People lying and ways to find out - share your knowledge!

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This thread is basically a response to a test in another thread and contains answers from that test as examples below marked with "SPOILER". Check here for the test and post your results there.

Yes, I know, a lot of text - please forgive me, I even tried to structure it for you to make it readable. I just thought it would be worth to share and collect some knowledge on the topic "lying" as it requires a lot of interpreting signals of a human, maybe it will be useful for some at least.

Below is a small summary of my knowledge about the topic "lying".

Of course it might be incorrect at some parts, after all I didn't really manage to use it all that well in real life either, but it actually "saved me" from some possibly embarrassing situations already as I knew that it was likely to expect lying from a mean person, someone who doesn't like me, or a bully, so I thought that maybe someone might find it useful when I share it either way - feel free to correct me on what I wrote there, everyone might profit from that after all!

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Summary of my knowledge on lying:

So far this relates only to NTs as far as I can tell:

• The body language can be categorized in gesture, the position it takes (comfortable or not) and "rigidness".
  
  People who lie often don't feel comfortable, so they don't make gestures (could be because they focus on telling you the lie(?)). Take this as a hint that, if the person doesn't use them, it is lying. Additionally, the person might look very stiff and not have a comfortable position of the body, e.g. when sitting in a chair sitting rather "solid" instead of putting one leg over the other, leaning to one side on one arm or when standing, shifting weight on a leg.
  On the other hand, people who don't lie "open up", their body makes gestures and they take a comfortable seating or standing position and look generally relaxed and not stiff.
  
  Additionally, people also tend to nod several times after telling a lie, as if reassuring oneself that it is the truth (imagine that as if they were complimenting themselves on the lie).
  
• The eye contact is another important factor.
  
  The person avoids eye contact with the one it talks to (in this case it was the camera), apparently eyes contain a lot of information for the one who is able to "read" them correctly, so it seems to be a reflex in NTs to avoid eye contact in order to hide their lie.
  One the other hand, some people who lie even tend to stare (those are usually aware of the eye contact issue when lying). I think that it might be compared to some sort of piercing glare rather than just being looked at, but I'm not all too sure either, I still find it hard to differenciate between regular eye contact and someone staring at me during a conversation (I just lack the experience or skill in "keeping eye contact with the person" to tell whether it is a stare or just normal I think ).
  People who don't lie/don't hide the truth and don't hide information, will usually feel comfortable keeping eye contact.
  
• Of course it also depends on the angle they are looking at when lying in combination with the voice.
  
  What I noticed/know: When a person looks down, but somehow tries to start and hold eye contact, it might feel guilty - when the person lowered the head and has to look up with its eyes in order to hold eye contact, even more so. Guilt can be an indicator for a lie.
  I also noticed, that people who lie tend to look in a roughly 45° angle downwards (not directly to the floor in front of them) while telling something and jumping with the eye to the center again to hold contact with yours and returning back to that quite frequently, the majority of the time looking away though. Rolling the eyes seems to be less frequent in the average NT, but it can also be a sign for a lie.
  
• Is the person looking up, it might be that it just tries to remember something (imagine it like looking at the brain in order to tell it "now, give me the information!"). However, many people also tend to look directly downwards to the floor and sometimes to the side. I admit that the eye movement part is (except for the eye rolling) not 100% clear to me yet (as you can see).
  If the person is thinking, this is usually accompanied by a break, an "erm..." (or noises alike), or a sentence stating that the person should have a bit more patience, a question directed at the own self like "what was that again..." - sometimes all three in combination.
  
  Additionally, when trying to remember pieces of information (as I stated here), the person will most likely look upwards thus breaking eye contact, so if it is a topic which is "hidden" deep in the person's memory, having it to struggle to remember, the person might even look away more often than keeping eye contact with you, so one should try not to confuse that with the aforementioned paragraph as this most likely doesn't indicate lying!
  
  A lying person would most likely not make a break unless they are insecure about the lie and have to think of a way to transmit it in a believable way. The voice of a lying person taking a break in their speech might sound insecure too (so if they use "err" the voice might sound somewhat "shaky" and uneasy). More about this in the next paragraph.
  
• It is also important to listen to the way the person says something, the "melody" of the voice to be specific.
  
  E.g. some people, who are bad in acting, will exaggerate the pronounciations/melody in a question like "what was it again? (I can't remember!)" unnecessarily stressing parts of it and it will clearly sound fake.
  
