When you say yes or agree to something, your head will usually nod up and down in agreement. So, when O.J. Simpson shook his head back and forth as she said that he didn’t know he was doing anything illegal when he took it upon himself to take his own property from memorabilia brokers, it was one of the few times that he was telling the truth that this was his actual thought at the time. But when Lance Armstrong said to Oprah, ―I am flawed, deeply flawed,‖ he shook his head, indicating that deep down he really didn’t feel deeply flawed at all. In fact, at the beginning of the interview, when Oprah asked him if he thought what he did was wrong, he showed no signs of deception when he said no. When he told Oprah that what he had done was ―inexcusable,‖ he once again shook his head when he should have been nodding it in agreement, reflecting that the only thing that was inexcusable to him was the fact that had been caught.
STATEMENTS THAT SOUND LIKE QUESTIONS
When someone sounds as though she is asking a question when she is actually making statement, it is a good indication that she is lying. I am not referring to ―uptalk‖ or Valley Girl speak or anything young people say to sound cool; they tend to consistently speak like this throughout their
conversation. Instead, I am talking about a situation in which you suddenly hear this upward inflection in the middle of a conversation. In his interview on Oprah, for example, Lance Armstrong discussed Emma O’Reilly, a woman who had rightly accused him of taking cortisone and whom he sued. About her, he said, ―She’s one of these people I have to apologize to…?‖ with an upward inflection at the end. This meant that he likely didn’t want to apologize to Emma.
TAKING TOO LONG TO ANSWER/OVERLY LONG PAUSES
If someone takes an inordinately long time to think of an answer, or pauses too long between words, chances are he or she is lying. This person is likely buying time as he/she is trying to think up a good answer. What was striking about Bob Costas’s interview with Jerry Sandusky was how long it took Jerry to answer the questions that were posed to him. He should have been able to rattle off his answers immediately, not wait in awkward silence for several seconds before he answered.
Unsurprisingly, it’s since been confirmed that he was lying.
Many times people will inadvertently spill the truth (especially if it’s something insulting about you) and then immediately try to negate or cancel it by adding, ―I was only kidding.‖ Know that in almost all cases, when someone says this, he or she is not kidding. The rude or sarcastic statement is exactly how they feel about you. They have just told you the truth, so believe them!
“I DON’T KNOW” AND “I DON’T RECALL”
If someone is constantly peppering their speech with ―I don’t know‖ or ―I don’t recall,‖ chances are they actually do know. People who constantly use this phrase are usually nonconfrontational; they don’t want to make waves or tell you what they are really thinking. So they play it safe by vacillating and constantly saying that they don’t know. Oftentimes if you ask for their true opinion about
something, they will use this response, even when they most definitely have an opinion. You hear this most often during election times when people don’t want to tell you their real political views. So they will often lie by omission and say they don’t know or haven’t decided, when they really do know and have decided.
When Oprah asked Lance why he was coming forward now, when for 13 years he brazenly and defiantly denied everything he had just admitted on her show, he looked down and replied, ―I don’t know that I have a great answer.‖ But in actuality, Lance knew why he chose to come clean and admit to doping: he still wanted to have the opportunity to compete in cycling races in the future.
MINIMIZING AND MAKING EXCUSES
When people are caught in a lie, they may continue to lie as they justify their behavior by minimizing their actions. Take Lance Armstrong’s response to Oprah as he answered her question about his drug use:
My, uh, cocktails so to speak was, was, only, uh, E. P. O. [not a lot]—transfusions, then testosterone, which in a weird way I almost justified because of my history, obviously, because I have testicular cancer and losing…surely I’m running low.
Here we see how Lance justified his actions by telling us that he only took a little of one drug, and how he only took the other drug because of his testicular cancer. His minimizing statements and self- justification supported and continued the lie, even after he admitted to doping. Indeed, he admitted later in the interview that it was true what Emma O’Reilly had said about his taking yet another drug—cortisone.
DETACHING, REFERRING TO OTHERS AND SELF IN SECOND OR THIRD PERSON
When Lance Armstrong discussed how he had sued the people who exposed his doping, he said, ―It’s a flaw.‖ Note that he didn’t say, ―I have a flaw.‖ By referring to himself in the third person as ―it,‖ he was essentially detaching himself from his crime and putting distance between himself and what he had done. Tellingly, he went on to say ―It’s a guy who expected to get whatever he wanted and to control every outcome [italics mine].‖
Another example of how someone detached during a lie could be seen in O.J. Simpson’s Court TV interview with Catherine Crier. She and everyone else watching found it impossible to believe that in the 10 years since Nicole’s death, O.J.’s teenaged children had never asked him about their mother’s death, despite the fact that they had been in therapy. What gave him away was the fact that he detached and referred to himself as ―you‖ when he described what he would say if they ever asked him about their mother. While pointing his index finger, he said, ―The day they ask, no matter what you are doing, don’t say Wait ’til we get home. Uh, no matter what you are doing, drop it, take them somewhere, and talk to them about it.‖ When Catherine pressed the point and asked him what,
specifically, he would say, since he had had 10 years to think about it, he responded by saying that ―you couldn’t tell them anything as fact, just how you felt.‖ If he had been telling the truth, he would not have referred to himself in the second person.
FREUDIAN SLIPS
Liars will often tell the truth through a slip of the tongue, or Freudian slip. As I mentioned
previously, the brain doesn’t ―want‖ to lie. Lies take a lot of effort. You have to think up a story and make it sound believable. Then, you have to remember the story and not contradict yourself. The brain and the body want to do what comes naturally and what is easy—namely, telling the truth. So it is not uncommon for the truth to leak out in one of these slips. That is why you have to listen carefully to what people say. If you ask your single, never-married boyfriend to follow you in your car and he says, ―I’m a good father,‖ when he meant to say, ―I’m a good follower,‖ you might want to look a little more deeply into his past.
Oftentimes after someone has betrayed himself in this manner, he will show signs of
embarrassment as he rushes to correct his ―error‖ and make all kinds of excuses for what he just said. That is yet another sign that he lied or has something to hide. So listen for slips of the tongue and unexpected kernels of truth that leak out of the mouth of the liar.
NONSENSICAL SPEECH
When people are caught in a lie, it is not uncommon to hear them speak in sentence fragments that don’t seem to make any sense. They will ramble on or use inappropriate words. When Richard Heene was essentially busted by Wolf Blitzer, his response was, ―I see where this is hedging,‖ instead of ―I see where this is heading.‖ The reason liars mix up words or even make new ones up is because their brains have to work extra fast to do damage control. So their thoughts come out more quickly and, often, unintelligibly.