5 Signs Someone Might Be Lying to You, According to a Former FBI Agent

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Scott Taylor, a former FBI agent and lead interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, has spent years studying deception. His advice, as reported by Metro, is to avoid getting hung up on one nervous tic. Instead, pay attention to sudden changes in behavior around certain questions. And he points to five physical signs that can be a “tell” when someone’s trying hard to sell you a story.

People normally blink around 12 to 14 times a minute, according to Taylor. Stress can increase that rate, although some people actually blink less while they’re lying and then rapidly make up for it afterward. Researchers have described that burst as a compensatory effect.

You probably aren’t going to sit across from somebody counting blinks like a lunatic. Just notice if there’s a change from how they were acting (or blinking, rather) before. 

Lying can trigger a stress response, and one side effect is dry mouth. “When people lie, we release cortisol, the stress hormone, and it dries out our mouth and slows down our saliva,” Taylor said.

That’s why lip-licking and hard, audible swallowing can happen when someone’s forcing a story. It also happens when people are nervous for completely innocent reasons, so seeing somebody reach for their water glass isn’t evidence of a lie. 

People can physically pull back when a question makes them uncomfortable. Taylor watches for things like the torso turning away or the chin dropping, especially when the movement happens at a very particular moment.

Hands drifting up to the face can also signal deception, like tracing their jaw or rubbing their forehead. Again, the change in behavior is what matters, not the behavior itself. Someone who constantly touches their hair or face, for example, could just be them being them.

“Truth tellers convey, and liars convince,” Taylor said.

This is the person who keeps adding reassurance you never asked for. They’re absolutely positive. They definitely remember. Their eye contact becomes weirdly intense because they’re concentrating so hard on looking sincere.

Anyone who’s ever heard a partner give a 10-minute explanation for why a certain text “meant nothing” has probably seen this in the wild.

A lie can make ordinary speech sound strangely stiff. Taylor points to people dropping contractions, so “I didn’t” becomes “I did not.” It’s wording that would sound normal in a courtroom and just bizarre while you’re standing in your kitchen. 

Liars like to include words like “obviously” or “100%” when they want you on their side before you’ve decided whether you believe them.

Joe Navarro, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively about deception, puts a big asterisk next to all of this. “There is no single behavior indicative of deception, not one,” he wrote on his website. Research supports his general warning. A review covering 206 studies and more than 24,000 judgments found that people identified lies correctly only about 54% of the time.

So the person licking their lips while insisting they “did not” send that text could be lying. They could also just be nervous because you’ve been staring at their face for 10 straight minutes, and it’s making them feel uncomfortable. 

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