Eric Ravenscraft – 2/8/16 – LifeHacker

Lies are hard to come up with on the spot, even for seasoned liars. If you suspect someone is feeding you a false story, draw it out by making them think too much about their story.

As tips blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree explains, a liar naturally wants to keep a lie simple. The fewer details they have to come up with on the spot that are all consistent with each other, the easier it is to be convincing. However, you can counter this by asking open-ended questions that increase the cognitive stress on the person you suspect is lying. The more you have to make them think, the less likely they are to tell a straight story:

So if you want to make a liar reveal themselves, you want to increase their cognitive load. The more they have to think, the more likely they are to make a mistake.

How can you do this? Police detectives ask open-ended questions that … read more here