Lesson 5

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Lying

Advertising agency executive Charles, returning from a client meeting (speaking to his boss):

Charles: ‘Great news. I managed to convince them that they should take the back cover for the next available issue.’

Boss: July?

Charles: ‘No, I didn’t have to. They convinced themselves.’

The area of lying and deception holds great fascination for many people and is the subject of much scientific study with psychologists and other researchers continually exploring the area.

The effectiveness and success of any interaction is determined by how the listener perceives the message (and you!), not by what you may have intended it to communicate. So it’s perception – on the other person’s part.

They’ll base their perception on your body language behaviour as well as your words. But, as we know, we can all give off negative signals that may not reflect us in the right light. We may give the impression of deceit when it’s actually not the case. Equally we may interpret another person’s body language signals as them not being entirely honest – and that may not be the case. Deception is often just perception.

We’re discussing more self-serving types of lies in this Lesson, rather than the social type referred to above. Indeed, we could argue that in this area it’s become socially acceptable to indulge in this sort of conversation. They can be classified as statements made to avoid being hurtful or to be socially polite without offending; or to protect someone from the truth. Just think how parents have to conceal information from young children because they’re ‘not ready’ to be told the true facts. Or when those same children in their teenage years conceal details of their ‘liaisons’ with the opposite sex – because they, the parents, are ‘not ready’ to be told the truth (there’s a switch!). It’s a fact that a lot of relationships in personal life are only sustained because of, as Paul Ekman put it, ‘the myths they preserve’.

When questioned, by far the top two areas in which people seem to want to become more skilful – in body language terms – relate to:

• liking (which we will cover in Lesson 7): ‘How do I know if he/she likes me?’ and ‘What makes him/her like me?’
• lying: ‘How do I know if a person is telling me the truth?’

Types of deceit

The spectrum of telling untruths is broad – from not doing homework to ‘social lies’ in response to the ‘How big is my bottom?’ and ‘Do you think I’ve got a good singing voice?’ variety, to the antics of businessmen negotiating a high-power deal, to the Grand Jury testimony of former President Bill Clinton. But even the best forensic minds have agreed on one thing – there is no ‘one thing’ that provides the ‘Eureka’ moment that tells you, ‘Aha – that’s a lie.’

Thankfully most of the ‘lies’ that we tell (or are on the receiving end of) are more of the social type rather than those that destroy the fabric of society. Telling your dinner party hostess that her home-made crème brûlée was so much better than ‘shop-bought’ – even though you inadvertently spotted the shop’s packaging when you took the bottle of wine to the kitchen – is far better than damaging a relationship. We quite naturally don’t want to make people feel bad about themselves on occasions, or to embarrass them.

Just an aside here – sometimes we’ll get into the situation where a person is telling us something which is patently a lie but they believe it to be the truth, and they won’t budge. Tricky one this, isn’t it? What they’re telling you, which somebody has recounted to them, is clearly a lie to you, but this person believes it to be the truth. For example, the builder says to you that you told one of his workers to fit stainless steel dimmer switches, and the worker maintains that you had said, when asked about the choice of plastic or steel, ‘We’ll leave it to you.’ Somebody’s lying or somebody’s got false-memory syndrome.

Check the cluster of behaviours in a situation like this because what you perceive to be a lie may actually be a misunderstanding or genuine belief, and so the lack of negative signals (which we’ll look at shortly) would confirm this. So, if somebody tells you the Earth is flat – and they genuinely believe it – sometimes you may have to go along with it.

We spend most of our lives interacting with people in relationships. If we always said what we thought, society would break down. For more serious things we rely on the fact that people tell the truth, otherwise that breakdown of trust (which is the most important thing in any relationship) is difficult to repair.

How difficult?

The consensus seems to be that unlike most other aspects of body language, lying proves very difficult to read. This applies to laypeople, such as parents, and people in occupational roles, such as the police, judges and jury, and politicians (even though many are quite adept themselves!). Tests by Paul Ekman in the 70s and 80s showed that when people were asked to detect behaviour that was indicative of lying, the results repeatedly came out at no better than chance – in other words 50/50.

As with the reading of all other aspects of body language behaviour, there is no one single gesture that you can look for to confirm your views. It’s made worse by the fact that it’s an activity – since we’re talking about lying, let’s be honest about it – that we’ve all been practising since childhood. Even as teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, we’ll be selective with the truth with our beleaguered parents. So – practice made perfect.

So, you have to work those observational skills a little harder and sharpen up your listening skills in the area of vocal inflection.

Baseline behaviour

If there’s one golden rule that you take from this topic of trying to detect lies from a person’s body language and vocal cues, it’s an understanding of the importance of baseline behaviour. This is important if we’re concerned about the reliability of our observations.

