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The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EYE

Eye Reading (Body Language)
What someone's eyes can tell you about what they're thinking.
They've existed for 540 million years and most of us have a pair, but aside from giving us sight,
what can we tell from looking at someone's eyes?
People say that the eyes are a "window to the soul" - that they can tell us much about a person just by
gazing into them. Given that we cannot, for example, control the size of our pupils, body language
experts can deduce much of a person's state by factors relating to the eyes.
The Pupils
The pupils are a part of our body language that we practically have no control over.
As well as adjusting the amount of light taken in the process of sight (Dilation: pupil size increasing;
Contracting: pupil size decreasing), Eckhard Hess (1975) found that the pupil dilates when we are
interested in the person we're talking to or the object we're looking at.
As an indicator, check a friend's pupil size when you're talking to them about something interesting,
then change the subject to something less interesting and watch their pupils contract!
Eye Contact
For making contact and communicating with a person, effective eye contact is essential to our every
day interaction with people, and also to those who want to be effective communicators in the public
arena:
Persistent eye contact
Look, Don't Stare.

Look, don't stare. Over-powering eye contact can make the recipient uncomfortable.
Generally in Western societies and many other cultures, eye contact with a person is expected to be
regular but not overly persistent. Constant eye contact is often considered to be an attempt at
intimidation, causing the person who's the object of a person's gaze to feel overly studied and
uncomfortable.
Even between humans and non-humans, persistent eye contact is sometimes unadvisable: the New
Zealand Medical Journal reported that one reason so many young children fall victim to attacks by

pet dogs is their over-poweringly regular eye contact with pets, which causes them to feel threatened
and defensive.
Overly persistent eye contact is also a sign of a person's over-awareness of the messages they are
emmiting. In the case of a person who is try to deceive someone, they may distort their eye contact so
that they're not avoiding it - a widely recognised indicator of lying.
Avoiding Eye Contact
Evasive Eye Contact

Evasive eye contact: a sign of discomfort.

Why do we avoid looking at a person? It may be because we feel ashamed to be looking at them if
we're being dishonest of trying to deceive them. However, Scotland's University of Stirling found
that, in a question-and-answer study among children, those who maintained eye contact were less
likely to come up with the correct answer to a question than those who looked away to consider their
response.
Eye contact, as a socialising device, can take a surprising amount of effort to maintain when this
energy could be spend on calculating, as opposed to perceptive, tasks.
Crying
Did You Know?
Humans are believed to be the only species on Earth to cry, though there is emerging evidence of it
in elephants and gorillas.1
In most cultures around the world, crying is considered to be caused by an extreme experience of
emotion; usually, it's associated with sadness or grief, though often extreme experiences of
happiness, and through humor, can cause us to cry. Often, forced crying in order to gain sympathy or
deceive others is known as "crocodile tears" - an expression from myths of crocodiles 'crying' when
catching prey.
Blinking
Aside from our instinctive need to blink, our emotions and feelings towards the person we're talking
to can cause us to subconsciously alter our blink rate.
Blinking more than the average 6-10 times per minute (see right) can be a good indicator that a
person is attracted to the person they're talking to, and is for this reason used as a sign of flirting.

Did You Know?

Men and women blink at roughly the same rate as each other - between 6 and 10 times per minute in
a normal setting. Additionally, animals such as tortoises are known to blink at different times with
each eye.
Winking
In the West, we consider winking to be a cheeky form of flirting - something we do with people that
we know or are on good terms with. However, there are cross-cultural variations on the issue of
winking: some Asian cultures frown up on the use of this form of facial expression. 2
Eye Direction
What does the direction that someone looking in tell us about what they're thinking or feeling? Well,
probably just what they're looking at.
The thing to look out for is the direction someone's eyes are looking in when they're thinking.
Looking to their left indicates that they're reminiscing or trying to remember something. On the other
hand, looking to their right indicates more creative thoughts, and this is often interpreted as a
potential sign that someone may be being deceitful in some situations, i.e. creating a version of
events.
Note: if a person is left handed, the direction indicators may be reversed.
Eye Reading Summary
From the findings above, what's the best way to convey a "positive you" using eye contact? If you
want to show you're interested in what someone has to say, make eye contact often, but remember
that unblinking stares are disconcerting.
Researchers have found that when people are engaged in an interesting conversation, their eyes
remain focused on their partner's face about 80% of the time - but not exclusively on the eyes.
Instead, they focus on the eyes for two to three minutes, then move down to the nose or lips, then
back up to the eyes. Occasionally, they look down to the table momentarily, then back up to the eyes.
Avoid looking up and to the right - it's a universal symbol of boredom and dismissal.
Also remember the following key points with regards to eye contact:

Demonstrate that you're interested and active in interacting with someone by maintaining
regular intervals of eye contact, but remember that contant eye contact can be intimidating.

