X-ray vision. The ability to fly. Super-human strength. Identifying a liar.
Claim any of the first three and people will think you’re crazy. Claim the last one, and you’re a body-language expert.
Pamela Myer in her recent article How To Spot a Lie, claims that anyone can spot a liar, and that, “Detecting lies, or ‘lie-spotting,’ is an essential skill for everyone to acquire, both for personal and professional reasons.”
My question is, “why?” Why is it such an essential skill to be able to spot a liar? What, exactly, are we so afraid of?
Look, I get it. No one wants to be taken advantage of. And yet people lie for a variety of reasons, many of which don’t have a single thing to do with us. Not to mention that there is no guarantee that you can even spot a liar. Research has been pretty clear that there are no tell-tale signs of lying, and even Myer admits that most of the nonverbals associated with lying–shifty eyes, stuttering, blushing–have been discredited as such.
But my biggest problem with “lie-spotting” is that it takes us away from what communication is really supposed to be about: connection. You can follow Myer’s advice and carefully observe nonverbal behavior, but what if you determine –after your thorough examination–that the person is, in fact, telling the truth? You’ll have missed out on authentic connection with the person sitting right in front of you.
We’re all hard-wired from birth to understand and interpret nonverbal cues. The problem is, we often ignore our instincts out of politeness or because we don’t want to believe that someone would lie to us. If you’re really interested in increasing your awareness to dangerous situations I highly recommend Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear. But nonverbal communication, at least the way I use and train in it, is something we fine tune in an effort to communicate more authentically and effectively leading to greater connection, not less.
In other words, I support a balance between trusting our instincts and giving people the benefit of the doubt. What gets under my skin is the underlying message that everyone is out to trick you. This just simply isn’t true. Life is risky. We can’t protect ourselves from everything. But we can get lost in fear, which increases the separation between us and our fellow human beings.
Which, come to think of it, might just be the biggest danger of all.
Very nicely put – it also depends on the type of people you are dealing with and background of that person – I think it is nicely said and I find it very helpful in dealing with students at the high school level and adminstrators. I think listening is the issue because alot of people want to be heard and feel like someone cares. With the internet, Facebook more students instead of dealing with their issues one on one are creating a papertrail of communication in bullying and harrassing each other and it has become more of an issue in schools. You know the adage “can’t we just all get along” does not work in our world any more and kids are learning in a bad way in communicating and not problem solving. Listening and having respect is the most important part of communication and feel like you are truly being heard.
Thanks! Yes, we spend time teaching kids to write, less time learning how to speak and probably no time learning how to listen. And it’s so important! Thanks for weighing in.
Thank you for putting words to something I've always wanted to say, but couldn't quite put my finger on! This is wonderfully thought-provoking and I've finally come across a blog I actually want to follow. So true– why is it that we so often defer to our fears of overt injury and forget the covert injury of losing connections! I hope this idea reaches more and more people. Constantly being en guarde walls you in as much as it walls others out and that's a safe world and a lonely, tiresome, frustrating little "safe" world for the person in and all the decent people shut out. There is no safety in having your faculties of expression dulled to a blunt tip when expression and connection is life.
Hey there, for some reason I just started getting alerts to comments on my blogs. Love this! Thanks for weighing in. Let’s lunch soon.
This is completely right on. True communication is connection. And we are losing opportunities more and more–to typing ferociously on our iPhones, or talking on our iPhones as we wait in line or walk down the street, or send an email to our officemate right next door. We certainly don’t need to add to the list by looking for liars in all the wrong places! Wait, isn’t that a song?!