Of course it’s easier with people you know intimately and people you have frequent interaction with, both personally and professionally. Friends, family and people with whom you have frequent contact will have provided you with a subconscious ‘store’ in your memory of their baseline behaviour. You’re aware of their general demeanour in a ‘normal’ situation when they’re speaking truthfully, and so a departure from the ‘norm’ may alert you to a discrepancy between what they’re saying and what you can see – or hear in terms of ‘paralanguage’. But you can also quickly establish a pattern after meeting people for the first time. Again, the watchwords – look and listen. You’re observing bodily behaviour (obviously including the face) and vocal cues. After a short time you’ll have two sets of behavioural cues to interpret. So much of this is down to your all-important ‘intuition’. That subconscious store of knowledge that the brain registers and stores and then provides us with a warning sign if behavioural cues are different – a kind of ‘sixth sense’ or heightened awareness in reading behaviour.

Observe a person’s behaviour ‘style’ when they are telling the truth about factual statements. We all have our own personal idiosyncrasies. For example, some people may have excessive eye avoidance when speaking, or they may just move about in their seat frequently or fidget a lot. So to conclude at the outset that their actions betray guilt, anxiety or deception may be totally inaccurate. If that’s their ‘baseline’ when responding with truthful answers then these are obviously not good indicators in detecting deliberate deceit.

If you’re dealing with somebody you already know then it’s a little easier. You can compare a person’s baseline behaviour with any deviations (again, that occur in clusters) that are displayed. If it’s somebody you don’t know too well or are meeting for the first time, then observe their manner of behaving and speaking when everything is relaxed and easy-going – in other words, when there is no discomfort on their part.

As you begin to become familiar with a person’s mannerisms, look at all the areas we’ve discussed in the previous Lessons for indications of ‘deviant’ behaviour. You need to look at facial expressions, eye activity and gaze, hand movements, self-comfort gestures, arm movements, feet and leg activity, and paralanguage.

No one ever said that detecting lies was easy. There are too many variables at play. An individual action or gesture may be exhibited for a reason that has nothing to do with deception – merely discomfort. So – more than ever – we have to look for clusters of behaviour in order for us to make an evaluation.One expression or gesture cannot be used to detect deception all the time. A rub on the side of the nose, for example, after you’ve asked an interviewee whether they have any other job offers ‘on the table’ may just be a spontaneous action at that moment – on their part – as opposed to a ‘disguised mouth cover’ as they blurt out an untruth. We may strike lucky on many occasions but at other times our interpretation will lead to an incorrect conclusion.

Even with people you don’t know and are perhaps meeting for the first time, it’s possible – after even just a few minutes – to subconsciously register their normal modus operandi in behavioural terms.

Life is like a game of poker

If you’re familiar with poker (or you’ve ever been accused of having a ‘poker face’) you’ll know that the excitement of this ever-popular game has a lot to do with the reading of your fellow players’ body language. But of course they’re doing it to you too. So you have to be expert at controlling your non-verbal behaviour so that you’re able to hide your feelings (minimising leakage). Then of course there is the bluffing – putting on the body language to indicate you’ve got a bad hand (when it’s good) and when you’ve got a bad hand, the opposite.

You probably engage in a lot of poker-type activity at work – especially if you work in an office and you attend meetings as part of your job. As we discussed earlier, it’s in the workplace that you see the most ‘masking’, as we all play our respective ‘roles’ at the same time as trying not to display any hint of weakness in our façade that may indicate we’re ‘not up to the job’. Substitute the poker table for a meeting room table and you see the same ‘game playing’ at work. In any negotiation the same tactics of hiding true feelings and bluffing come into play.

You may have heard the word ‘tell’ in poker parlance, which refers to a particular body language gesture transmitted subconsciously (leakage) – the way a person twiddles with their pencil when they’re anxious, for example – or deliberately, as part of a bluff. You may have seen films in which one or more players are wearing outsize dark glasses so as not to give away anything through the eyes. We know that pupils dilate when we’re experiencing joy of any kind. Also the blinking rate increases in times of anxiety or anger. Whether you play poker or not, it’s interesting to watch players in action, whether it’s in Las Vegas or your living room. As well as observing a great deal of masking of feelings and the challenge of spotting if you’ve witnessed a ‘tell’, you’ll see a good demonstration of how liars pit their wits against chance.

Back to the real world. We can’t know just from one isolated gesture if a person is deceiving us (for whatever reason, be it harmless or more serious) – we need to look for a number of supporting clues. To help us we’ll take a look at all the research findings, and the most effective clues as to whether a person is being ‘economical with the truth’ or whether they’re telling a downright lie.

