- September 9, 2018
- Psychology of communication
- Raisa Bogacheva
Most of humanity tries to tell the truth, but there are people who sometimes lie, and there are those who do it all the time. What do you call people who lie? It is clear that not in very good words.
Sometimes a person lies to protect someone. Even after meeting people, after a few minutes they begin to lie to each other. Every day a person hears from several dozen to several hundred deceitful phrases and sees several thousand deceitful movements. Everyone is very interested in the question of why people lie. Psychology gives the following answers.
Why do people lie
If a person constantly lies, the psychologist’s answer is the following: he creates an image for himself. That is, they talk about some adventures or exploits in order to appear in the eyes of the listener in a better and brighter light. They make up stories or exaggerate their abilities to make people think how wonderful they are. There are people who lie just like that, without any reason, simply because they like it. Some people may lie to unsettle their interlocutor. Other people lie to protect relationships or feelings.
For example, if a spouse cheated, he will lie to save the family and relationship. Or he will praise his wife for her new blouse, even if he doesn’t like it, just so as not to upset his beloved. Sometimes a person lies to protect another person from some consequences.
For example, if a child faces legal liability, then the parents will protect him, even if he is guilty, so that the life of their child is not ruined. Sometimes such a lie is justified, because it helps to avoid an unnecessarily severe punishment. There are people who lie for the sake of their own reputation and in order to impress.
For example, they lie about their financial situation in order to arouse interest in their personality, or exaggerate their work opportunities in order to get a good job. They resort to this form of lying in order to get career growth, a higher salary, for some kind of self-interest. Some liars lie to avoid some kind of conflict situation. For example, children may tell lies to avoid punishment or fear disapproval.
It becomes difficult for a person to speak
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“If you've ever seen a recording of a guilty suspect, you may have noticed that with every word it seems like it's getting harder and harder for him to speak,” Glass writes. “At such moments, salivation decreases and this leads to a dry throat.” Other signs that a person may be lying are lip biting or pursed lips.
Influence on others
Some liars lie to somehow influence others. They think that deception sounds more reliable than the truth, and thanks to this they control the situation.
When a person begins to lie systematically, he can no longer stop; lies give rise to new lies. And the more he lies, the harder it is for him to tell the truth. Pathological liars think that if they admit that they once distorted the facts, then they will be exposed and the whole truth will be known. Fearing this, they continue to lie even where it is not necessary. In stressful situations, a person does not think about little things and to save himself, he begins to lie and believes it himself. It is more profitable for him to lie and believe than to tell the truth.
Sometimes people who lie a lot engage in wishful thinking. It seems to them that dreams can become reality if they just exaggerate a little and throw dust in the eyes of others. Whatever the reason for the deception, the person feels awkward at this moment. And the reaction of the interlocutor is very important, who may say “I don’t believe it” or “stop making up things.” The liar will then lie even more to protect his reputation and show that he is telling the truth.
Cognitive load
Cognitive load occurs when processes such as thinking, attention, and memory are involved. That is, a person is overexerted mentally. But how can you understand during a conversation that the other person is lying? Psychologists have proven that lying is much more difficult than telling the truth. The brain becomes tense and the person becomes overly nervous.
To increase cognitive load and definitely catch a person lying, you should ask your interlocutor to tell the story in chronological reverse order. That is, from the total to the elements. It is important to maintain constant eye contact. If a person fails, he is lying.
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Low self-esteem
The reason for lying can also be low self-esteem or some difficult life situations that a person has experienced. It could be criticism or unrequited feelings. Other people have a hard time accepting a situation and it’s easier for them to come up with something and lie so as not to fall on their face. Instead of thinking about his problems, a person comes up with some new and interesting facts about his own life. As a rule, people become liars from adolescence, when the teenager may have experienced some kind of social conflicts or was humiliated. And in order not to experience this again, they lie, thus protecting themselves. Lying is not a habit, it is a natural human trait.
Man stands motionless
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It's no secret that people fidget when they're nervous, but Glass says a person lying may also be standing or sitting still. “This may be a sign of a primitive “neurological struggle”, because the body involuntarily prepares for a possible confrontation,” says Glass. “Usually, when talking, people often make small body movements, relaxed and, as a rule, unconscious. So if you see a person standing absolutely still, that's usually a sign that something is wrong."
How does this happen in children?
Not only adults, but also children cheat. What is the reason for this? It happens that children's lies do not harm, but benefit, but it also happens the other way around.
Let's figure out when and for what reasons children lie:
- Up to 3 years. At this age, children do not know how to lie at all; it is not physiologically given to them. The child’s brain is not yet capable of inventing; it pays its attention only to what is around it in reality.