Pupil dilation can indicate someone is interested; it could, alternatively, be that the room has
become brighter.

Wink sparingly, even in cultures you know accept such a gesture in jest.

Avoid "crocodile tears" if you want to be considered trustworthy by your peers.

Reference: http://www.psychologistworld.com/bodylanguage/eyes

12 Ways Eye Movements Give Away Your Secrets

Your eye movements unconsciously give away secret personal information.
What are Saccades?

Source: Pixabay/Free Image

Saccades are the eye movements made to receive visual information and shift the line of vision
from one position to another. We rely on the accuracy of saccades every millisecond of our
lives. During normal day-to-day conditions, you make about 3-5 saccades per second.
This amounts to about a half-million saccades a day.
Humans intuitively create a narrative based on the nonverbal cues from the saccadic rhythms, the
speed of eye movements, as well as, the amount and angle of sclera that is exposed at any given
moment.
We all know from life experience that the amount of eye white, the angle, and the directional
speed of eye movements plays a primal role in our interpretation of human interactions. An
averted gaze, as well as direct eye contact, can have a wide range of meanings depending on the
circumstance.
12 Ways Your Eye Movements Reveal Personal Information
1. Rapid eye movements indicate impulsive decision-making.
2. Plodding eyes reflect a wandering mind.
3. Slow eye movements indicate your level of fatigue.
4. Tracking eye movements can shift your moral compass,
5. Gaze cues can reveal your political temperament.
6. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep minimizes painful memories of PTSD.

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7. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep increases positive emotions.
8. Jerky eye movements can predict neurodegenerative diseases.
9. Alterations in eye movements are an early indicator of Alzheimer's.
10. Involuntary eye movements can diagnose ADHD.
11. Lack of eye contact is the earliest marker for autism in young infants.
12. Abnormal eye movements can diagnose mental Illness.

12 Ways Your Eye Movements Reveal Personal Information

1. Rapid eye movements indicate impulsive decision-making.

In a 2014 study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine reported that people who are less patient
or impulsive tend to move their eyes with greater speed. When the speed of the volunteers'
saccades was compared to their impulsivity during a test of patience, there was a strong
correlation.
The researchers concluded that people who make rapid eye movements tend to be more
impatient. This correlation may be caused by a fundamental link between how the nervous
system evaluates time and reward in controlling movements and during decision-making
processes.
2. Plodding eyes reflect a wandering mind.

A 2010 study identified a wandering mind by tracking how the eyes moved during "mindless
reading." Mindless reading occurs when the eyes continue moving across the page even though
the mind is thinking about something unrelated to the text and not absorbing the information.
The researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that eye movements vary depending if the
reader is paying attention or if his or her mind is wandering. During normal reading, the eyes
tend to zip from one word to the next word. When someone's mind is wandering, however, the
eyes fixate longer on individual words and plod along the page and the reader generally doesn't
absorb the material.
3. Slow eye movements indicate your level of fatigue.

In 2014, an international team of scientists tracked the various speed of saccadic movements to
create a metric for gauging levels of fatigue. For this study (link is external) the researchers
enlisted medical residents who had to work 24-hour medical shifts.
The more fatigued someone became, the more slowly their eyes moved as saccadic speeds
diminished. This research reveals that the velocity of your saccadic movements is an excellent
index to objectively measure levels of fatigue.

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4. Tracking eye movements can shift your moral compass.

A March 2015 study by an international team of researchers reported that our moral decisions
can be influenced by where our eyes are focused when we make a decision. The researchers used
a new experimental method to track participants' eye movements. They concluded that the
processes needed to reach a moral decision are interlinked with our eye movements and how we
view the world.
5. Gaze cues can reveal your political temperament.

