E5 — Contractions — Deception Tips Podcast
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Deception Tip 5: Guilty people often avoid using contractions as if to emphasize their innocence. Example: using did not instead of didn’t.
Hello, and welcome to the Deception Tips Podcast, where you will learn amazing cues to detect deceit that will help you read people like never before. I’m your host, Spencer Coffman. Let’s get started.
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Welcome to episode 5 of the Deception Tips Podcast. Last time, we went over a behavioral sign that is very easy to spot. In addition, when you see it, you can be almost sure, there is some form of deception going on.
This sign occurs when someone is performing a physical task and then, when that person is questioned or doubted in any way, or is asked to tell more of their story, they stop doing whatever they are doing to tell the lie. This is because a lie is a conscious effort. They have to think about it. They have to plan for it. They have to prepare it.
Lies are very stressful for the physiological responses of the human body. When someone is doing some form of simple task, that task is usually an unconscious task. It’s something that they do often enough, so often that it becomes a habit. It’s a form of habit for them.
Therefore, when they recite this rehearsed lie, the lie that they had to think about consciously, their unconscious stops doing that unconscious task because, as we’ve talked about before, the unconscious is very, very truthful. So when the conscious tries to sneak out a rehearsed lie, and the unconscious is busy doing some unconscious task, it stops because it’s trying to catch the conscious’ lie. It wants to leak some form of nonverbal behavior.
What’s ironic though is the fact that the unconscious stopped performing a certain task is a form of leakage in and of itself. So remember that when people are doing those tasks and you question them if they stop working that is a red flag for you.
