How to spot a liar

Okay, now I don’t want to alarm anybody in this room, but it’s just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also, the person sitting in your very seat is a liar. We’re all liars.

Pamela Meyer explains that she will share what research says about why we all lie, how to become a liespotter, and why we should go beyond liespotting to truth-seeking and trust-building. She jokes that since writing her book on deception, nobody wants to meet her in person anymore.

Her first key idea is that lying is a cooperative act. A lie has no power by itself; it only works when someone else agrees to believe it. Sometimes we knowingly cooperate to protect feelings or keep a harmless secret. Other times, we become unwilling participants in deception, and the costs can be dramatic.

Meyer gives examples of massive corporate fraud, financial scandals, and double agents to show how deception can cost billions and even lives. She quotes a professional con man who says that everyone is willing to give you something if you know what they are hungry for, and she asks us to reflect on what we personally are hungry for.

Lying, she explains, is often an attempt to bridge the gap between who we are and who we wish we were. Studies suggest that on a given day we may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times. Strangers lie to each other frequently in the first minutes of meeting, extroverts lie more than introverts, and men and women tend to lie for different reasons.

She argues that we are publicly against lying but quietly for it in many socially accepted ways. Lying is woven into culture, literature and even evolution; more intelligent species with bigger brains tend to be more deceptive. From fake crying babies to bluffing five-year-olds and cover‑up experts at nine, she shows that we are hardwired to lie from a very young age.

As adults, we move into a world full of spam, fake digital friends, partisan media, identity thieves and a wider deception epidemic in what some call a post‑truth society. Trained liespotters, however, can get to the truth far more often than the average person because liars tend to make the same predictable mistakes.

Meyer then introduces patterns of deception in speech, such as overly formal denials and distancing language, and in body language, such as freezing the upper body or overcompensating with eye contact. She explains concepts like qualifying language, fake smiles, and the dangerous facial expression of contempt.

She emphasises that no single gesture proves deception; these behaviours are red flags that must be read in clusters while we stay curious and respectful. Finally, she contrasts deceptive attitudes with honest ones and urges us to combine the science of recognising deception with the art of listening, so that we can build a world where truth is strengthened and falsehood is recognised and marginalised.