The microexpression

The face is obviously the main focus for covering up deception. When there’s a clash of feelings or emotions, the turmoil in the brain means that the canvas of our emotions – the face – may display that flashing ‘microexpression’ that Ekman introduced us to after his extensive studies on the human face. Being involuntary, the idea is that they express the true emotion felt, as opposed to the emotion the person is trying to present outwardly. The limbic area of our brain – which handles emotions – throws out a spontaneous physical reaction if we’re feeling any kind of negative emotion – guilt or shame, for example.

This microexpression comes and goes in a fleeting moment – it can last for less than half a second – before the ‘mask’ takes hold again. This mask could have been one of concern, joy or even a ‘poker face’, but it’s interrupted by the microexpression of a sneer, for example, or malevolent smile or other contradictory expression – very revealing for your best friend, boss, spouse, police or jury in a court.

These brief facial movements – that leak the truth – are involuntary and only the really observant and perceptive person can pick them up. The small or inconsequential lies that a person tells, ‘I only had one drink at the station bar’, don’t usually provoke enough emotion to generate negative ‘leakage’ (though perhaps another type of leakage in the train’s WC!). Lies of greater magnitude usually generate enough physiological activity so that it shows on the exterior.

Telltale smile

There’s a general perception that you can tell when somebody is lying about something because they will tend to display a smile in order to mask the truth. The reason being, of course, that it’s the polar opposite of a person’s countenance that you would expect to see if they were telling an untruth. A smile looks less suspicious and also has the added advantage – as we know – of usually generating positive feelings in the other person. That’s what most of us human beings are like – always taking people at face value, aren’t we?

All the studies show that in the main it’s the opposite – these people display less smiling. It’s not that the liars don’t smile: they just smile less, believing that because the common perception is that people expect them to smile a lot if they’re lying then they’ll thwart them by not doing it.

When people are smiling they’ll adopt a ‘false’ smile while they’re lying (lower half of the face, remember?). Again, look for the classic signs of the non-genuine smile (discussed in Lesson 2). Remember that the fake smile appears rapidly and is held much longer than the genuine one, and then rapidly disappears from sight.

The ‘felt’ or real smile, just to remind you, appears slowly and then fades slowly as well. It’s tough to produce a real smile when you’re actually lying to someone. Also, remember that the non-genuine smile is asymmetrical and the corners of the mouth, rather than being upward, are turned down. A lop-sided smile is, for most of us, quite evidently not a true smile of joy. But we don’t tend to care much in normal ‘polite’ interactions because a smile is a smile and we’re conditioned to appreciate that. But if we’re looking for clues to back up other telltale body signals, the type of smile will help us make our assessment.

Eyes

In counteracting what is normally thought of as deceptive behaviour associated with the eyes – ‘shifty-eyed’ is a phrase that often comes to mind – a person engaging in deception may do the opposite of what is normally expected. In other words, they may use excessive eye contact. Because gazing is a conscious activity, the eyes can be used by someone telling a lie to try to denote sincerity. Ekman, in his research, found that certain Machiavellian types – such as confidence tricksters and psychopaths – engaged in this behaviour.

This is the complete opposite to most people’s perceptions – surveys carried out worldwide, over the decades, show that most people believe that the number-one give-away is that people don’t look at you.

To add further weight to this generalisation I tried at a seminar an experiment with one of the women present, using piles of playing cards, to try to ascertain if I could tell when she was lying in response to my questions to her. Long story cut short – there was fleeting but intense eye contact that gave her away at one point in the questioning.

On asking the others who were present (some of the sharpest minds around, I have to say) as to how they thought I knew she was lying at that point, the answer was ‘the eyes’. Well their response may have been correct, but they said she didn’t look at me when she answered. In fact it was the opposite. That was the only time she made eye contact. At other times she had looked downwards or was giggling with the person who sat to her immediate left. All the other people present remembered her not looking at me at the point when I spotted the right answer. Confirmation that most people associate looking away with deception.

There’s no doubt that you’ll come across people who won’t look you in the eye when they’re telling an untruth or when they’re being asked an awkward question appertaining to dishonesty. They may be looking downwards all the time or their eyes may be darting here and there. Rather like what children tend to do when questioned by a parent or other adult. They too can go in for excessive eye contact as well when they try to convince you of their innocence. Again, you have to look for supporting body or vocal information.

We’ve spoken earlier about ‘baseline’ behaviour. This is one of the terms you should overfamiliarise yourself with. If you can identify someone’s normal way of operating, then it’s easier to notice deviations from that. For example, if someone’s normal way of conversing is with minimal eye contact (due to shyness perhaps) and when questioned or pressed about something they start using unusual and prolonged eye contact, then some alarm bells should be ringing.

