How does someone’s speech show if they’re being deceptive? Can stress cause speech problems?
Even though stress is psychological, it often manifests in physical ways. One way stress can show itself is through someone’s speech. Further, signs of stress in someone’s speech may indicate they’re lying.
Discover how you can tell if someone’s bending the truth just by the way they talk.
Speech Indicators: Detecting Stress and Deception
To answer if stress causes speech problems, Hughes describes many signs to look for in someone’s speech. However, we’ll focus on these four: hesitation, changing speed and pitch, reversing a question, and attaching caveats to statements.
Speech Indicator #1: Hesitation
According to Hughes, if you ask someone a question and they take a long pause before responding, they may be stalling for time to think of a lie. This also applies when someone repeats your whole question back to you. For example, if you asked your employee “Why were you so late turning in this project?” and they say “Why was I so late turning in this project? Well…” before answering, they might be thinking up a lie.
Speech Indicator #2: Changing Speed and Pitch
Hughes says that people’s voices tend to get higher and their speech faster when they’re lying, so pay attention to whether someone’s speech patterns change as they speak.
Speech Indicator #3: Reversing a Question
Hughes explains that another way people often hide deception is to reverse a question that’s asked of them. For example, if you suspect your spouse is cheating on you, you might ask them, “Have you ever thought about being with someone else?” If they defensively respond, “Have you ever thought about being with someone else?” they may be withholding something important from you.
(Shortform note: A reversed question often comes across as confrontational, like in the example above. The authors of Spy the Lie consider confrontational or aggressive responses to questions suspicious because they’re likely attempts to annoy or scare you into backing off.)
Speech Indicator #4: Caveats for Excluding Details
People may include caveats in their statements that allow them to omit certain details without explicitly lying. Examples of these caveats include, “If I remember correctly,” “As far as I know,” “If memory serves,” and similar statements. The context of these statements is important. If you ask someone if they’ve ever committed a murder, they shouldn’t need to search their memory for that information. If they preface their response with “As far as I can remember,” you may want to avoid spending time alone with that person!
| The Five-Second Rule, Clusters, and Additional Signs of Deception Other experts suggest that reading people may not be as simple as just generally watching for these indicators. In Spy the Lie, the authors note that the human brain can’t closely monitor and analyze every single thing someone says and does throughout an entire conversation. To avoid overwhelming your brain, they recommend 1) using the five-second rule and 2) looking for clusters of stress indicators. To use the five-second rule, focus on the five seconds after you’ve asked someone a question. This ensures that their behaviors are in direct response to the question and not related to other stimuli. Look for both verbal and physical indicators during this interval—and once five seconds have gone by, if you haven’t seen a sign of deception, assume that any further indicators are unrelated to your question. The authors also recommend watching for clusters of stress indicators: when someone shows two or more signs of deception in their response. Again, at least the first sign of deception must occur in that five-second window. If you see one sign of deception in the first five seconds, a second sign of deception outside that window counts as part of the cluster. If you see multiple signs of deception that begin after the five-second window, don’t consider them related to your question. The authors also highlight many of the same signals of deception as Hughes: For example, they concur that facial touching and hesitating before answering are potential indicators of lying. They add other indicators that Hughes doesn’t mention: Clearing one’s throat before answering (though they emphasize that clearing one’s throat after answering is not a sign of deception) Being overly specific in their responses Making oaths (like “I swear on God,” or “I swear on my family’s lives”) Complaining about procedure (like saying, “This is taking too long!”) Being overly polite Being overly concerned about minor events, or being less concerned than they should be about major events Looking for these signs, in addition to those Hughes describes, can help you better identify when someone may be lying to you. |
