Have any of you ever taken a lie detection test of any kind? (Polygraph or written q & a or some other kind of test I have not read about yet.) If so would you care to tell me about it? Feel free to be anonymous in the comments if you’d prefer.
And more generally: for those of you who have told lies and gotten away with it—what’s your method?
Do any of you believe you have the ability to tell when someone else is lying? Is it a general ability or just with people you know well?
Can any of you recommend any good non-fiction articles and books about lying? Most of what I’ve found so far has been deeply underwhelming.
Thanks!
And thanks for all the fabbie fairy responses. It was mucho gratifying to see that quite a few of your fairies are already in How To Ditch Your Fairy.
My new novel, How To Ditch Your Fairy, is set in a world where almost everyone has a personal fairy. My protag, Charlie, has a parking fairy (which she hates because she’s only fourteen and doesn’t drive and doesn’t like cars), her best friend has a clothes-shopping fairy, and her arch enemy has an all-boys-will-like-you fairy.
So what’s your fairy?
Or what fairy would you like to have?
Recently several friends have been on the receiving end of some very bad blurb etiquette and they have requested that I set the world straight about how blurbage should actually work. I live to serve.
What is a blurb? It’s the little quotes that typically appear on the back of a book saying how wonderful it is. For instance here is what Libba Bray has to say about How To Ditch Your Fairy:1
Justine Larbalestier has a super-cool writing fairy, and I am vastly jealous! Thoroughly entertaining, totally enchanting, wickedly funny, and 110% doos, How To Ditch Your Fairy had me grinning from page one (when I wasn’t laughing out loud). And as soon as I can figure out how to do it I’m going to ask to swap fairies with Justine.
—Libba Bray, New York Times Bestselling author of A Great and Terrible Beauty
A while back I talked at length about my policy on blurbs. The short version is: Yes, I am happy to look at books and if I love them I will blurb them.2 Turns out that there are other aspects of blurbage that I did not cover. Mostly because I did not know these things happen. But apparently they do.
- Never offer to swap blurbs with an author. “Hey, I have a book coming out. If you blurb it I’ll blurb your book!” This is a terrible idea. I may be a blurb purist but all the authors I know only blurb books that they enjoyed reading. They do not blurb books because that person blurbed their book and they especially don’t do that for someone who has never had a book published before and therefore has no track record. Blurbs are supposed to help to sell books but they’re useless if no one knows who the blurber is.
- If the author who agreed to look at your book does not get back to you DO NOT bug them. There are several reasons for not blurbing a book such as not liking it, not having time to read it, and losing said book. Putting the author in the position of having to explain which reason applies is not fair. No author wants to explain to another why they didn’t like their book well enough to blurb it. Just assume it was lack of time.
- There is nothing wrong with receiving a blurb from a friend unless of course that’s the only reason they’re doing it. I blurbed Cassie Clare’s City of Bones because I could not put it down. I loved it. The reason I know some of the wonderful writers who have blurbed me—Karen Joy Fowler, Samuel R. Delany, Libba Bray, Holly Black—is because I love their writing. They are my friends because of writing. None of them would blurb my books if they weren’t into them. It’s not worth our reputations to blurb books of varying quality. Every author I know has said no to blurbing a book by a friend. It’s awkward, but not as awkward as having your name eternally on the back of a book you don’t love.
- Never claim to have a blurb from an author if that is not the case. If the author in question has agreed to look at your book with the possibilty of providing a blurb that DOES NOT mean they are going to blurb you. I looked at several books last year and blurbed none of them. The author has agreed to read your book NOTHING more. If you go around boasting that you have a blurb when you don’t odds are it will get back to the author, who will then be much less inclined to blurb you. This is a very small industry. Word gets around.
This last point leads to a bigger point: Anyone who advises you that lying: claiming blurbs you don’t have, doctoring your publications list, claiming non-existent connections etc. etc. is a good way to get “your foot in the door” is full of it.
Don’t do this. Not ever.
Finding out that someone you have NEVER met is using your name to get ahead is vastly cranky-making. Also in the age of the internet it’s almost impossible to get away with these shenanigans. Google knows when you lie.
I think that about covers it, but if I’ve missed anything do please let me know.
Aparently, the top sekrit title of my new book is already out of the bag. And who was the wicked naughty person who let out the top sekrit ahead of the cover art showing up? What’s the name of that evil party pooper?
Er, um, that would be me. In this interview with Jim Hall of Cult Pop TV.
So I will share with all of you as well. The title of my next book, formerly know as The Ultimate Fairy Book and before that as the Great Australian Feminist Monkey-Knife-Fighting Elvis Cricket Mangosteen novel, is:
How To Ditch Your Fairy
I think it is the best title ever and not only because google’s never heard of it. Not even because the genius Libba Bray came up with it. But because it perfectly describes my book and makes me smile.