Check their blinking rate as well. How does it compare to their normal rate – when you weren’t asking them searching questions? Look for changes in baseline behaviour and note when they occur during a conversation – it will tell you a lot. But also remember that nervousness and anxiety cause similar behavioural ‘tics’, which is why it’s important to look for other clues as well.

Eye direction

We’ll touch on some research that has been done in connection with the direction of a person’s gaze, providing you treat these findings with caution. They can be revealing if tested beforehand by observing a person’s baseline behaviour. I can’t stress it enough – observe a person’s normal behaviour and commit it to memory. Then it’s a question of looking at a person’s body language deviations in order to be able to read them much better.

You may recall we discussed earlier (in Lesson 2) that the direction of a person’s eyes at some stages of an interaction can be quite revealing. Briefly, and I stress use this with caution, it’s been agreed by neuroscientists that each side of the brain is responsible for different functions. The left side is the logical side dealing with rational, analytical and linguistic activities; the right side is the more imaginative and creative side, and the more ‘intuitive’ side.

Following on from this clear division of the left- and right-brain functions:

• When you’re searching for the answer to a question from the ‘storehouse’ of information that’s lodged in your brain (in other words, recall) your left side will be more active.
• If you’re lying then there is no recall, but there is a need for imagination in order to create a fictitious answer, so it’s right-brain activity.

It has been discovered in research that since we all naturally break eye contact while we’re speaking to another person, the direction of our gaze can reveal – I must stress, after we’ve established ‘baseline’ behaviour – whether or not a person is telling the truth. How?

Each side of the brain controls movements of the opposite side of the body (something you may already be aware of). So, just to be clear, the left-hand side of the brain controls the right-hand side and vice versa.

• If a person gazes to the right while they’re answering your question, they may be telling the truth (the left brain, as we noted, being responsible for recall).
• If they gaze to the left, they may be fabricating an untruth because it is originating from the imaginative right-side of the brain.

Once you’ve surreptitiously established a pattern for a person’s eye direction, it can be a useful indicator to help you – along with other clues – to establish honesty.

Blinking and ‘eye rub’

A person’s blinking may increase when they are lying because the increased cognitive activity associated with dealing with stressful questions accelerates everything. It’s not always because of lying, it happens when you’re under pressure or tired.

It has also been discovered that there’s a certain type of person who engages in what is known as an eye rub. Looking like the activity that’s associated with fiddling with contact lenses (be sure it’s not that), the person will rub their eye(s) while delivering the lie. It seems to be common in both men and women, with men producing a more rapid action and women confining it to a touch to the side or below the eye. It appears that the greater the perception of the lie, the greater the associated activity with the rub. So it may be accompanied by looking away from you.

What’s the psychology behind it? It’s accepted that it’s a kind of blocking out of the deception, or of the person to whom they’re dispensing the untruth. We’re under threat and we want to erase the image of the person in front of us.

Face touching

Hand-to-face displacement activities are, for most people, quite prevalent when lying and there is usually an increase in their use. We all, to varying degrees, touch the face during our interactions with others, but research shows there is much more of this activity if there is deception involved. Again, tread carefully, there is no one particular gesture. Use it in combination with other clues to recognise a cluster and this will enhance your efforts in recognising a lie.

Mouth

For children, just putting a hand in front of the mouth is usually enough for a parent to know that a lie is about to be told. As adults, we’re more sophisticated in the magnitude of deceit and the ways in which we try to prevent it leaking out. However, we may still need the comfort of putting the hand to the face, especially the mouth.

When we’re surprised about something notice that we’ll instinctively raise a hand to the mouth and cover it. We do this subconsciously to guard against letting out a knee-jerk emotion as the mouth is forced open – we need time to evaluate. So we’re still wired in adulthood to bringing a hand to the mouth in times of stress or surprise. In a situation involving a lie, the hand may go up to the mouth (commonly known as the mouth cover). It’s a way of covering up a lie – or something you feel you shouldn’t have said (too late!). The brain is rejecting the false message and instructs the hand to do a cover up. The palm of the hand usually covers the whole mouth, with the thumb pointing towards the ear. (It sometimes gives the person an anxious look – if not an outright lie, it usually denotes some kind of anxiety or doubt.)

Alternatively, it can be a hand supporting the chin with a finger just touching the mouth – this is similar to the ‘shh’ that we were used to as children, when you hold a single finger against the lips imploring others to be quiet. Our subconscious is sending a signal to the hand telling us to be quiet.