- From 3 to 4-4.5 years. At this age, the child fantasizes, comes up with some images, he composes some fables, which in principle cannot exist. At this age, lying helps the child develop and learn.
- 4.5-5 and older. The child lies about everyday and domestic issues. For example, he lied that he had done his homework, but he didn’t even know what the homework was, he skipped class, and said that the teacher canceled it and didn’t come.
Movie The Man Who Lies
Czech Republic (judging by the name in the pharmacy), World War II (judging by the Nazi soldiers running through the forest and streets). It is these same soldiers who are chasing a man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) dressed in a classic suit through the forest. In the end, the hero is overtaken and killed. But, this is a film by Alain Robbe-Grillet, so reality and memory meet at great speed and now we see Boris Varis, as this very man is called, on the street of the town. He is a close friend of one of the heroes of the Resistance movement, Jean Rabin, who recently allegedly died. No one knows him and no one really believes him, although he tries to tell everyone how he saved the hero. Then he goes to a remote castle, where three beautiful girls live - Raben's wife, his sister and their maid. He tells them his stories and they seem to believe him so much that he stays in their house and even manages to sleep with some of them. However, the viewer can understand from a series of incoherent flashbacks that Varys is not a member of the Resistance. However, with this, too, it is not entirely clear who Varys really is, and who Raben was.
Like many of Robbe-Grillet's films, this one is divorced from geographical and historical moorings. On the one hand, it seems that “Last Year in Marienbad” tells the story of two people meeting in Marianske Lazne, that “Eden and After” takes place in a Parisian cafe and an Algerian village, that “Trans European Express” rushes across the boundaries of geography. All this is true in a sense, but the films would not have lost anything if Robbe-Grillet had changed the geographical context. The same applies to this film, which only at first glance looks like a military-historical film, but in fact is another metaphorical story, another study of the falsity of human memory, the relativity of perception, another cast of images, ideas, a collective mind capable of creating such miracles that you cannot see in reality. It is even difficult to determine whether the war has already ended or not, and which of the scenes shown belong to the realm of memories.
It is difficult to say which of what is shown is objective truth; there is no objectivity here as such in principle, and the viewer is placed in exactly the same position as the rest of the film participants. Even a little more complex, if you look at it, because the viewer has no idea what Jean Rabin looks like. In other words, Robbe-Grillet creates the most complex world in which reality is not only intertwined inextricably with memories, but, in fact, becomes them, and this, in turn, is complicated by the fact that memories can be false. Therefore, the slightest attempt to analyze the sequence or even simply build a logical chain of scenes seen in the mind of a normal person is doomed to failure. But Robbe-Grillet's work is not at all intended for such straightforward analyses. Here complex brain research and scientific work are already in use, the field of which is located not only and not so much in cinema, but in psychoanalysis and even sometimes in psychotherapy.
Of course, someone may complain that the film does not look like a film, some kind of experimental confusion, modern kitsch instead of art. In this dissatisfaction, of course, in addition to a certain narrow-mindedness and closed-mindedness, which always prevents us from perceiving something outside the usual coordinate system, there will also be a grain of truth. Yes, Robbe-Grillet deliberately denies many of the artistic features characteristic of canonical narrative cinema. This is no longer an ordinary film, it is no longer even a film at all. It is a kind of abstraction that involves to some extent the very material that makes up the movie, but is intelligent enough to look inward, analyze, change the order. This is more of a scientific work or even a laboratory experiment, which may not have any visible emotional benefit for the average person, but from the point of view of the development of the cinema institute itself, it is even an important point in history and evolution. People don’t go to the cinema to see such films; such films are sources of quotes for subsequent generations. And it is at least risky to evaluate such works from the position of a simple viewer.
Types of Liars
There are 7 types of people who lie all the time:
- Psychopaths. These are people who lie for their own benefit, even if they find themselves in a situation where they need to help someone, they will easily lie for their own benefit.
- Extroverts. These are people for whom lying is as easy as breathing, and they themselves believe what they say.
- Narcissistic people. These are people who lie in order to get attention.
- Sociopaths. These are individuals who live and breathe lies.
- Pathological liars. These are people who lie constantly but never admit it.
- The youth. Teenagers can cheat an indefinite number of times; this is a natural stage of socialization. It is difficult for teenagers to fit into society without using lies.
- Salespeople are people who lie all the time in order to earn as much as possible.
The older a person gets, the less he lies. It is difficult to say what causes this, but this fact exists.
Detecting lies by facial expressions and eyes
Microexpressions.
A person who lies subconsciously displays the emotion of distress. Outwardly, this is expressed in the involuntary raising of the eyebrows, as a result of which folds form on the forehead. Asymmetry—different expressions of emotions on the right and left sides of the face—will help judge untruthfulness. Such inconsistency is a sign that the emotion is imaginary and not experienced.
