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In the video clips that follow, I ask some second-hand car dealers to tell me a few bits of information and then challenge them to lie convincingly with one of the bits. You will see that, despite the dealers' best attempts, I can always tell when they're lying – a very useful skill! Below I tell you how you can do it, too.

Watch this video clip.

See also:
» Silent responses
» Skiing scenario
» First kiss
» How's it done?

This one about the first kiss is a little different, but once again the eye movements give it away. With the other situations, the content of what I asked and the response was not important: it was the process of the individuals trying to respond that gave away the lie. This time, questions themselves are important.

Watch the clip a couple of times. See how his eyes move when he has to retrieve the information. The first thing I ask him for demands some thought on his part. It isn't easy for him to remember immediately how old he was. But note the time it takes him to find the answer in his mind.

Now, I know he is picturing the scene of his first kiss because of that eye movement and the nature of the question. So I imagine myself in his mind, picturing the same scene. Whereas his mental picture wouldn't tell me how old he might have been when he first kissed a girl, if it were me who had been kissed, I should certainly be able to come up with the colour of her hair very quickly.

Watch what he does. He moves his eyes in the same direction to retrieve the information. He isn't planning on lying, not like my other two 'victims'. But he holds the look for an extra beat before giving me the answer. Why? I know that he should be able to see the girl's hair colour very easily. Is it a difficult colour to describe? Is that why he has to take an extra moment? No, for he describes it in one word: 'Brunette.' He must have seen her hair in his mind, mentally named it as blonde, then decided to lie and change it to brunette.

It all happened in a second, but we could see his thought processes clearly. Not only can we tell when people lie, but exactly how they lie.

How did I know her real hair colour was blonde? Well, it was simply a likely guess. After all, I'm not psychic.
 

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