I just typed the (top sekrit) title of my fairy novel into google and came up with ZERO hits. ZERO. No book has ever had that title before. Not only that but no one has even put those words together before. Title of my next book for the win!
I will be revealing top sekrit new title as soon as there’s a cover to go with it. So if you happens to know the top sekrit title please not to give the game away. Thank you very much!
I am now determined that all future titles of my books will beat google. It could lead to much obscureness of titles. Yay!
Re: the thieving manager: nah, he confessed before taking it.
I can tell when my uncle is lying because of the face he makes and if what he is saying doesn’t make any sense. He might tell you something to see if you will belive him, and then he laughs when you really do belive him.
I can tell when my friend lies because she tries to sound likes she is older than she is and knows what she is talking about.
The secret to lying is to make the lie as close to the truth as possible.
If you don’t believe your own lie, no one else will believe you either. Haha, that sounds terrible coming from me………but I don’t lie very often.
I was required to take a polygraph a long time ago. I was the manager of a retail store. There had been an employee that worked for me who did not like me and accused me of things. Some items had turned up missing and she accused me of that as well.
I was innocent and when asked to take the test, of course did so willingly. I was told what some of the questions would be on a general level. I learned that some questions that were going to be asked had nothing to do with the missing inventory but about something else I was being accused of. Although I was innocent of it at the time, when I was much younger and stupid, I had done these things.
I find that if there is some truth in the lie, then you can get away with certain things. For example, if you are asked, “Have you ever taken anything from the store without paying for it.” If I had, by simply saying yes, I have taken things like paper clips, office supplies, etc. you are telling the truth without telling the whole truth.
I don’t know if any of that makes sense but I did pass the test and I was innocent of what I had been accused of. And the missing inventory ended up being located in the shipping and receiving room.
Purely as a matter of interest, those people who say “I can always tell when X is lying” - how do you know?
Couldn’t they have lied on occasions that you didn’t find out about?
I’m an excellent liar. I’m not proud of it, no, I am. Its just so easy… The secret, you ask? Too many people send off signals while lying. They look in the direction of thier dominant hand, they fidgit, twitch, sweat, stutter. Don’t do that!
Be yourself! If you weren’t lying, how would you respond? Do that. If you need to cry, think of something sad. Like that lady who asked you for money to buy food. Or the time your dog was run over by a car. Cry real tears!
If you’re supposed to be happy, think up one of those jokes that always set you off for ages!
Lying is powerful though. It can be used for good… or EVIL!!!!! Good: “She’ll be late to class, Mr. so and so. Her locker is jammed.” okay. Thats sort of evil. Evil: “She’ll be late to class Mr so and so. She’s making her daily trip to the bathroom. Yeah, she goes everyday after lunch.”
Not that I would ever do that. Seriously.
i knew a compulsive liar once–had a brief relationship with him actually. when i asked him why he lied, he said he just couldn’t stop himself. he had severe anxiety attacks and i think he just suffered from the need to keep everyone around him happy–to tell them what they wanted to hear. his heart would speed up and he his breathing would accelerate and he’d just open his mouth and it would come out of its own accord. at least that is what he told me. which was very likely a lie now that i think of it.
i think it all stemmed from the need to avoid confrontation, whatever the cost.
don’t know if this helps at all.
oh and i could usually tell when he was lying–mostly because things didn’t fit together–like the fact that his mother died three times and was very much alive when i called her after that.
Years ago, I worked for the first bank in this area (Atlanta, Georgia, US) to put locations in grocery stores. After training, they made me a “floater,” so I went to whichever branch in my area didn’t have enough people for my shift.
Apparently, they didn’t think through the security so very well, and there was a series of break-ins in which someone went through the dropped ceiling into the bank branches to steal money after-hours (the grocery stores were open 24-7). They suspected an “inside job,” and I’d worked at every branch that was hit, so I was asked to take a polygraph test.
I didn’t realize at the time that my normal blood pressure is quite low. For some reason, that and the fact that I was completely calm (I knew I didn’t have anything to do with the robberies) screwed up the test - there was no real difference between me saying one of their “test lies” and saying, truthfully, that I knew nothing about the robberies other than what little I’d heard at work. The guy doing the test got really mad at started yelling at me for no apparent reason.
Unfortunately for him, it was obvious to me that he presented no physical threat, and I’d been yelled at (and worse) by a 6′4″ Marine for most of my life. I didn’t freak out. When he told me to get the hell out of his office, I did. My manager told me later that the guy was certain I’d done SOMETHING wrong, but I had awfully good alibis for every time they’d asked me about. In fact, I’d been singing in front of an entire congregation during several of the robberies.
