Tuesday, February 11, 2014

TED Tuesday: How to Spot a Liar

Hello! For those who are new around here I do something called TED Tuesdays. This is a series where I find a TED video that sparks my interest and then I share with you because I love you. The videos range anywhere from 3-20 minutes and I won't share it if I don't love it. Capiche?

Today we are going to talk about lies.

 photo liarliar.png
We all tell lies and we all are fed lies - anywhere from 10-200 times each average day. I'm not saying this to alarm you and I honestly (ha-ha) don't have that much human interaction each day to be in the triple digits.

I admit to lying little bitsy lies all the time here on the blog. Examples of this are like how there may have been one other person on my snowy bus ride to get downtown, or how the photo above was maybe 5 minutes into my workout when I stopped to do a photo shoot - not nearly the end or worthy of the title "sweaty selfie".  I have been working on telling less "little" lies because if you're not careful you can easily become desensitized to telling them. Just last week, Helene wrote about some of her favorite white lies and the blogging world couldn't agree more.

The topic of today is around the question of whether you're able to tell when you're being lied to. Can you recognize speech patterns, body language cues, attitude, aversion to face-to-face communication?   Do you notice embellishment of an otherwise simple story, or maybe the absence of a critical detail?

Much like I'd guess your parents can, mine always know when I'm lying. My classic go-to moves are adding too much detail to my "stories" in awkward or irrelevant places. Or, sometimes I get a little too formal with the way I say things.

For example:

Lie: "Yes, I did get my oil changed last week when it was raining - the one on 39th and I had a coupon."

Truth: "Hey look who's getting their oil changed! (Insert cheesy waiting room selfie w/ bad coffee)"

Since a liar needs a believer to be successful, I'm interested in understanding this lie-spotting practice. But much more than lie-spotting I want to take a clean shot at truth seeking. And hopefully I'll learn a little something about trust building along the way!

Take it away, Pamela!

6 comments

Kathy@MoreCoffeeLessTalky said...

yep, i can tell when i'm being lied to. it's like a new part of your brain wakes up when you become a mother and the radar is on def con 5 all day, errday.

-kathy | Vodka and Soda

Amanda Elizabeth - Meet @ the Barre said...

The longer the explanation of a story usually alerts me to a lie....like if it was the truth it wouldn't see so complicated and fabricated right?

~Amanda
Meet @ the Barre

Katie Elizabeth said...

This was interesting! I was just thinking about this the other day. The lies I tell the most often are when I don't want to do something with someone.. instead of literally telling them I'm not interested and would rather stay home, I'll make up some sort of an excuse! It just seems nicer to keep it that way!

Melissa Nicole said...

because i'm such a good liar (it's almost scary how good sometimes) i can ALWAYS tell when someone is lying. everyone has a tell and i can pick up on it super fast. im gonna make a great mom...

Ashley - Married to the Game said...

I must be a good liar because my parents could never tell that I was lying all those times in high school or college when I was trying to get away with things! All parents should watch this!


Ashley, Married to the Game

JMO said...

I'm with Katie Elizabeth- I'll always say I have to be somewhere or have an appointment versus saying no I'm staying home and watching HGTV on the couch alone hahaha this was great!