There’s an article in this morning’s Star detailing suggestions for catching a liar. The focus was on business interviews, and the advice was for folks interviewing job applicants, but I wonder if the same tips might be useful when applied to the candidates applying for our votes.
According to the article, signs of dishonesty include
Showing an inappropriate level of politeness. Let’s say you respond to a question. Then you suddenly increase the level of niceness by injecting a compliment such as, “That’s a great tie, by the way.” The compliment is a signifier, because psychologists tell us that the more we like someone, the more we’re inclined to believe him and to shy away from confrontations. The person is using politeness (aka “sucking up”) as a means of promoting his likeability.
Making “referral” statements. This is when a deceptive person responds to a question and refers to having answered the question previously. The idea here is to build credibility through repetition. (This probably doesn’t work when the previous answer was dramatically different than the one currently on offer. Yes Mitt, I’m looking at you…)
Using qualifiers. These indicators are “exclusion qualifiers” that let people “who want to withhold certain information to answer your question truthfully without releasing that information.” They’ll say things like “basically,” “for the most part,” “fundamentally,” “probably” and “most often.”
Another clue is use of “perception qualifiers” to enhance credibility: “frankly,” “to be perfectly honest” and “candidly.”
Going into attack mode. ‘Nuff said.
I don’t know how accurate any of these are, or how applicable to the political arena–but using these clues to analyze the bilge that passes for political argumentation these days might make those 30-second smears more bearable. And who knows–in any given race, one candidate might turn out to be a bigger liar than his opponent.