It is remarkably difficult to tell when people are lying.
'Tells' likely tell you nothing: looking for signs like sweating, looking away and fidgeting does not help.
Studies find that people are able to detect lies in traditional lie detection tasks at only about 54 percent.
Given that 50 percent is pure chance, this isn’t much of an improvement.
So, what do psychologists actually find about how to detect lies more accurately? What do liars consider the best strategy? And what turns people into serial liars in the first place?
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Author: Dr Jeremy Dean
Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. View all posts by Dr Jeremy Dean