Breaking someone's poker face doesn't require a piercing look so much as knowing what makes some liars so effective. Pyschology Today details the most effective strategies of good liars.
Photo by polandeze.
The most effective liars are often people who tell some version of the truth—a half-truth—and enjoy the game of deceiving others. But if you're getting suspicious and they suspect, sometimes you have to step back and see how they might be changing the game:
(Good liars often) raise the emotional stakes. "The best liars are natural manipulators," says Sgt. Yarbrough. He cites as a perfect example the scene in Basic Instinct where Sharon Stone is brought to the cop station for questioning and winds up flashing everyone a glimpse of her Lesser Antilles. "She was turning them on," Yarbrough explains, "and that's a form of manipulation—using sexual or emotional arousal to distract the interviewer."
You might not be able to run everybody you meet through a human lie detector, but check out the Psychology Today article for a few other ways to spot good liars and the tactics they commonly employ, along with our previous tips on knowing if somebody's feeding you a line.
