The Two Main Types of Liars
- Liars who don’t care if people think they are liars
- Liars who want to appear honest
Type 1 liars require no further explanation. They are hucksters, entertainers, politicians, or salespeople who everyone expects to exaggerate and embellish. They are like entertaining carnival acts. In fact, many celebrate the whoppers told by these type 1 liars. They create alternate realities that allow others to enjoy a fake existence vicariously. People go to circuses, concerts, and fairs to suspend everyday reality; they want to be entertained in a carefully crafted environment of illusion. President Trump is the perfect example of a type 1 liar. There is no better explanation for the fascination and loyalty of the MAGA crowd. It also explains why Trump performs so poorly in court trials and dispositions. He is a type 1 liar, not a type 2.
Type 2 liars are very different. They do not want to be found out; they want to pass as an honest person. So, how does a type 2 liar fool others?
Type 2 liars must have a strategy and the mental stamina to pull it off. These liars must have the basic acting prerequisites of being calm, looking others straight in the eye, and showing “normal” emotions. Their mental skills must be highly evolved, and only the best liars can master them. Successful type 2 liars are mental athletes.
When honest people are questioned about an event in the past, they act as if they were casually strolling down the street. As they say, if you have nothing to hide, telling the truth is easy. You do not have to think; you repeat what your memory tells you. Of course, this will not prevent a clever lawyer from trying to trip you up. In fact, honest people are sometimes the easiest to be made into liars. The inquisitor might try to find contractions in your memory, which is not really that hard since the honest person is only operating at a low level of mental effort.
Talented type 2 liars are highly evolved and have honed their mental powers. Some might have the added advantage of being a psychopath, but in general, type 2 liars must work very hard to appear to be honest. While an honest person can relax and coast during an interrogation (though some are insecure and therefore unnecessarily nervous), a type 2 liar needs to operate near the limit of their mental capacity to appear honest. In addition to mental effort, the type 2 liar also needs to control his body so that no nervousness is displayed.
Type 2 liars might be predisposed to lying, but they also require learned and practiced skills. The liar must:
- Invent a plausible story that is as close to the truth as possible, without revealing any incriminating or embarrassing facts.
- The story must be skillfully layered with a background and many delicate touches in the foreground, like a good oil painting.
- Must know what the truth really is.
- The story must be consistent with what the listener knows.
- Be cognizant of their own body language to appear honest.
- Monitor the listener’s reaction to make sure the story is going well.
- Repress the “real” truth.
To make a fabricated story believable, the liar’s brain must be working very hard. While they might appear unflappable, they are like the proverbial duck paddling like crazy underwater. Here are three situations (an employment interview, a date, and a criminal inquiry) in which we might encounter a type 2 liar.
If type 2 liars are so skilled, how can their façade be torn away? Skilled detectives and lawyers know how to do it.
Not being a detective, I asked Perplexity to help list the ways to defeat a type 2 liar:
A skilled detective “breaks down” a liar less by reading body language and more by using structured interviews that overload the lie, expose inconsistencies, and pin the person to a detailed account.
1. Build a baseline, then add pressure
– Establish a baseline of how the person talks, remembers, and reacts on neutral topics, then shift to high‑stakes questions to spot changes in detail, pacing, and comfort. Have the person reveal the timeline of events.
– Use open‑ended prompts (“Walk me through everything from when you arrived…”) to force a liar to construct and maintain a rich narrative, which is cognitively more complex than telling the truth.
2. Use cognitive‑load and “curveball” questions
– Increase cognitive load with techniques like asking for the story in reverse order, unexpected details, or drawing the scene; lies crack faster under this extra processing burden.
– Ask unanticipated questions a prepared liar won’t have rehearsed (“What was the exact layout of the room?” “Who could confirm that timeline?”), then revisit them later to test consistency.
3. Lock in the story, then introduce evidence
– Let the suspect give a complete, uninterrupted account first, capturing their wording and specific claims before showing any evidence (a core PEACE‑model move).
– Once the narrative is fixed, present strategic evidence that contradicts key parts and watch how they handle the clash—truth‑tellers tend to clarify, while liars blame “bad memory” or change their story abruptly.
– Suggest hypothetical evidence to catch the liar off guard. For example, “If we were to check the cameras from the time of the event, is there a reason that your story might be mistaken?”
4. Listen to content more than “tells”
– Research finds classic “tells” (avoiding eye contact, fidgeting) are weak; better cues are within‑statement inconsistencies, lack of detail, and reluctance to elaborate when invited.
– Techniques like AIM and similar interviewing methods explicitly tell subjects that more detail helps detect lies; liars typically respond by offering less and more generic information, which itself is diagnostic.
5. Stay ethical and non‑coercive
– Modern best practice favors information‑gathering models (like PEACE) over aggressive, confession‑driven tactics (like traditional Reid‑style interrogations) because coercive pressure increases false confessions as much as it breaks real liars
– A calm, rapport‑based approach makes it easier to keep a liar talking at length, test their story from many angles, and get a reliable record that stands up in court or public scrutiny.