INTRODUCTION
Everybody lies.Years ago, a psychological experiment was devised to estimate the prevalence of untruthful behavior. It involved broken vending machine.Subjects were informed that the vending machine was malfunctioning. If they put in a dollar, the faulty machine would dispense candy, but then return their dollar.
Subjects who used the vending machine found this to be absolutely true. They dispensed one, two, three, proven four pieces of free candy, and then retrieved their money from the machine.There was a sign on the vending machine. The sign read: “To report any malfunctions with this machine,please call this number.”
Unbeknownst to the subjects,the number provided belonged to one researcher in thestudy.Take a guess how many of the subjects called this number to report the broken machine.Zero.That’s right. Not even one of the dozens of subject was honest enough to call the number and report the broken vending machine. Each one of them took their free candy and moved on.As I said, everybody lies.There are many easily identified signs that a person is lying, especially if they are an unskilled liar.
As a trained psychiatrist, I am intimately familiar with these signs. It’salmost too easy to spot them:Liars fidget.The tone of their voice or speech patterns changes.