  It takes some practice to become familiar with it, unfortunately... That same way, the voice can as well be overly monotone and regular (this doesn't exclude the pace in which it is said, more about that in the next paragraph), which might indicate the person is just "quoting" what it has prepared in its mind beforehand.
  
• The pace at which the person usually talks can change during a lie.
  
  People who prepared a lie might talk slower than they usually do (or than the majority of people does) to not make a mistake/accidentally slip out pieces of truth or information or maybe contradiction when telling it.
  Or they might talk faster, if they want to blurt it out as fast as possible to avoid the uncomfortable situation of lying.
  
  For this it requires to know the person that is telling the lie though - unfortunately - to know what the average talking pace is (you have to know your friends, family and enemies in that case). One can listen to people in public places though to get an idea how the "average pace" of most people is though.
  
• And the (probably) most obvious one: Contradictions in what was said.
  
  If the person tells you stuff and there are contradictions and you ask about those and that person disregards them as "oh well, maybe I just remembered wrongly" or says "oh, I didn't mean to say it" and correct it direclty afterwards or just says"that isn't important at all", you are allowed to suspect a lie. While the person tries to "fix" the fatal mistake it made, there might be a hand waving gesture, as if to indicate to shoo something away, or to "throw" something down, additionally the person might twist or turn the head away from you (leaning the body a bit to the back while doing so), frown/furrow the eyebrows and fasten the talking pace and overly stress the said/increase the "melody" in the voice.

But it is also important to know when to expect a lie. You must know the person, the motive it would have. Would it profit from harming you by tricking you into a lie? Does that person like you or want you to like it and try to tell you a lie in order to "appeal better to you"? Is that person a bully? Is that person a liar by nature?

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That is my personal knowledge on the topic, feel free to correct it, if something is wrong. and comment on it and add your own knowledge. I hope this will be of some help to others. As I said, I'm not all too good at it either in real life, but at least I know the theory and I even managed to apply it some times during my late school years.

I gathered these tips from lots of sources, TV, trusted people (family) and the internet being the main source and practiced that during my school time.
Of course I am pretty sure that those tips might make it really hard to tell whether an autistic with poor body language, monotone regular voice and no eye contact is lying or not. I think I even fall into that category.
That's why I mentioned that these tips most likely just refer to NTs.

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The Routine in which I checked (in the test):
And I also understand that this is pretty hard as one has to focus on so many things at once, but when I analysed the videos from the test in the other thread, I went by this routine:
First, when expecting a lie (which the test suggested as it was a "lie or truth" test), I look at the person beforehand, if it has a fair amount (or at least some of the "symptoms" of lying) before starting to talk, it might already be an indicator for a prepared lie - or maybe it just feels uncomfortable by the situation, that is usually hard to tell.

Then I noticed that I go through this routine:

• Check the body position once the person starts talking, look at/around eye area to make out the position/direction of the eyes throughout the video for some seconds to make a rough judgement.
  
  I repeated the process of analysing the videos to see how exactly I do it, as I was curious myself and caught myself often looking at the forehead (in between the eyes, it is a habit of mine and is great to fake eye contact with people) and using my peripheral vision when I have troubles with processing several things at once to somehow make out the direction of the eyes without directly looking at them - I might have to add that I didn't maximize the view but kept it little, so maybe it influenced the difficulty in a positive manner. Though I think that's also how the "successful" tries of detecting a lie in real life went (somehow peripheral vision might be an important key element there, I should experiment with that).
  
• Then focus on the voice/the way the person is talking and what it says.
  
• At the same time, if I witness movement of the body, I immediately check what was moved there.
  
  If the person was moving arms or just changed position because it looked uncomfortable before and afterwards (once the person is done) try to remember, if the gestures were rare or not.

The last paragraph is surely not easy, if one doesn't spend some time in looking at strangers conversating from afar.

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Where could one analyse the body language of an average person?

The bus or a train is a good chance to do so for example, I spent most of my time in school in breaks observing conversating people all over the playground as I couldn't participate in the conversations anyway - they were muted by the music I was listening to on my mp3 player, I think that this allows for more focus on analysing, which can look quite funny without sound to be honest!
So, if one has to go somewhere and has to use public transport anyway, or when one has to wait in a waiting room (for example at the doctor), I suggest to try to take a peek/look at the people in the room (of course, I understand if that can be uncomfortable for you as well as some people might notice and feel offended/threatened in a way, so use with care and try to hide it).
It can be exhausting (especially after a hard day), I admit it, but at least it seems to work in a way.

