Psychology of lies: epilogue

The book I have written should basically help the verifiers, not liars. For I am sure it is much easier to improve a person’s ability to detect fraud than to commit it. This is much easier to learn. In order to master my methodology, no special talents are required. Any sufficiently diligent reader can use the questionnaire given at the end of the book and assess whether the alleged cheater will make a mistake or not. However, in order to fully master the art of noticing signs of lies, it is not enough just to understand my methodology; this art is given only by practice. But anyone who does not regret time for attentive observation of the presence of signs described by me in Chapters 3 “Detection of deception by words, voice and plasticity” and 4 “Mimic signs of deception” can improve their abilities. I and other specialists taught people how to look and listen, and this has benefited the majority. But even without such formal training, a person can train himself to detect signs of lying.
While for verifiers it would be nice to open a school, for liars this idea is meaningless. Congenital liars need no school, and for most of us there would be no proc. Congenital liars already know and use most of what I have written about, although sometimes they do not realize it. The ability to lie well is a special talent, which is not easy to acquire. For this person must be a born artist and have the charm and ability to fascinate people. Some people are able, without thinking, to manage the expression of their faces and create exactly the impression they want to make. So people do not need any help.
Most people need such help, but, not having a natural artistic gift, they will never learn to lie very well. My explanations about the signs of deception and the ways in which a liar may seem persuasive will not particularly help such people. They can even hurt. One cannot learn to lie better by learning what one should and should not do. And I strongly doubt that exercises in this will be of great benefit to anyone. An embarrassing liar who has thought through each of his movements is like a skier who, moving down a slope, thinks about his every movement.
However, there are two exceptions, two lies lessons that can help anyone. Liars should carefully and thoroughly think over and memorize all the details of their lies. Most liars are usually not able to foresee all possible questions and all the surprises they may encounter. And the liar must have prepared and rehearsed answers to unforeseen circumstances, and with a margin. In order to create a convincing answer right off the bat that will fit everything that was said earlier and what needs to be said further, you need such mental abilities and endurance in a stressful situation that very few people have. The second lesson, which by now is probably already learned by the readers, speaks of how difficult it is to lie, without making mistakes at all. And in most cases, a lie goes unnoticed only because those for whom it is designed, do not take the trouble to detect it. For it is very difficult to lie without the slightest sign indicating a deception. I never tried to teach anyone to lie better. My opinion that such attempts would not be of great use is based on logical reasoning, and not on actual evidence. But I hope that I am right, because I would like my research to help those who reveal a lie, and not liars. This does not mean that I consider a lie to be an absolute evil. Many philosophers argue convincingly that at least in some cases a lie is morally justified, and the truth can sometimes be cruel and bitter ^[265] .
Still, my sympathies are on the side of those who convict liars, and not lie himself. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the purpose of my scientific work is to search for signs that allow us to understand the nature of human emotions. What interests me is not so much the deception itself as the true emotions felt by a person, which are hidden behind the deception. It gives me satisfaction to find the differences between the true and the facial expressions, to detect signs of poorly hidden emotions, to understand that the pretense manifestations of emotions only resemble true ones, but in fact they differ from them. In this formulation, the study of deception concerns a much wider range of issues. It gives you the opportunity to witness an amazing inner struggle between the conscious and unconscious spheres of our life and learn how we can manage the external manifestations of our inner world.
Despite the fact that my sympathies are on the side of verifiers, and not liars, I understand that catching a lie is not always a blessing. If you expose the deception, when your friend out of politeness hides that he is bored, you will offend him. A husband who pretends that he is funny when his wife ineptly tells a joke, or a wife pretending that she is interested in a story about how her husband has repaired some device can be offended if they are suspected of pretending. And in the case of military tricks, the national interests of the country are sometimes defended by deception. For example, during the Second World War, who among the inhabitants of the Allied countries would not want Hitler to be deceived and did not know on which coast of France — in Normandy or Calais — the landing of the Allied forces would take place?
