutes interviewing you and everyone in your car about every single detail of your journey. In some cases they would order you out so they could unpack all of your luggage and look around the car for any contraband. Nowadays? Nowadays you get in the car and drive through the border, passin…

Certainly your experience of a journey from communist Poland to Germany was full of Brave New World experiences. Now that that regime is gone, your travel is easier. The GP is pointing out that the rest of the world appears to be adopting the tactics that you encountered 20 years ago. Traveling to the US or Israel, for example.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#55
post #53

There are ways to work around this. The key is to not lie, but to tell a different truth. I used to do this in high school, when my parents were grilling me. Friday night: go out with quiet friends. Saturday AM questioning: "How was your evening?" "Fine". "OK". Saturday night, go out with less quiet friends. :) The Sunday AM questioning was rather more rigorous. So I described what I did Friday. There were telling he…

And no, I don't recommend lying to border guards. :(

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#56
post #28

You will find the techniques described in the article used when you are traveling into Israel. I've gone through this many many times, and am still often taken aback by the weird questions I sometimes get asked by their officers. Still, the whole process is rather smooth and I've never been detained or even treated unfairly.

The way I see it there are at least two possible ways to "fight" against this, that is if you're on the liar's side. The first one is to offer to whoever is questioning you a "local maximum" victory, i.e. to pretend to hide a smaller lie compared to the bigger one you're supposed to be hiding. In the case you mentioned, you could pretend to be "covering up" the fact that you've been cheating on your SO, hence all the…

> The second strategy is to be so good at this as to believe in your lies/stories you're telling.

That is harder than it sounds. Even sociopaths have a hard time outright lying. Or keeping lies straight.

The technique being used here is one of consistency. Is your story consistent? Does it have all of the details one expects from a normal story? Are there any hesitations when recalling the story?

It is very difficult to come up with consistent and detailed lies on a moments notice. The better approach (used by lying CEOs on news shows) is to have a different story that you tell in detail.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean nowadays? 20 years ago if you wanted to drive from Poland to Germany, the Policeman would spend no less than 20 minutes interviewing you and everyone in your car about every single detail of your journey. In some cases they would order you out so they could unpack all of your luggage and look around the car for any contraband. Nowadays? Nowadays you get in the car and drive through the border, passin…

Certainly your experience of a journey from communist Poland to Germany was full of Brave New World experiences. Now that that regime is gone, your travel is easier. The GP is pointing out that the rest of the world appears to be adopting the tactics that you encountered 20 years ago. Traveling to the US or Israel, for example.

Or traveling to the US, for that matter. I still don't understand why border guards ask incoming US citizens where they are going and what is the purpose of their travel.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#58
From what I understand you typically need a 'base-line' of normality to know when someone has deviated from that. People can get nervous or make mistakes at any point. The best way to set the base-line is to have a general conversation to put them at ease and then ask the more consequential questions. This could lead to longer queues though which would be an unfortunate side effect.

TL;DR

Use the deviation from the base-line to work out if someone is lying.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#59
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean nowadays? 20 years ago if you wanted to drive from Poland to Germany, the Policeman would spend no less than 20 minutes interviewing you and everyone in your car about every single detail of your journey. In some cases they would order you out so they could unpack all of your luggage and look around the car for any contraband. Nowadays? Nowadays you get in the car and drive through the border, passin…

Certainly your experience of a journey from communist Poland to Germany was full of Brave New World experiences. Now that that regime is gone, your travel is easier. The GP is pointing out that the rest of the world appears to be adopting the tactics that you encountered 20 years ago. Traveling to the US or Israel, for example.

Communist Poland didn't exist 20 years ago, Republic of Poland was established in 1989.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#60
I read "What every body is saying" by Joe Navarro, an ex. FBI agent a few years back, and one of things it spent a lot of time on was tearing apart the notion that we can recognise liars by body language without knowing them well first. People do have "tells", but as the article says, they vary wildly from person to person.

They're still interesting to look out for, though, as they're helpful hints to let you direct your conversation to probe at areas that makes someone nervous and/or to figure out what someones different tells means.

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