Another position is all of the fingers fanning the lips.

Sometimes it’s a fist that covers the mouth (See next page) as opposed to the open palm. This is seen more often when the listener has heard you speak and thinks you are concealing something – they’ll adopt a hand-to-mouth position because they’re suppressing a subconscious urge to challenge you.

A word about lips

While we’re on the mouth, we should talk about lips. Not the touching of lips, which we’ve covered, but the activity of the lips independent of that. We spoke about lips in terms of different smiles. You’ll remember that there is a complex network of muscles around the mouth area that can all behave independently of each other, allowing a myriad of expressions. As such, they can reveal a lot about our emotions (tension is a big give-away) and also conceal (‘stiff upper-lip’).

We all, at one time or another, display tight lips – the tension usually means we’re trying not to display our guilt about lying, our anger or secret delight about something. Equally the oft-quoted ‘stiff upper-lip’, in which it is just the lip muscles above the top lip that tighten, is used to suppress a particular emotion, usually, of course, negative. It can give the person an air of suspicion, since it is indicative of concealment of some sort.

A particularly interesting activity, that quite often occurs during a state of anxiety, or with a cluster of lying behaviours, is the biting of the lip. We know from what we’ve just discussed that in stressful situations we increase hand-to-mouth behaviour and may also chew on things or bring objects to the mouth. The lips, of course, are part of that very same mouth, so it’s small wonder that we’ll use them for comfort. You’ll see a bite of the upper lip as the lower teeth come forward and touch it, or a lower lip bite where the upper teeth come down and bite the lower lip. Again, it’s usually part of a cluster of anxiety activities. Back to one of our 3 Cs again – context.

Of course it’s evident in other situations when you’re told to ‘bite your lip’ – in other words, when we want to avoid coming out and saying something in order to ‘keep the peace’. You’ve probably adopted that philosophy at work many times, as well as with your nearest and dearest.

It can also be seen when someone is trying to convey empathy and there are many people in the public eye that use this almost as a trademark display. Bill Clinton – he seems to provide us with a lot of case material – commonly uses the lower-lip bite in some of his speeches and interactions with people. Along with his other facial expressions, he’s showing that he has empathy and ‘feels the pain’ of his audience.

Another common activity is caused by drying of the mouth due to pressure or anxiety, and so you may see excessive licking of the lips or inward sucking of the lips in a pursed fashion, but this is due to a desire for lubrication.

Nose

Folklore seems to have endowed the lay person with some concrete proof of lying – firstly (as we’ve discussed) that the person won’t look at you. So – guilty. They touched their nose during a conversation. Definitely guilty. (It’s often referred to as the ‘Pinocchio’ effect.) If only life were that simple. By now, it should be patently clear to all of you that if we have other clues, or leakage, we may very well deduce things correctly.

An alternative displacement activity is touching the nose as opposed to the mouth. It provides the self-comfort of covering the mouth with a disguise. A hand goes up to the nose and conveniently covers the mouth, which is what you’re really after. The mouth cover becomes a by-product of the nose touch.

As an excuse for covering up the mouth, you’ll see this gesture repeatedly in everyday life. However, on occasions you need to touch your nose. Not because of the effects of cold, hay fever or whatever. That of course is perfectly legitimate. (However, you should be aware that, as with all body language, it’s sending out a signal to the other person who may, in all likelihood, misinterpret it.) You may have to touch it for physiological reasons. What do we mean by that?

It’s your autonomic nervous system at work again. When you’re under pressure – you could be telling a lie under traumatic circumstances or just in a pressurised, stressful situation – there is an increased flow of blood into the tissues of the nose causing them to swell. The nose grows slightly larger and the inflammation – fortunately not visible to the naked eye – gives rise to that itchy or tingling sensation that makes you touch or rub it, or whatever.

Nose touching gained a lot of publicity in 1998 when President Bill Clinton was televised before the Grand Jury for his involvement with Monica Lewinsky. This piece of ‘theatre’ has gone down in history for its content and obtuseness. A definition of the word ‘sex’ was needed, in response to one of the questions. (Previously, during the Paula Jones testimony, Clinton’s questioners had to deal with his response: ‘It depends what the definition of “is” is.’)

However, the trial also provided television viewers (as well as the Grand Jury) with a masterclass display of behaviour associated – at the very least – with anxiety. He certainly used the ‘mouth guard’ a lot, fixed an intense gaze and there was little movement of his hands, which were mouth-directed. As far as the nose was concerned, an analysis showed that when he was speaking about things that were obviously the truth, he didn’t touch his nose at all – in fact his hands were nowhere near his face during these points. However, while discussing his involvement with Ms Lewinsky he touched his nose every four minutes or so, for a grand total of 26 times.

