DIY Life

For a few months this year, my son went through a maddening stage where he was lying to me all the time. Thankfully, he is a terrible liar: I could see through it every time. After months of behavior charts and doing everything I could think of to teach him the importance of truthfulness and trust, his lying just went away. I'd like to say it was because of stellar parenting on my part, but I think it was just a phase, and he worked through it.

But not everyone is as easy to spot in a lie as my son is. With a keen eye and some understanding of body language, you have a better chance of catching a liar in the act. Possible signs that someone might be lying to you include:

• Starting a sentence with "The truth is..." or something of the sort.
• Speaking with a higher pitch.
• Lips pressed more tightly together than usual.
• Hemming and hawing while telling a story.

Check out the AOL Body slide show for a full list of signs that someone might be lying to you. You may also enjoy a few previous DIY Life posts on this topic, Catch a liar in the act and Mind reading through simple visual cues, both by M.E. Williams.

The site Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis, and Persuasion has an interesting article: Your Eyes Don't Lie -- Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements.

The article is based on the concept of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), and states that people's eyes will go in certain directions if their thoughts are in specific categories associated with those eye movements. To wit:

• Eye contact denotes interest. Brief eye contact denotes nervousness or some disinterest. Prolonged eye contact may denote an attempt at intimidation.
• Eyes looking straight up may denote contempt or annoyance, unless the conversation is religious in nature.
• Eyes looking to the left suggest that someone is imagining what something sounds like.
• Eyes looking to the right suggest that someone is recalling what something sounds like.
• Eyes looking up and to the left mean that someone is imagining a picture.
• Eyes looking up and to the right mean that someone is trying to recall an image.
• Eyes looking down and to the left mean someone is thinking about their emotions.
• Eyes looking down and to the right denote an "internal dialogue" of some kind, whether it's the recollection of a past conversation or an internal debate about what to say next.
• The directions may be the opposite for some people, but they should be consistently so for the person concerned.
• To see if someone is lying, establish a "baseline" for them by asking questions you know they won't respond to with a lie; observe what they do when you know they're telling the truth.

I'm not going to lie to you: I think there are problems with this information. If you're curious, please join me after the break.

Many human relationships run on trust. How do you know if that trust has been broken? Can you handle the truth, or is it better to live in the dark? Most people would probably prefer to be in the know, regardless of how upsetting it might be.

If you don't have incontrovertible personal knowledge of the facts, it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether or not someone is lying to you. The website Blifaloo has an interesting behavioral article: How to Detect Lies. They reveal some visual cues that show you someone might be less than truthful.

We'll discuss a few, and what you can do with them, after the break.