The Ultimate Body Language Book

create facts instead of simply recalling and describing them. In truth tellers emotion flows effortlessly,
but those who are faking it, have to foster theirs and while liars are playing a role, truth tellers are just
living. With an increase in pressure, such as one might experience during cross-examination in law
proceedings, liars might be faced with an unexpected question catching them off guard. Pathological
liars are constantly having to mentally catalog their lies and then entwine them with lies told previously
which is confusing. This makes liars who are caught off guard more likely to delay responding and
increase pauses as they attempt to create information while simultaneously comparing it to information
otherwise presented. They must also compare information to possible information already known to the
listener. It has been said that for every one lie originated, two to three other lies must be created to back
it up. This can become mentally taxing and is a process not required of truth tellers. While pauses in
speech are not definitive cues to deception by itself, since remembering the truth is sometimes difficult
as well, pausing, when it is obvious that the answer should be known, can serve to betray a liar.
Thus, we can expect that when someone is caught with difficult questions that they should exhibit more
nonverbal leakage and might even ‘appear’ to be thinking harder. Some researchers therefore have
linked avoiding eye contact, or looking away to think as a signal of mental processing and lying.
However, as we have seen, looking away sometimes helps us recall real to life events so this, in and of
itself, is not an indication of lying. Using eye direction was outlined in an earlier section, but it’s
important to note that baselining must first be accomplished for this to be anywhere near accurate.
Right and left handed persons will look in different direction depending on whether they are creating
information or recalling it.
A way liars use to reduce the work to carry out lies is to prepare the details in advance. In this condition
we should expect more eye contact, gestures and overall movement because less stress is put on the
mind, and so the body should appear more relaxed. When a liar is not afforded the time to prepare to
tell a lie their movement should be less fluid and their behaviour should exhibit changes in frequencies
especially nervousness. Liars that prepare their lies in advance will have fewer inconsistencies in their
stories, but might appear overly rehearsed whereas liars that can’t prepare will seem to be over
thinking. Thus when truth telling, there should be an inherent fluidity about the conversation. Other
research tells us that liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers and tell less compelling tales. The
stories they tell also have fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents.