9 Scientific Ways To Tell When Someone Is Lying
And it's not by checking if their pants are on fire.
We're all liars. You might as well admit it now, because if you've genuinely never told a lie then there might actually be something wrong with you.
Statistics suggest that, on any given day, you might be lied to anywhere between 10 and 200 times.
Studies at theUniversity of Massachusetts have shown that the average stranger will have told you three lies within 10 minutes of meeting you ... and you will have done exactly the same. That's okay though, because as many as 82% of these lies will go undetected.
You've gotten very good at it over the years, you practically came out of the womb lying - babies as young as six months have been found to fake cries and actively deceive their parents to get attention. By the time kids reach the age of six, they'll be telling a lie around once every 90 minutes and, what's more, they'll be beginning to grasp how to make it believable.
Despite their prevalence, most people will only be able to correctly identify a liar 54% of the time - only slightly better than guessing. This is due to a lot of our perceptions and instincts of how liars behave (e.g. body language) are incorrect.
So howdo you spot a liar?