10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

If you want to become better at spotting a lie when you hear it or read it, then check out our list of 10 easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text.

Do you feel kind of stupid and sad when you find out someone has lied to you and you believed them? You aren’t the only one who feels that way. Quite the opposite, the fact is that we have all been victims of lies, whether on the phone or via text, and we have probably believed many things we shouldn’t have, even though the lies didn’t sound all that convincing. Why? The reason is not that we are simply naive and can’t recognize a lie. It may sound bad, but sometimes we believe a lie because we want to. We may care deeply for someone and we don’t want to lose them so we neglect the fact that they might be deceiving us and we go along with the lie. However, those are special situations and they mostly refer to couples. It is not unusual to become blind upon falling in love, but the good news is that blindness is not permanent. Putting all jokes aside, in one of our previous articles we wrote about 10 Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying About Cheating, and we discussed ways of recognizing a lie when you suspect your partner has been cheating on you. But not all lies are related to relationships. Sometimes, people lie because they want to get out of doing something or they are sad and fear to share the truth with us. Sometimes, a person is not lying for malicious reasons at all. Reasons may vary but lies are all around us.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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Whether we spot a lie or not depends greatly on the circumstances. For example, it is easier to recognize a lie when we speak to someone face to face. The majority of people believes a lie because it’s hard to suspect something is not true when we can’t see the person and look them in the eye as they say it because we are texting or talking on the phone.

That’s why it is relevant to learn the basics about the art of deception. In person, we rely on body language to give us clues about whether a person is lying or not. We pay attention to their eyes and look for eye contact because when a person is avoiding eye contact it is a clear sign that they are hiding something. We observe their hand gestures to determine whether the person is hiding something or not. There are countless ways of knowing when the person is lying thanks to body language. But it is not all that simple when it comes to talking on the phone or texting. We don’t have much choice but to believe the speaker because we can’t see their facial expression or gestures. We can’t look them in the eye or notice when they are looking away. We have limited means and detecting a lie can be quite a challenge sometimes. Luckily, there are some pretty easy techniques that can be applied when trying to find out the truth. Psychology Today wrote about detecting lies when you are on the phone as well as People of Our Everyday Life, but we also incorporated clues from our own experiences in order to provide useful guidelines for detecting lies. Take a look at our list of 10 easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text.

 

10. Changing The Subject

If a person is hiding something from you when you are speaking on the phone or texting, they will definitely try to move from the subject as quickly as possible and start a new topic. If you ask a direct question when on the phone, and a person gives you a quick, undefined answer and then moves quickly to something else, this is alarming and can mean that the person is lying to you. It is similar with texting, so pay attention to how the person changes the subject.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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9. Verbal Pattern And Baseline

We are continuing with the number 9 on our list of easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text – if you want to be certain whether a person is truthful or not when speaking on the phone, it is useful to establish a baseline during the first few minutes of the conversation. That means establishing a verbal pattern while discussing some everyday things where the person has no need to lie at all. Now that you have established a baseline, you can observe to see whether there are any from the baseline. If the person becomes anxious, it is likely there will be a deviation so this is your clue. But make sure you look for more than one change before you make a conclusion.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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8. Sweet Talk

Do you enjoy compliments? Then, read about number 8 on our list of easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text – you probably do just like everyone else, but beware of sweet talk that is meant for other purposes than making you feel good. When a cheater wants to hide the fact that they are cheating, they will rely on the power of compliments to mask the lie. It is quite similar to changing the subject but in this case, the speaker uses a more appealing way of hiding a lie. They will give a short answer to a direct question and then start complimenting you for no reason.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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7. Vague Answers

Liars often avoid giving clear answers to direct questions that are really simple. They tend to give vague answers that don’t really tell you anything or tell you everything except what you wanted to hear. If the person is not certain and tries to avoid the subject by giving vague answers, it is a suspicious behavior that can indicate he or she is lying. Now, let’s see what’s next on our list of easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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6. Tense Hopping

When a liar is crafting a lie, they will probably jump from past tense to present tense without even realizing it. This is known as tense hopping. Their minds are too busy creating a lie so they don’t pay attention to details like these, but this is your chance to detect a lie. This works better when you are speaking on the phone as the person has no time to create a perfect story and no possibility to change what they say, unlike in text messages.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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5. Using ”Umm” and ”Well

Another easy and useful way on our list of easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text is to pay attention to their usage of word fillers. When speaking on the phone, liars often use ”Ummm” and ”well” to gain more time to fabricate a lie. AS they are not ready to give an immediate response to a direct question, they rely on word fillers while they create a story to cover the lie.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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4. Evasive Answers

When you ask a simple yes or no question, regardless of whether you are speaking on the phone or texting, a liar will not give you a simple answer. They are not prepared for such questions and as they don’t want to say the truth, they will avoid giving a simple yes or no answer. This technique is very simple and useful if you want to determine whether you are being deceived or not.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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3. Delayed Reply

If you are texting with someone and suddenly a person takes a long time to respond, this might be suspicious and can mean that they are taking longer to respond because they are fabricating a lie. Liars need more time to give a response and that is a well-known fact. It is especially suspicious if you were texting each other back and forth very fast and they then slow down for no reason. And now, let’s see the top two on our list of easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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2. Special Statements

There is no doubt that lying is not very comfortable. That is why some liars use special statements to mask the lie, for example by saying ”no offense” right before they say something that you will find offensive. Other similar statements include ”I hate to tell you”, ”To be honest” etc. They might use these statements to attack you in order to change the subject.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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1. Can You Repeat The Question?

Liars are well versed in ways to gain more time for crafting an answer. Very often when you speak on the phone and ask a direct question, the person on the other side of the line will act confused or as if they didn’t hear the question. They might ask you to repeat the question but actually, they do it to gain more time to think of a perfect answer to cover a lie. Sometimes they will even repeat the questions themselves so as to appear that they didn’t hear clearly. It is not hearing impairment and they are not confused so don’t be fooled. Combining our 10 easiest ways to tell if someone is lying on the phone or text will equip you with means to detect a lie whenever you hear it or read it.

10 Easiest Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying on The Phone or Text

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