Signs If Someone Is Lying In An Online Dating Site
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Telling a lie is a fascinating aspect of human communication. From big businesses maliciously spewing disinformation and craven politicians trying to get ahead, all the way down to you friends, family and awkward first dates trying to protect our feelings, like it or not, lies are a part of the social fabric. Some would argue that they’re necessary; others would claim that even if they aren’t, we could never actually get rid of them.
Regardless of your personal stance on the spreading of untruths, if you communicate regularly with other human beings, you’re going to be lied to. People will lie to make themselves seem more impressive, to influence how you’ll act or to skip over unpleasant truths. Hell, they might just lie for the hell of it.
But how can you know when those people are lying to you — and what should you do if you suspect that’s the case? Let’s dive in.
1. Signs That Someone Is Lying to You
When you’re speaking to someone in person, you have no idea whether what they’re saying is true or not — particularly if it’s someone you barely know. There are a handful of physical tics that might give away a lie, however.
“Lies leave clues,” says dating coach Connell Barrett. “We all have tells. There are a couple of key signs that someone is lying to you. If they repeat your question back to you before answering, they may be buying time to fabricate a response that sounds better than the truth. When they break eye contact while telling a story or sharing details, they might be bulls--ting you. They look away because they know they’re lying, which is bad, and they’re a bit ashamed.”
Justin Lavelle, chief communications officer for background-checking site BeenVerified.com, agrees that breaking eye contact is a common tell when it comes to lies, but notes that a practiced liar might not give the game away so easily.
“Shifty eyes can be a sign of lying, if they look away from you at a certain point in the story,” he notes. “However, some studies have shown that liars can also tend to stare you directly in the face when lying as well. One way to see if these are normal behaviors is to challenge their story.”
That’s why, according to Lavelle, if you suspect that you’re being misled, you might want to go on the offensive and make the other person sweat a little — literally and figuratively.
“Ask a question about a specific detail and see how they respond,” he suggests. “A liar will have one or more of these responses: fidgeting, dry mouth, sweating, overthinking, going pale, changing the story, and may provide too many or too few details. In one way or another, a liar will become flustered when you check them on their story.”
2. How to Tell When Someone’s Lying in a Business Negotiation
One area of life where people may feel motivated to lie is in a business or financial context. For instance, if you’re dealing with someone who may stand to materially profit from fudging the truth a little — say, a repairperson or someone selling you something — it may behoove you to be on your guard a little bit.
“When working on a business negotiation, people often feel the need to omit important information, or exaggerate their services,” says Lavelle. “In this context, lies can be hard to detect.”
He notes that one aspect of lying which might be worth planning for in this kind of conversation are lies of omission. Since the person you’re dealing with might benefit from being positive, agreeing with you without bringing up any drawbacks you might experience, some of the responsibility for ferreting out the truth lies on you.
“It is important to do your research about the person you are working with,” adds Lavalle. “Ask the right questions, and pose them in a pessimistic way. For example, instead of ‘This equipment is in good condition, right?’ ask ‘Isn’t this equipment out of date?’”
It’s a subtle tweak, but forcing the other person to speak at length about the product or services you’re buying might be a better means of getting to the truth, since agreeing with you is much easier than explaining the condition of what you’re buying.
“Another way to tell when a possible business partner is lying is if they dodge your questions and attempt to fast-talk or sweet-talk you,” he also points out. “These reactions, as well as dodging with a subject change, are signs you cannot trust this business negotiation to proceed honestly.”
So if you find the person trying to hustle you through a series of complex decisions or pressuring you to agree to something you’re not sure of, they may be trying to take advantage of you.The smart move here would be to push back and say something like, “I need to think about it more,” or simply say, “No thanks,” and walk away from the negotiation.
3. How to Tell When Someone’s Lying in Online Dating Scenarios
Unfortunately, another aspect of life that’s rife with lying is, online dating. Though it’s perhaps less rigorous than a straight-up business deal, dating is a part of our lives that can either make us incredibly happy or sad. It also requires negotiating our desires and those of others.
