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Better and worse ways to spot a liar

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Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#91

Post by nucleardog »

adekok wrote: post #56
paganel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 difficul…

If you have time to prepare your lies then it just requires a sort of reframing.

Do all your imagining ahead of time. Walk through and construct the lie. Fill in the details. You're not just imagining this one thing, you're imagining an entire alternate reality where this thing is true and all the implications that follow from that.

When it comes time to answer questions the person is asking about the alternate reality you've imagined. No need to make things up - just recall back.

I guess I'm saying the same thing as you, just in a different way - don't make something up on a moments notice, just have a different story that you tell.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#92

Post by JonnieCache »

splat wrote: post #77
JonnieCache wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have border guards not always asked those questions? I'm pretty sure it's been like that since before the 20th century.

Border guards and passports as we conceive them didn't really exist until the 20th century. The historian Paul Fussell wrote in his book Abroad : "[B]efore 1915 His Majesty's Government did not require a passport for departure, nor did any European state require one for admittance except the two notoriously backward and neurotic countries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire." And it wasn't until 1945 that Americans were…

Thanks, I was vaguely aware that it was around the turn of the century that these things came in.

An american in 1940 may not have needed a passport to leave, but would they have needed one to get in somewhere else? Surely the nations of europe at that time would have been suspicious of basically everyone?

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#94

Post by casion »

These sort of things really bother me, because they cause me a lot of trouble.

I am really uncomfortable in front of people, and no matter how honest I am, I am show my discomfort in interacting with people quite a lot. I look around the room while talking to people, I shuffle around, sometimes I sweat just talking about the weather... I have social anxiety obviously, but it's awkward to start a conversation with anyone by saying, "Oh hey, this interaction is going to be really awkward because I have social anxiety." I tried it for a while and most people seemed to just blow it off.

It's caused me quite a few issues with friends who frequently think I'm lying when asked 'truth-seeking questions. More importantly authority figures tend to misinterpret this as me being deceptive or uncooperative.

---

The most recent example was a police officer that came to my house to see if I had seen my neighbor's car recently. The car had been stolen and they were trying to determine the last known time it was present. As usual, during the rather normal questions I was rocking back and forth, chewing on my nails and shuffling my feet. I'm painfully aware of these things and consciously try to stop each little tick, one by one.

It didn't take long for the officer to ask why I was so nervous, and the he promptly switched the subject and asked if I had any hobbies. I'm fairly obsessive about my hobbies, and I pretty much immediately started rambling about what I was doing. I suspect I stopped most of my 'nervous ticks', because he interrupted my ramble to ask why I was lying about not having seen the car lately.

It was extremely offputting, since I wasn't lying. I got really nervous again, and started thinking about how I 'screwed up' the interaction. Instead of responding to his question I simply told him that I had really bad social anxiety and this questioning was really difficult for me. That didn't help at all.

I ended up with another officer at my door, with more questions that I had no answers to, and I became more and more nervous. Needless to say this went on for ~30 minutes just standing at my front door until I suppose they realized that I was either telling the truth, or was a completely unreliable witness (I was!).

---

Things like that aren't rare for me. It sucks, and early in my life it caused me to simply lie a lot. People almost always thought I was 'up to something' or 'not telling the true', so I would just go with it. I eventually learned the value of consistent honesty, but I am treated the same regardless.

It goes without saying that this being in my head during every single personal encounter causes me even more anxiety and unsuredness about my responses to someone.

edit: I noticed I actually started rocking back and forth and itching my head randomly while writing this post... bleh.

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#96

Post by Drdrdrq »

benihana wrote: post #16

> Ironically, liars turn out to be better lie detectors. What is ironic about that? If I understand how to lie to other humans, why is it anything but expected that I would be able to recognize that skill in other people?

For one thing, you can never be sure if they really detected a liar or they are just lying about it. ;-)

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#98

Post by patcheudor »

andreyf wrote: post #89
patcheudor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder, and this is a serious question. Why would someone trying to be deceitful because they have something very serious to hide even take the chance on speaking with a security agent? I'm not suggesting they "plead the fifth," but rather carry a card explaining that they are mute. Doctors papers are easy to forge. If the incident leading to the condition happened recently, then that would be an excuse for not…

I think questions at a border don't really fall under the fifth, as you're submitting to them voluntarily because you want to get in the country. You can refuse to answer any question, of course, but then the border agents can refuse to let you into the country. I'm not sure if the goal is solely to stop "truly bad guys" who want to bring down a plane from getting on it, but rather make a note of anyone who might be…

>I'm not sure if the goal is solely to stop "truly bad guys" who want to bring down a plane from getting on it, but rather make a note of anyone who might be traveling under false pretenses for any number of reasons.

This is what I'm afraid of. Is travel on a plane now squarely reserved for the honest or those with nothing to hide? There are plenty of very legitimate reasons to travel under false pretenses, including it would seem, hiding from one's own government because of some irrational administrator who decides to use air travel restrictions to carry out a grudge. The restriction on travel, especially within the US as applied to US citizens is very disturbing as it represents a fundamental erosion of our freedoms. Take a look at this case as just one example:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/united-airlines-stops-...

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#99

Post by PhantomGremlin »

paganel wrote: post #28
korginator wrote: post #9

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…

be so good at this as to believe in your lies/stories you're telling

One of my favorite quips from the internet is:

   All really good salesmen temporarily believe
   whatever bullshit they are selling at the time.
   It's kind of like method acting.
They're not lying if they believe it themselves!

Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar

#100

Post by wpietri »

casion wrote: post #94

These sort of things really bother me, because they cause me a lot of trouble. I am really uncomfortable in front of people, and no matter how honest I am, I am show my discomfort in interacting with people quite a lot. I look around the room while talking to people, I shuffle around, sometimes I sweat just talking about the weather... I have social anxiety obviously, but it's awkward to start a conversation with any…

Yeah, I used to struggle with social anxiety a fair bit, so this is familiar to me. It's true that many liars are anxious, because they're afraid of getting caught. But I became afraid of getting falsely accused, which tended to make me anxious at exactly the same times liars would be. Which in turn would trigger a wave of anxiety about the pattern, making me excruciatingly aware of the whole mess, making me yet more awkward.

I'm sorry to hear how much trouble it causes you. It's a miserable experience.

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