Poker players are notoriously good at spotting liars. After all, they're renowned as masters of the art of misdirection through bluffing. But what about the general population? We decided to test this hypothesis on the general public to find out how well the average American can accurately identify a liar. The answer was shocking! We can reveal that a whopping 97% of Americans can’t easily tell when someone is telling lies.

PlayStar launched a survey into perceptions and knowledge of lying in the United States, which was based on authoritative sources including the Scientific American, Forensics Colleges, and Science Daily. The results revealed that there were many misconceptions when it comes to liars. The most common misconception is that Americans wrongly believe that women are better at spotting a liar than men.

What Do Americans Know
About Lying?

The fact is that Americans simply aren’t very good at identifying lies. Not only do they struggle to work out when someone is telling lies, but they also believe several myths about lying, with almost 86% of Americans falsely believing that women are better at identifying liars than men.

Another surprising finding is that Americans believe that people are most honest when they communicate online, which will come as a shock to anyone who has ever been catfished! Americans believe that people lie the most in written communications, which includes texting. This could be explained by the belief that fiction and creative writing can be a channel for deception.

How often are lies or excuses sent by text to avoid a meet-up you would rather skip, as opposed to speaking on the phone and lying verbally? Still, we could be forgiven for thinking the US is a nation of barefaced liars, with 37% of Americans convinced that people lie the most during face-to-face communication.

Despite what 89% of Americans seem to believe, and much to poker players’ own ‘branding’, the scientific consensus still suggests that there is no clear way to tell if someone is lying based on their behavior and body language.

When Americans were asked questions about how to spot a liar, a few surprises turned up, as you’ll see below:

Signs Someone Is Lying

Scientific facts aside, it’s still clear that people remain on the constant lookout for those ‘lying telltale signs’ whether real or not.

Poker players attempt to adopt a poker face, an impassive expression that hides their true feelings, to avoid giving away poker tells. However, a gifted player will also exhibit some of the signs associated with lying as part of a poker bluffing strategy. It seems that an accomplished liar just needs to learn how to have a poker face, according to the PlayStar findings. This means a person will be skilled at hiding any gestures associated with lying e.g. fidgeting, sweating and avoiding eye contact.

The survey revealed that Americans associate any hint of nervousness with lying. Not only this but 85% of respondents associated a failure to maintain eye contact as a sign of lying. This was followed by fidgeting at 63% and starting to sweat at 61.08%.

The most ambiguous sign was individuals touching their faces, with just 33.98% of Americans highlighting this as a sign that a lie is being told. Clearly, Americans believe that liars struggle to keep a poker face. In the same way that certain poker tells can reveal your hand, the majority of Americans believe they have identified ways to uncover a liar.

America's Biggest Liars

With so many misconceptions on the topic of lying, you would be forgiven for thinking it is all but impossible to identify America’s biggest liars. However, our survey has provided a big tell that could very well indicate whether someone is lying: you just need to identify their generation.

It turns out Millennials are the biggest liars in the US by a wide margin, at least according to the survey, with 13% of its members admitting to lying at least once a day. In comparison, Boomers are evidently the most honest generation with just 2% lying at least once a day. Furthermore, Generation Z and Xers have never been more aligned: 5% of both groups admitted to lying at least once a day.

When it comes to the battle of the sexes, it seems that American women might have a higher chance of being on the receiving end of a lie, with more American men admitting to lying regularly. In fact, 23% of females vs 26% of men in our study said they lie at least once a day. For perspective, this could mean that roughly 33 million adult men in the US lie on a daily basis.

Still, our findings suggest that overall, a quarter (25%) of Americans (making up 64.5 million citizens of the US) admit to lying at least once a day and 12% said they do so multiple times a day.

Clearly, Americans need to up their game when it comes to identifying liars. This is especially the case for budding poker players, who will come up against some of the most accomplished liars, or bluffers, in the world.