Nose and mouth.
According to researchers, a liar touches his nose much more often than a person who tells the truth. This may be due to the fact that the rush of adrenaline in the capillaries of the nose causes itching. A person’s desire to cover his mouth with his hand or pursed lips can also indicate a lie.
Eye movements.
A person blinks more often when lying. The eyelids remain closed longer than usual when lying. Men often have a desire to rub their eyes when hiding the truth. It is easy to determine by the direction of gaze whether a person is making up information or not. Thus, a right-handed person’s gaze directed upward to the left indicates imagination, and upward to the right indicates memory. Although the postulate that a person looks away during a conversation to the side or down has recently been actively criticized as a tool for determining the truth, the technique is quite interesting.
How to determine that a person is lying?
It's easy to find out. There are 3 ways to understand this.
- The first way is facial expressions. One of the signs of lying is shifting eyes or staring too closely. Also, when a person is deceiving, he looks either to the left or up.
- The second way is gestures. When a person lies, he clasps his hands or hides them in his pockets, also moves a couple of steps away from the interlocutor, may clutch his cell phone or hold his bag tightly.
- The third way is conversation. When deceiving, a liar's voice begins to tremble and he begins to speak more slowly, indistinctly, in order to come up with a lie during the conversation.
Cognitive approach: methods and results
All of the above methods for detecting lies in conversation were tested on volunteers. 1781 people took part in the experiment. According to the results, all participants, using a cognitive approach, were able to determine with an accuracy of up to 60% whether their interlocutor was lying or telling the truth.
Previously, studies showed that only 54% of people could accurately detect a lie.
But it is worth taking into account that some participants in the experiment knew other signs of lying besides those studied. Therefore, the results should not be taken to the nearest percentage. However, the cognitive approach increases the accuracy of the result by 25% and helps to structure the conversation competently.
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Watch your speech
In addition to body language, it is also worth analyzing the features of speech.
Usually we know well the personal qualities and behavior style of loved ones, so it is not difficult to replace changes in their behavior and speech. But if in front of you is a stranger or an unfamiliar person, you need to work on his basic behavior, as they do in the FBI.
We first calm people down to understand how they behave in normal, minimally stressful situations. Thus, by finding out what their baseline behavior is, we can track changes in behavior regarding a specific issue.
Some people begin to speak faster, their voice may become higher, or they begin to make more mistakes in conversation, forced interjections appear, they begin to cough, etc.
Liars are more about convincing you than just making a point.
Therefore, sometimes they will repeat the same thing several times - just to be believed. Their words become weak at the beginning or end of a statement.
You need to be aware of strategic delays, such as when someone answers a question by saying, “That's a good question.” This kind of beginning is used to “forge” an answer. It just so happens that this tactic is used by both honest and dishonest people, so in itself it does not indicate deception. Some people are very careful in their answers, so a lawyer of Bill Clinton's caliber will be very careful in constructing his sentences, choosing his words carefully.
Closed poses
Characteristic signs of lying are some postures that a person can take unconsciously:
- Crossing your arms over your chest;
- Crossing legs over legs;
- The “four” position (when the ankle of one leg rests on the knee of the other).
These postures may indicate an attempt to hide something, a reluctance to have a conversation, or a person’s dislike or fear.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of signs of lying. Come to acting classes at the Benefis theater studio and you will be able to recognize a liar literally from the first seconds of a conversation. Agree: the skill is very useful.
When you come to the theater, you understand perfectly well that in front of you is not Madame Bovary, but a professional actress. But her talented performance makes you unconditionally believe in everything she says and plunge into the plot headlong. This is exactly what we strive to teach our students at the Benefis Theater School.
Already at the first lessons in the studio we begin to learn etudes. Such exercises are designed to develop acting technique and teach a person to perform accurate and competent impersonations. Your task is to get used to the role so much, to feel the image of the character and his life, so that the viewer believes you unconditionally. After such exercises, communicating your ideas and thoughts to others in everyday life becomes much easier.
The art of transformation and acting turns out to be useful not only on the theater stage. Having learned it, it will be easier for you to achieve mutual understanding with people - at work, in personal and friendly relationships.
In the “Acting Skills” course at the Benefis Theater Studio, quite a lot of time is devoted to the issue of the psychology of lying, since everyone, even the most demanding audience, must believe the actor. Many people come to us with the sole purpose of learning how to convey their material and their ideas to the audience so that they believe in them. This skill is extremely useful both in work and in personal relationships.
Choose the most suitable course for yourself. We conduct classes for adults and children in the center of Moscow.
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