You can never completely tell when someone is lying. Not even a lie detector can do that. Do you understand what that means? That means that not a single one of the tips we are about to give should ever be used to determine that someone is lying without reservation. Even if someone does all 25 of these things they still may be innocent.

The power of circumstance cannot be overestimated and people have even been known to give false confessions because they were being pressured to “tell the truth”. With that said, there are certain things you can look for that might arouse your suspicions. These are 25 ways to tell if someone is lying to you. Sort of.

This is probably one that you already know instinctually, but liars will be hesitant to make eye contact with you

To complicate things, if someone is lying to you they might make too much eye contact. Possibly because they are aware that liars are known to avoid eye contact. We know, it’s confusing.

A liar tends to provide more information than necessary, or to answer questions that they weren’t even asked in the first place. This may come from a desire to justify oneself

A genuine shrug indicating uncertainty is usually complete and symmetrical. A partial shrug may indicate deception

For potentially obvious reasons liars are likely to stutter. It’s hard to talk straight when you’re making things up as you go!

A liar tends not to use contractions. For example, “I didn’t do it” statistically tends to be a more truthful statement that “I did not do it”