Lies

A couple of years ago, I was invited to attend a lecture given by an FBI profiler. It was rather fun--each of us in the audience got a remote control-looking thing with A/B/C/D buttons on it. We were shown a clip of a real-life situation the FBI was involved in. One was a scene of panic--an arson case. One, if I remember correctly, was about drug dealing. There were a few others. In any case, in each clip, SOMEONE was lying and we have to press the buttons in answer to the questions. Most of the questions were simple. "Is this person telling the truth?"

I didn't do so well.

In fact, most of the audience did abysmally. EXCEPT a scattered handful of teens (more on that later).

Then we were able to listen to the lecture of WHY person x or y was lying. And WHY we failed the test. These are a few things I learned . . . .

Most adults have an internal voice that tells them "trust/don't trust." But on a subconscious level, because we have been trained to have manners, we talk ourselves out of it. We think, "I shouldn't think this person is lying because his race is different from mine, or he dresses like that." We are so busy, internally, second-guessing our decision that we often don't come up with the right answer.

Teenagers, who haven't yet matured enough to give a crap what anyone thinks, are EXCELLENT profilers. In fact, when the FBI chooses profilers, they are statistically speaking the youngest recruits. By 28, most profilers' careers are finished. They move on to other things . . . (obviously some don't--but most profilers are MUCH younger than any of us would picture).

Simplest lies are best. Professional liars know this. Good liars know this. BAD liars give more information than they need to.

In fact, liars sometimes are SO overcompensating, they will make that ONE mistake, that obvious mistake and get caught. For example, they might say, "I wasn't home at the time. I didn't even HEAR the alarm." When, in fact, if they weren't home, how would they KNOW the alarm went off.

There is some physiological measurement of lying. Sweating, eyes darting upwards. Blinking too much.

So here's what I know. Don't lie to me.

Here's also what I know . . . many liars have a "tell."

And here's another . . . when writing characters who lie, it's a tricky thing. I had one major character in one of my books lie, and readers didn't find out until a plot twist 50 pages from the end. Readers were irate. THEY don't like being lied to any more than we do. Yet, sometimes, we have to have those lies in there for plot.

Thoughts?