You May Hear 200 Lies Today. Will You Spot Them?

According to several different studies, most of us encounter up to 200 lies a day. The majority of these untruths are white lies, the kind people tell in order to keep conversations going, but many are far more serious.

“Sure, I’d love to see your vacation pictures,” you might tell the guy sitting next to you, hoping he doesn't have more than 500 or so on his camera.

Or you might fib to establish something in common. “That's a great jacket," you might gush, when what you are thinking is: OMG, that’s horrid.

To avoid embarrassment, you might say, “Sorry I’m late; the traffic was murder.” In truth, there was no traffic, but you didn’t want to confess that you hit the snooze button one too many times.

White lies aren't the big problem. Of more concern are the ten or so lies you hear daily that - were you to know the truth - would impact the decisions you make regarding your career, business, closest relationships, and your personal life:

• “That’s an interesting proposal. I'll bring it up with the board.”
• “Don’t listen to the backstabbers. Our revenue is growing gangbusters.”
• “We're definitely looking for someone with your skills. Let me pass your resume on to HR.”
• “If this weren't an emerging market, growing fast, I wouldn’t advise you to invest in it.”
• “I'm stuck in Chicago, honey. The client insisted on another dinner.”
• “There is only one condo left…I’d recommend signing now.”

These lies are dangerous. Missing them is like missing a warning sign about quicksand ahead.

It doesn’t matter how much money you make, or whether you went to a fancy school: All of us routinely ignore obvious signs of deception. Repeated studies have shown that the average adult can only distinguish truth from falsehood fifty-four percent of the time. That’s barely better than a blind guess, and literally about the same success rate as the average chimpanzee (I’m serious). What’s more, this statistic is relevant only for the instances when we suspect someone may be lying to us.

One of the reasons for our poor lie detection skills is simple, if slightly counterintuitive. It’s in our best interest, as a species and as a civilization, to maintain what psychologists call a "truth bias." Unless we’re given a reason to believe otherwise, human beings are generally hardwired to assume that what we are told is true and that what we see is real. Great for society, bad for negotiators.

Tilting the odds back in your favor: Know what you are hungry for!

Whether you choose to believe that you are so smart and that you managed to spot a spectacular investment that others can’t appreciate… depends on how you view the world and what you might be deeply hungry for.

• If you badly want to get rich quick, you are much more likely to fall prey to a financial scam
• If you badly need next quarter numbers to be up by 10%, you are much more likely to believe your sales staff that tells you they are on the verge of closing a big one.
• If you badly wish you were just a bit better looking… you are much more likely to be seduced by the one that tells you how gorgeous you are.

If you can stop yourself from letting your own blind spots influence your judgment, you will be much more likely to spot deception.

No one can lie to you, unless you agree to be lied to.

Building an inner circle around trust…

Learning who to trust has practical applications. When given the choice of ten fabulously skilled job applicants, a human resource director can figure out much faster which of them to hire. Faced with a handful of journalists eager to conduct a one-on-one interview, a CEO can ascertain which is the least likely to add his own "interpretation" to a news story. A consultant can confidently pick a client or employer who can be trusted to pay him on time.

A little bit of knowledge about liespotting goes a long way toward strengthening many of our relationships, so we can develop a small inner circle of fiercely loyal, dependable colleagues and friends.

Liespotting isn’t just about sniffing out liars in the short term, but about building a sustainable infrastructure of trust for the long haul. That’s when the fun starts, because one of life’s greatest pleasures is to engage in relationships in which we are free to express ourselves to the fullest. There is no reason we can’t have that at work, with our bullet-proof circle of trusted co-workers and business partners.

Adapted from LIESPOTTING: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception. Pamela Meyer, whom Readers Digest called "the nation's best known expert on lying ", works with CEOs and Boards - plus legal, insurance and financial institutions - to equip their leadership with the tools to insulate their organizations against inside threats, fraud and corruption.