Owen Benjamin explains:
Number one is a passive voice. Notice when someone doesn’t use the word “I”. Passive. Like saying “you”. When you add too many words, liars a lot of times are trying so hard not to be caught lying that they overdescribe things. They won’t say things like “I saw, I see”, those are direct, that’s direct language. It’s always passive. “You’d be inclined to believe that”. Liars also speak in the negative. Always understand that when a liar is speaking, they’re always simply trying to avoid being caught in a deception. They’re not trying to say anything, they’re only trying to evade. It’s like word judo.
So they don’t say what they saw, they say what they didn’t see. And they say “you”. It’s never “I”. Because when you say “I saw, I went, I am, I will” that is people hold you to that. That’s why Kennedy was like “We will go to the Moon. That’s very direct language.
Evasive language is when you say “the gun went off”. You don’t say “I shot someone”, you put all the onus on the object and not yourself. Like “you know how fast you were going?” “The car started accelerating.” No. A liar is always trying to take everything off you and you’re never going to make a statement that can later proven to be false.
It’s so funny because if someone speaks clearly and strongly and with meaning, I am so much more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt as just being wrong than if someone speaks this way. The odds are really high that they are liars…. They also tend to stutter on the word “I” when they are lying. “I… I… I.”
I am immediately suspicious of anyone who will not answer a direct question or who begins evasive action. I knew Jordan Peterson was a liar due to his dishonest response to criticism on the IQ question, so when I saw his first video and witnessed his “I… I… I’ve been thinking so deeply about this for so long that I can’t possibly give you an answer”, that simply confirmed what I already knew. But it would have been enough to make me deeply suspicious of anything the man said.
Another tell is when they avoid precision with regards to quantities. They suddenly can’t remember what their IQ is, but somehow, they know it is really high! They can’t tell you how much they owe you, but they always know to the penny how much someone else owes them.