• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

A thread of a liar giving tips about lying.

Status
Not open for further replies.
also, lie about things that you can remember. nothing worse than someone bringing up that time when you saved a cat from a tree to skip work, and you saying you don't remember it, then them giving you a weird look and realizing you lied about it.
 
9giv0i.jpg


"I approve of this thread"
 
mcrae said:
also, lie about things that you can remember. nothing worse than someone bringing up that time when you saved a cat from a tree to skip work, and you saying you don't remember it, then them giving you a weird look and realizing you lied about it.
Click to expand...

Yes, which is why you should always say "Oh yeah!" whenever someone brings up a ridiculous story you told them, because chances are pretty good they didn't just make it up in their heads.
 
I will tell you this. Point #3 is 100% false. It has been scientifically proven that there is no correlation between eye contact and lying. This is a myth that has been ongoing for years that is just untrue. But it is still believed by people that don't know any better. If somebody tells you they know you're lying because you can't look them in the eye, are just using the common stereotype thinking it actually has merit.
Click to expand...

Whew. I noticed that whenever someone asks me a question, my eyes immediately dart off to the left for some reason. I'm not trying to lie, it's just casual conversation. I constantly have to remind myself to bring my eyes back. Good to know there's no correlation to lying.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
Right, that's exactly it. Perhaps I should have been more clear. The alphabet is similar to a lie in that it is rehearsed over and over to memorization. But only one way, because that's the only way you're expected to ever recite it. To the guy that had the DUI and said it backwards, that's not an acceptable test for sobriety and even if you failed it, it couldn't be used in court against you. Not sure why some departments still use this, just plain stupid.

The average person can only keep track of so many lies during a story that it causes an overload. When that happens, I trip them up and catch them in lie after lie and it snowballs from there.

The show Lie to Me, is actually loosley-based on actual science. A good majority of the show is Holywood fluff to make it more interesting, but the basic principles are real. That's not my particular area of study, I focus more on body language cues, parts in the suspects story that causes stress, and verbal cues that someone does involuntarily to "sell" the lie.

For example, a person's body language is a split second ahead of verbal communication. When somebody lies, this split second gap becomes larger. This is because subconsiously, the body wants to tell the truth, but the person's brain is over-riding the truth with a lie, but only verbally. Case in point:

Does anybody remember when Alex Rodriguez was first accused of steroids? Back before he actually admitted to using them he had a sit down interview with somebody(can't remember who and I don't have time to find it) asking him about being on the list of players accused of using steroids. When asked point blank if he has ever used steroids or HGH, he said "No". But if you look closely as he's saying no, his head nods yes. It's very fast and hapens only once and it's something that you have to train yourself to look for because it's very subtle. That is a dead giveaway.

This interview actually happened when I was in the middle of my training, and we spent 2 days dissecting the interview. He did about 15 other things that were big indicators of deception which I don't have time to go into as I'm getting ready to go to work. I actually now make it a habit to watch interviews of people to stay sharp on what I know and to pick up new things. I'll check this thread tonight after work and add more things like that, as I don't mind sharing them with you guys.
Click to expand...

I would be interested in hearing more about that A-Rod video. More details and such. I'm gonna have to try and find that video now to see the head nod.
 
When I was about 9 I was round at my friends house. Me and him slept in a fort we used to make with the pull-out sofas downstairs. I woke up, as early as ever. In the dark I made my way over to the mantlepiece. No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn't make out the time on the clock. I got up on my tip toes and tried to knock this gold box closer towards me, closer, a little closer... and bang, the fucker falls off the mantlepiece and on to the floor.

I pick it up and look at the time. Half six... oh wait the arms are just hanging loose. Awesome I've just broken this really expensive clock. With the aid of a thick pillow I awkwardly shift it back on the mantlepiece and go back to bed, hoping that no-one notices. In accordance with Sod's Law I did later endure the moment when my mate's mom, practically a second mother to me, finds the broken clock. Everyone is implicated in turn - the mom's boyfriend, my best mate, and my best mate's hot older sister (then 12). To weed out the liar, who everyone expects is my mate, the mom responsibly announces that she's going to go for a drive. To kill herself.

She couldn't "trust anyone in the house" so unless someone owned up, she was going to go and kill herself. The sister is begging my mate to own up but he can't, he hasn't done anything, I have and I'm letting their mom go out in her car to kill herself.

She goes.

