Instant Genius The best ways to spot a liar
Mar 9, 2026
Dr Kirsty King, a UCL communication lecturer and author of The Language of Lies, studies linguistic markers of deception. She explains how people distance themselves with nouns and passive voice. She highlights missing sensory and emotional words, shifts in concrete versus abstract terms, and paraverbal cues like pauses and pitch. She also discusses tactics to disrupt false accounts with unexpected questions.
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Lies Map To Conversational Maxims
- Lies fit linguistic patterns based on Gricean maxims like quality (truth) and quantity (completeness).
- Kirsty King maps lies of commission and omission to these maxims to explain how people distort or withhold information.
Chris Watts Used Distancing Language
- Distancing language shows negative affect and attempts to emotionally separate from people involved.
- Example: Chris Watts repeatedly used her, she, and everybody instead of my wife or my family during early interviews.
Lies Lack Sensory Details
- Fabricated accounts tend to lack sensory and interoceptive details like sight, sound, heart racing or dizziness.
- Ryan Lochte's robbery story contained only basic verbs and no sensory description, signalling invention rather than memory.
