When you attend your first murder mystery dinner, you’ll quickly realise that they way to find out the identity of the murderer and in doing so, win the game, is to figure out who’s telling the truth, who’s holding information back and who’s lying. There are seven common signs that the liars in your party will display when you’re talking to them, and it’s a great way to focus on who you want to investigate more.

Look at the face

Whether they know it or not, various expressions will flash across a liar’s face, even when they’re giving you their best smile. Pay close attention to other players’ micro-expressions, as they’re incredibly difficult to hide, giving you a possible clue to ulterior motives. Anxiety, associated with lying, may cause someone to blush. Other indicators of lying include rapid blinking, flared nostrils, deep breathing and nibbling their lip.

Body language

No one feature will effectively give a liar away, so examining someone’s entire body language is important. Features that are in sync with each other characterise honesty, so look for matching posture, face, speech and voice. Liars will often pull themselves inwards to minimise their movements- they will often place their hands behind their back to hide fidgety hands.

Watch the smile

Smiles are often used by liars as a way to hide their true emotions and motives. Take a note of how their smiles interact with their other facial movements. You have a good chance of being able to detect emotions the person would like to hide, such as anger or fear. True smiles incorporate the eyes as well as the lips.

Changes in speech

A change in voice, along with speech rate and breathing pattern are all indicators that someone’s lying to you. When lying, these can either speed up or slow down depending on the individual. If there are changes, the chances are you’re not hearing the entire truth.

Which words are they using?

As liars tend to have difficulty maintaining a complex thought process, they tend to avoid exclusionary words like “but”, “whereas”, “nor” and “except”. Liars will try to psychologically distance themselves from their lies by using fewer personal pronouns, such as “me”, “I” and “mine”.

How are they acting?

In terms of murder mystery dinners, this is a difficult clue to use, but changes in how people generally conduct themselves are clues worth acknowledging. By weighing the context of the situation against hand gestures, speech, tone of voice and posture, you may still be able to tell if your best friend has been given the role of the murderer.

Are your questions simple or embarrassing?

Whilst it’s normal for people to look away when you ask them a difficult question, liars will try to avoid your gaze even when you ask simple questions.

Filed under: Murder Mystery Tips

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