When she returns (thank god) I still don't own up - it takes the guilt of hearing my mom tell a friend that it couldn't have been me because "I'd have owned up" for me to burst out in tears and get working on the apology letters, one to my friend for not having his back and one to my friend's mom a) for breaking her clock and b) for letting her commit suicide in order to save face.

Anyway tl;dr: I don't lie any more.
 
My gf has a friend who lies about everything to make herself seem better. They went to the driving range a few weeks ago and later that day the friend was bragging to my gf about how far her drives were going. Unfortunately, my gf had actually been there (duh) and knew that the friend was completely lying. Poor girl just couldn't help herself I guess.
 
Kapura said:
DISCLAIMER: I am not here to discuss the benefits of lying or not lying. I'm here to discuss how to lie well. If you don't approve of lying, I don't care and you should just move on to the next thread.

I lie a lot. I lie to and about friends, to and about family, to and about school. I'm very, very good at lying. I've found that I've been relatively happy living in a semi-fabricated world as a semi-fabricated version of myself. But, I feel that I can do more good in the world by sharing what I know. So here are the three most important things about lying:

1: Make your story plausible. Hitler may have said that the weak fall prey easier to a big lie than a small one, but this is at a macroscopic scale. This is not a guide for politicians, this is a guide for average joe. A person you don't like a whole lot invites you to his birthday party. You think up an excuse not to go. A good choice is that you promised to do something with your family, such as a ski trip or plans to see a film with them. This is good because it is relatively simple and you may decide to see the film after all. An inexperienced liar would come up with something both more complicated and less plausible, such as a funeral of a relative. Faking sincerity about a death is much, much harder than faking sincerity about doing something else for the weekend. If you can include a grain of truth, all the better. The reduced complexity ties nicely into number two:

2: Keep your story straight. This is the easiest way to screw up, and the most easily recognisable. Don't include others who could easily be called on to testify the fiction in the lie. Rely on yourself. Before you are talking to somebody that you intend to continue the lie to, go over what you will say. A little planning goes a long way. Additionally, don't fabricate details as they come up. If you have a simple story, keep telling the same story. Don't try to elaborate. The devil is in the details, after all. People usually don't remember details of an event, so if quizzed on them simply state that you don't remember. It breeds less suspicion than contradictory stories.

3: Control your face. A liar will look away. This is verifiable by anybody being lied obviously to. Thus, if you wish to pass off your lie, you must maintain natural eye contact. This means that when uttering a false statement, you mustn't look away during the utterance of the lie or immediately after. Both of those send people's bullshit meters skyrocketing. The secret to eye control is detachment: Don't focus on the other person's face; unfocus your eyes so you are looking into the distance rather than at their face. Keep your eyes pointed at them, though. Detach your statement from the lie too: These are just words, after all. Take them as such, and say them without special emphasis or de-emphasis. After you tell the tale, let them break eye contact. If they don't do it within several seconds, close your eyes before moving them from the others' face. This builds up a persona of frustration, and reality tells us that nothing is more frustrating than the truth going disbelieved. Play your lie off as such; guilt is a powerful tool to avoid suspicion.
Sometimes, I have a different problem. Sometimes, even in the most severe situations, I just long to burst out laughing. If this is the case, I recommend biting some of the skin on the inside of your mouth. I generally bite the inside of my bottom lip. Biting keeps you focussed, if not on the situation, on the irritating pain. It is also almost undetectable by somebody watching your face if you're doing it right. Nothing can blow a lie faster than laughing while telling it, and the person will probably be insulted that you were not only lying to them, but also laughing at them. Avoid laughing at all costs.

If you have other inquiries, I'd be happy to answer them.
Click to expand...

...fool
Those born with silver tongues like you and myself shouldn't share with others
 
I hate lying. Its possible that I'm not very good at it and wasn't given that many chances to given in how tight knit my family/friends were while growing up. But lol, after I graduated, and went to work, I saw benefits in lying (in half truths) to my manager to keep my schedule from being dicked over. She wouldn't give me the shifts/positions otherwise. :\ I love the place and all, but good gracious, its the only way to get what I wanted.