I figure it’s a really good thing that was before I took biofeedback training.
The most convincing liars I’ve ever known are those who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders. Whatever they’re saying is the absolute truth to them while they’re saying it.
As I recall, the culprits did have an accomplice in the bank, but it was someone much higher up the food chain that I was. I made a point of not knowing the combinations for the safe at any branch, since I wasn’t a regular at any of them, but there was at least one person who had access to all of them.
I find that the best way to make a lie believable is to believe it yourself, at least for the moment. Act as if it WERE true. It’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself that something is true, particularly when you are trying to convince someone ELSE that it’s true.
Also, if someone thinks your story doesn’t make sense, instead of coming up with a complicated explaination, act as confused as they are.
Pretending not to understand the question is a good way to buy time to think of an answer.
I feel dirty.
Tell the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies….
and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Anon
the secret to lying is to actually, not lie at all.
you tell the truth, but you don’t tell the whole truth.
so, there are always things left up in the air. this causes people to make assumptions, and nearly always, their assumption is the most likely one. and if you’ve told your story correctly, then you won’t get into any trouble, because they’ll be assuming the best.
it never fails. and if for some odd reason, you do fail, and someone accuses you of lying, you can say (without lying) that you weren’t lying, you just didn’t tell them that certain aspect of the story.
for the record, i’ve always heard that polygraph tests are completely unreliable and easy to fool besides. this is why i absolutely detest that stupid show moment of truth. the whole effing thing is a lie. some guy is probably sitting there in a dark room with two buttons to push, deciding when to say “true” and when to say “false,” and none of it has anything to do with what the contestant actually says. and that’s only one reason why i hate that stupid show. end soapbox.
in high school, i lied and sneaked around all the time, and i usually got away with it. i learned a couple things from this. one, if you’re generally trustworthy and people know that there are certain lines you won’t cross, then you can easily get away with other, less “serious” things. two, even if you know you’re lying, you can still pull it off as long as you feel that the lie is justified. i rarely felt guilty about lying back then. but everything flipped in college. i stopped feeling justified, so i stopped lying. for me, that seems to be the key. it also helps to be able to come up with relatively believable stories on the spot. if you have to stop and think, that’s the first and most obvious clue that you’re not telling the truth.
on the opposite end of things, i’m utterly crap at reading other people. it doesn’t matter if they’re lying or pissed or whatever, i only seem to see what’s on the surface. i’m the same way when reading “great” literary works. i never see the underlying meaning of either one until someone else points it out to me. hmm, maybe that’s the fairy i need.
I think I’m a convincing liar, but I think that since I’m a 90% trusting person, that when I lie, people just expect it to be truth. I’m not proud that I’m good at it, really, I’m not. It makes me feel horrible.
John Green wrote a list of “Things I am good at” in which he listed sitting down and telling lies. He said that’s why he became a writer.
So there you have it - ask your mate!
On a more practical note - a good lie (for good - read convincing) should always have some truth attached. Then if ever found out the author of the lie can claim they misunderstood the situation.
A good liar should have a great memory.
There’s an abstract on PubMed (here) in which a variety of people were asked to distinguish liars from nonliars. The only people to perform better than chance were Secret Service agents.
Thanks again, everyone. Some fabulous stuff here.
Jane Volker: I already did.
I think everyone has generally given good advice on how to be a successful liar, but I think the true key to getting away with a fib is picking your target carefully. Because really, the worst liar I’ve ever met is also the person who pulled the wool over my eyes most successfully–and he was able to do that in large part because he told *such* bald-faced lies that I couldn’t believe they were actually lies. This is a kid who could have been standing over a corpse with a bloody knife in his hands and claimed that he had *no idea* how those stab wounds got there. Even if you told him that you’d *seen* him do it, he’d have told you you saw wrong. It was ridiculously unbelievable…which is why it worked. I couldn’t believe that someone could lie that badly to my face and expect me to believe it; even if I’d seen him do something rotten with my own eyes, I started to doubt what I’d seen.
But more importantly, I *wanted* to believe him–which brings me to the moral of my story: all you really need to be a successful liar is a gullible target–or, more accurately, someone who *wants* to believe you. If you’ve cheated on your girlfriend, you can probably get away with lying to her about it because she doesn’t *want* to believe that you would do that to her. You have to figure out what someone wants to hear, and then you have to say that. It doesn’t matter how crappy your performance is, how completely it contradicts all available evidence; people will believe it because the alternative means looking like an ass. And everyone hates feeling stupid.
I am shame-faced and blushing. But my excuse is that I only found your blog TODAY and I hadn’t quite read back as far as 2006.