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SPOILER:

I'm posting the reasons for what I guessed in the test and what I didn't here. Maybe there is something I can improve after all and maybe the insight might be useful? I tried not to give away the answers like that to avoid direct spoilers that might be seen when scrolling but wanting to do the test, so I tried to just write down my reasoning. When doing the test, you will get the correct answers anyway.

The results that I could guess:

• First row left, reason: She was avoiding eye contact with the camera all the way through and her body position on the chair was very "stiff" and straight, her arms (apparently) folded (?) on her lap. In between 0:08 and 0:09 you can see what I meant with the 45° angle looking down. She also rolled her eyes a lot - and she nodded her head in the end.
• First row right, reason: The person seemed generally very relaxed, was smiling, "laughed", gestured a lot and the eye movement seemed to indicate that he tried to remember directly after the question (still, if not for the relaxed movement, the eye movement afterwards might have been irritating).
• Second row right, reason: At first the person was taken aback by the question, the "shocked" wide open eyes gave that away. Then the person started thinking (given the "distorted facial expressions" she was making - especially with her mouth -, it might hint at difficulties in making a decision), smiling and I think there was a slight hint of embarrassment(?) after she said she would like to meet Beyonce. The positions seems comfortable and her legs are overlapping, she seems generally relaxed to me.
• Third row left, reason: Eye contact is somewhat constant, the left hand did gestures to stress the said, the position is generally relaxed and he is leaning on his left arm. Filler-"words" were used, like "err" indicating that the person was trying to remember.
• Third row right, reason: There were long breaks with silence, the person shifted the position from one to another quite frequently, it would mean it was uncomfortable with the situation (the question). The voice sounded insecure/shaky and he smiled when he mentioned "generally interested in politics" - I think he might have been amused by his statement.
• Fourth row left, reason: The woman was in a comfortable position (leaning on her left arm, legs crossed), finished off with a gesture and was smiling all through the video and laughing and seemed overall very relax.
• Fourth row right, reason: I admit this one was a bit tricky as he used gestures, but the fact he aborted eye contact this much in combination with the insecurity about the topic (one would assume that one knows his own hobby ) gave it away. The reasoning also sounded a bit clishé and his overall position seemed quite stiff/rigid.
• Fifth row right, reason: This one was not all too easy either. But although in the video, the position looked rather stiff, he seemed quite relaxed with his voice and took the time to stress certain words ("all the way") although not in an exaggerated manner. At the end he also began to smile and he did some body movements at one part, I can't explain how yet, but this somehow felt relaxed and "neutralized" the seemingly stiff position.

The results that I could not guess were:

• Second row left, reason: the voice sounded very "regular and monotone" and slow, I think unsure would be a word that could fit this, as if he was trying to just retell something that he has studied before, his overall body position was very rigid, but he seemed to be keeping eye contact with the camera, this made me very unsure and I developed a habit that if I can't tell, I should expect the worst to be secure.
• Last row left, reason: She was avoiding eye-contact with the camera, looking upwards - in retrospect I realize that this could have as well been just an attempt to remember, somehow many people apparently are supposed to do this. The way she talked was quite monotone and not giving away all to much information, unfortunately, and the fact she blushed after she was done and that she didn't seem to smile or laugh before mentioning p**** (censored because I don't know if someone might feel offended) differed from what I know from people, I would have expected her to blush before if this was because of shame, but I really couldn't tell if she was blushing because of laughter or because of shame... So once again, I was confused and just took the option I usually take.

I hope I can also improve in reading body language yet, especially this. Feel free to post your knowledge and theories about how to find out if someone is lying!

One area I realize I am still very gullible is when someone makes a post or I talk to them on the phone. I realize I am missing something. It appears my unconscious mind isn't but what could it be picking up that I am not picking up on a conscious level?

This made me realize why people often think I'm lying when I'm really not.

As a serious live poker player, I have found this brilliant despite that I'm using it not for reasons that you really intended it to be used. Nevertheless thank you very much for posting this .

I see what you mean!

Glad to see that it is useful though!
I just wished I could have been more accurate at the part of the eye movement, but for me it is a weird topic to begin with (I usually avoid it too by looking next to the person or pending between forehead and somewhere else - unless I "smell" a nasty motive/someone hiding the truth/telling a lie, that's when I do my best for my own sake ).