IE for a good example, I told my manager that I need to come in later than sooner because I'd be dropping off my hubby to work (we carpool). The thing is, he always had a ride from his coworkers, and they know he walks there too. Good opportunity arises when he told me that his job recently gave out work-from-home positions and one of his rides took that opportunity. He was in fact worried how to find a ride on those days. So I took it as "the only ride" he had is now working from home and etc. She begrudgingly gave me the later shift. Of course I had to be asked several times if I could go in earlier, I would always said NO because "give them a inch, they'll take you by a mile". :\ Its bullshit, so hence half truths is a must.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
I will tell you this. Point #3 is 100% false. It has been scientifically proven that there is no correlation between eye contact and lying. This is a myth that has been ongoing for years that is just untrue. But it is still believed by people that don't know any better. If somebody tells you they know you're lying because you can't look them in the eye, are just using the common stereotype thinking it actually has merit.
Click to expand...
This post is 100% correct. Discovering a liar is about establishing a baseline and catching deviations. Discovery actually works EXACTLY like a lie detector. On most liars, they will have tells that deviate from their standard demeanor. If someone is shifty and unfocused to begin with, you're not really going to be able to call them out on lying because they break eye contact with you. It is more likely that this person will suddenly become focused and attentive on key points but become confused or vague on simple aspects. Likewise if someone is nervous, they are more likely to break eye contact out of fear or anxiety than actually during account of an actual lie.

Also, it is much easier to uncover lies in writing, because it comes from 2 different parts of your brain. It's always fun to pick apart stories in writitng. Another trick is to have someone tell the lie from end to beginning. Most people can not do this because it's much harder to keep the story straight and the sequence intact without messing it up.
Click to expand...
Both of these are pretty cool to see in person, but at the same time pretty easy to avoid. The key to keeping a lie straight in writing is to write as you speak. Most people tend to get verbose or specific when writing which pretty much falls into your point. Write as you would speak the lie, keep it simple, and keep your facts straight.

It's not hard to tell if someone is lying if you know what you're doing.
Click to expand...
Hmm.. This is kind of misleading. I mean simple brain surgery isn't very hard if you know what you're doing either, but very few people can still do it. Catching a liar requires a very dynamic recognition of multiple potential aspects of a subject. Are there small inconsistencies? Does the way the recite the story change? Do they seem too detached, or not detached enough? Do they offer common tells at specific points or information? Etc. Catching a liar is about taking dozens of variables and possibilities and putting it together in each case and making an educated supposition.

For the record, I've learned a lot of the problems with catching a liar from my daughter. For a little back story, as far as I've ever been able to discover, my daughter (9 years old) has NEVER lied to me. We have a wonderful relationship and love each other dearly. However I will ask her something about something and she will come back and say this is or isn't the case, and at times it seems far fetched or unlikely. Not only that but she comes off anxious or lying. So I probe further and eventually find out she is telling the truth, and many of the wives tales about lying can also very simply be confused for anxiety, fear, confusion, or trepidation for example. Now that I understand my daughter's "baseline" so to speak, it is very easy to catch her while being dishonest. Fortunately it is infrequently, and at this point I have a reputation of her not being able to get away with anything as a result, so it works out well. :D

but yeah, catching a liar is fairly easy to do for people who REALLY know what they're doing.. but for the common person, a really good liar will be able to walk all over them, and often someone telling the truth will come across as lying because of what people have come to believe regarding how liars act.

edit - ironically none of this comes down to me being a liar or even particularly good at it. On the contrary, a lot of this comes from having to deal with people lying in customer service and management. Often in customer service it becomes paramount to figure out if someone with a nonsensical story is actually telling the truth (I've seen it many times) whereas someone else with a simple request is in fact lying. In my personal and professional opinion, being able to detect a liar is an infinitely more useful skill than being a masterful liar. You are much more likely to avoid unnecessary hurt and anguish from the former than you are from the latter.
 
mcrae said:
hardly the same principle imo. we remember the alphabet via sing-song that we learn as children. trying to say it backwards is as hard as trying to say a favourite song backwards.
Click to expand...

that's the point. Memorizing the alphabet or song lyrics is the same thing as making up a story.

If the story is real, it is stored differently in your brain and you should be able to recall it backwards.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
I can tell you this. I am a police officer and I have extensive training on body language, speech patterns, and being able to identify stress points when interviewing people.
Click to expand...

Studies show that police officers are no better than lay persons at determining whether a person is lying.