Although Hitler obviously had every right to try to expose the lies of the allied countries, the discovery of lies is not always justified from a moral point of view. There are cases when good intentions should be valued, regardless of what a person really thinks or feels. Sometimes a person has the right to take his word for it. Detecting a lie is a violation of the right to privacy, the right of everyone to keep certain feelings or thoughts with them. Despite the existence of situations when such a violation is justified - criminal investigations, buying a car, discussing the terms of a contract and so on - there are areas of life where it is assumed that a person has the right to hide his personal feelings and thoughts and expect others to accept what he deems necessary to inform.
It is not only considerations of altruism or respect for the right to privacy that have to cool the ardor of the implacable debacher of lies. Sometimes a person is better off if he is mistaken. The host is better if he thinks that the guest had a great time; the wife will be happier if she thinks she is good at telling jokes. False information may not only be more pleasant than the truth, it may be more useful. The carpenter’s sham statement “I feel great” in response to the head’s question “How are you today?” Can give more important information than his truthful answer “I still can’t recover after yesterday’s home scandal”. His lie truly speaks of his intention to do his job well despite his personal grief. Nevertheless, even in these seemingly obvious cases, a lie can be perceived differently. The boss could better distribute the work if he knew that the carpenter was really very upset. The wife would learn to tell jokes better or would not even tell them at all if she noticed the pretense of her husband. And yet, I think it is worth noting that sometimes as a result of exposing lies, relationships collapse, trust is lost, information appears that was hidden not without reason. The verifier should at least be aware that identifying signs of deception is, in a sense, insolence, because this is done without permission and without taking into account the desires of the other person.
When I began my job of researching deception, I could not know what exactly I would be able to detect. Information from various sources contradicted each other. Freud argued: “He who has eyes to see, and ears to hear, can make sure that no mortal can keep secrets. If his lips are silent, he speaks with the tips of his fingers; signs of lies seep from every pore on his skin ” ^[266] .
Nevertheless, I knew many examples of quite successful lies, and my first studies showed that when a deception was found, people show results not above the level of random guesswork. Psychiatrists and psychologists were no better than others. And I am pleased with the results of my research. As liars, we are neither flawless nor imperfect; lie detection is neither as simple as Freud has stated, nor impossible. All this complicates the matter, and therefore makes it more interesting. The imperfection of our abilities to lie is a fundamental, and perhaps even vital, quality of human nature.
Imagine what life would be like if everyone were perfectly mastered the art of lying, or if no one could cheat. I thought about it mainly in relation to the lie concerning emotions, because this is the most difficult lie, and it is emotions that most interest me. If we could never know about the true feelings of a person and know that we can’t find out about them, then life would become poorer. If people were confident that any manifestation of emotion is only a mask, worn to please, manipulate or mislead, people would become more alienated from each other, and their attachments - less strong. Imagine for a moment what a difficult situation parents of a month-old baby would be if he could hide and falsify his emotions as well as most adults do. His every cry could be a false alarm. We live in the belief that there is some deep emotional truth that most people cannot or will not deceive us about what they feel. If emotional pretense was as easy as intellectual, if facial expressions and facial expressions could be masked and forged with the same simplicity as words, our emotional life would become poorer and more restrained than it is now.
And if we could not lie at all, if a smile were a reliable sign that is always present when pleasure is felt and is always absent when there is no pleasure, then life would become rougher and many relationships would be much more difficult to maintain. There would be no politeness, no attempt to somehow smooth out an unpleasant situation or hide feelings that a person would not like to show. It would not be possible to have your own secret, to be sad or to lick your wounds, left alone. Imagine that your friend, colleague or lover is at the level of a three-month-old child in terms of control over his emotions, and in all other respects - in intelligence, skills, and so on - he has the abilities of an adult. This is a hard sight.
We cannot be seen through, as children, but we do not possess the ability to pretend flawlessly. We can lie or tell the truth, notice the deception or skip it, be mistaken or find out the truth. We have a choice; such is our nature.