How To Tell If Someone Is Lying

All human beings possess the ability to lie. And many of us do, multiple studies have suggested that, on average, Americans tell one or two lies a day. Fortunately, experts say there are ways to spot signs of untruthfulness.

To identify a fib, you first have to have a baseline for how someone acts when they're being honest, says Traci Brown, body language expert and author of How to Detect Lies, Fraud and Identity Theft: Field Guide. For example, watch how someone responds to a basic question such as, Where are you from? Where do their eyes go? How does their voice sound?

The signs however, aren't foolproof if someone is uncomfortable in their seat, they may fidget; if someone is nervous, their voice may crack.

Lying and deception are common human behaviors. Until relatively recently, there has been little actual research into just how often people lie. Some surveys have suggested that as many as 96 percent of people admit to lying at least sometimes. One national study of 1,000 U.S. adults found that 60 percent of respondents claimed that they did not lie at all. Instead, the researchers found that about half of all lies were told by just 5 percent of all the subjects. The study suggests that while prevalence rates may vary, there likely exists a small group of very prolific liars.

The reality is that most people lie from time to time. Some of these lies are little white lies intended to protect someone else's feelings (No, that shirt does not make you look fat!). In other cases, these lies can be much more serious (like lying on a resume) or even sinister (covering up a crime).?

Just about everyone you know tells low-stakes lies, but some people even go so far as to lie about important matters that could forever change their relationships, end their employment, or even send them to jail.

Detecting high-stakes liars is often the work of the FBI, and they frequently look to facial expressions, body language, and verbal indicators as signals, or "tells," that someone is lying.