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A body language expert revealed the best ways to spot a liar.

Vanessa Van Edwards, from California, who is the founder of Science of People, which gives people science-backed skills to improve communication and leadership, joined Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast this week. 

The public speaker, who is also a bestselling author of Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication, revealed that most people can only spot a lie with 54 percent accuracy, saying you are better off tossing a coin. 

However she did say it was possible to spot a untruth based on certain cues that liars typically, but not always, do. 

The vocal cues to look out for which could be an indication of lying are ‘question inflection’ and ‘a volume drop’.

Meanwhile there are also non verbal cues to watch for, such as ‘mismatched facial expressions’ and the look of ‘disgust.’

She said: ‘There’s no one cue that means someone is lying but there are a couple cues that come up over and over again.

‘Vocal cues are incredibly important, vocal cues tell someone how you are feeling about them, and how you feel about yourself, one of the biggest ones is an accidental question inflection.

Body language expert Vanessa Van Edwards, from California, revealed the best ways to spot a liar- saying they give off many cues without realising it

‘A question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence, so it sounds like we’re asking a question even if we’re actually using a statement.

‘If we are listening to someone and we hear them accidentally use the question reflection our brain goes from listening to scrutinising.

‘Our brain wonders ”why did you ask me that”, liars typically accidentally use the question inflection. Liars are asking ”do you believe this?”

‘We did a massive experiment in our lab where we had people play two truths and a lie with us, and we found overwhelmingly one of the biggest patterns was that liars “asked” their lie statement.’

‘Our brain is very adept at this, if we hear someone use the accidental question inflection, we go wait a minute is someone lying to me.’

Vanessa claimed that highly competent people actually go down at the end of their sentences, which is called the ‘downward inflection’.

Vanessa, who is the founder of Science of People, which gives people science-backed skills to improve communication and leadership joined Steven Bartlett (pictured) on The Diary of a CEO podcast

She said: ‘President Obama is very good at slinging down his words which makes you want to listen to listen to him. 

‘That gives him more resonance but it also makes us think he really believes his word because it’s the opposite of the question inflection.’

‘If you give the question reflection on your name, on your speciality, on what you do, people begin to doubt you.’

Vanessa also claimed ‘a volume drop’ is a good indicator that someone might not be telling the truth. 

She explained: ‘So when we’re anxious or nervous we will lose volume and we lose breath…if you’re listening for it you’ll hear where someone literally lost fuel, they literally lost breath, so a sudden drop in volume.’

However she also claimed there are some non-verbal cues to look for when trying to spot a liar. 

She said: ‘So non-verbal, what you’re looking for is incongruencies where the verbal does not match the body. 

‘The biggest and most obvious one is when someone says ”yes” but shakes their head no or says ”no” but shakes their head yes.

‘There’s a cultural exception to this one, India, Bulgaria and Pakistan, they nod a little bit differently, the research actually shows that.’

The author also claimed ‘mismatched facial expressions’ also tends to give away someone’s true feelings.  

She explained: ‘The research finds that the biggest one for liars is disgust. Disgust is an expression that people make without even realising it.

‘When we don’t like something or we smell something bad we crinkle our nose up and we flash the upper whites of our teeth.

‘You’ll notice that liars typically feel dirty when they lie so often times they’ll show disgust with themselves for lying.’