As a result, lots of people approach dating with a somewhat less than honorable mentality, and online dating — where the person you’re talking to is most likely a stranger, and someone with whom you may have no mutual connections at all — is particularly likely to lead to people falsifying things.
“If you’re on a date with someone you met online, chances are they are they’ve already lied to you,” says Barrett. “A whopping 81 percent of online daters in the U.S. misrepresent themselves on their online dating bios, according to research from the National Science Foundation. People mainly lie about height, weight, income, jobs or age. The common thread? Trying to appear more attractive to potential dates.”
So what should you keep an eye out for? “The most common lies in online dating appear on dating app bios,” notes Barrett. “Adding a couple inches of height, dropping 10 to 20 pounds, posting a younger age, or saying you’ve never been married when in fact you’re divorced.
Signs If Someone Is Lying In An Online Dating Site For Over 50
Lavelle agrees, adding that “the lies you encounter in online dating are endless.”
“Online liars will often let you speak first and ask questions for you to answer so they can get a read on you,” he adds. “This will allow them to pretend that you have everything in common — making them more desirable. An online liar will be very charming and friendly in the beginning.”
There’s also the case with scams where con artists pose as attractive singles on dating sites and aim to part people from their money by endearing themselves to their targets.
“The biggest lie to watch for is money scamming,” says Lavelle. “If this person begins to complain about money troubles very early on, watch out. They may claim it is a personal emergency, a medical expense, or just a favor that they can pay you back for when they accomplish a certain thing.”
4. How to Respond When You Catch Someone in a Lie
Figuring out when you’re being lied to is all well and good, but the real question is this: How do you respond to an out-and-out liar? Well, it all depends on the situation, as well as the person who’s doing the fabricating.
“If you catch the person you are dating in a lie, consider how long you have dated,” says Lavelle. “If it is the first date, it is best to gracefully excuse yourself and break it off. If someone is willing to lie on the first date, imagine how comfortable they will be with it in the long term.”
Barrett is a bit more forgiving, however. “You have two options,” he says. “You can ignore the obvious lie, be polite, and move on — not wanting to embarrass them. Why escalate the issue and create an awkward moment if you’ll never see them again? Or, you can play the part of cross-examiner, pick apart their story, and gently call them out on their dishonesty. If you go this route, don’t make it about exposing them to make them feel busted. Offer them a valuable lesson. You can say, ‘It seems you stretched the truth about such-and-such. You don’t need to do that. Honesty and authenticity are very attractive.’”
If it’s a lie you discover past the first date, whether related to their faithfulness to you or something else,it can be a trickier proposition.
“If you have been dating for a long time, there is much more to consider,” says Lavelle. “The best course of action, if they have not been discovered [to be] dangerous, is to confront them and ask them to explain why they lied. It is up to the both of you to decide whether this lie will cost you the relationship.”
In more platonic situations, don’t be afraid to speak up.
“If you catch a friend or family member in a lie, confront them about it,” suggests Lavelle. “Maybe [it’s just] a story they are changing the details to — but you were there and know they are lying. Correct them as they go, and let them know they are wrong in their details. If it is a big lie, safely confront them with the facts you know and see how they respond. Be sure to stay calm and matter-of-fact when doing this. A heated debate or ugly fight will do no good. It is better to keep yourself from becoming aggressive, and let their reactions tell you what you need to know.”
There are lots of different reasons people lie, but treating all lies in the same way isn’t necessarily the right approach. If you have a desire to figure out the truth, rather than diving in with accusations that the other person is evil or in the wrong, that’ll help you go a long way in sorting the situation out.
Four clues to deciphering the language of online lying.
Posted November 15, 2011
Though internet lie detection may seem to be a daunting task, it's not an impossible one. Once you understand the language of the online liar, you may actually prefer the cues you can read on the screen rather than the cues you read on someone's face.
