As The Traitors final airs on BBC One, a show in which the faithfuls battle to expose the traitors to win a cash prize, we spoke to an expert in the psychology of deception on how to lie.
Richard Wiseman, a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, has an interest in deception both academically and professionally – he doubles up as a professional magician.
After years of study, Wiseman has concluded lying is a “very difficult thing to do”, but here he gives his view on what makes a good liar.
A sanctioned lie
Wiseman says the traitors are already at an advantage as their lies are “sanctioned” – in effect, the contestants have been given permission to deceive. This is far easier than the opposite, an unsanctioned lie.
“On Traitors [lying] is encouraged and allowed,” he says.
Lying for a reason – or at least a reason that convinces the liar it is just – will lower anxiety and curb some of the behaviours that might suggest you are engaged in deception. “Lies that pull us apart and that are exploitative, we feel bad about, and we should feel bad about it, and that means all those signals flow out,” Wiseman says.
Complimentary lies, told in order not to upset or offend, though not strictly “sanctioned” fall under this category as we feel we are allowed or permitted to tell them.
“It’s not a lie told to exploit,” says Wiseman, “it’s a lie told to make our lives better.”
The “tell” is not always what you think
While there are “tells” – involuntary visual gestures that suggest a person is lying – there are not as many as is assumed and they are not necessarily accurate, says Wiseman.
“The big one is eye contact. But it’s fairly easy to control the degree to which you maintain someone’s eye contact,” he says.
Wiseman says there is such a thing as a “poker face”, which relates to tells such as eye contact, rubbing noses, covering faces, rubbing hands together, but these visual signals are actually less accurate.
Verbal cues such as “ums and ahs”, missing details and displaying uncertainty, tend to be more accurate. “When you put attention on to verbal stuff, then [cues] become a little bit more accurate in terms of lie detection,” he says.
There are also “micro-expressions”, for example a brief flash of horror covered by a smile.
Make it plausible
“You have to think what’s plausible, what they already know, what questions are they going to ask, and all that involves quite a lot of thinking, to be honest,” Wiseman says.
“Good liars are normally fairly bright, actually, because they’ve thought through all of that. They’re very conscious of the signals they’re giving off to people.
“Keeping it plausible, that’s key. You don’t want these sort of fantastical kind of lies. You do want stuff which people are ideally not going to spend time investigating. That would be your ideal.”
Self-control
Wiseman says it helps if a liar can control their physiology, especially when coming under pressure, as is often the case on The Traitors.
“Some people are very quick to anger, and other people can be thinking one thing and saying something else,” says Wiseman.
“I’ve worked for many years as a professional magician. You’re lying all the time and you sometimes get caught out with stuff, but what you can’t do is just spill the beans and say that’s it. So you get used to not panicking.”
It helps to lie to a stranger
Traitors also have the advantage that they are lying to people who do not know them well, and most gestures or behaviours that give away lying often deviate from a person’s “normal” behaviour.
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The final of The Traitors, series three, airs on Friday at 8.30pm on BBC One and is also available on BBC iPlayer