A 2011 study, "The Politics of Attention: Gaze-Cuing Effects are Moderated by Political
Temperament," from Univesity of Nebraska-Lincoln found that liberals and conservatives had
different eye movement responses to a visual cue. The researchers measured both liberals' and
conservatives' reaction to "gaze cues," which are an indication of a person's tendency to shift his
or her attention.
In this study, liberals responded strongly to a visual prompt that shifted their eye gaze, along
with their attention in the direction suggested by a face on a computer screen. On the other hand,
conservatives had less eye movement in response to the visual prompt and were less likely to
shift their gaze or attention.
6. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep minimizes painful memories of PTSD.

A 2011 study from University of California, Berkeley found that time spent in rapid eye
movement (REM) sleep can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
minimize painful memories.The researchers, led by Matthew Walker, found that during REM
sleep, stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences in a way that
can take the edge off painful memories.
These findings offer a possible explanation as to why people with PTSD have a hard time
recovering from distressing experiences and suffer recurring nightmares if they are unable to
sleep through an REM cycle.
7. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep increases positive emotions.

A 2009 study reported that taking a nap that includes a period of rapid eye movement (REM)
sleep refreshes the brain's empathetic sensitivity for evaluating human emotions by decreasing a
negative bias and amplifying the recognition of positive emotions.
The researchers believe their results emphasize the importance of rapid eye movement sleep as
part of a process that increases positive emotions and maintains optimal levels of social
and professional mental health.
8. Jerky eye movements can predict neurodegenerative diseases.

A 2012 study by researchers at University of Southern California (USC) reported that certain
neurological disorders can be identified through the study of eye movements. Their research
provides new insights into how attention and gaze control are affected by specific
neurodegenerative disorders.

Participants in the study simply had to "watch and enjoy" television clips while their eye
movements were tracked and recorded. The eye-tracking data allowed researchers to decode
each individual's neurological state based on his or her eye movements. Using the eye movement
data, they were able to identify older adults with Parkinson's Disease with 89.6 percent accuracy.
9. Alterations in eye movements are an early indicator of Alzheimer's.

In a 2014 study, an international team of researchers reported that tracking the eye movements of
individuals as they were reading could be used to identify impairments in working memory
and was an early indication of Alzheimers disease.
The researchers found that patients with a probable diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease showed less
focused visual exploration, including slower eye movements when they were reading. They also
showed longer fixations when processing new information and had to read sentences a second
time in order to grasp the full meaning and context of a written passage.
10. Involuntary eye movements can diagnose ADHD.

A 2014 study published in the journal Vision, reported that involuntary eye movements
accurately reflected the presence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The
researchers acknowledge that ADHD is the most commonly diagnosedand often misdiagnosed
behavioral disorder in American children.
Theyre hopeful that their research on eye movements can provide an objective tool for medical
professionals to accurately diagnose ADHD. An incorrect ADHD diagnoses can lead to the
overprescription of drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine.
11. Lack of eye contact is the earliest marker for autism in young infants.

A 2013 study, published in the journal Nature, found that eye contact during early infancy may
be the earliest indication of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Babies typically begin to focus on
human faces within the first few hours of life. Learning how to pick up social cues unconsciously
by paying attention to another person's eyes is key to social conneciton. Children with autism,
however, don't exhibit interest in making eye contact which makes it difficult to read faces.
Typically, autism isn't diagnosed until after the age of two when other delays in a child's social
behavior and language skills begin to reveal themselves. Tracking eye movements offers
earlier markers for autism. The sooner autism is diagnosed, the higher the odds are that
the treatment interventions will be effective.
12. Abnormal eye movements can diagnose mental Illness.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are studying (link is external) how subtle
abnormalities in eye movements can be used to diagnose mental illness and psychiatric disease.
They've discovered that irregularities in how the eyes track a moving object reflect
specific defects in the neural circuitry of the brain that correspond with particular types of mental
disorders. For example, schizophrenic patients tend to have difficulty keeping their eyes focused
on slow-moving objects.

Eye movement studies provide an inexpensive and non-invasive way to gain a deeper
understanding of different brain abnormalities at the root of various psychiatric illnesses.
Hopefully, in the near future, a better understanding of eye movements and related brain
abnormalities will allow researchers to identify high-risk individuals earlier and
enable specialists to create more targeted interventions for people with psychiatric disorders and
mental illness.
Referrence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/

The Clues to Deceit: The Psychology of Lie Detection

What does the psychological research tell us about how to catch liars?

