I’m a body language expert, this is the simple technique you can use to tell if someone is lying

A body language expert revealed the best ways to spot a liar.

California-based Vanessa Van Edwards, the founder of Science of People, which gives people science-based skills to improve communication and leadership, joined Steven Bartlett this week on The Diary of a CEO podcast.

The public speaker, who is also a bestselling author of Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication, revealed that most people can only spot a lie with 54 percent accuracy, saying it would be better to flip a coin.

However, she did say that it was possible to detect a falsehood based on certain cues that liars typically, but not always, do.

The vocal cues to look out for that may indicate lying are “question inflection” and “volume drop.”

Meanwhile, there are also non-verbal cues to pay attention to, such as ‘mismatched facial expressions’ and the look of ‘disgust’.

She said: ‘There isn’t one sign that means someone is lying, but there are a few signs that come up again and again.

‘Vocal cues are incredibly important, vocal cues tell someone how you feel about them, and how you feel about yourself. One of the biggest is accidental demand inflection.

“A question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence, so it sounds like we’re asking a question even though we’re actually using a statement.

‘If we are listening to someone and we accidentally hear him or her, use the question reflection, our brain goes from listening to looking critically.

“Our brain wonders ‘why did you ask me that?’ liars usually use accidentally the demand inflection. Liars ask, “Do you believe this?”

‘We did a large-scale experiment in our laboratory where we had people play two truths and a lie with us, and we found that one of the biggest patterns was that liars “asked” their lie statement.’

‘Our brain is very adept at this. If we hear someone use the unintentional question inflection, we’re going to wait a minute if someone is lying to me.”

Vanessa claimed that highly competent people actually fall at the end of their sentences, which is called the “down inflection.”

She said, “President Obama is very good at putting his words together that make you want to listen to him.

“That gives him more resonance, but it also makes us think he really believes his word, because it’s the opposite of the question inflection.”

“If you make the question think about your name, about your specialty, about what you do, people start to doubt you.”

Vanessa also claimed that “a drop in volume” is a good indicator that someone may not be telling the truth.

She explained, “So when we’re anxious or nervous, we lose volume and we lose breath…if you listen to it, you hear where someone literally lost fuel, literally ran out of breath, so a sudden drop in blood pressure. volume.’

However, she also claimed that there are some non-verbal cues to look out for when trying to spot a liar.

She said, “So nonverbal, what you’re looking for are incongruities where the verbal doesn’t match the body.

“The biggest and most obvious is when someone says ‘yes’ but shakes their head no, or says ‘no’ but shakes their head yes.

‘There is a cultural exception to this, India, Bulgaria and Pakistan, they nod slightly differently, that is evident from the research.’

The author also claimed that ‘mismatched facial expressions’ also tend to give away a person’s true feelings.

She explained: ‘The research shows that the biggest problem for liars is disgust. Disgust is an expression that people express without even realizing it.

‘If we don’t like something or if we smell something bad, we wrinkle our nose and show the top whites of our teeth.

“You’ll notice that liars usually feel dirty when they lie, and so often feel disgusted with themselves when they lie.”