A former Secret Service interrogator has revealed the two things that make him believe he's being lied to.
How can you spot whether or not someone is lying to you in a conversation? It's a thought which all us hope will never cross our minds However, it's more than likely that we'll all end up in a conversation with a person who's telling porkies and thankfully there is a wealth of advice online which aims to help catch out a liar.
For example, body language experts will often pay attention to the way a person speaks, mismatches in body language and of the choices in language we use. A more adept liar will be aware about this, meaning you have to look for other ways to catch them out.
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One person who can advise on how to do that is former US Secret Service interrogator Desmond O’Neill, who recently discussed the topic during an appearance on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast.
O’Neill has spent three decades using 'science-backed' techniques to help him catch out liars and engage in tough conversations.
So, what are the biggest giveaways that someone is lying to you?
Using the example of a scenario where he was interviewed Phillip Garrido - the man convicted of abducting Jaycee Lee Dugard and holding her captive for 18 years - to see if he was connected to another missing persons case involving the disappearance of nine-year-old Michaela Garecht.
Following his conversation with Garrido, O’Neill was able to deduce that he was not involved in the Garecht case, which the interrogator explained was down to two things: corrections and complications.
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For example, if you're recalling the events of your day to someone and misremember something, you're able to casually correct yourself.
"If I’m talking to him about something and there’s some type of spontaneous correction where he’s like, “Wait a minute, this happened before this,” those are indicators of truth," he explained.
When it comes to complications, O'Neill explained that 'nobody’s day goes perfect' which is something which Garrido referenced when talking about his history of crimes.
"When complications are introduced to a story, people who lie don’t do that," he explained, which is usually because someone who is lying may have rehearsed their story down to the last detail.
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Meanwhile a person who is telling the truth will often introduce complications in their story as 'this is just what happened'.
"In terms of how that conversation went, there are those type of indicators that just made it trend more truthful than not," O'Neill recalled of the overall conversation with Garrido.
"There are no cues to deception."
While these tehniques won't work in every scenario, they did in this case, as O'Neill's evaluation of Garrido ultimately led to a re-examination of evidence and the arrest of David Misch in 2020. He is currently awaiting trial over her alleged murder.
Brenna Cooper