To better understand the essence of lies, let’s first understand what the nervous system is and how it works? Thus, the nervous system is differentiated into the central and peripheral nervous systems. The brain and spinal cord belong to the central nervous system, and the peripheral is divided into the somatic and autonomic (not subject to human will) nervous systems. We also note that the autonomic nervous system (ANS) carries out its work through two independent systems: the sympathetic - under the influence of which the active work of various kinds of reactions is carried out in unforeseen situations (heartbeat increases, blood pressure rises, the concentration of glucose in the blood increases, etc. .) and parasympathetic, due to which some functions of the body slow down their activity (heart rate decreases, blood pressure decreases, blood glucose levels drop).
Your worst enemy, he thought, is your nervous system. At any moment, internal tension can affect your appearance. George Orwell. 1984
Changes in the body caused by the VNS.
The autonomic nervous system creates changes that are noticeable in the event of emotions in the form of changes in the frequency of swallowing and the intensity of the sweat glands.
These changes, which are accompanied by the emergence of emotions, occur involuntarily, so this is the most reliable sign of determining deception. In fact, a large number of people masterfully deceive everyone around them by playing with the intonation of their voices characteristic of anger, fear, happiness, surprise, etc. However, it is much more difficult to hide such manifestations; it is much easier to demonstrate them.
Share if it helped
Top ↑ Home
- Average frequency of the word “lie” per million uses: 31 times. Number of letters: 4.
- The search took 0.011 seconds. Remember how often you look for what you can replace a word with? Add sinonim.org to your bookmarks to quickly search for synonyms, antonyms and sentences (press Ctrl+D), because a high-quality online dictionary of Russian synonyms will always come in handy.
Random words and phrases: wildcat, introduced, biotechnology
Psychologists' opinion
Using a lie detector, specialists monitor these changes in the autonomic nervous system, but most of them can be determined without the use of special devices.
When a liar experiences fear, upset, excitement, anger, shame, or guilt, it usually occurs along with rapid breathing, heaving of the chest, odor of sweat, or perspiration on the forehead. For many decades, psychologists have been arguing that each specific emotion is characterized by its own set of ANS changes. Many psychologists fundamentally disagree with this statement, saying that any emotions can provoke rapid breathing, increased sweating, and swallowing movements. Changes in the autonomic nervous system directly depend on the strength of the emotional outburst, and not on its nature.
Hidden lies: speech signs
The person who gives the poison can be recognized. He does not answer questions, or they are evasive answers; he talks nonsense, rubs the ground with his big toe, and trembles; his face is pale; he rubs the roots of his hair with his fingers; and he tries with all his might to get out of the house...
Veda
ABOUT
Detecting deception in human interactions has long been of interest around the world. Lie detection has obvious implications for business, politics, law, law enforcement, national security (such as passenger profiling), and privacy. A person’s well-being in almost all areas of life largely depends on the ability to identify any false, negative, harmful and dangerous intentions of an interlocutor during a conversation, talking on the phone, communicating in instant messengers, correspondence or Internet communities.
The general life skills of every person should include the ability to recognize the discrepancy between the information someone is presenting and the interlocutor’s internal understanding of the subject of the conversation. For professionals involved in the search for truth in various fields, the ability to recognize lies is one of the most important professional qualities.
How can you recognize a lie?
How is it actually possible to distinguish a person who expresses what he thinks and knows from a person who generates and broadcasts disinformation in some form that he needs for selfish purposes? Remember the words of the wandering philosopher Yeshua, nicknamed Ha-Nozri from the novel by M.A. Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” which he said during interrogation by Pontius Pilate: “Is it easy and pleasant to tell the truth?”
James Tissot (1836-1902). Jesus before Pilate, first interrogation. 1886-1894. Pencil, watercolor, paper. 16.8 x 28.6 cm. Brooklyn Museum
A liar is like a tightrope walker whose goal is to overcome the canyon of our doubts and skepticism in order to convince us of his story. Their job is to remain upright and move forward steadily throughout the interview, dialogue, or monologue. The task of the person receiving the information is to monitor any deviations from the usual style of speech and behavior (baseline) and specific signs of deception. Fortunately, lies can really be recognized, because only the truth is easily told. Lying and deception are the very specific and complex cognitive task of getting someone to accept as true or valid something that is in fact false or invalid.
