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How to Tell When Trump and Clinton Are Lying Tonight

Eight debate-watching tips from a professional.

By Pamela Meyer
October 19, 2016

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Whatever surprises come our way at tonight’s final presidential debate, we can count on one thing: At some point, the candidates will be lying. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has a sterling reputation for honesty, and in 2016 the live fact-check has become a cottage industry, tracking factual missteps as they happen. But honesty isn’t just about getting facts right: Candidates hedge, they omit, and they dissemble about their intent.

How can we tell when politicians are lying to us? In recent years, psychologists have been investing more study and research into the science and art of lie detection. When I wrote the book Liespotting, I spent several years conducting a broad survey of the research in deception detection, and met and interviewed the figures who are behind this growing science. Like all explorations that sift through science by way of intuition, lie spotting is fallible. But the lie detection field is moving fast away from intuition and into science (President Barack Obama’s $300 million BRAIN Initiative imagines a future of neuroscience to detect “lying or telling the truth”). Still, the best-trained lie spotters, whether in corporate fraud or the CIA, don’t need an fMRI machine. Research has proven the essential fact at the center of lie detection: It’s simply harder for the brain to tell a lie than the truth. Detection methods, then, use well-substantiated methods that probe the subconscious habits of a lying brain that’s dissembled itself into knots.

Politicians aren’t special. They lie the same way we all do, revealing their true nature under pressure. Trained lie detectors detect deceit through a two-step process: Establishing “baseline behavior” for how their subjects normally respond, then turning up the heat (“cognitive load”) and watching how they react under pressure: Have you ever leaked secrets? Had an affair? Avoided taxes? Suddenly, people begin to deviate, displaying the little “tells” in posture, blink rate, or tone of voice that signal deception.

VIDEO: How to spot a liar | Pamela Meye
https://youtu.be/P_6vDLq64gE

What are Trump and Clinton’s tells? Using a formula my company deploys to train civilians in lie spotting, voters watching the debate tonight can spot lies the same way fraud investigators and prosecutors do—by looking for tiny, personal deviations from their normal behavior.

During this historic election in which fact and fiction have been so casually blurred, training the American voter to spot a lie has never seemed more important. Here’s what to look for tonight.

1. Creating distance. When we lie, we tend to unconsciously distance ourselves from our subject, using language as our tool. Bill Clinton offered the most famous example when he denied an affair with “that woman,” which is typical distancing language. He also spoke in third person, pleading that because the White House is a “stressful environment, you are constantly getting calls”—rather than simply, “I was constantly getting calls.”

Both candidates tend to use distancing language under pressure: Donald Trump even echoed Bill Clinton, referring to one of the former president's accusers as “that horrible woman.” And he frequently speaks in the third person, typically when he’s skating delicately on thin ice: “No one would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump,” is one frequent example. Trump reverts to “you” rather than “I” when asked for details and real plans that he may not be prepared to discuss. From the first debate moderated by Lester Holt:

HOLT: Back to the question, though. How do you bring back—specifically bring back jobs, American manufacturers? How do you make them bring the jobs back?

TRUMP: Well, the first thing you do is, don’t let the jobs leave.
During the debate, listen closely for distancing language when Trump is asked about sexual assault, or his shady business dealings. We’d be wise to do the same when Clinton’s emails are brought up, or her response to the 2011 Benghazi attacks, which we still have yet to hear the candidates spar over extensively.

2. Deflecting and minimizing. Honest answers follow a simple formula. They are direct, helpful and to the point. Dishonest answers often include deflection from the subject or attempts to minimize the significance of the issue at hand:

Hillary Clinton was asked a simple question last spring: Did she wipe her email server? She laughed as she responded, “What? With a cloth or something?” An honest answer would have been a simple yes or no.

Trump both deflects and minimizes, sometimes in the same breath. During the first debate, when Holt asked why Trump supported birtherism, a disproven conspiracy theory about where Obama was born, Trump changed the subject in a rambling monologue, and tried to shift the focus to an attack on the Clintons and their top aides. Consider his tone regarding polls. Trump once said, “I love polls,” back when he was winning the Republican primary. Now that reports indicate he’s fallen 12 points behind Clinton, he’s minimized their importance. “I don’t even believe the polls.” (He also tried to lessen the damage, adding, “They say we’re tied.”)

3. Shifting posture. Pay attention when candidates shift their weight when speaking, and shift how they anchor themselves to the ground as they talk. Each of us, quite literally, has a postural home base, and Trump’s home base is his lectern. He leans on it, grasps it and relies on it while he speaks. And when he lies, or finds himself under attack, Trump tends to move off that baseline.

When he suggested last week that Hillary needs to take a “drug test” before tonight’s debate—implying absurdly that political rival was using some form of illicit narcotic—he shifted off his anchor point. He leaned back and gesticulated with both hands, rather than remain centered or clutch the podium. Leans or erratic movement can suggest, at least at a subliminal level, that even Trump is aware when leveling an insincere accusation, unmoored from reality.

