An incredibly important part of successfully playing casino table games is keeping your cool when the pressure is on. For example, if you’re involved in a high-stakes game of Blackjack, you don’t need everyone at the table to know you’ve been dealt a pair of eights. Some call this triumph keeping a poker face. Others call it lying.
When mastering the art of deception, some people can easily tell tall tales, while others let the nerves get the best of them. To learn more about the art of lying, we surveyed people across the country to determine which states in the U.S. have the best poker faces or, in other words, which states are home to the most adept liars.
We evaluated four key factors: frequency of lying, proficiency in lying, comfort level while lying, and success rates in getting away with it. Read on to see if your state emerged as a champion of deception or if your hometown’s poker face game could use some improvement.
Key Findings
- The three things Americans say they lie about most often are reasons for not seeing people (24%), how they feel (21%), and secrets they’re keeping (17%). Men most often lie when keeping secrets (20%), while women most often lie when providing reasons for not seeing people (29%).
- The people Americans lie to most often are their friends (26%), strangers (16%), and their parents (14%).
- Americans think the biggest tells of a liar are avoiding eye contact (46%), closed body language (15%), and changes in voice (14%).