The Language of Lies

Posted: 1/5/12 12:08 AM ET

It turns out to be difficult to tell when other people are lying. There are lots of cues that we believe will tip us off to whether someone is telling the truth. We expect people telling the truth to be more confident, to look us in the eye when they talk, and to speak more fluently. But, these cues aren't really reliable indicators of truth telling. Someone might be uncomfortable talking about a topic and look away from you, yet still be telling you the absolute truth.

A nice set of studies by Tom Gilovich, Kenneth Savitsky, and Victoria Medvec in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1998 made this point. They had people answer questions about themselves to a group. Some people were asked to tell the truth, while other people were told to lie. Afterward, the speakers who lied were asked to rate how many people in the room would think they were lying, while those in the audience rated each speaker for whether they were telling the truth or lying. Speakers who were told to lie strongly overestimated how many people would know they were lying. They felt as though the evidence for the lie was leaking out of them, even though the audience actually had a hard time determining who was lying and who was telling the truth.