Bluffing tips: how to bluff, and how to tell when someone is

Bluffers usually get caught by their story, because it's too long or too tidy. So most of bluffing is deciding what you'll say, and then saying less of it.

• Know how you act when you're innocent. What gives you away is change. If you're chatty as a villager and quiet as the wolf, people feel the difference even if they can't name it. Decide how you play a normal round, then play every round like that.
• Keep the story short. Liars over-explain. Give one reason and say it once. If someone pushes, give the same reason again instead of three new ones.
• Leave in a strange detail. Made-up stories tend to be tidy. Real memories have odd bits and small mistakes in them, and a big review of research on lying found liars' stories had fewer of both. "I suspected him because he said 'trust me' twice, and my uncle says that right before he borrows money" sounds true, because nobody would bother to invent it.
• Admit a small doubt. "I could be wrong, but" is something honest people say all the time. Liars tend to rehearse a confident version and cling to it.
• Agree with someone. Find a player who's saying something close to your line and back them up. It's hard to suspect two people at once, and they'll defend you to defend themselves.
• Don't lead the charge. The loudest accuser is the next person everyone looks at. Let someone else point first, then agree with a little less heat than they have.
• Vote like an innocent player. In Mafia and Werewolf, your votes are evidence. Wolves who never vote against each other get found by whoever keeps notes. Sometimes the right move is voting out your own teammate.
• Prepare for the question you dread. Decide your answer before anyone asks it. Make it boring. Boring sounds true.

• Think about the argument, not your face. If you're watching yourself, you'll look like someone watching themselves. Put your attention on what you're saying and why.
• Look where you normally look. Staring someone down to prove you're not avoiding eye contact is its own tell. If you usually look at your drink when you think, look at your drink.
• Laugh if it's funny. Innocent people laugh when they're accused of something ridiculous. Fighting a smile looks worse than smiling.
• Breathe out before you answer. A slow breath buys you a second and keeps your voice from jumping. It also looks like thinking, which is fine. Honest people think too.
• Give your hands their usual job. Hold your cup, rest your phone face down, do whatever you always do. If you fidget, fidget the way you always fidget.

Ask people how to spot a liar and you'll mostly hear one answer: liars look away. A group of researchers calling themselves the Global Deception Research Team asked people around the world how they could tell when someone was lying. One answer showed up across cultures: liars avoid eye contact ("A World of Lies," 2006).

It doesn't hold up. A review that pooled 1,338 measurements of 158 possible signs of lying found that most behaviors had no link to lying, or only a weak one (DePaulo and colleagues, 2003). Liars came across as a little more tense, and their stories were a little less convincing, but the differences were small. Honest people look away and shift in their seats all the time, usually because they're thinking, or bored.

The number to remember comes from the psychologists Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo, who in 2006 combined research covering 24,483 judges. People sorted lies from truths correctly 54% of the time. A coin gets 50% ("Accuracy of deception judgments"). If you think you can always tell, you probably can't, and that's worth knowing before you vote someone out.

Skip the face and work on the story. The useful evidence is what people say, and whether it matches what they said before.

• Ask why, then ask for one more detail. Real opinions come with a story attached. A made-up one runs out of road after a question or two, or gets suspiciously neat.
• Check it against earlier rounds. People are consistent about what they think. In Mafia, track who defended whom on day one. In a game about opinions, remember who hated pineapple on pizza an hour ago.
• Look for change, not nerves. Compare someone with a round where you know they were innocent. A quiet person being quiet tells you nothing. A loud person going quiet might.
• Listen for over-explaining. Three reasons where one would do, or an answer to a question nobody asked.
• Follow the votes. Over a few rounds, who votes with whom is better evidence than any face. Partners protect each other, or overdo it trying not to.
• Don't convict a bad arguer. Some people are just bad at arguing. A weak case isn't a lie, and a polished one isn't the truth.

And expect to be wrong a lot. One person's read is barely better than a coin, so compare notes before anyone votes.

The Lobbyist is a bluffing game where the lie is an opinion, not a secret role. Everyone picks a side of a question on their own phone. One player, the Lobbyist, is told to argue the side they didn't pick. The table argues, then votes on who didn't mean it. Nobody gets knocked out, so a bad bluff costs you one round, not the whole night.

At real tables, the Lobbyist got away with it 54% of the time. Here's what else we found. To get better at arguing a side you don't believe, start with how to play devil's advocate, then read how to play and try it.