Believe it or not: How to beat the best liars

Despite our intensive experience in the art of human interaction by the age of 18 years, a lot takes place in our subconscious during our interactions with others that completely evades the detection of our self-awareness radars. In fact, successful communication (not agreement with others, but our ability to get a message across to them) can occur because of our reliance on basic assumptions that we subconsciously make on a regular basis.

To the great surprise of the cynic, the "Negative Nancy" and even the realist, one of these basic assumptions is that others are telling the truth. In other words, we don't expect people to lie. Our conversations with others are operations based on a sense of shared general trust, whereby we all assume that we are not being deceived. This is our natural "truth bias," and the results of various studies on communication have implied its universal presence — despite valiant situational efforts to the contrary.

Regardless of our respective intellectual levels, we are all remarkably terrible lie detectors. This is due to our compulsive focus on the facial expressions and general outward demeanor throughout any given conversation. This information is less surprising than our truth biases — how often have you come away from a conversation thinking about how strange it is when someone raises their eyebrows multiple times in a row, how awkward someone seemed because of a weird stance they stood in throughout the whole exchange, or how down someone seemed because of their failure to flash even one smile? We are obsessed with visual cues, and we rely on them to decipher whether someone is sending across a truthful message.

Here's why that strategy doesn't work — facial expressions and outward demeanor are exactly what liars control in themselves. Because of our own obsession with visual cues, we keep a tighter rein over the ones we put out. If we're lying, it's not going to come out in our faces or demeanors, because we will make absolutely sure that it doesn't.

If you really want to catch a liar, you need to turn a blind eye — literally. Close your eyes if you have to — seeing is (way too much) believing. If you want to be cued into deception, listen to a person's voice. It is actually verbal cues that give them away, and we are attuned to what these cues will be, regardless of who the liar is in relation to ourselves. Our visual bias makes these verbal and vocal cues difficult to notice during face-to-face interactions, so the most accurate lie-detecting tool to turn to is a telephone.

A study performed by Judes K. Burgoon, J. Pete Blair and Renee E. Strom (2008) supported the human tendency to overlook deception in face-to-face interactions as contrasting greatly with accurate lie-detection from a person's voice alone. They also found — listen up, all you texters out there — that interestingly enough, we don't trust the written word nearly enough! We are much more suspicious of written messages, and our truth bias becomes almost completely reversed by this suspicion — we assume we are being lied to or deceived, unless there is proof or reasonable doubt to suggest otherwise.

So, what does this all mean?

1. If you are suspicious of a text or e-mail, get the sender on the phone for a round-two assessment.

2. The "leftward eye-shift" (you know what I mean) actually isn't necessarily a reliable method of lie-detection after all. This groundbreaker may require you to apologize to an ex or two.

3. If number two does apply to you, do it face-to-face to maximize the forgiveness rate.

4. If you're skipping class for no reason, explain the "pink-eye" to your professor in person. The fact that yours is a rare type that lasts less than 24 hours and isn't contagious will do better when explained in that conditional setting.

5. If you think you've been cheated on, call your partner to talk.

6. If you've cheated on your partner, insist upon a face-to-face discussion.

7. John Mayer really does think that his girlfriend's body is a wonderland, or we would have detected dishonesty in his voice by now.

8. Trust news channel reporters less than you do.

9. Trust newspaper articles more than you do.

10. Trust everything you read in The Collegian, or else you're being biased. (Did you feel a hint of suspicion upon reading #10? Don't worry - it's natural!)