One big challenge in the dating world: figuring out if you can you trust that a person you are getting to know is telling the truth about themselves. To be fair, everyone is under a decent amount of pressure to put a good foot forward and show their best side in the dating arena. Unfortunately, deception, exaggeration, and straight out lying are common methods used in an attempt to impress others in the effort to find a new relationship. The problem is that if a potential dating partner is lying to you, that gives you a misrepresentation of what they are all about and what a relationship would be like with them over time. So, what can you do to accurately decipher if someone is telling the truth? How can you know if they are giving you an accurate representation of themselves? In this brief article, a few ideas will be given to help you figure it out. Ideas to Help Figure Out Truth or Deception: *Multiple Data Points: one of the best ways to accurately determine the accuracy of what a person says is by “multiple data points”. That is a fancy way of saying, compare and contrast what they say vs what sources show about them outside of their word alone. This could include their posts on social media, what they family and friends say and reveal about them, an online background check, Googling their name online, and anything else revealing where they are coming from in avenues apart from them trying to impress you. *Facial Expressions/Other Nonverbals: people who are telling the truth have been shown by research to display different facial characteristics than those who are lying, often referred to as “microexpressions”. People who are telling the truth generally keep better eye contact, have less nervous laughter, talk in a more secure and even tone of voice, keep a more open body language with their arms and hands, and their smile includes expressions reaching their eyes for more full warm. Conversely, people who are lying/acting deceptive tend to look away more/break eye contact more often, have more nervous laughter, talk with a higher tone of voice, have a more closed body language (such as covering their mouth or part of their face), and their smile is limited to only being around their mouth (without extending to smiling expressions up around their eyes).
Read the rest here.
