The Body Language of Liars: From Little White Lies to Pathological Deception

Book Preface

Being fooled, conned, duped, or just plain lied to can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter how smart, old, rich, or famous you are. Almost everyone at one point in their life, and in one way or another, has been the victim of a liar—someone who has withheld the truth or given them false information. Whether you have been unfortunate enough to have met up with someone who has scammed you in business; swindled you out of money; betrayed you by spreading falsehoods; stolen your lover, husband, or wife; conned you over the Internet, or ―catfished‖ you by purporting to be someone they were not—rest assured that you are not alone. The world is full of these most toxic of people, the liar.

When you find out that someone whom you once trusted, loved, or respected deceived you, a myriad of strong emotions can arise. These emotions range from feeling shocked, hurt, depressed, sad, and/or angry—sometimes all of them at once. You wonder whom you can really trust or whether you can ever trust again. You even tend to question your own judgment. You may even beat yourself up emotionally as you constantly ask yourself why you didn’t see the signs of their lies well ahead of time.

But realistically speaking, how could you have seen the signs if you didn’t know what signs to look for?

How could you have known that your spouse was cheating on you, that a suitor you met over the internet was a phony, that your housekeeper was stealing from you, or that your babysitter was neglecting (or worse, abusing) your child? How could you have known that your boss was full of it when he said your performance was great, only to fire you the next day? How could you have possibly known that your coworker was badmouthing you behind your back, or that your employee was bilking funds from the petty cash? How could you have been able to tell that your closest friend was being insincere when she told you that marrying your troubled boyfriend was a great idea? What signals did you miss when your son swore he never experimented with drugs, only to find his bong and a stash of pot under his bed later?

How do you know whether you can trust what you read in the media about certain newsmakers? Is that celebrity couple really in love, or is their relationship merely a PR ploy? How can you be sure your political leaders are telling you the truth, or that those on the world stage aren’t really lying to you?

Researcher and pioneer in the field of lying Paul Ekman of the University of California San Francisco studied 12,000 people. He discovered that only a little more than 50 percent of them were able to tell if someone was lying. Thus the odds of being able to figure out whether someone is lying to you are not great. However, these odds can increase dramatically when you know how to read certain signals that will alert you to the fact that someone is not telling the truth. My aim in writing this book is to help you increase those odds. I will teach you how to trust your instincts when you have that ―gut feeling‖ that someone is lying to you. More specifically, I will show you what to look for in terms of possible signals of deception in a person’s body language, facial language (expressions and movements), voice patterns, and finally, their speech patterns—how they say what they say and even what they write over the Internet.

CONTENTS
Introduction
Part I: Encountering the Liar: Who Lies, and Why?
Chapter 1: What Is a Lie?
Chapter 2: The Price of a Lie
Chapter 3: The Evolution of a Liar: Why Animals (Yes, Animals!), Children, and Young People Lie
Chapter 4: The Seven Reasons Adults Lie
Chapter 5: Cyber Liars
Part II: Human Lie Detection
Chapter 6: Instincts and Context
Chapter 7: The Body Language of a Liar
Chapter 8: The Facial Language of a Liar
Chapter 9: The Voice of a Liar: Pitch, Volume, Tone, and Pacing
Chapter 10: Speech Content: It’s Not Just Words
Chapter 11: Your Lying Eyes: Lovers Who Cheat and Deceive
Chapter 12: A Profile of the Most Toxic Liar of All—The Psychopath/Sociopath
Conclusion: The Catharsis of Discovery
Index
About the Author