The Ultimate Body Language Book

thereby creating the behaviour instead of uncovering it. Contrary to popular belief we discussed that
eye contact can often increase during lying rather than decrease due to “duping delight” where a person
receives a charge from pulling one over on someone else. We learned that lying is hard work so should
expect that when someone is caught with difficult questions that they should exhibit more nonverbal
leakage and might even ‘appear’ to be thinking harder. Nervousness and guilt was touched on which
showed that at times liars can give themselves up through a higher pitch, faster and louder speech,
speech errors or stuttering, blushing, an increase in blink rate, fidgeting, dilation of the pupils or
sweating, but that these cues only reveal liars that actually feel guilt, and not all do. Liars can also tend
to “freeze up” and reduce movement and we related it back to professional poker players. Next we
looked at how liars remain uncommitted to their lies, and thereby use less exuberant gesturing, and can
stop or reduce touching when they lie.
Next we looked at the “truth bias” which shows that an average of sixty-seven percent accuracy is
found when detecting the truth, whereas forty-four percent is found while detecting deception because
people expect to be told the truth so have adapted to detect it. We found in this chapter that truth tellers
(and liars) are sometimes less cooperative, but not always, and looked at the FACT or the facial action
coding system as another way to detect lies. “Microexpressions” were defined as facial expressions that
flash across the face in 1/25 to 1/5 of a second and can betray liars because they are difficult to
consciously control and appear more honest. We discussed that while lying requires fabrication, telling
the truth can be just as difficult since details must be recalled from memory. Police officers, we found,
are fairly good at detecting lies, but this is in spite of what they are taught rather than because of it.
Lying language in children was discussed and then we classified the major gestures that are usually
associated with lying, but that aren’t always actually indicative of it. Our aim in doing so was to avoid
doing them so we can avoid being mislabeled as untruthful by others. These commonly associated
gestures include touching the face and ears, scratching the neck, pulling at the collar, touching the eyes,
mouth, or nose and closed body language. We also examined eye patterns in lying, verbal and
paraverbal cues and nervous body language as they relate to lying. We discovered that machines such
as the fMRI, thermal scanners, eye trackers, pupillometers and stress sniffers had a much greater
success rate when compared to people, but were also expensive and impractical.
We finished up the chapter by examining true success which is achieved by the experts; the CIA who
scores seventy-three percent, sheriffs sixty-seven percent, psychologist sixty-eight percent and the
secret service who scored sixty-four percent as well as techniques for actually detecting lies by
comparing the baseline of a person as they shift from comfort to discomfort based on questioning or
other stimulus.
Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
by Chris Site Author • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments
Final? There’s no end to the constant flow of research on Body Language and how amazing our Brains
are… Stay tuned for more, and visit our Articles section of the site for the newest research.
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