Pamela Meyer thinks you’re a liar. It’s nothing personal; she thinks we’re all liars. And the science bears her out. Her 2011 TED Talk “How to Spot a Liar” has been viewed over 23 million times. She says studies have shown that strangers tell 3 lies to each other, on average, within the first 10 minutes of meeting. She says lying has now reached a crisis for companies. Writing for HR Executive, she says median losses from occupational fraud have increased a whopping 24% since 2022, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
She runs a company that trains HR professionals and managers how to spot deception, and she says we need this skills in the workplace now more than ever. “The good news,” she writes, “is that we can all learn to be excellent “lie spotters.” It’s not a single skill; it’s a combination of many: asking expert questions, observing cues, deconstructing deceptive story structure, psychological profiling and more.”
What got my attention in the first minutes of her TED Talk is her assertion that lying is a “cooperative act.” Just saying something untrue is not in itself harmful; it’s only when someone listens, accepts, and acts on an untruth that bad things happen. She quotes an infamous con man named Henry Oberlander who ran a banking fraud scheme in Great Britain in the 70s. He’s still alive, at 98 years old, which may prove that Billy Joel was right: only the good die young.
Oberlander will live forever, though, because he coined a rule that is the motto of every liar on Earth: “Everyone is willing to give something for whatever it is they desire the most.” This is why lying, like the tango, takes two: The liar is offering you the false promise of something you desperately want, whether it’s a loving, faithful marriage, a child who would never break the rules, or an employee who is completely loyal to you and the company. Meyer says that whatever you’re hungry for, that is where you are vulnerable.
Meyer says we hear somewhere between 10 and 200 lies a day (she doesn’t say whether that includes advertising.) Many are white lies, told to keep the peace or uphold the social contract. “How are you today?” “Fine.” (No matter how you’re really feeling.) “I just found that email – it went into SPAM – so sorry.” Here are some of the other data points Meyer offers: extroverts lie more than introverts. Men lie more about themselves than they do about other people. Women lie to protect people. And we all lie to get out of trouble.
Lying is deeply imbedded in our human wiring, which means it holds some survival value. Babies will fake crying, stop and listen to see who’s coming, then start up crying again to get attention. By nine years old, children are master deceivers. Meyer’s TED Talk highlighted Koko, the gorilla who mastered sign language so she could communicate with the humans studying her. She also adopted a kitten and cared for it lovingly. Until, one day, she tried to blame it for a sink that had been ripped out of her enclosure wall. Yep, everybody’s a liar.
Meyer says that most of us believe we can spot lying – and the truth – intuitively, but that research indicates we’re right only 54% of the time. Might as well flip a coin. But training in spotting deception can help managers and other leaders get to the truth quicker.
For example, you might think liars tend to avoid eye contact. Not true; they tend to look more directly at you than someone who’s telling the truth. They smile more. They also use phrases like “to tell the truth,” “to be honest with you,” and “frankly” more often that non-liars. They offer too much detail, and they are careful to tell stories in chronological order. “I left the office at 12:18 to get lunch at Joe’s deli on 68th street and 11th Avenue.” Sounds obvious when I write it, doesn’t it? But if you’ve trusted this person all along, you may overlook the warning signs.
Look for too much emphasis in denials or assertions. “I absolutely did not leave early yesterday.” Ask the person what they think should happen to the guilty party (whether it’s cheating on an expense report or embezzling thousands of dollars); the innocent person will suggest much harsher punishment than the guilty one.
Innocent people will get angry at being accused. In 2017, 11-year-old Ava Bell, a Scottish schoolgirl, wrote this answer to the prompt: “Things my teacher could do better.” (Her dad published the document on Twitter, unsure of whether to “ground her or buy her ice cream”.)
Ava wrote: “Not use collective punishment because it is not fair to the many who did nothing and under the 1949 Geneva Conventions it is a war crime.”
Sometimes, the truth hurts.
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