6 signs you’re dealing with a fake person, according to psychology (2024)

What’s a worse feature in a person than inauthenticity?

When someone is fake, you have no idea what to believe and whether or not you can trust them.

You never know when they’re being their true selves and when they’re not, and it can be a real mess.

People behave inauthentically in many different ways. They might say things that aren’t true, misrepresent themselves, and even show false emotions.

It’s not always malicious, either. Often, fake people are just trying to fit in.

So, how can you tell if a person is being authentic or not?

You might get a tingle in your intuition, but if you want to really be sure, there’s something you can turn to – psychology.

Researchers have done plenty of studies into how inauthentic people behave and have come up with some very interesting results.

So, if you’re not sure if a person’s being real or not, here are six signs you’re dealing with a fake person, according to psychology.

1) Fake people fake behaviors.

What I’m trying to say here is that fake people are comfortable with active deception.

Think about meeting someone for the first time at a party. They ask what you do, where you’re from, where you went to school, and lots more, and they seem absorbed and sometimes surprised by your answers.

After your conversation, a friend walks up and says jokingly, “Hey, I just saw you talking to Jack. How was it? I already told him everything about you, so I was worried you’d have nothing left to talk about!”

Yes, you’ve just realized that Jack was faking in your very first interaction. Although he knew the answers to his questions, he still asked them and acted as though he didn’t.

This shows that he’s perfectly comfortable with deceiving you and that probably doesn’t make you feel very positively toward him.

According to research, people fake all sorts of behaviors depending on their abilities, motivations, and opportunities. They can pretend to be good and moral, bad and unwell, or even good or bad at different activities.

But all of these actions are intentionally deceptive, and when you catch them in the act, you know that you have a fake person on your hands.

2) They always try to show only positive features.

You know what it’s like.

3) They express fake feelings.

Inauthentic people express inauthentic feelings.

They’ll go to a funeral and act sad even when they’re not really broken up at all.

They’ll whoop and holler, cheering when they find out that a friend got engaged when they’re actually bitterly jealous.

Why do they frequently express these fake feelings?

Generally, they show the emotions that they think other people want to see. They want to be included and seen as being a part of the group, so they go along with the general feeling that the group is expressing at the time.

The problem with this is that it’s really hard to actually pull off fake emotions.

A real, authentic smile is more than just showing your teeth, after all, and without those real wrinkles around the eyes, people can tell it’s not real.

4) They say what they think people want to hear.

Another way that fake people go along with the group in order to fit in is to say things that people want to hear.

They’ll often wait for others to speak first and then echo their opinions.

Or, if they weren’t sly enough to do this and spoke first, they’ll frequently change what they said to help it fall closer in line with what other people in their group think.

This second behavior is seen as highly deceptive, and it seems to be related to self-control. Surprisingly, people with more self-control are able to express themselves more authentically and practice less deception than people with low self-control.

Telling people what they want to hear might not even be intentionally deceptive. It may be motivated simply by a desire for a person to make themself look good to others.

But lying or covering up details is still involved, and that still constitutes deception.

This is something that we can often pick up on because people will tell different things to different groups of people. So you’ll hear contrasting opinions or contradictory facts from the same person, and this will let you know they’re fake.

Ironically, research shows that when we do catch people who are being deceptive, we’re more likely to dislike them and lie back to them.

So rather than getting into other’s good graces, fake people often fall from grace instead.

5) They try to please everyone at once.

There’s an awful lot of truth behind the old suggestion from poet John Lydgate that “you can’t please all the people all of the time.”

Legendary one-liner comedian Mitch Hedberg stressed that feeling of futility with his adapted quote: “Y’know, you can’t please all the people all the time… and last night, all those people were at my show.”

But amazingly, there are still people out there who try to please everyone.

These are the people-pleasers, and at times, they can be really fake, too.

I know because I used to be one of them.

In case you think that being a people-pleaser is about being high in agreeableness, which is a generally positive social trait to have, there are other things at work.

People-pleasers work to keep others happy, usually at the expense of their own time, energy, and even happiness. They often do this because they want to be liked and thought of as a good person, generally looking for validation from the outside.

But some of their pleasing behaviors start to lean toward fakeness. They could tell people what they want to hear to keep them happy, which is deceptive.

They also tell people that they’re not being put out by doing favors, though they really are, so that’s fake behavior as well.

By trying to be everything to everyone, people-pleasers often end up having to be fake and without any real substance of their own.

6) They feel bad about themselves.

What does being fake all the time do to a person?

Researchers have found that people behave in phony ways to gain advantages or to conform so that they feel accepted by a group. However, by being inauthentic all the time, they constantly suppress their true thoughts and opinions, and this can lead to feelings of self-denigration.

Imagine a person who pretends to like someone they actually despise so they can gain some advantage. Think about someone who lies about their qualifications to get a job.

These people may gain in the short term, but being inauthentic can cause long-term damage.

It can make people feel insecure and anxious about being caught. It can also make people feel impure and bad.

One study found some very interesting results about people who are inauthentic.

They discovered that after people had behaved inauthentically, they were inclined to do something pro-social, like donating to a charity as if to balance out their bad behavior/

Surprisingly, if they were given the opportunity to physically clan themselves afterward, though, they no longer felt the need to do something pro-social.

So, it seems being fake truly makes people feel bad and impure.

Last words

These six signs you’re dealing with a fake person, according to psychology, should help you spot a fake person.

That way, their false and insincere behavior won’t bring you any harm.