Brilliant interview. Very entertaining. I’m always impressed by a teller of tall tales mostly because I can’t lie convincingly unless I think the person I’m speaking to needs me to. In fact I can look totally guilty when I’m telling the whole truth. It’s a terrible affliction. Maybe people fall into two groups: good liars and good confessors.
It’s a bit depressing to realise you are one of the latter.
Don’t pause. Just GO. The best liar I know (who happens to be ELEVEN YEARS OLD) just spins stories out of nowhere so fast I can’t tell which are true and which aren’t - and I know he’s a pathological liar. And the times I’ve been most convincing in my own lies are the times I didn’t even know I was going to lie until I said it.
Jane Volker: I am shame-faced and blushing.
Don’t be silly. Why would you know about an interview conducted almost two years ago? I posted the link cause I thought you might be interested and because it confirms your supposition that Mr Green does indeed know a vast deal about lying.
Came across some news articles about polygraphs and lie detection just today that might interest your research.
Showing the inaccuracy of polygraphs:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044177/
Preliminary info about brainscans and lies:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21552376/
I do a lot of ferreting out lies in my day job work and I have to say, so much of detecting lies is what I call the internal tuning fork - it’s just this “ping” I feel inside sometimes when someone says something - sometimes it’s that the word choice is odd, or the voice fluctuated and sometimes it’s just instinct. But when I start pulling at the story, some common things fall apart.
First, as a caveat on all this, some people are such good liars they actually convince themselves the lie is truth - they are almost undetectable, because there won’t really be any tells. The “tells” - eye contact, pupils, breathing, pitch, pulse, blood flow, etc… - none of that will show if the person is: (1) believing the lie; or, (2) psychotic/compulsive.
Now, for the rest of us, there are tells. And those tells are different for everyone.
Many times, the lie is told differently than the truth - with someone who is generally fluid in their delivery, sometimes the lie stumbles or a word choice is off. If the person sometimes hunts for words, sometimes the lie is too well-rehearsed or flowing.
Many, many times I say the truth is in the pauses - and in the deflections. When someone doesn’t answer a question fully, or directly, I usually zero in on the deflection. I find with many people the information I need to know most is in the pauses between their answers.
But, all that said, there are some good liars, and those people you only trip up in examining the details and seeing if every facet of the lie can be proven true- usally some small detail, maybe even as small as time or place, falls away, and then the story unravels. Becuase (generally) people don’t lie about little things unless they are trying to hide bigger things. So, sometimes someone lies about some stupid thing, and that derails an otehrwise well-concocted lie.
There are some great articles on jury seletion out there, and they are studies in psychology and reading people. Some of that technique would work for detecting liars, too.
Here are some pretty basic sites talking about some of the techiniques and tests (although, they may be too shallow, if you’ve already been researching):
http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/liars/
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/bob8.asp
What it comes down to very much is focussing on the person totally and watching for the thing that makes you wonder if the person is lying - the loose thread to unravel the lie is there. Even over the phone, even in written letters, the thing that makes you pause and wonder, to hesitate, your instincts are picking up on something…so pull at it and see what falls apart.
Just some quick thoughts… emily
[…] of you have been emailing to ask why I wants to know about lying and DNA testing and race that I feel I should offer some kind of explanation, or several […]
Reflecting some of the other posts, I was taught to always make my lie part true. If I’m taking a day off work to attend a funeral, include the aunt that died a month ago, even though the funeral was on a weekend and required no days off work. If you make it partially true, you can feed off that section of the truth and let it carry over into the not-so-true part.
Moderately related: a friend of mine has no adrenal gland, and has to take adrenaline just to keep his heart beating regularly. He was falsely accused of stealing by a grocery store, and placed in a small room with many people yelling at him. The fact that he never got excited, raised his voice, or freaked out was held against him, though it’s pretty imnpossible for him to get upset, or at least manifest it physically. He was eventually allowed to leave, and never went back.
Don’t know if this is still helpful, but I thought I’d post it anyway, since I don’t think anyone’s said this already
I don’t often lie, but when I need to - cough cough, ‘needed’ to go to a Harry Potter convention but told uni my cousin was getting married - I make up all the information around the lie to support it before I tell them, littering it freely with the truth and getting all the details fixed in my mind. Then when I have to tell the lie, I only tell them a tiny bit more than they asked for - not so much as to make them suspicious - and then if/when they ask me further questions (like, so where is your cousin getting married?) I can quite happily and confidently answer, and give the same answer to everyone (in the church near m grandparents’ house, so my grandma doesn’t have to travel too far with her sciatica) and not get caught out later.
Of course, this takes a bit of prep time, but not a huge amount. It depends on the extent of the lie. Usually I can do it in a couple of minutes, and then I repeat it to myself in my mind to fix it there.
I have never been caught out.