Can I Tell If You Are Lying?
By Brian Lynch, M.D.
I can’t tell if you are lying. Now the thing is you can’t tell if I am lying either. You may think you can but I am sorry you can’t. Who says? Well, all the people that study these types of things. Mr. Paul Ekman for one. He is a world expert on “reading” the face. There are some things I disagree with him on but about lying I do believe he is probably right and that is that almost no one can judge if someone is telling the truth or not.
What are the consequences of such an insight into human interaction? I think they are many.
I think we should think a lot about the consequences of this. That said, I think if we accept that we cannot tell if someone is lying it can be liberating as it frees us in many situations to leave the consequences of the lie solely to the person lying.
For example, as a physician, I know patients lie to me all the time. A long time ago when I accepted that I had little hope of telling the truth tellers from the liars and accepted that my job was much easier. I did not “fight” so much. My job is to do the best I could; if someone is lying it is their burden to bear. That is not to say I let myself be made a fool.
This has helped in my private life in that “I accept” my role in “the play” knowing that it is most likely that the lie will come out eventually and the hurt will be exposed and the fact that I did not force any issue at the time of the lie very much makes it so much more clear who was dishonest.
Let me be clear: Dr. Ekman certainly can teach most people to detect, to a very high degree of certainty, that someone is concealing something or engaging in some kind of deception but always remember we do not know why they are doing it. We should not and cannot be quick to judge even if we know this evolving science of lie detection. Almost no one, maybe one in one thousand people can naturally detect deception otherwise pretty much forget it and relax.
Since I wrote this the science of lie detection has advanced, but still the admonition is to always take the analysis with a grain of salt. You must consider all the data and understand the motive for lying is often for the best intentions and otherwise almost always based on shame. I would say these people exemplify the state of the art. They are way ahead of me. SEE:
https://www.youtube.com/c/thebehaviorpanel
Copyright 2009
