The 10-second trick to spot a liar, according to a psychopathy researcher

• Leanne ten Brinke is a social psychologist specializing in dark personality traits.
• In her new book, "Poisonous People," she outlined some of the ways to spot an immediate lie.
• Asking open-ended and unexpected questions makes it harder to convincingly lie.

Malicious people may live among us, but it doesn't mean we have to fall victim to them.

Leanne ten Brinke, a social psychologist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia, dedicated her career to studying dark personalities. "When I'm talking about poisonous people, I'm specifically talking about what we call the dark tetrad of traits," she told Business Insider.

They include psychopathy (characterized by impulsivity and rule-breaking), narcissism (self-centeredness and entitlement), Machiavellianism (a strong desire for status and control), and sadism (enjoying other people's pain).

While they're different traits, there's also some overlap. "If you score high in one, you also tend to score high in the other because they have those shared components," she explained.

In her new book, "Poisonous People: How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life," released March 10, she outlines how to spot these traits in the wild. To be clear, ten Brinke doesn't want you to start diagnosing anyone you have difficult interactions with as a psychopath or narcissist.

Rather, it's to "identify patterns in other people's behavior that we can recognize, and try to figure out how we are going to deal with callousness or manipulation, for example."

Since lying is common among dark personalities, ten Brinke recommends a "10-second" test: asking certain questions to see how they respond. Here's how it works.

Ask open-ended questions

According to ten Brinke, some research shows that truth-tellers tend to go into more detail when answering questions.

While it's not a perfect tell for lying, it can still be a helpful tool to keep in mind. Because liars tend to give shorter and simpler answers, they benefit from straightforward yes-and-no questions, ten Brinke said.

Answering a more open-ended question, like "what did you talk about in the Thursday meeting you said you went to?" is more challenging if you're lying.

"If I'm lying about it, I need to come up with those details," she said. "I need to make sure they don't contradict what you already know. I need to make sure that I'm remembering them for the next time."

If someone gives a short answer to an open-ended question, she recommends asking them to elaborate more. "Truth-tellers won't have difficulty with simple requests for more detail, but liars will be challenged to come up with more," she wrote in the book.

The more unexpected the questions, the better

If someone has time to prepare a lie and add supporting details, it can be trickier to spot. That's why ten Brinke encourages asking unexpected questions.

In the book, she gave the example of interviewing a job candidate. If they listed five years at the Apple Store on their résumé, they're probably expecting questions like "tell me about your role."

"They probably won't expect, 'I'm wondering, what was your favorite place to grab lunch when you were working at the Apple Store in Berkeley?'" she said. " If they never worked there, they'd likely struggle to generate a detailed and verifiable response."

When confronted with an unexpected question, liars might start speaking slowly, stumble over their words, or just appear to be thinking very hard, she said.

Focus on their words, not their body language

Common stereotypes of lying include nonverbal cues such as avoiding eye contact or fidgeting. Still, there's not much evidence to support them, ten Brinke said.

"If you actually take videos of people lying and people telling the truth, and you count the number of seconds that they're looking at you versus looking away, there's no difference," she said. "If you're waiting to see someone shift in their seat or look to their left, your judgments are probably not going to be particularly accurate."

Instead, the goal should be to have a conversation and try to pick up on vague or brief answers. "The thing that actually does help to discriminate liars from truth-tellers is their words," ten Brinke added.

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