How to spot a liar, and why doing so might be harder if he's the boss

The May issue of the Harvard Business Review includes “Powerful People Are Better Liars,” a Q-and-A with professor Dana Carney. In an experiment, she took two groups of people and made one the bosses and one the subordinates. She had them perform functions relative to their roles in an imagined corporate food chain. They then were instructed to steal $100. They were told they would be questioned about it but that they could keep the money if they could convince the "investigator" they were innocent. Guess what? The boss cohort lied — and lied well. Need proof? Shoulder shrugs while speaking are a tell that someone is lying. The bosses only had 1.4 shoulder shrugs while being interviewed; the subordinates had a whopping 4.3. Other nonverbal tells, according to Carney: "You'll see people manipulate objects; they'll flip the cap on a water bottle or roll a pen. They'll fidget and do things like stroke their arms. . . . Liars are trying to suppress something." (I have seen this in the real world.) Also, liars who think they got away with a lie involuntarily smirk and press their lips together. Their voices change, with a liar uttering more syllables per second at a higher pitch; they repeat words and sentences more. I was with a client who said that when he investigates employee theft, he always asks an employee, "If someone did XYZ, how do you think they should treated if caught?" The guilty always made excuses for the conduct; they projected their internal feelings. Also, I think liars who are good at prevaricating create their own moral universes, with rules and protocols that make sense to them. Look at the HBO show "The Sopranos." The main characters lied (and did much worse) because their created world was set apart from the accepted moral universe — precisely so they could operate comfortably and effectively in it. One final thought on lying and truth telling from Mark Twain:" Always tell the truth, that way you don't have so much to remember." And that's the truth.