The Ultimate Body Language Book

level of guilt.
4. If possible have the person you wish to read to first relax. With time everyone relaxes, even guilty
people so if you can put off asking important questions or build rapport, do so.
5. Look to establish a baseline. This is especially important if you don’t know the person you are
questioning all that well. Look for cues they use normally especially mannerisms and pacifiers.
6. As you begin questioning, watch for an increased use of pacifiers. This will be especially telling
when they seem to increase dramatically during specific questions or when certain topics arise. When
they arise, it will provide clues as to which information requires further investigation.
7. Pause frequently after asking questions. It is important to avoid putting out too many questions all at
once because it will only serve to create stress. Give the person you are trying to read enough time to
think and answer questions so as to avoid false positives.
8. Stay on task and maintain focus. When people feel stress they often want to change the subject
matter or avoid questions. If a person gets the opportunity to change the subject their will emit fewer
nonverbal tells of deception because when people speak they get to choose and control the topic.
9. Chatter is not truth. Listening to one side of the story often produces a bias and on the surface, the
more we listen to people, the more we tend to trust and believe what they tell us. Advertising
campaigns work through a similar mechanism as the more we hear the message, the more we think it to
be true. Eventually, if we hear messages enough time, they work into our subconsciousness to become
“ours”, they re-write our reality. When people present a huge amount of information about a topic, they
appear to be telling the truth, however this is not always the case as even creative liars can go at lengths
to produce elaborate and believable lies. It is not the amount of information provided that matters, but
rather the accuracy of the information which can only come through verification of the facts.
10. Stress in and stress out. There are two times when stressful nonverbals are emitted, once when the
question is asked which can appear like distancing behaviours such as arms and foot withdrawl and
then again when pacifying is needed to calm. These come out as neck touching, stroking the hair and so
forth.
11. Isolate the cause of stress. Is stress due to being asked stressful questions, or because someone is
being interrogated. Not all stressful nonverbal language is due to lying and often people that are honest,
show nervous language.
12. Pacifiers tell us a lot. Pacifying body language tells us when someone is stressed which tells us
which scenarios, questions or information has created it. It therefore follows that pacifying cues tell us
which areas require more thorough investigation.
Chapter 16 - Deception and Lie Detection
Summary – Chapter 16
We began this chapter knowing full well that lie detection through nonverbal means was difficult at
best. However, we did cover a huge amount of clues that can help us by raising suspicion and provide
us with leads to delve further. We began the chapter by looking at the reasons for lying which includes
hiding feelings, preferences and attitudes. We found that lying is used to reduce disagreements and hurt
feelings and is a useful skill in impression management. We listed the nine reasons people lie which are
to avoid punishment, to gain access to a reward, to protect another person or one’s self from being
punished, to win admiration of others, to avoid awkward social situations, to avoid embarrassment, to
maintain privacy and to gain at the expense of others.
We found that by grilling someone for the truth it is often enough to cause someone to feel stress