People communicate using verbal, vocal and visual cues. The words they choose, their voice
quality and numerous body cues all provide information about their emotional and cognitive
state and whether they may be lying. The lie catcher needs to notice and interpret these manifold
and very subtle cues. The expert, professional, lie catcher differs from the (often misguided)
amateur by the cues they look for, the trust they have in them, and the way they are interpreted.
Liars leak deceit. Most try hard to cover-up their deceit but it is difficult trying to control your
words, voice, face, feet and hands all at the same time. The voice and the face carry important
cues.
Prof Aldert Vrij from Portsmouth University in England has identified 17 nonverbal behaviours
that may be directly related to lying:
Vocal Characteristics
1. Speech hesitations: use of the words ah, um, er, and so on.
2. Speech errors: word and/or sentence repetition, sentence change, sentence incompletions, slips
of the tongue, and so on.
3. Pitch of voice: changes in pitch of voice, such as a rise or fall in pitch.
4. Speech rate: number of spoken words in a certain period of time
5. Latency period: period of silence between question and answer.
6. Frequency of pauses: frequency of silent periods during speech.
7. Pause durations: length of silent periods during speech.
Facial Characteristics

8. Gaze: looking at the face of the conversation partner.

9. Smile: smiling and laughing.
10. Blinking: blinking of the eyes.
Movements
11. Self-manipulations: scratching the head, wrists, and so on.
12. Illustrators: functional hand and arm movements designed to modify and/or supplement what
is being said verbally.
13. Hand and finger movements: non-functional movements of hands or fingers without moving
the arms.
14. Leg and foot movements: movements of the feet and legs.
15. Head movements: head nods and head shakes.
16. Trunk movements: movements of the trunk (usually accompanied by head movements).
17. Shifting position: movements made to change the sitting position (usually accompanied by
trunk and foot/leg movements).
He also gave some very specific verbal indicators that can indicate a person lying:
Negative statements: Statements indicate aversion towards an object, person or opinion, such as
denials and disparaging statements, and statements indicating a negative mood
Plausible answers: Statements which make sense and which sound credible and reasonable
Irrelevant information: Information which is irrelevant to the context, and which has not been
asked for
Overgeneralized statement: The use of words such as always, never, nobody, everybody,
and so on.
Self-references: The use of words referring to the speaker himself or herself, such as I, me or
mine
Direct answers: To-the-point and straightforward statements (for example, I like John is more
direct than I like Johns company
Response length: Length of response or number of words spoken.

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The greatest expert in the area Paul Ekman has stressed facial clues to deceit and how facial
expressions can serve a lie, but also provide manifold and very subtle cues to the truth. He argues
that the face can show which emotion is felt anger, fear, sadness, disgust, distress, happiness,
contentment, excitement, surprise and contempt can all be conveyed by distinctive expressions.
The face can also show whether two emotions are blended together often two emotions are felt
and the face registers elements of each. The face also shows the strength of the felt emotion
each emotion can vary in intensity, from annoyance to rage, apprehension to terror, etc.
All people learn facial display rules. But to the skilled observer there are a range of microexpressions which yield the emotions behind them. There are all sorts of technical terms that
help describe expressions. For instance a squelched expression is one where one (possible
natural) expression is masked or covered by another). Experts look for asymmetrical facial
expressions which show up on only one side of the face, the exact location of these expressions,
the timing of the expression (with both words and other expressions).
To the expert like Ekman, the face really is the mirror of the soul. He believes one can
distinguish between eighteen different types of smile from the contemptuous, dampened and
miserable to the flirtatious, embarrassed and compliant smile. He also documents some of the
characteristics which often accompany particular lies. False smiles are often inappropriate (when
they occur, how long they last); they are often asymmetrical, they are not accompanied by the
involvement of the many muscles around the eye, and they only cover the actions of the lower
face and lower eyelid.
Ekman has argued that face may contain many different clues to deceit including micros,
squelched expressions, leakage in the reliable facial muscles, blinking, pupil dilation, tearing,
blushing and blanching, asymmetry, mistakes in timing, mistakes in location, and false smiles.
Experts, pundits and researchers - they are not the same- often get called in by the media to help
analyze whether a (famous) person is telling the truth.. The Clinton Lewinsky issue is a good
example. Usually all they have to go on is brief video-clips.
There are some facts that are clearly true about lying:
1. You can observe stress signals produced by the autonomic nervous system: dry mouth, sweaty
palms, shallow uneven breathing, `tickly' nose and throat, blushing or blanching. These are
observable when someone is under stress whether he or she is lying or not. It is very easy to
confuse the two. Most people in interviews are, initially at any rate, anxious. Psychopaths are
brilliant liars because they dont suffer guilt and, thus, do not become anxious when lying.
2. People are less conscious of their feet or legs: the further you are from the face the nearer you
get to the truth. Sudden changes in foot-tapping, pointing feet to the exit ('I want to get out of
here'), simultaneous tight arm and foot-crossing have all been taken to indicate lying. Yet active
extroverts fidget more, as do young children. Foot movements may be as reliable an index of
boredom as they are of lying. The frequent crossing of legs may simply indicate an

