You probably know someone who you consider to be a liar. They might make up big, elaborate lies or they might have a tendency to lie about small, trivial things. Whatever the situation, it’s hard to trust them. It’s also difficult to separate the truth from the lies. To differentiate, look for key phrases that chronic liars often use.
Here are five phrases that liars use to make you believe them
1. They Use “They, He, She or We” More Than “I”
Avoiding ownership and accountability is what is happening when liars try to explain themselves and they hope you will believe them. As a result, they use the personal pronoun ‘I’ less often as they tell their tale. According to the American Psychological Association, a study of lie detection by the University of Texas at Austin looked at written statements and could predict lies by looking for these 3 types of phrases that liars use to get you to believe them:
* More negative emotion words like hate, worthless, angry, or sad
* Less use of words that are exceptions, like ‘but’ or ‘except’
* Less use of ‘I’ statements
The researchers were able to develop a software program that analyzes writing for these phrases that liars use differently and were able to detect lies with 67% accuracy, which was better than a human judge of lies who was only accurate 52% of the time.
2. They Say “To Tell You The Truth” Or “Honestly”
Well, we would hope they would always be telling the truth but a liar will try saying, ‘To be quite honest with you’ as support for a story that is clearly a lie whereas people who don’t feel defensive don’t feel the need to say this.
3. They Give Short Answers, Deny Wrongdoing And Use Justifications
If you ever question a liar’s story, they immediately become defensive. They deny any wrongdoing and justify their words or actions, even if you never accused them of wrongdoing or questioned their motives. They give short answers because they are trying not to reveal too much of the truth, and they defend themselves because they feel guilty.
4. They Say “I Always” Or “I Never”
Absolute words like ‘never’ and ‘always’ are almost always false, because we rarely always or never do anything the same way in our behavior. A liar will try to add these words to their conversation to make them seem reliable to you.
5. They Elaborate With Too Much Detail
Liars have to memorize the details of their false story so that they won’t get caught in a lie. They will often tell you way too much detail as a result of trying to make their story seem realistic and cover their tracks.
For example, a liar will try saying ‘It was exactly 8:15am when I looked out the window and saw the car was missing from the driveway.’ Very few people would know the exact time that they looked out the window, or would think to check the clock as their first reaction so this additional detail is a giveaway of a story concocted by a liar.
Source: davidwolfe.com