In this case, the brain of the deceiver performs many more cognitive tasks simultaneously than the brain of the person telling the truth. At the same time, brain resources, in particular working memory, have limitations. Because of this, “overload” of cognitive systems can manifest itself externally, since a person does not have enough resources to control all aspects of his behavior.
What is a liar overloaded with? He must simultaneously control many arrays and flows of information:
- The Truth: The Facts, How They Really Happened
- Aspects of truth that require distortion.
- Generated new "facts" in the lies being presented
- Control and updated comparison of current false information with what they have already given you previously
- Generating and feeding new lies
- Fear of the unknown: what do you know and can know about the facts described, but did not reveal to the liar
- Constantly updated control of your reaction to the facts he provides
- Analysis of the reaction, correlating it with the facts presented, and promptly generating new information to correct your negative reaction
This additional volume of cognitive tasks is usually many times greater than the load on cognitive systems when presenting more or less truthful information.
Withholding the truth occupies an intermediate position in terms of cognitive load between generating lies and issuing truthful information.
Common speech signs of lying
Changing the tone of your voice.
Research has shown that a person's tone of voice will deviate from baseline by up to 95% when uttering all misleading statements. Changes in tone are one of the most reliable indicators of deception, whether it goes up or down, depending on the emotions involved. The tone of the voice rises when a person is angry or excited. You can hear the tone of the interlocutor changing as he tries to convince you of something.
However, be careful - a truthful person will also become angry and his tone of voice will rise if he is wrongfully accused of anything. How to distinguish a liar or manipulator from an insulted honest person? It's very simple: a liar's emotional reactions are under strict cognitive control, and all deviations from the baseline subside much more quickly than in an ordinary person.
The tone of voice decreases due to emotional reactions of sadness and shame.
The predominance of the reflection of thoughts and reasoning over the reflection of perception.
The reality monitoring technique is based on the idea that a person's memories of actually experienced events differ in quality from memories or ideas of imagined events. Experienced events are more likely to reflect truth, whereas imagined events are more likely to reflect deception. Although, it is necessary to make a reservation that this is not always the case. Memories of actual experiences are obtained through perceptual processes and may therefore contain, among other things, information about the full range of senses: characteristics of sound, smell, taste, touch or visual details, contextual-spatial information (details about where the event occurred and how objects and people were positioned relative to each other, e.g., “He was standing behind me”) and temporal details (details about the order of events, e.g., “First he jingled something in his pocket, and only then took out a knife”). These memories are usually clear, sharp and vivid. A person does not have to strain and think to reproduce it.
Reports of imagined events are derived from an internal source and are likely to contain not traces of perception, but traces of cognitive operations in the production of imagined information, such as thoughts and reasoning: “I should have put on something warm because it was hot that night.” very cold,” instead of real impressions: “There was a cold wind blowing outside, but I threw on my blue coat, which made me quite comfortable.” The memories generated are usually fuzzy and less specific.
Lack of self-reference.
Truthful people often use the pronoun “I” to describe their actions: “I came home at 6:30. The phone rang when I unlocked the front door and I went straight to the kitchen to answer it. "I talked to my mom for about five minutes before I noticed my TV and computer were missing from the living room." This short statement contains the pronoun “I” five times in three sentences.
Deceivers often use language that minimizes self-reference. One way to reduce the number of self-references is to describe events in the passive:
“The safe was left unlocked,” not “I left the safe unlocked.”
“The sending was authorized”, not “I authorized the sending.”
Another way to reduce self-reference is to replace the pronoun “I” with “you”:
Question: “Can you tell me about how you conduct bank statement reconciliations?” Answer without self-reference: “Yes, of course. The way it works is you try to identify all the outstanding checks and deposits in transit, but sometimes when you're really busy you just put the discrepancies into an escrow account.”
