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Revealed:key steps in spotting a liar

In her new book, Presence, she writes that the best way to spot lies is by looking out for discrepancies across various channels of communications such as posture, movements, facial expressions, vocal qualities and speechs.

 

But it is difficult spotting a confident liar. People who lie with conviction and make you believe what they say is nothing but the truth, yet inward, they know they just told a lie.

It is even worse when there is no one formula to base on to say "look, you just told a lie." We sometimes assume one is lying base on some nonverbal communications.

But according to Amy Cuddy, a psychologist at Harvard University,  there is no one nonverbal sign that tells one is lying.

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"Lying is hard work," she writes. "We're telling one story while suppressing another, and if that's not complicated enough, most of us are experiencing psychological guilt about doing this, which we're also trying suppress. We just don't have the brainpower to manage it all without letting something go — without 'leaking."

“It’s about how well or poorly our multiple channels of communication — facial expressions, posture, movement, vocal qualities, speech – co-operate,” she adds.

She argues that, in trying to spot a liar, we often do not pay attention to nonverbal gestures, adding truth reveals itself through actions than through words.

“When we’re consciously looking for signs of deception or truth, we pay too much attention to words and not enough to the nonverbal gestalt of what’s going on,” the professor adds. “Truth reveals itself more clearly through actions than it does through our words."

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