Communication professors Catalina Toma (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Jeffrey Hancock (Cornell University) decided to use their analytic tools to detect the language patterns shown by online liars (Tona & Hancock, in press). They conducted in-person interviews of 80 online dating service users who previously completed online profiles. Participants rated the accuracy of their own self-descriptions, a process that could be prone not so much to outright lying, but at the least, to self-deception or exaggeration. After all, we don't always want to admit the truth about ourselves to ourselves. To supplement the self-ratings, the researchers also calculated an objective deception index comparing what participants said about their physical attributes (height, weight, age) with their measured attributes. Photos presented yet another challenge. A group of undergraduates compared the online photos to photos taken in the lab to determine how accurate they were.
The deception index provided, in the words of the scientific method, the 'dependent variable.' In other words, building an index showing how far people's online profiles deviated from the reality of their true attributes, allowed the researchers to move on to figure out how to predict the extent to which online liars lie.
To tackle this prediction problem, Toma and Hancock enlisted the help of a computerized linguistic program. The program analyzed the open-ended self-descriptions that participants included in their profiles. By crunching the numbers and types of words the online daters produced, the computer found these 3 revealing cues to lying.
Wouldn't it be nice if a mouse could serve as a lie detector?
The results of the computer analyses fit a theory known as Interpersonal Deception Theory, which predicts that liars use communication strategically to accomplish their goals.
These are great clues, then, but what if you don't have a computer that can analyze what you're reading on your computer? In other words, can people detect lying in online profiles? It would be nice if we could but, unfortunately, the human mind is more easily swayed. We are subject to what deception researchers call the 'truth bias.' Most of us normally assume that other people are honest. These tendencies came out in the next phase of the study.
Looking at actual online readers, Toma and Hancock next recruited a sample of 62 undergraduates to read some of the self-descriptions the computer had already analyzed. As it turned out, the human raters were no better than chance in picking out the online deceivers. What's more, they based their judgments solely on the length of the self-descriptions. The longer the self-description, the more truthful it seemed to the raters. Other than correctly assessing length as a predictor of truthfulness, however, humans were far worse than computers at sniffing out the liars. Humans tend to use clues such as pronouns: talking about 'we' evokes more trust than talking about 'you.' These aren't as relevant as the cues that computers picked up on thatseparate truthful people from liars but they do provide evidence of a fourth clue to online lying.
1. Longer is better. An internet profile rich in self-description is likely to be more truthful. Liars may be afraid of getting caught in their own traps. The more detailed a person's story, the more likely it contains accurate self-depictions.
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2. Look for consistency. When people describe themselves in one part of an online profile, they should be able to provide back-up evidence somewhere else that confirms it. Don't just read an online self-description from top to bottom. Go back and double check within the profile to make sure it all fits together. You could also, if you are seriously interested in pursuing a relationship with this person, resort to a Google search.
3. Recognize that liars avoid negative emotions. The person strying to sway you will try to avoid negative associations. The liar will want you to feel warm and fuzzy, not uncomfortable: 'It's all good.' An unrealistically positive image may be just that—unrealistic.
4. Watch out for the 'we's.' Avoid being drawn into the liar's web of deception that puts you and a stranger on a par. An unusually high number of first-person plural pronouns may signify a profile that is intended to make you feel emotionally close to the writer but not one that is particularly honest.
The truth bias may operate far more in online dating situations than in other everyday situations in life. If we like someone's photo (which, remember, is unlikely to be accurate), we're willing to suspend disbelief. However, the online world has plenty of traps set by people who do not have your best interests at heart. Learn to let your head rule your heart, and your online experiences can be far more fulfilling.
Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging and please check out my website,www.searchforfulfillment.com where you can read this week's Weekly Focus to get additional information, self-tests, and psychology-related links.
Copyright 2011 Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.
Reference:
Toma, C. & Hancock, C. (in press). What lies beneath: The linguistic traces of deception in online dating profiles. To appear in the Journal of Communication. (I wish to thank the authors for sending me a pre-publication copy of the article).
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Readers may also wish to follow the landmark work of Dr. Bella DePaulo, an international authority on both lying and the single experience.