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uncomfortable chair. It is critically important to look at the synchronicity between what is being
said and change sin NVB during the conversion.
3. Posture is more sincere than gesture: it can be seen as more unnatural and forced when people
lie. Because people seem less aware of their total posture, they may secretly signal various
desires (to leave) or that they are holding back the truth. However, the shape and comfort of
furniture naturally have something to do with it.
4. Give-away, expansive gestures decline: because they feel they may be caught, liars tend to sit
on their hands, fold their arms, clasp their hands together. The lack of spontaneity may be an
index of lying or fear - the fear of being caught. And some people are simply not as gesturally
expressive as others.
5. Shifty gazes: when children are lying they look down or away. They look guilty but do not
look you in the eye. Many an innocent person has been accused of lying because they avoid eye
contact. But people avoid eye contact for many different reasons -- they feel uncertain about their
opinions, they are trying to remember facts or they feel social embarrassment. Indeed it is
impolite in some cultures to look someone in the eye. And as we shall see some liars we caught
because knowing this rule they state too much. In this sense they protested too much and
hence got caught.
Considerable and impressive research has been carried out on lying. The research may involve
videotaping people when they are known to be lying and also when they are known to be telling
the truth. From an analysis of their `normal' non-lying interpersonal style, one can see the
difference when they are actually lying. And one can vary the type of lie involved to see whether
this makes any difference. One can perform these studies on men as against women,
professionals as against blue collar people; neurotics as against the stable and so on in order to
look at individual difference patterns.
However, there are not hard and fast practices about catching liars. At interview it is good to
relax them (to get them off their guard) and then to talk as much as possible. The more said the
more opportunities to be caught.
Peter Collett the Oxford University trained psychologist used the concept of tell to specify
signals or actions that tells you what somebody is thinking even if that person does not know it
themselves:
Detection Tells: Whereas most people believe they are good at detecting lies the opposite appears
to be the case. They seem to fail at this all important skill for five reasons. First people prefer
blissful ignorance, not wanting to admit that the other person is lying. Next people set their
detection threshold very high but highly suspicious people might set it very low. Third, people
who rely on intuition and gut feelings do not do as well as those who look for clues to
deception. Fourth, people forget that all behaviours have multiple causes and that there are few
single, simple indicators of lying. Finally, people look in the wrong places and for the wrong
cues fidgeting as opposed to smiling. He then considered classic lying tells.

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Eye Tells: People know about gaze patterns and control them but continuous rapid blinking and
unusually intent staring may be signs of lying.
Body Tells: Despite popular beliefs hand movements and fidgeting are under conscious control
and therefore unreliable indexes of lying. However, other neglected things like leg and feet
movements and self-touching are better indicators. Further just as many liars appear to freeze
more rather than become increasingly animated when lying. Nose Tells: Touching the nose really
represents covering the mouth. The Pinocchio syndrome may be simply due to anxiety and it
remains unclear whether vasoconstriction (blood draining from the face/nose) or vasodilatation
(blood increasing in the face/nose) occurs when people lie.
Masking Tells: These are masks (often smiles) that people use to cover or mask their negative
feelings about lying. The straight or crypto-relaxed face masks seem to work best.
Smiling Tells: Smiles are used extensively by experienced liars because they both make others
feel positive and also tend to be less suspicious about them lying. But there are many types of
smile blended, miserable, counterfeit. Clues to the counterfeit smile lie in the duration (they
last longer), assembly (they are put together and dismantled more quickly), location (confined to
the lower part of the face), symmetry (less symmetrical).
Micro Tells: These are very fast, short-lived, micro momentous expressions that are difficult to
see live but can be seen on second by second videotape play back. They may relate to tension
release or anger or a whole range of emotions associated with lying.
Talking Tells: Despite the fact that most people believe nonverbal cues are better than verbal
cues to lying it actually appears the opposite way around.
Collettt (2003) lists eleven of these:
Circumlocution: beating around the bush with long-winded digression.
Outlining: broadbrush, detail-less account. Liars rarely expand when asked truth-tellers do.
Smoke screens: confusing, non-sensible statements.
Negatives: liars are more likely to use negative statements.
Word-choice: fewer self references (I, me) and more generalizations (everybody, always).
Disclaimers: excessive use of I know this sound strange, let me assure you, and You wont
believe this but.
Formality: becoming more tense and formal they say things like do not instead of dont.
Tense: liars use the past tense more to distance themselves from the event they are describing.

