This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Read People Like a Book" by Patrick King. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you fall for people’s lies? How can tell when someone is lying?
Patrick King says that one of the main reasons people want to learn to read others is to detect when they’re being lied to. Nobody wants to be tricked, and a person who can detect lies has an advantage when negotiating or otherwise interacting with people.
Discover how to detect lies, no matter how big they are.
How to Detect a Liar
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to learn how to detect lies. Different people have different indicators because they react uniquely to the uncomfortable feeling of lying—one person might fidget while another frowns more than usual.
Furthermore, liars are often aware of how nonverbal cues can be read and will often consciously avoid making mistakes that would give them away. If they know averting their eyes conveys deceit, for example, they’ll make sure not to do that.
(Shortform note: Former FBI counterintelligence officer Joe Navarro agrees with King’s assertion that detecting lies is difficult, but offers another reason for it beyond the variability of nonverbal cues: We tend to believe those we like, and we look for signs of deception less critically when we want to believe what we’re hearing. Thus, even if someone doesn’t manage to hide their deceit indicators perfectly, we might overlook them due to our own subjectivity. This tendency has the potential to lessen the advantages of knowing what signs of deceit to look for.)
King writes that the best way to unearth a lie is not to look for individual, specific indicators, but instead, to have a conversation with the other person and then evaluate it holistically. Then:
- Try to make them mess up their story.
- Look for unnatural behaviors.
- Watch for emotions that don’t match the situation.
1. Make Them Mess Up Their Story
King writes that the best way you can get another person to reveal faults in their story is to stress their brain. Lying is mentally taxing, and if a liar is forced to devote more mental resources to their lie than they had planned, they’re more likely to slip up.
The best way to do this is to get them talking. The more they talk, the more opportunities they’ll have to say conflicting facts or to get details wrong. Start by asking open-ended questions to get the conversation flowing. Keep your tone casual so they don’t feel they’re being interrogated, which would cause them to clam up or get defensive. Your goal in the beginning of the conversation is to encourage them to reveal as much as possible.
King says that while getting them to talk, you should limit how much you contribute to the conversation. In particular, don’t reveal what you know about their lie. If they don’t know what you know, you’ll have an advantage, as they won’t be able to judge what information to hold back or adjust to fit the narrative.
As the conversation progresses, switch to specific questions about details of their story. Your goal here is to throw them off-balance. King writes that liars usually have rehearsed their tale but are unprepared to answer questions about things they haven’t thought through yet, which gives you an opening to poke holes in their story.
You can further tax their brains by repeating a part of their story slightly incorrectly, to see if they correct you—if you do this several times, they may not be able to keep track of their small details.
2. Look for Unnatural Behavior
When looking for deceit, King advises you not to fixate on specific, isolated actions like fidgeting or avoiding eye contact. Individual indicators might mislead you because a person who feels nervous (as they might if they sense you’re questioning them) may do things that show discomfort but don’t necessarily mean deceit.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Patrick King's "Read People Like a Book" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full Read People Like a Book summary:
- How to look at someone and read their thoughts, desires, and personality
- How to spot liars, navigate relationships, and handle difficult people
- What someone's clothes can tell you about their mood and personality
