In reality it’s not so easy to spot a liar (Image: Stephen Webster/plainpicture)
Whoever says honesty is the best policy is probably lying right there. Lying is a vital, smoothing part of the social fabric. We develop the skill young: about not having peeked at a toy you told them not to look at. The average UK adult admits to lying 10 times a week – even if these tend to be little white lies, like inventing reasons for not answering a phone call.
These fibs are surprisingly easy to get away with. Contrary to popular opinion, there are no reliable “tells”, says of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Liar: The truth about lying. Shifty eyes or showing anxiety – behaviours commonly associated with lying – aren’t consistent indicators. And we are hopeless at detecting lies, for good reason. “Most of the time we assume that people are telling us the truth. It’s really cognitively exhausting to always be assessing whether other people are telling the truth or not,” says Feldman.
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Even so, there are tricks we can learn. The best liars are “natural performers”, says , a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, UK. They “naturally exhibit behaviours that observers associate with honesty, such as making eye contact, smiling and smooth speech lacking in ‘ums’ and ‘ers’, even when they are lying”, he says. Many successful liars also mask signs of thinking hard – and it seems good-looking people are more likely to be believed when telling porkies.
As for taking lying to the next level – from creating Ponzi schemes to leading a double life – complex deceptions might be easier than you would imagine, Feldman says. Keeping secrets is part of being human, and we are adept at compartmentalising our lives, for instance having different personas at work and at home.
The Clinton effect
Since telling white lies is so common, higher-level deception can become habitual for many people, says Feldman: “Think about all those people who are lying to their spouse, mostly by omission, and getting away with it.” And when a major deception is found out, some people manage to get off lightly – especially if they never came across as a paragon of virtue anyway. A good case study might be Bill Clinton, says New York-based psychologist Michael Shulman: his reputation as a “lovable rogue” helped him keep the presidency despite his transgressions.
We probably all lie much more than we realise. In one study, Feldman filmed students interacting with a stranger for 10 minutes. When he replayed the footage, the volunteers were surprised at how much they had lied – . When it comes to lying, the truth is we are already getting away with it.
Read more: “Guilty pleasures: Which bad habits can you get away with?“
This article appeared in print under the headline “Getting away with lying and cheating”