In oral statements and informal written statements, deceivers sometimes simply omit self-referring pronouns. For example: “I picked up the revolver to clean it. He moved it to his left hand to get the cleaning rod. But something pulled the trigger and the revolver went off, killing his wife.” In the first sentence, the husband admits that he picked up a revolver. But the second sentence is grammatically incomplete: “I” was dropped at the beginning of the sentence. In the third sentence, “something,” not “I,” pulled the trigger. The statement also contains several personal possessive pronouns. A person operates with the concepts of “revolver” and “left hand”, where in reality he himself acted.
A game with present and past tense.
Truthful people usually describe events that actually happened in the past tense. People who deceive sometimes refer to past events as if the events were happening in the present. Describing past events using the present tense suggests that people are rehearsing and rehearsing these events in their minds. Therefore, any inappropriate transition from the past to the present in relation to events in the past should attract special attention. Consider the following statement made by a store employee who claims that a bag of cash was stolen from her before she could take it to the bank:
“After closing the store, I put the bag with the money in the car and drove to the Sberbank branch on Dzerzhinsky Street. It was raining heavily, so I had to drive slowly. There was no free parking near the bank, so I had to drive into the courtyard of the house opposite. As soon as I turned off the engine, a guy in jumps out points a gun at me and shouts “Give me the bag!” I get very scared and hand him the bag. He grabs her and runs into the entrance yard. As soon as I realized that I was safe, I immediately took my mobile phone and called the police.” In this example, the possible truth ends with the phrase “I just turned off the engine...” and appears again with the moment “... picked up the mobile phone.”
Answering questions with questions
Even liars choose not to lie. Outright lies always carry the risk of detection and unpleasant consequences. Before answering a question with a lie, the deceiver usually tries not to answer the question at all. One common method of avoiding questions is to pose your own question to the questioner:
“Why would I steal from my own brother?”
“Do I really look like the kind of person who would do something like that?”
"Don't you think it's stupid enough to steal from your own cash register?"
Equivocation
Equivocation or “equivocations” is the avoidance of direct answers to questions with uncertainties, broad concepts, modifiers and qualifiers. Equivocation is the most interesting and creative type of lie, the speech signs and non-verbal markers of which are the most diverse.
Speech markers of equivocation:
- Vague statements and expressions of uncertainty allow a person to promptly change the information presented without directly contradicting the original statement. “I think”, “I guess”, “I suppose”, “it seems”, “as if”, “maybe”, “possibly”, “probably”, “approximately”, “probably”, “could”, “yes” No".
- Vague qualifiers: “one might say”, “more or less”.
- Persuasive qualifiers: “really”, “actually”, “honestly”, “in truth”, “really”, “absolutely”, etc. “To be honest, this Vasya is really his own fault for not keeping track of his money at all.”
- Ambiguous answers and statements : jokes, proverbs, sayings, comparisons - information presented in any way that can be interpreted in two ways. “Tell me, did you lock the safe before you left?” “Well, try not to close our safe!”
- Complex passive negative constructions: “It couldn’t be,” “Nobody says it’s not so.”
- Inconsistency of the answer to the question: avoidance of a direct answer to the question, attempts to replace the required information with another or insignificant one. “Tell me, where were you yesterday from 17 to 19?” “Yes, my mother-in-law has sciatica, right here, on the right, and he gets so angry and grumbles if I don’t come to help her.”
- An excess of positivity: “good, cool, great and excellent” in almost every phrase or answer. Liars don't like to talk negatively. “We went out of town - it’s so cool! We had a rest - everything was cultural! Fresh air! We were enjoying our vacation and didn’t notice that the bag with the money was missing.”
- Using short and inappropriately expressive “yes” or “no” in answers . “Tell me, did you take the money from your employer?” Almost screaming “NO!!!”
Oaths and assurances
Although deceivers try to give as little factual information as possible, they try very hard to convince everyone that they are telling the truth. Deceivers often unconsciously use “light” oaths in an attempt to make their statements more convincing. Deceivers, more often than truthful people, sprinkle their statements with such expressions as: “I swear,” “a matter of honor,” “an officer’s word,” “God is my witness,” “I should fail in this place,” “you can check.”
