We love to think there's some trick we can use to identify when someone isn't telling the truth.
Maybe people look up and to the left before they lie, or touch their face while being dishonest.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) trains employees to think that body language clues give away dishonest travelers, and FBI agents give talks explaining verbal and non-verbal cues that can help anyone spot a liar.
The problem with these ideas is that for the most part, they're wrong.
As Maria Konnikova, author of "The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It ... Every Time" explains in her (fantastic) book, these ideas about liar giveaways "persist because they fit our image of how a liar should behave."
But in general, good liars don't have simple universal "tells."
A bad liar might become uncomfortable while trying to hide the truth, but a skilled con artist, like those Konnikova writes about, is capable of deceiving people without giving themselves away. In some cases those deceivers might be charming enough that people ignore inconsistencies in what they say. In other cases, they're just good enough liars that lying isn't taxing or stressful in any way.
As Konnikova explained to Tech Insider in an interview, not everyone has the skill to lie and con their way through life: "A lot of people want to, but they can't — because you can see them coming from two miles away." But you'll never spot the good liars and true con artists.
"You can't, that's the whole point," says Konnikova. "If you could spot them they wouldn't be a good con artist."
Plenty of research backs this up.
In 2013, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed 400 studies that investigated lie detection. Results indicated that the average person was able to tell when someone was lying only 54% of the time, close to chance. (That rate of success is about the same with people from the intelligence community as well.)
Konnikova discusses the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who has studied lying for decades. Ekman has found that for the most part, people have about a 55% success rate when trying to identify an honest statement.
Some people give something away with an incredibly quick involuntary facial twitch called a microexpression — a momentary change that flashes across the face in a fraction of a second — but Ekman told Konnikova that only a tiny percentage of people can actually see these expressions.
And even if you can spot microexpressions (which Ekman says is a rare ability and not necessarily one that can be learned), it doesn't mean you'll identify a liar. As Ekman told Konnikova and has also told Business Insider, all that microexpression is saying is that some thought or emotion is concealed. But that doesn't mean there's a lie. It could mean that someone is confused, angry, anxious, or afraid, whether they are being honest or deceitful.
It is possible to learn to read people's emotions better. That can help you deal with people, but it won't necessarily help you spot a malicious lie. If you're dealing with a true con artist or psychopath (a rare trait that con artists tend to have), that person may be able to make you think they're projecting whatever will make you feel comfortable.
Accepting that most of us probably won't spot a con artist or liar is perhaps a bit scary, but as Konnikova tells us, you can't go around suspicious all the time.
"You have to remind yourself that they are a really small minority of the population and that most people are not going to take advantage of you," she says. Thinking you can spot a liar might make you suspicious of other people, but it won't actually give you a lie-spotting skill you don't have — and that's an unpleasant to interact with the world. "Guard yourself as best you can," Konnikova advises, "but live."