Shifts in anchor point were tough to spot in last week’s debate, when candidates were pacing about. But tonight, watch for both candidates’ baseline posture. Deviations from their comfort zone can be an indication of deception.

4. Speaking louder, and faster—and the telltale pause. Tonight, look for the ruptures in decorum or tempo, such as interruptions from moderator Chris Wallace or the candidates themselves. These fissures can reveal a lie. Researchers have observed that the first seconds after someone is asked a difficult question are the most reliable for deciphering someone’s behavior. The spontaneous reaction is the one that counts, not the considered, delayed one. This is particularly true for presidential debates as candidates practice and perfect their answers (and in some cases, like Marco Rubio, memorize them outright).

Research indicates that a pause tends to be a signal that a cluster of deceptive cues is on its way. This is a key reason reason why voters routinely associate Trump with authenticity: He rarely pauses. Clinton, on the other hand, pauses generously and often—sowing the subconscious impression that she is obscuring the truth.

Once they begin talking, look for what researchers call a “paralinguistic shift,” or a deviation from normal speech. Lowering of vocal cords is one such example. So are sharp changes in pitch, tone and rate of speech. Tonight, look for spontaneous barbs that give pause to Trump, or elevation in volume or speech speed with Clinton.

5. Clinton hedging; Trump getting blunt. We all know this one: You know... To tell you the truth... In all honesty… When a politician hedges, we roll our eyes. Hillary is a trained lawyer, and shows it, relying heavily on qualified language whether she’s telling the truth or not.

Interestingly, Trump typically does the opposite—speaking with blunt confidence, even on subjects about which he’s utterly uninformed. But Trump isn’t entirely immune: His most famous filler phrase, “believe me,” has the kind of existential conceit that to the ears of lie spotters sounds more like a subconscious plea. And in the last debate, when Trump was on the ropes about taxes, the hedging was in full swing: “ I filed a 104-page, essentially, financial statement of sorts…”) Tonight, look for these filler statements when Trump is asked about the GOP’s exodus from his candidacy, or his drop in the polls.

6. Shrugging shoulders. Unconscious shoulder shrugging can signal that beneath a veneer of certainty lies anxiety, uncertainty and deception. Joe Navarro, a 20-year veteran of the FBI, thinks shoulder and upper body movement are an overlooked aspect of lie detection.

For some subjects, erratic or asymmetrical shoulder movement might be a normal mannerism (partly why it’s so important to establish baseline behavior.) But it’s is not normal for Donald Trump, typically lumbering and centered. When a tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault was released, Trump released a recorded statement, saying, “These words don’t reflect who I am,” before giving a quick half-jerk of the shoulder. Perhaps this is one of Trump’s tells, since, within hours, the next news cycle was dominated by several new alleged victims of Trump’s advances.

Clinton has sometimes demonstrated the shoulder-shrug herself, typically when talking about her emails. (In this compendium of her many denials, look for the shoulder shrug around the one-minute mark when she talks about turning over emails in an “ attempt to be helpful.”)

7. Flashing contempt, or “duping delight.” Contempt is the only asymmetrical expression in the muscular facial system: Disgust, fear, happiness, surprise and anger typically express themselves symmetrically. Contempt is marked by one lip corner pulled up and in a dismissive sneer. Research has demonstrated that contempt can flash across the face during a lie, channeling a defensiveness and moral superiority that is closely associated with deception.

Trump’s personality complicates this scenario: Contempt seems to be his baseline, his face resting in a contemptuous sneer. It’s likely not a reliable reflection of deception with him. But Trump’s mannerisms are all-too-human in one classic regard: “Duping delight,” one of the famous giveaways of deceit, and a method that seems to be Trump’s go-to for expression masking. Duping delight is the the unconscious smile at getting away with a whopper—you can see it in this famous case of murderer Diane Downs, who can’t suppress a smile as she insists she didn’t kill her daughter. Trump’s duping delight is often fully on display, if you look for it. In Trump’s rally this week, claiming that he’s “doing pretty good in the polls” and simultaneously “no longer believes the polls,” he wears a thin, bemused grin throughout the soliloquy, an unmistakable sign of duping delight.

8. Counterattacking. When a pointed question is beaten back with an attack or threat of “How dare you...” it’s a reliable signal that deception is involved. Trump is a master at this. To wit, when Senator Marco Rubio challenged him to answer a policy question on substance, Trump kneecapped him with a simple, condescending comeback. “Don’t worry little Marco, I will.”

For Hillary’s part, watch when the topic of her emails emerges. If Trump brings them up—and he likely will—look for her to counter with an attack on Trump’s sexual assault accusers or his treatment of women.

At my company, we train civilians in the ways to root out lying behavior. But we always counsel that lie detection is simply the first step. Creating real ramifications for lying and making sure it never happens again, are crucial safeguards—whether for an individual, a company, or a body politic. Candidates will only be reluctant to lie when there are real consequences for lying. Perhaps that day will arrive on November 8.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/final-debate-2016-lying-politicians-214370