How do you tell if someone is lying when you're not face to face?

Question

Seriously. By nature, I'm a trusing person, but sometimes I get a feeling that someone isn't being completely honest with me. Are there tell-tale signs in the voice?

Answer 1

It really depends on how well of a liar the person is. If they lie a lot then you may not have any real signs of it when you are even face to face with them. Those who lie a lot have learned how to successfully fool others with body language and eye contact and how they use their voices. One of my children (who I adopted when he was seven) is a accomplished liar. I am the only one who can tell 95% of the time when he is lying. Which is due to how much time I spend with him. He is so good he could fool a lie detector machine! lol Well, it is not really funny, but I love him and can catch him nearly all of the time so I find it funny. It is not funny for those who do not know him.

Those who do not make a practice of lying will nearly always give themselves away, whether they are in front of you or on the phone. Now, you have to know the individual to a degree, otherwise if somebody lies, you just will believe them. You have to know people even just a little to figure out when they are lying to you.

I make a habit of treating people as if they were honest people and then "hide and watch". "Hide and watch" is an expression and an action which my husband introduced to me because I was and still am to a smaller degree (I am older now and wiser) an extreamly trusting person who usually sees the good in the most horrid people. "Hide and watch" is a system my husband developed for me as he was attempting to protect me from my own trusting nature and was tired of seeing me hurt.

What you do is treat each person you meet as though they are trustworthy, hold back a peice of your heart, then wait and see if they prove worthy of that trust. When you get to know them better you will learn just how trustworthy they are. Individuals have very individual levels of trustworthiness. Some are painfully honest and have an extreamly high degree of integrity, while others are accomplished liars and deceivers, and then there are those who are everywhere throughout the middle of those two extreames. Just hide and watch, then as you learn where they fit into trustworthiness you can adjust how you view them and what you intrust them with. This way you protect yourself by holding back that vital part of you which would otherwise get hurt when you discovered somebody was not trustworthy after all. Don't share all of who you are right off the bat.

Good luck in learning how to weed out those who do not deserve either your trust or your friendship. Much happiness always.

Answer 2

Hard to tell if you're not face to face...

But here are a few tips :

Listen for Suspicious Behaviors

By themselves, each of these behaviors can just be signs of stress, or even a person's natural mannerisms. One can occur by chance, but when two or more of these behaviors suddenly appear at a moment when lying could be expedient.

Here's a list of suspicious behaviors:

A change in the voice's pitch.
A change in the rate of speech.
A sudden increase in the number of "ums" and "ahs."
An aburpt change in subjects.
Getting vague answers to questions.
Nervous lip or mouth sounds.

When you've gotten a signal the person may be lying -- ask for more information about the same topic. Are those same lying signs apparent? That can confirm your suspicion.

Of course, there's no foolproof way to detect lying. Some people are terrific at covering themselves up, especially if they are naturally emotionally flat or have practiced their lying skills over many years for voice behavior changes and mixed signals at lying-expedient moments, you will improve your BS detector

Answer 3

Yes, inflection can be a give away. If it's someone you know, you might be able to detect stress in their voice. This might show up as a change in inflection or timbre of their voice. Also if the person hesitates when speaking, they may be trying to come up with an excuse or answer that isn't quite on the up and up. And if the person fills in gaps in conversation with ums and ahs, they also might be stalling. Lastly if the story or details change, even slightly, during your conversation it's likely that it isn't completely true.

Answer 4

I am sure there are signs in voice, body language, and facial expression. However, I feel you should trust everyone initially, if this person has lied to you in the past, chances are-he/she will do it again..

Answer 5

you can tell by tone of voice (nervousness and shaky, and they pause to think quite often so that they dont slip up!) or rather more simply, the lie they are telling you...sometimes people leave cracks in what they say and it is true that the truth always comes out eventually...

Answer 6

human beings say issues to be large, human beings want to be large. however i'm advantageous what they is genuine. definitely everyone has solid and undesirable factors. human beings tell me how clean my face is and how come i haven't any spots. yet I do haha

Answer 7

Shoot them anyway. Lying or not, who cares. They're still talking to you. Ha. Really, body language and tone of speech. That's real obvious.

Answer 8

there are studies out there that detail this point.
Yes, eye movement is the biggy.
Try this in a search engine: Eye movement / lying / research

have fun with that.

Answer 9

If their voice is shaky, or they talk very low during certain parts of your conversation. Also, just trust your instincts!

Answer 10

I normally will ask a question so that if they are lying, they will either contradict themselves or they will dig themselves deeper.