How to Tell If Someone Is Lying



Dimitrius says lying is usually accompanied by a physical gesture, such as blinking or not blinking; turning directly towards someone as if to say, "This is the really important part that I'm lying about that you need to listen to;" and the licking of lips.

For signs of a child's not telling the truth, Dimitrius says to look for wringing hands, the position of the body, scratching an ear, touching of the head.

Famous people also betray patterns of speech and posture in telling lies. For example, Dimitrius says that when Bill Clinton denied his involvement with Monica Lewinsky, what he said ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky") and how he said it was a tip off.

Clinton is an unusually eloquent speaker, but in his denial, he paused frequently and didn't follow his usual smooth speech pattern, Dimitrius says. He also bit his lip before declaring he did not have sex with Lewinsky, as if trying to hold back the words, and dropped one shoulder, as if he is shrugging, Dimitrius said.

In another example, track star Marion Jones told "GMA" anchor Robin Roberts she had never used steroids, which she later admitted was untrue.

Dimitrius analyzed that tape and said that Jones visibly raised a shoulder, and then says "Umm" before answering a question. Midway into the conversation, she starts blinking her eyes so much they look like they're closed at one point.

When John Edwards recently denied that he had an affair, Dimitrius said he also began blinking rapidly and smiled inappropriately after calling his wife Elizabeth "sexy."

Read a Chapter

Below is a portion of the first chapter from the book.

Chapter One: Reading Readiness
Preparing for the Challenge of Reading People


In theory, thanks to the people-reading skills I acquired over the years, it should have been easy for me to make better decisions in my personal life—whom to let into it and what to expect from them once I did. Yet for many years I failed to apply my courtroom abilities to my off-duty life. Perhaps I had to reach a saturation point of pain and disappointment in some of my personal relationships before I was willing to analyze my mistakes and put my professional experience to work for me.




1. Spend more time with people. That's the best way to learn to understand them.

2. Stop, look, and listen. There's no substitute for patience and attentiveness.



5. Train yourself to be objective. Objectivity is essential to reading people, but it's the hardest of these seven skills for most of us to master.

6. Start from scratch, without biases and prejudices.

7. Make a decision, then act on it.

Discovering the Lost Art of Reading People

Unless you've been stranded on a desert island for the past fifty years, you've noticed that the world has changed. Understanding people has always been one of life's biggest challenges, but the social changes and technological explosion of recent decades have made it even more difficult. Today, many of us don't enjoy close bonds or daily contact even with the most important people in our lives. We're out of touch and out of practice.





Making Contact



1. Face-to-face meeting
2. Telephone call
3. Letter/fax/e-mail/answering machine
4. Delegation

Instead of asking someone else to set up an appointment for you, contact the person yourself by letter, fax, or e-mail. Instead of text messaging on your BlackBerry or e-mailing your cross-country friend, call, even if the conversation has to be brief. Instead of phoning your neighbor to discuss the school fund-raiser, knock on her door and talk to her in person. Step by step, you'll become more comfortable with the increased contact.

Try to improve the quality of your communication, too, by making a conscious effort to reveal something of yourself. It doesn't have to be an intimate secret—in fact, many people will be turned off if you inappropriately reveal confidences. But you can share a like or dislike, a favorite restaurant, book, or movie. And ask something about the other person—where she bought a piece of jewelry, or whether he saw the ball game last night. Warm them up, and the conversation will start rolling.


Learn to See the Sheep

The more time you spend reading people, the easier it gets. Just as the anxiety and awkwardness of your first time behind the wheel of a car disappeared after a few months of everyday driving, people-reading skills that may seem unattainable today will become automatic with a little practice.

With willpower and persistence, we can sharpen any of our senses. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than an experience a client of mine had several years ago. He'd been hired by the Bighorn Institute, a facility dedicated to preserving an endangered species of bighorn sheep that live in the mountains just southwest of Palm Springs, California. Development of neighboring land was disturbing the sheep and interrupting their breeding activity; the institute wanted to do something about it.



Stop, Look, and Listen

In the courtroom, I constantly watch jurors, witnesses, lawyers, spectators, and even the judge, looking for any clues about how they're responding to the case and the people presenting it. I listen carefully to the words that are spoken, and to how they are spoken. I pay attention to the way people breathe, sigh, tap their feet or fingers, or even shift their weight in a chair. As the jurors walk by, I notice any unusual smells—heavily applied perfume, body odor, the scent of medication. When I shake someone's hand, I take note of the feel of his handshake. I use all of my senses, all of the time.

Patience, Patience

Observing people properly takes time. Most people simply don't take enough time to gather information and reflect upon it. Instead, they frequently make critical decisions about people in a hurry, as if life were a game show in which quick answers scored more points. It's usually the other way around in life: quick answers are often wrong— and lose points.



Pay Attention, or Pay the Consequences

Every interview with the neighbor of a heinous criminal seems to start with "He seemed like such a nice guy." Further questioning usually reveals that the neighbor never really noticed the man, with the neighbor ultimately admitting, "He kept to himself." In fact, there were probably many clues that Mr. X was not such a nice guy after all. It's just that no one ever paid much attention.


It's not hard to recall occasions when we've been inattentive to important clues. We may hire a day-care provider without spotting the faulty latch on her backyard fence, noticing how she ignored the children under her care as she spoke to us, or paying attention to her poor grammar. Yet each of these factors could have a critical impact on our child's well-being and development. We may not notice the flushed face and ever-so-slightly slurred speech of an employee who returns from a long lunch, but these may be clues he's been drinking—maybe drinking too much. This type of critical information is usually available to you—if you just take your time and pay attention.