silent lies
Body signals that show you are being lied to
are you lying to These body signals speak for it.
© LoloStock / Adobe Stock
Can you tell from the body signals of your counterpart that they are lying to you?
“Language can lie, the body can’t,” explains body language expert Traci Brown on her website. And indeed: There are body signals that indicate that the other person likes you. But does the body of the person in front of you also reveal less nice things – for example that you are being lied to? While science tends to doubt this, there are some who are convinced that body language also reveals untruths.
First you have to know each other
The most important thing first: Body language is not as universal as one might initially assume. Everyone has idiosyncrasies in their behavior and language, so there is no kind of “universal translation” that will unequivocally show that the other person is telling a lie. So it helps if you know the person you’re putting through their paces, because then you probably know their way of speaking and interacting with you.
But we don’t always know the person we’re talking to very well – is it possible to guess lies? Mark Bouton, an FBI agent with 30 years of professional experience, has probably never had the advantage of knowing his counterpart well in his decades of work, which is why he advises “Business Insider” magazine to “observe the person for a while, while making small talk or asking innocuous questions to see how he:she usually reacts and what tics the person has”. If the other person then shows several signs of a lie, if more specific or suggestive questions are asked that the person hasn’t shown before, then one can assume that he is lying.
Body signals that indicate a lie You can see some signs of lying in the other person’s face © master1305 / Adobe Stock
Behavioral scientist and body language expert Vanessa Van Edwards points to a few “red flags” that can indicate a lie, including:
- They purse their lips: This may indicate that they are withholding information. A red flag that may leave you asking right now.
- They end their sentences questioningly: This can be a sign that they themselves are not entirely convinced of what they are saying. “Liars often do this inadvertently because they subconsciously ask, ‘Do you believe me?'” says the expert.
- Literal distancing: If a person suddenly leans back or takes a step back, this indicates that they are uncomfortable with the situation – for example because of the lie.
Bouton also knows some body signals that indicate a lie, for example:
- Frequent blinking: Stressed people blink more often. “Typically, a person blinks every 10 or 12 seconds,” the agent said. Anyone who blinks conspicuously often is nervous – possibly because of a lie in the room.
- The person remembers “wrongly”: If you ask a right-handed person about something they say they saw, they will most likely look up and then to the left to recall what happened. “But if the person looks up and to the right, they use their imagination and make up an answer,” Bouton warns. For left-handers it is exactly the other way around.
- They blush: Blushing is an involuntary reflex triggered by the sympathetic nervous system triggering the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline is pouring out here and you should ask yourself: why?
What does science say – can we really tell lies by body language?
Being able to read the other person like an open book – an exciting idea, but unrealistic, at least from a scientific point of view. “Several decades of empirical research have shown that none of the non-verbal signs that psychological folklore assumes are diagnostic of lying or truthfulness are actually indicative of it,” states in a studywhich refers to several older scientific works.
“People are mediocre lie-catchers when they pay attention to behavior,” says one other study. The evaluation of micro-expressions on the face as an indicator of a lie also has no scientific basis. In the end, even the people who are assumed to be good “lie detectors”—like police investigators, psychiatrists, and others—would get little better results than laypeoplerevealed a meta-analysis.
So all nonsense? At least not as easy as we might like. No one likes being lied to, that much is clear. But perhaps this requires a basic discussion with the other person rather than a close look at their lips and eye movements.
Sources used: cnbc.com, businessinsider.com, betterhelp.com, frontiersin.org, journals.sagepub.com, annualreviews.org, bodylanguagetrainer.com