Euphemisms
Many languages offer alternative terms for almost any action or situation. Statements intended to distort the truth often contain soft or vague words rather than their harsher, more explicit synonyms. Euphemisms portray the subject's behavior in a more favorable light and minimize any harm that his actions may have caused: a deceiver will more often use "missing" instead of "stolen", "borrowed" instead of "taken", "attached" instead of "hit", " warned" instead of "threatened".
Action Link
People sometimes refer to correct or required actions without saying that they actually did them. For example, an employee who lost valuable data from a computer, when asked “Has he made a backup copy of the data?” may give this evasive answer: “I always try to make a backup copy of the disk before leaving home. Last Tuesday I decided to copy my files to a network drive. I also needed to archive my client list.” The employee referred to all the actions that he was required to perform, but did not indicate that he actually completed them. This is done in the hope that referring to actions can eliminate the need to check whether they actually occurred.
Lack of details and details.
Truthful statements usually contain specific details, some of which may not even be relevant to the question being asked. This is because when telling the truth, people retrieve events from long-term memory, and our memories store dozens of facts about each experience - the new shoes we wore, the song that played in the background, the woman at the next table who resembled a junior high teacher. classes, a conversation that was interrupted when a shot was fired. At least some of these details will appear in a truthful account.
Those who fabricate their story usually make their statements simple and brief. Few liars have the imagination and working memory capacity to construct detailed, multidimensional descriptions of fictitious events. In addition, the deceiver wants to minimize the risk that any of his statements will contradict what he said before: the fewer facts that may turn out to be false, the better.
Narrative balance
A narrative usually consists of three parts: a prologue, a critical event, and a consequence. The prologue provides background information and describes the events that took place before the critical event. The critical event is the most important event in the story. Consequences describe what happened after a critical event. In a complete and truthful presentation, the balance would be: prologue from 20 to 25 percent, critical event from 40 to 60 percent, and consequences from 25 to 35 percent. If one part of the narrative is significantly shorter than expected, important information may have been omitted. If one part of the narrative is significantly longer than expected, it may be supplemented with false information. For example, the following statement filed with an insurance claim is suspiciously unbalanced:
“I was driving along Krzhizhanovsky Street at about 16:00 on Tuesday from the Perekrestok supermarket. The traffic light at the intersection of Krzhizhanovsky and Lenin streets was red, so I stopped. The light turned green and I drove on. Suddenly a car crashed into me. The other driver didn’t stop, so I drove for another 5 minutes before stopping and calling the insurance company.”
The subject statement contains four prologue sentences, only one sentence describing the critical event, and only one after sentence. The prologue contains a reliable amount of detail: the day and time of the incident, the driver's destination, and the location of the incident. But the description of the critical event (i.e. the alleged accident) is suspiciously brief. The complainant did not describe the other vehicle, what direction it was going, how fast it was going, whether the driver was braking to try to avoid the accident, or how the two vehicles came into contact. The aftermath is also described more briefly than one would expect from a full and truthful account of a two-car accident. The complainant does not say in which direction the other vehicle went after leaving the scene. He makes no mention of getting out of his vehicle to inspect the damage, nor does he say whether he spoke to people who may have witnessed the accident.
Average utterance length
The average number of words in a sentence is called average utterance length (AEL). The ADV is equal to the total number of words in a sentence divided by the number of sentences:
Total number of words / total number of sentences = ADD
Most people tend to speak 10 to 15 words in sentences. When people worry about a problem, they tend to speak in sentences that are either significantly longer or significantly shorter than normal. All statements whose length differs significantly from the subject's ADD should be given close attention.
Disturbances in normal speech patterns.
Any deviations from the normal tempo, sequence, or expressiveness of speech may indicate the generation of information, and not its retrieval from memory.
- Strange changes in speech: neologisms, unusual stresses or accents.
- Diplophony: the simultaneous formation of two tones of different pitches when pronouncing one sound: “Check?”
- Frequent pauses during storytelling: pauses are necessary to select words or think through a change in strategy.
- Increased duration of pauses before and immediately after lying.
- “Start-Stop” sentences - when starting to say a word or express a thought, a person suddenly breaks off the narrative and changes the word or the whole thought to another: “The money - they were all lying on the table.”