It’s difficult to know whether or not the former president, in asking for redefinition of certain terms, had convinced himself that he was therefore not lying to the nation and within those narrow confines, for purposes of that testimony, believed he was telling the truth. If that was the case it certainly wasn’t reflected in his performance while fighting for his political life and avoiding impeachment. The number of repeated displacement gestures, captured by the unforgiving TV cameras, was certainly illuminating.

Hillary Clinton seems to be afflicted – maybe quite innocently – with a similar propensity for redefining words in the English language. During her Democratic nomination campaign in 2008 she suffered a big setback in terms of integrity when she ‘misspoke’ about what happened during a visit to Bosnia.

Hillary had been recounting to the crowds how, during her period as First Lady, she landed in Bosnia in dangerous conditions under heavy sniper fire.

‘Then I gnawed through the ropes, kicked a couple of alligators out cold and pulled myself to safety.’

‘The new Indiana Jones movie?’

‘No, just Hillary’s stump speech.’

Cartoonists had a wonderful time with this (just before the Cannes Film Festival).

Obliging TV stations dug out old footage showing her strolling across the tarmac and smiling as she was serenaded by a little girl.

Misspoke? This was her response, with guarded body language, when asked about a lie she had just told. She hadn’t told a lie – she just ‘misspoke’.

Hillary Clinton

Hands

We’ve looked at what the hands do to the face, now let’s see what they’re typically up to when they’re away from this area. What’s noticeable from all the research is that hand actions tend to decrease from a person’s normal ‘baseline’ during deception. They are still, rather than animated, contrary to what most laypeople think.

Normal hand gestures (illustrators) used to accompany speech and reinforce a message are noticeably absent. There is a tendency to be on guard and suppress movements – especially of hands – because quite often you’re unaware of what they are actually doing when they’re accompanying your words.

The hands typically may be hidden. Be aware, as always, that this also occurs when people are just nervous. There’s always been a symbolism between hands and the heart (‘with my hand on my heart’) denoting sincerity, so the subconscious may instinctively seek out a hiding place for them – under a desk, in pockets or even hidden under the armpits. In other words, creating an arm-cross – that defensive ‘closed’ body position – which certainly doesn’t give a good impression. Alternatively one hand may take a grip of the other and clasp it, pushing it down and holding it in that position.

Equally, there are times when a person (check ‘baseline behaviour’) may engage in activities away from the body – like excessive fidgeting with the fingers, picking up a pen and twirling it, clicking it up and down (you’ve done this, I bet), doodling subconsciously on a piece of paper or rotating an empty glass on a table. These ‘adaptors’ – you’ll remember this from an earlier Lesson – may give a clue if they occur as part of a cluster of other clues.

Legs

It may come as a surprise to you but extensive research shows that the area of the body that is best at displaying whether or not a lie is being told is the lower part of the body, below the waist.

Solid research (Ekman and Friesen) found that even though the legs and feet are under our conscious control, because they are the furthest away from the brain – especially the feet – they are the least controlled parts of the body when somebody is trying to deceive.

Locked feet and ankles

In the lower part of the body, ankles may be crossed around each other in the familiar locked ankles position in a stressful situation. The interesting thing is that in this situation the feet do not move much and this may accompany the restricted hand and arm movements that often occur with this cluster – closed body language. You may have noticed this, often with women in dentists’ waiting rooms as they nervously flick the pages of two-year-old magazines. Or passengers on an aircraft just after boarding and waiting for take-off. It is extremely common in a job interview situation both while waiting to be called in (not good – you’re on show) and during the interview – but it may not be so serious because the barrier of a desk may provide camouflage in many instances.

A variation

Sometimes you’ll see a variation of the above position, in which the person actually locks the feet around the legs of the chair (an unnatural position for men). This is often accompanied by a tight gripping of the arms of the chair – if they have them – otherwise it may be accompanied by an arm-cross position or there may be excessive fidgeting. This is a common seating posture in situations in which the person is holding something back (or when anxiety is being experienced or they’re being defensive for whatever reason). Their mind and body are in harmony in the sense that the position reflects their negative emotions. There’s a lack of movement because they won’t budge from their defensive position.

Movement

Equally, as in the previous example where there is lack of movement, there could be movement of a fidgety nature, which gives a similar message. Many people sit in a crossed-legs position, for example, with the foot of the crossed leg moving from side to side, up and down or twirling around in a circular fashion. Some people don’t typically exhibit this movement. Watch for a change in foot movement from no movement to sudden movement; equally from, say, circular movements to kicking up and down, which usually betrays annoyance or extreme nervousness (without conscious awareness).

