“if somebody becomes panicked when you accuse them of lying theyre obviously not telling the truth” shut up ugly im a survivor who got punished for shit i never did all the time of fucking course im gonna panic when im blamed for something i didnt do
since this post is actually getting attention rn i really want to emphasize this-
many of the “tells” of lying are traits commonly found in abuse survivors and mentally ill/disabled people.
stuttering, averting eye contact, panicking, raising your volume, fidgeting, and other similar traits are actions performed commonly by these groups, especially in situations of heavy stress- such as being accused of doing something we didnt do, especially if we are afraid of being punished for doing nothing.
im honestly begging people to think critically when accusing somebody of lying for small traits like these.
Adding entirely to elaborate in case drawing out the actual causation here is useful: Most of the “tells of lying” are tells of anxiety.* In the clinical sense. They’re tells of someone having anxiety about how what they’re going to say is going to be perceived, received, and reacted to.
This is also what polygraphs test. It’s why they’re not actually “lie detectors”, and why any sane jurisdiction does not allow them to be used as actual evidence (and why they SHOULDN’T be, any more than anybody’s “gut feeling”). They literally measure the body’s physiological anxiety responses to the question/statement they just heard (or at least the physiological anxiety response that happens right AFTER the question/statement they just heard – just to make it even wobblier). That’s all they do.
These things are associated with lying for a simple reason: most people, when lying, are some level of anxious. They are concerned about how what they’re going to say is going to be received – if it will believed, how it will be reacted to. If something weren’t at stake, if they didn’t care about convincing their audience, they probably wouldn’t bother lying!
However, as OP points out, there are lots. of. other. reasons. for anxiety. Lots of them. From having an anxiety disorder to just being afraid in that moment to trauma crap to who knows what. The most common in small children including being insulted all to hell and back that you don’t believe them.
So be careful, or risk being an asshole.
*“most”, in the sense that some – like “blatantly contradicts reality as reality has been established by something more reliable than a human, like a video recording” – have nothing to do with anxiety, and depending on what people are thinking of as “tells”, this may apply.
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Thoughtfulfangirling 