How do you detect untrustworthy people from the beginning?

Lack of eye contact, and an air of all talk and no action.

You should know in the first 3–4 seconds. First impressions are everything and very accurate. Read the book Blink sometime and it will fill you in on this incredible ability of the subconscious to evaluate people you meet in a blink of an eye. Then as @Blackberry suggests, body language will confirm what your mind has already made up.

Difficult to nearly impossible to detect, is my opinion.
Any ‘obvious’ signs of untrustworthiness can easily be caused by something completely else (shyness, uncomfortableness, too tight shoes, etc.).
You will find out in time if someone is to trust or not.
But then again, I trust everybody from the get go.

I run a barrage of psych tests on every person I meet.

@rebbel I agree with you… sometime body language is not accurately providing good information, as you said, they can be affected by shyness or other factors. Say I am very shy at first and I don’t look into people eyes as I find it difficult to see someone eye to eye if I like them…

I listen to what my dogs have to say on the subject. They are generally more sensitive and accurate at judging character than I am.

I think it is difficult to judge the trustworthiness of an individual without some significant history involved. That is not to say that one should always go around with their shields at maximum. However, how much trust one places in an individual should be proportional to how trustworthy they have shown themselves to be in the past. In short, trust is earned over time.

Although you can infer a lot from body language, it can be misleading. Being socially insecure is not the same as being untrustworthy, but they carry many of the same body language traits.

You can’t know for sure until time passes and you see them in various situations. Are they honest in tipping and shopping? Do they treat their other friends well? Experience is the best predictor.

@YoBob True, but I’m a very sceptical person, I don’t give all the information to someone new and I don’t know. I usually take time to free the trust then I reveal myself a bit like onions…

But then those people may find me untrustworthy because I am not totally honest with them at first? But in fact, once you know me, I am the person you can rely on and I am the kind of person keeping my words.

No one can ever be 100% sure, but body language does say a lot about what people are thinking, meaning if they are just talking to you and telling you what they think or whether they’re trying to bulls*t you. You can also find out a lot by what they actually say. But you have to engage people in conversation to find out how they are. You can’t just sit back and only let them talk (although you can figure out the really bad bullsh*tters that way, because they’re not subtle). It’s very difficult to tell how people online really are, because you don’t get to see their body language or hear the intonations and inflections in their voice. Plus words on a screen, can sometimes come across very differently than real words said in person.

I would have a hard time trusting someone who just started blurting out dramatic or personal things to me, especially if they were gesturing wildly. If I’ve just met someone, I need to take time to get to know them and for them to get to know me. I’m pretty honest and straightforward, but I don’t give out personal info to anyone, immediately. Even if it’s someone that seems OK.

I also never trust anyone who wants to know all sorts of personal information about me, right after we’ve met, or someone who gets irritated if I don’t tell them everything they want to know about me, in the beginning. That’s a huge red flag.

If a person is talking to you and seems to be talking non-stop about themselves, either complaining about how they’ve been wronged, or the opposite of that, telling you how fantastic they are, that’s a sign to you that that person is very self centered and probably doesn’t much care what you think or feel. That’s not to say that very chatty people, in general are like that. Two of my best friends could knock out an all night filibuster, but they’re very interesting women and they engage others in the conversation, they don’t become the conversation.

Be aware of overly dramatic statements of any kind. And be aware of too much flattery (towards you) too soon, especially if it’s rather personal or potentially sexual in nature (those are big red flags).

Also beware of people who make big bold dramatic statements (that sound mean or scary, or extremist, like political statements or racial statements or statements against one group or another) and then, when you react in a shocked manner, tell you that they were only kidding, or that you need to lighten up or that you can’t take a joke. Walk away from those people, quickly!

I wish I knew!

My little doggie has been pretty good though.

@Kardamom OK quite a few tips there… I agree that online you cannot really tell about the words are being put as you cannot see them….

@all who use doggie to detect untrustworthy people: Can you tell me what your doggie do when they detect liars?

@Londongirl: My dog did the following with 3 dates that went nowhere good:

When they talked to him, my dog kept looking at me and kept out of arm’s reach when they reached to pet him. One guy actually bent down to hold and rub my dog but doggie kept looking away.

To see how he reacts to males he likes is night and day but I never “got it” til later.

@Neizvestnaya Too bad I don’t have doggie but cattie…. My cat will follow visitor around like a butler to observe them… Too bad I don’t take every new people I meet to my home, so I cannot rely on my cat to give me signs…

You can test them by giving them some 3 $200 bills and tell them to put it somewhere and never take it out. If the person takes it out than he is untrustworthy.

PS:I saw this situation in the diary of the wimpy kid

THe last straw.

There are so many new ideas here to test out untrustworthy people that I have never thought of… hmmm

Just a feeling…but I’ve been fooled a few times in the past

@Lightlyseared I’ve met my match! Nothing like an old psych test to break the ice!
I go with my gut. I feel I’m astute enough to know a bulls***er when I see one, unless they’re a really smooth operator. Those pesky ones can be hard to detect. If they dupe me, I lick my wounds for a while and move on.

Sometimes I felt the person was good at the beginning then trusted them and then they let me down…

@Londongirl Ah, the pesky smooth talkers I mentioned. They’re everywhere I’m afraid and we’re all susceptible to their antics. We can’t always be sure I guess.

Who knows what may be going on in someone’s life when you first meet them. I have had bad first impressions with a few people who I later came to really like.

In my experience you can only tell the untrustworthy ones when they do or continually say things are untrustworthy.

I try to give everyone a fair chance…even after a mess up or two.

@stardust I guess you are right… I felt for those smooth talkers… next time I will bring my cat to meet them!

@tranquilsea True but you need to take risk to give them a chance though… but I guess at least the more you get let down the more you know they are untrustworthy…

@Londongirl people generally get two chances with me, depending on the severity of the let down. If it’s really bad then I pretty much stop talking to them with no second chances. It’s not a perfect system but I’d rather err on the side of giving people a chance then axe people who are really decent people.

I think some people are better at just “sensing” these things than others. Most people have my trust until they prove me wrong. Sometimes I immediately sense something just not right in what they say to me. I don’t know what it is, but it just doesn’t add up. I still try to reserve judgement for hard proof, but if the hair on my arms starts to rise right away I proceed with caution.

@tranquilsea True, but I always give people chances if they try to make amendments… but sometimes you don’t know if they are genuine or not…

@Judi I usually go with gut feelings and I would say 80% I am right so far, but that failing ones for some reasons I couldn’t detect them at the beginning…

For sure? After you’ve known them for 20 years, usually, but not always. People change, not necessarily together or at the same time.

@Sunny2 Nope not 20 years, with that length of time, I think I would know them better…

@Londongirl You haven’t heard of husbands who have been just fine, getting to age forty and then wanting to sow some wild oats? It’s called Midlife Crisis.

When their lips move.

@Sunny2 Yes, I totally understand some guys at the mid life crisis in 40s or 50s, then they want younger girls to make them feel alive again… sad but yes its true.