- Filling pauses with interjections and sounds (mmm, uh, nnn, this, cough, cough) “The money... mmm... maybe... uh... it... someone took it.”
- Accelerating the rate of speech when giving false information.
- Great energy of speech at the beginning of the lie and at the end.
To summarize briefly : Full and accurate accounts of actual events are usually given in the past tense and tend to have a predictable balance of prologue, critical event, and aftermath. True statements usually contain numerous self-referring pronouns and contain at least a few seemingly unimportant details. True statements rarely contain oaths, ambiguities or euphemisms, neologisms, and the pattern of speech does not differ from the usual one in the baseline.
Andrey Demkin
Is it possible to deceive the ANS?
Some changes that cause the functioning of the autonomic nervous system are quite simple to imitate.
It's hard not to notice rapid breathing or swallowing, and you don't need to have acting skills to imitate them: you just need to breathe and swallow more often. As for sweating, it is very difficult not only to hide, but also to imitate. Despite the fact that someone who wants to deceive can increase the number of actions in favor of proving his “truthfulness,” many people will most likely not remember this opportunity. It is precisely such manipulations that, due to their absence, can demonstrate the falsity of other “true” statements.
Breach of trust
Trust is the basis of all human relationships, which can inevitably fail if you lie too often.
Any lie, white or otherwise, carries the risk of being discovered. If this happens, trust decreases. The conversation with the person who deceived you becomes unpleasant, and most likely you will want to not maintain contact with him at all. Every word that comes out of his mouth you question, and every action he takes is even more questionable. His once brilliant authority was darkened forever.
Over time, lying will destroy relationships, even if you did it with good intentions. Every time you lie, the person is forced to re-evaluate how trustworthy you are, which is a serious blow to communication.
Jolie and Pitt's children celebrated their 12th anniversary: how they grew up (photo)
Did you grow sweet potatoes on your property? It's time to prepare an unusual multi-layer dessert
Anastasia sang in Kamburova’s voice in “Midshipmen”: what the singer looks like (photo)
If you are caught telling a small, white lie, your good social standing may be in jeopardy.
Habit of lying
Bad habits are easy to form. One small white lie, seemingly harmless, leads to another white lie, eventually accumulating an unstoppable 2-ton snowball of destructive deception. Indulging in bad behavior quickly becomes normal, and soon a person can effortlessly indulge in other types of immoral behavior. Slowly but surely, your once majestic character turns into the image of a bad person whom hardly anyone would dare to date.
White lie
White lies can be laced with arrogance and selfishness. Why are you so sure that a person will not accept the truth? Cheating robs them of their freedom to make an informed decision on an issue—it’s hardly fair that you make that decision for them.
Being naturally subjective beings, we do not always accurately understand the truth. While white lies can have the benefit of preventing hurt feelings, as adults we must be fully aware that life is hard and sometimes pain is necessary in order to learn and grow. Lying to protect someone's feelings is treating the person like a child who does not have the mental capacity to cope with adversity. In addition, a person who discovers that they have been lied to may feel that they do not deserve the truth, and thereby you have a detrimental effect on their self-esteem.
All people lie
Psychologists say people lie all the time. However, depending on their ability to do this, it is difficult for others to understand whether a person is lying or telling the truth.
Do you know how to spot the signs that you're being scammed?
Some of these signs are quite obvious, while others are subconscious and quite difficult to recognize.
However, there are ways to catch a person in a lie. Each of us, even without being a good psychologist, can understand whether our interlocutor is lying to us.
Here are some simple ways to spot a liar and catch him in the act of deception.
The benefits of lying - is it possible?
Although lying is often uncomfortable, telling the truth is much harder because you don't want to upset the person. This is the peculiar benefit of lying when we are trying to protect someone's feelings. People prefer the discomfort of lying to the discomfort of truth.
The truth can also have drastic, life-altering consequences that we are not prepared to accept. Think of a wife who fell out of love with her husband a long time ago, but continues to profess her love for him every day because she doesn't want to ruin his feelings or face the reality of a painful divorce. She selfishly lies to achieve her own goal.