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Speed: liars slow down because of the strain on their various capacities.
Pause: liars pause more with more traditional dysfluences like um and er.
Pitch: this rises with emotion.
Despite the fact there are numerous popular books and articles that seem to imply that you can
read people like a book and relatively easily catch liars expert in the field say the precise
opposite. Ones ability to detect lies is multi-faceted and problematic. In short it depends: it
depends on the nature of the lie, the personality and experience of both the liar and the person
trying to detect the lie and the context/situation in which the lie is told.
In short Ekman notes it is easier to catch liars when: the lie is being told for the first time; the
person has not told this type of lie before; the stakes are high most importantly the threat of
severe punishment; the interviewer knows how to encourage the interviewee to tell his or her
story; and the interviewer and interviewee come from the same cultural background and speak
the same language
It seems both verbal and nonverbal cues to deceit and that, contrary to popular belief,
verbal/vocal cues may be as accurate and sensitive an index as body language. Indeed it is
precisely because lairs believe there is more potential to catch them through their body than their
voice that they concentrate too much on their body language and not what they are saying or how
they are saying it.
How do professional lie-catchers (i.e. police, customs officers) go about catching liars? Indeed
are they better at it than non-professional? There are some simple but important points to bear in
mind when trying to catch liars:
Establish base-rate behaviour. What are they like when they are normal, relaxed and telling the
truth? Give people time to relax and see what they are like when it is unlikely they are lying.
Some people fidget more than others. Neurotics are more anxious than the stable most of the
time. There are numerous idiosyncratic but stable nonverbal behavioural differences between
individuals. It is too easy to mistake particular signs such as sweating or avoiding eye gaze as a
betrayal of anxiety and a function of lying when it is perfectly normal everyday behaviour for
that person.
Look for sudden changes in verbal, vocal or visual behaviour such as movements. It is when
behaviour noticeably alters that it is most meaningful.
Note any mismatch between what is being said and how it is being said as well as any
differences in anxiety level as certain topics are raised. When the eyes, the voice and the words
spoken are not in emotional synchrony, it may well be a very good sign of lying. A forced smile
or laugh to accompany the carefully prepared verbal line can be a powerful indicator that
`something interesting is going on'.

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Formulate a hypothesis as to the cause: what are they lying about, what is the sensitive issue?
Not everything is a lie. Why should they be lying about some issues and not others?
Test the theory by bringing up a particular topic (the area of the lies) and see if the nonverbal
pattern reoccurs. If there are persistent indicators of discomfort when particular topics are
reintroduced into the conversation, one may assume a stronger possibility of lying.
The bottom-line however is that even for the trained expert it is often very difficult to deter liars.
We have video-tapes of famous spies lying; of murderers who pretend to be victims appealing for
help; of politicians telling bare-faced lies in video close-ups. They succeed in fooling hundreds
of people. Even the lie-detector can be relatively easily fooled. Studies using it have shown that
when misdiagnosis occurs it is much more likely than an innocent person is judged as guilty as
the other way round. So beware the person who claims to be good at spotting liars in the
interview. It could be true.or a self-delusional porkie!
But the experts caution against feeling confident particularly in the hard job of distinguishing,
disbelieving-the-truth and just as easily believing a lie. Clearly absence of a sign of deceit is
not evidence of truth. One problem as noted above are the ever-present idiosyncratic individual
differences.