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Having just finished conducting my portion of a training program on organizational leadership, I decided to hang around and listen to the next presenter. It proved unsettling. His subject was interpersonal communication. However, curiously, he began by promising the participants he would teach them how to spot someone in the act of lying. This particular mind-reading capacity would serve them well in their business and personal dealings, he claimed.
Surveys suggest many folks believe they can discern when another person is being disingenuous. How? By observing what psychologists call “micro-expressions.” Ostensibly, subtle behaviors like eye movements, facial twitches, shifts in vocal tone and a slew of other autonomic responses unmask those who seek to deceive. These so-called indicators differ from those measured by lie detector tests, which record biometric markers like respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Of course, lie detectors are inherently unreliable, and their results are largely inadmissible in criminal proceedings.
Meanwhile, back at the organizational training program, the other presenter described how to decipher lies from truth by watching behavioral micro-expressions. His style was convincing and theatrical, so the participants were enthralled with the special mental powers he was offering. At one point, one of the conference organizers leaned toward me and asked, “Is it really true we can tell when someone is lying?” While not inclined to undermine my fellow trainers, I felt compelled to cite behavioral science’s answer to his question.
“Unfortunately, you are being lied to about lying,” I replied.
Truth or Fiction?
Popular misconceptions aside, when it comes to separating truth-telling from prevarication, you may as well flip a coin. Research shows that, even when using assessment instruments like the Facial Action Coding System to detect duplicity, our guesses are correct about 50 percent of the time. That means at least half of the time when deciding if someone is being dishonest, we guess wrong. According to popular biases, there are instances when a person looks like their lying. Perhaps they are fidgeting, sweating, avoiding eye contact, stammering and such. Those expressions could just as well reflect underlying anxiety or agitation, rather than duplicity, or even an urgent need to hit the restroom. Simply stated, we are not facile at distinguishing deception from honesty.
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Are there exceptions? Always. Maybe a parent learns to read a youngster’s expressions when they are lying. However, this capacity does not involve decoding micro-expressions like some sort of mental hieroglyphics. Rather, the parent has learned, by fact-checking, when their kid is feeding them BS, and knows how to recognize the expressions they display when doing so. But absent the ability to fact-check someone’s assertions, the science is pretty clear. We are lousy lie detectors.
More often than not, the impetus behind lying is either self-protection or self-interest. Frequently, self-protective deceit involves lying by omission; simply declining to disclose an inconvenient or incendiary truth. Most of us have experienced episodes when honest disclosure proved the interpersonal equivalent of throwing a rock at a hornet’s nest, sparking all manner of unwanted conflict and acrimony. Often, we view lying by omission as a less serious offense. However, lying by commission, meaning intentionally speaking an untruth in order to deceive, usually elicits more social condemnation. Often, we take a dimmer view of this sort of duplicity, perceiving it as selfish, hurtful, manipulative and motivated by ill intent, rather than self-preservation.
All of us have been lied to, sometimes by colleagues, politicians, so-called friends, spouses or partners, our kids, and the many hucksters out to profit by our gullibility. Being on the receiving end of deception can prove very hurtful, particularly if it involves a significant breach of trust. Which is why it’s seductive and reassuring to believe we possess the observational power to discern truth from lies. But, by and large, we don’t. And anyone who tries to sell you a way to do just that is basically lying to you about lying.
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