This may be accompanied by occasional crossing and uncrossing of the legs. The movements, rather than looking natural, tend to look stilted, as opposed to the more relaxed way in which they happen during normal conversation.

• So look to see if and when this movement with the feet starts. (Not so easy, as we noted earlier, in situations with a barrier in front of you.)
• If you establish that the foot movement occurs specifically when you’re discussing a certain point and then stops when you’ve moved on to something else, that may provide you with certain clues. (Mothers will be very familiar with this stop–start motion when questioning their teenage daughters.)

• Sometimes you’ll encounter a person whose normal baseline behaviour when seated with crossed legs is one of repeated movement – in other words, when they’re relaxed. When asked, or they’re speaking, about something uncomfortable, the foot movement may actually stop.
• So, in this instance, it becomes the lack of foot movement that’s a clue. They’ve gone from comfort to discomfort. It may not necessarily indicate lying but the point is that it’s a reaction to something that has stimulated a negative thought.

At other times you’ll observe that the body may slump down and the feet may be tapped, or body posture moved away from the source of discomfort with the feet (or one foot sometimes) pointing towards the escape route – the door.

Under cover

In the average workplace, in meetings and during other interactions, desks provide a ‘shield’ for most people and so it’s just the activities of the top half of the body that are observed. An awful lot of nervousness may be going on below – under cover.

Think of job interviews you may have been part of in the past. The protective shield of the interviewer’s desk may have helped you in the sense that you spent your time projecting a confident image from the waist up. Or maybe you’ve been to a panel interview where your whole body was on show. How different was that?

In restaurants, what’s going on below during that business lunch while you’re negotiating, or during that romantic encounter? That confident, no-nonsense, final offer with the seemingly unflinching client or potential boyfriend. What’s their body language betraying under the desk or table?

What about law enforcement agencies – the police and the like? You’ve seen it on TV and at the cinema – the person being interrogated with a full body view. Why? To get additional information from the lower, least controlled part of the body. The fact is – the underrated legs and feet reveal a lot.

If you’re standing when you’re interacting with someone then obviously you’ll be able to observe whole-body behaviour and also shifts in posture at specific times. You may witness a person tapping their feet, and if they’re not accompanying it to the lyrics of ‘Mamma Mia’ – in other words there is no music in the background – it suggests some discomfort and that they would like to flee.

It’s usually in a workplace setting – where we have desks to hide behind – and also dining tables in our personal lives that we’re able to prevent the lower half of the body talking too loudly.

Vocal

The second aspect of non-verbal behaviour – the non-verbal aspect of speech – provides us with important clues which, along with other body clues, can reveal much. In fact most deception or withholding of truth is given away by people’s speech. Not just by content but also by the way in which things are said – the area that we are interested in, of course, is paralanguage.

Speaking slower

The words may come out more slowly than the normal rate because the person is having to rely on memory, rather than the truth. In addition, there’s a lot of cognitive activity going on because the brain is being asked to juggle the truth with the lie and also to avoid leakage through the body. If there has been a great deal of rehearsal then, of course, it’s possible that there might not be a detectable difference in the rate of speaking.

Silences or pauses

There may be discernible pauses or silences at specific points during an explanation. Deception usually produces more pauses than usual between individual words and sentences. There may also be a trail of abandoned sentences whereby a train of thought is not finished – and then there’s a long silence and the person doesn’t go back to the original point but starts a new sentence.

Breathing pattern

A person may be trying to adopt a relaxed posture while experiencing discomfort – whether they’re standing or sitting – but the telltale sign of a chest rising up and down is usually impossible to conceal, especially if there is shoulder activity. As the breathing becomes more shallow and rapid, this, coupled with voice change when speaking, gives away a lot.

Throat clearing

We do it all the time. Swallowing may become a problem because the stress reaction causes a dry throat. However, an excess of this activity indicates extreme discomfort.

Speech errors or hesitancy

There may be a lot of ‘errs’ and ‘ums’ punctuating the conversation, instead of a free flow that is not reliant on fabrication.

Pitch

Like every other pointer we’ve discussed, you’re looking for a change in a person’s regular vocal characteristics. Pitch can be a very good yardstick to indicate a change in a person’s emotions because these tend to cause a rise that is very difficult to hide. So the voice tends to come out higher, and maybe louder, compared to the baseline.

It can’t be stressed enough that because there is no one single clue for detecting deception, it’s important to take the all-important auditory clues – if you feel they are significant – and combine them with body clues to see if there is congruence (one of our 3 Cs).