In most studies, college students were used as lie detectors. They are probably less experienced in detecting lies than professional lie catchers such as police officers, police detectives or customs officers. It might be that these professional lie catchers make better lie detectors than college students, because of their experience. However, research does not support this assumption. In studies using professional lie detectors as observers, accuracy rates mostly fall in the 45%–60% range as well, suggesting that professional lie catchers are no better in detecting deception than college students.
Click to expand...

http://www.cmi.arizona.edu/classes/...Bull-PoliceOfficersAblilityToDetectDeceit.pdf (PDF)

I only point this out because I think it can be dangerous for police officers to believe themselves more capable of detecting lies than they are. DNA exonerations reflect that false confessions are involved in about 25% of wrongful convictions. That means that police officers could not tell in those cases that the confessions they were extracting were false (lies), and the confessions then resulted in the convictions of innocent people. This is especially a problem when police officers use the Reid method of interrogation, with which you may be familiar. That method requires the police officer first to form a judgment about whether the subject is lying. If the police officer determines the subject is lying, then a whole slew of psychological tactics are used on the subject with the sole aim of extracting a confession. In other words, the entire method depends on the ability of the police officer to correctly guess whether the subject is lying. False confessions result when the police officer's initial judgment about the subject's truth-telling was erroneous. And, as studies show (quoted above), police officers' judgment in this regard is no better than 50-50 or chance.
 
I find that paying attention to how I act when I tell the truth helps me to be a better liar. Intonation, length of pauses and subtle body language are the most important.
 
I just want to say earlier I was lying and Liar Liar is one of my favorite movies, I would never lie about that.

Or would I?
 
empty vessel said:
Studies show that police officers are no better than lay persons at determining whether a person is lying.

http://www.cmi.arizona.edu/classes/...Bull-PoliceOfficersAblilityToDetectDeceit.pdf (PDF)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this is true. In police academy, very little, if any, time is spent on actually learning how to spot deception during interviews. Even worse, there is virtually no training on even how to do a proper interview. Most officers learn from what their trainer shows them about interrogations based on what has worked for them in the past. Most of this is learned from trial and error with no understanding of why something worked or why it didn't.

Most officers have too big of an ego to admit their knowledge in certain areas isn't as good as it could be so they put up the facade so that nobody notices their shortcommings. It's not just a police-specific trait, it's quite normal for most people to not want to speak up and admit they don't know something for fear of ridicule by their peers.

I have sought out additional training so I can be a better officer, because that's what the people I serve expect. The training I have recieved has enabled me to be able to testify in court as an expert witness in my field of study, and is recognized by the courts as a scientifically proven method. My training takes the 50-50 chance and increases it to having about 85-90% accuracy.

The Reid Technique is something I have heard of, but that's not my area of training. From what I've heard from officers that have taken it, is that it has good points and bad, but it doesn't really focus on how to notice lies, but how to interview people and catch them in lies.
 
slider said:
Has anyone been up against a polygrapher? It's not an exact science but still...
Click to expand...

Polygraphs are based on heartrate and other things that don't hold too much weight. Courts do not allow results to be used from a prosecution standpoint unless the defense attourney allows it, which is never.

Polygraphs can easily be "beat" if you can control your heartrate. There are many breathing excercises that will allow you to do this.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
Polygraphs are based on heartrate and other things that don't hold too much weight. Courts do not allow results to be used from a prosecution standpoint unless the defense attourney allows it, which is never.

Polygraphs can easily be "beat" if you can control your heartrate. There are many breathing excercises that will allow you to do this.
Click to expand...
This is why I hate the episodes that use the polygraph on Maury and other talk show hosts. It always ends up that they were lying about everything.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
Polygraphs are based on heartrate and other things that don't hold too much weight. Courts do not allow results to be used from a prosecution standpoint unless the defense attourney allows it, which is never.

Polygraphs can easily be "beat" if you can control your heartrate. There are many breathing excercises that will allow you to do this.
Click to expand...

Flaws aplenty no doubt. Controlling your breathing (i.e. simply slowing it methodically) is a useful counter-measure but equally if the polygrapher notes that you're doing this it raises suspicions.

I was thinking of very specific examples (validation type stuff) and I'd never suggest it should be legally permissible or that it holds more water than it does.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

A warning about prednisone for dogs
17
476
Nydius replied
Canadian Olympic Men’s Curling team caught cheating. Then lied about it.
News Drama  2 3 4
174
1K
user friendly replied
Tips for someone wanting to get into 3D printing
17
490
P:axMagellanic replied
Linus Tech Tips breaks silence after ex-employee’s resignation video goes viral. 'Spoiler linus acts like a donkey'.
News Drama  2 3
102
2K
TVexperto replied
Phil Spencer's House buying tips
13
750
Jinzo Prime replied
Top Bottom