The non-verbal conduct of a person, such as facial expressions and body movements, is a source of information for detecting lies, because it is harder nonverbal than verbal behavior control. People mistakenly think liars move a lot, laughing, looking away and blink their eyes, while laughing, looking away, and the blinking of the eyes not related to lying behavior and liars in general are less moving their arms and legs and less use of illustrators. Also differences in the face can be observed when people lie about how they feel. A fake smile is asymmetrical and often without such laugh lines around the eyes. Also 'leak' actual emotions felt by the false emotions are occurring , when someone is feeling sad and such a fake smile even everything has gone well with him or her , the muscles around the eyebrows that are associated with negative emotions (such as the corrugator and frontalis) are still active.
Erroneous conceptions
One of the reasons for the differences between the behaviors that people think and the liars who demonstrate behaviors that liars actually prove is that people generally do not know how people, including themselves, normally behave when they are not lying. The erroneous ideas about lying behavior play an important role in the finding that people generally are bad in detecting lies. These erroneous beliefs have more influence on the detection of lies when people are asked to actively decide whether someone is lying or telling the truth than when detecting lies in a more indirect way is measured. In an indirect way of lie detection you would not wonder if anyone could lie, but go after the person who made a good impression on you or how the person must have felt at that moment.
What do studies show?
Studies have shown that although people are good liars could not assess well whether or not telling the truth, they do a have less good feeling about these people and were better able to assess how the person actually felt. So on a less direct level, where erroneous beliefs about lying behavior has less influence on the assessment, there is an accurate distinction between liars and truth tellers.
Dr. Marielle Stel: Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University.
website from: Marielle Stel