‘Below par’ performance

The world had to wait a few months for golfer Tiger Woods to make a public confession and acknowledge his extra-marital affairs. If his apology was to be successful, it had to be believed.

He did this in February 2010 not to a press conference, but to a hand-picked audience of family, friends and business associates at the PGA Tour’s headquarters in Florida. It was imperative that his sincerity shone through whatever he was about to disclose. His body language and his words especially the delivery – were going to be key to the impression he was about to give to the millions watching on TV.

The first thing people notice is the appearance of another person. The golfer looked as though he was there under duress and although normally an elegant dresser, he wore an ill-fitting shirt without a tie and it looked as though he had dressed hastily to be in time for an uncomfortable appointment. The following probably paints the picture:

Tiger Woods makes his entrance

BODYtalk

Q So there’s no foolproof method for detecting when someone is lying to us then?

No – just like in other situations we have to look for clusters of behaviour to help us.

Q Is it because the symptoms of lying are similar to a person just feeling nervous?

Yes, that’s partly it. But you can at least know when a person should not be feeling nervous in a particular situation; therefore a number of signals associated with deception can be looked for.

Q So you were saying earlier that a lot of lies are harmless in the sense that they are social lies – are you saying then that these are quite legitimate?

Well – in an ideal world when Aunt Florence gives you yet another six-pack of socks for Christmas, you could – if you were stone-hearted – give an honest response like: ‘How many feet do you think I have?’ Alternatively, you could have some empathy and think that the poor lady walked to the store, queued up to pay and wrapped them up – just for little ol’ you. So, as in many other instances, is it worth upsetting somebody who doesn’t have a clue?! (I never said that. You did.)

Q So it’s the more harmful, or shall we say more revealing, lies that we’re all obsessed with. Is that right?

Yes. In body language terms, when people are asked:

• why they want to have a better understanding of non-verbal behaviour
• what they want the magic pill to enable them to do the two reasons that come out time and time again are – I want to know how to tell:
• whether a person likes me (or dislikes me)
• whether a person is telling the truth (or is lying).

Q Is there a ‘must’ that you can advise us on that will help in detecting when somebody may be telling a blatant lie or withholding the truth?

Try to recognise what we call ‘baseline behaviour’. How do they normally conduct their interactions? Are they expressive, or the opposite? What’s the voice like when they are normal? What’s their typical eye contact like? Sometimes, of course, you haven’t met somebody for long and so you haven’t had enough time with them. But even in short interludes you can gain a lot of information as to a person’s baseline by asking factual questions. Observing their mannerisms and voice when ‘normal’ helps you to see how it deviates – if at all.

Q I’m a bit concerned about my feet and legs now. Should I try to hide them?

Well, not if you’ve got nothing to hide – I don’t mean your feet of course, I mean nothing that would induce your nervous system to leak out some unwanted body movement. On the other hand, even if you’re not lying about something but you’re nervous about being in a particular situation, your feet and legs may do the same thing – as if you were under stress because of lying.

Q Oh, that’s okay then. The people present would know it wasn’t because my telling a lie, but because I was just nervous.

They wouldn’t necessarily. They’re witnessing something that could indicate either. They should look for ‘clusters’, of course, to support it. But if they haven’t read this book, well ...

I see your point.

Q The person before was worried about their feet and legs. I’m worried about my voice. If I’m under stress it changes. I don’t want people to think it’s because I’m telling whoppers.

Take a deep breath and slow your speech down. The pitch, which has a tendency to rise, will then gradually start to drop towards normal level.

Coffee break ...

• There is no one single gesture to identify if a person is engaged in deceit. If possible try to observe baseline behaviour and then look for changes.
• Research shows that as many as 90 per cent of lies produce telltale behaviour through body and vocal cues.
• It’s generally thought that a lying person reduces eye contact, but quite often a person may overcompensate with excessive eye contact.
• A person may engage in a lot of hand-to-face gestures when lying – but caution is needed because the same activity is displayed during nervousness.
• The lips are often a good indicator – a person may adopt a tight-lip pose as the subconscious tries to withhold the truth; also there may be biting of the lips activity.
• There may be excessive touching of the nose – there is a flow of blood to the nasal tissues under stress causing the nose to swell (difficult to detect with the naked eye).
• Hand actions tend to deviate from the ‘baseline behaviour’ during deception – there may be some external activity away from the body like fiddling with objects or tapping fingers.
• The legs and feet are quite revealing as they are the least controlled part of the body, being furthest away from the brain.
• The vocal aspect of speech, the paralanguage, undergoes many changes during deception.
• Contrary to what is generally thought, most liars give themselves away by what they say, rather than what they do (the words and how they say them).