Natural born liars

Where does the ability to lie come from? Why did we evolve it and most importantly of all, how
do you tell when someone is lying to you?

By Maryke Steffens

Facial movements, body movements and conversation provide clues to whether a person is lying
or not. (Source: iStockphoto)

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Human Brain, Science Online, 27 Sep 2007

The Human Brain Quiz, ?

We learn to lie when we are children, discovering as we get older and as our awareness of self
and others grows what we can and can't get away with. Come on, admit it. We've all been guilty
of blaming a lack of homework on the unfortunate eating habits of the family dog. Child
psychologist Jean Piaget, in his study of moral development, says that "the tendency to tell lies is
a natural tendency...spontaneous and universal."

It seems that to lie is to be human.

The Evolution of Lying

As humans, we communicate with each other via various verbal and non-verbal signals such as
spoken language, facial expressions, and body gestures. But our ability to communicate is
enhanced by our understanding of what is going through someone else's mind our capacity to
empathise with each other.

Not all living things on this earth have the ability to empathise. Although animal psychologists
may protest, evidence of empathy has really only been witnessed in higher primates that
means chimps, gorillas, you and me.
This ability to empathise is a product of being able to recognise other minds as separate from
your own something that you are able to do after about the age of two. Richard Wright, author
of "The Moral Animal" suggests that lying is a fundamental part of this empathy, a by-product of
sorts. Think about it. If you want to purposefully deceive someone, you first have to be able to
understand what that person might be thinking.

Deception and Lying

Many plants and animals deceive others around them in order to get ahead in life. The Tawny
Frogmouth is camouflaged to look like the tree upon which it is perched to deceive its predators
and hide itself during the day. Some orchids deceive male insects by looking like their female
partners, getting a free pollination and fooling the male into thinking it's his lucky day.

However, the distinction between deception and lying is an important one. How aware are these
plants and animals that they are engaged in deception?

Although deception in the animal kingdom can look like lying, finding examples of conscious
lying amongst animals is difficult, says Richard Byrne, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at
the University of St. Andrews in the UK and author of The Thinking Ape. But, according to
Byrne, there is certain evidence that the higher apes chimps, bonobos and gorillas do
engage in a conscious form of deception that is different to the plant and animal deception
mentioned above.

Monkey Liars

When chimpanzees are foraging for food, a chimp who comes across something tasty will
occasionally pretend not to have noticed the food so as not to alert the chimps nearby and lose
his prize. But sometimes a competitor chimp will walk past the pretending chimp, then hide
behind a tree and peep out to see if the pretending chimp really does have some food.

There are many examples of animals pretending not to have seen food in order to save it for
themselves later, says Byrne, but not of a competitor hiding and turning back to peep.

Byrne suggests that this could be an example of lying, monkey-style. "Why would you do that if
you didn't have an idea that something is going on? If you have some kind of idea that there is
something secret going on, you understand deception."

Lying in this sense is part of an ability to take into account the likely response of another. This is
the ability to understand another's mind. Such an ability evolved because individuals and groups
that possessed this skill thrived. Why? Because they were able to communicate and interact more
effectively as a group, which in turn affected their capacity to survive.

Ability to speak =more lies

In the case of humans, the possibility for lying increased even further because of our use of oral
language. To quote Robert Wright again, "We are far from the only dishonest species, but we are
surely the most dishonest, if only because we do the most talking."

However, there is a restriction to the advantages of lying and the benefits it can bring. Otherwise,
we'd just lie all the time! Paul Ekman, Professor of Psychology at the University of California,
San Francisco, believes that we did not evolve to be inherently deceptive creatures because it
would pervert our success as a society. "I suspect that our ancestral environment was not one in
which there were many opportunities to lie and get away with it, and the costs for being caught
in a lie might have been severe."

The Pinocchio Effect - Can we tell liars?

Despite how often we engage in it, most of us aren't experts at lying. Unfortunately Mother
Nature didn't deck us out with the right equipment for lying well.

Just think about what happens to you when you lie. Your heartbeat increases, your rate of
breathing increases, the pitch of your voice might increase. You stutter. You sweat. You start
making all sorts of incongruous facial expressions and body movements in a desperate attempt to
seem believable and to suppress what you are really thinking.

You would think that with these sorts of symptoms, we would be able to pick a liar every time,
right?

Wrong. Just as we are poor liars, it turns out that we are pretty hopeless at detecting liars too.

We're believers!

Aldert Vrij, a Professor of Psychology from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, has found
that our ability to pick a liar is little better than if we were to guess at random; half of the time we
get it right, and half of the time we get it wrong.

What he found in his studies was that on average participants were able to detect a lie 44 percent
of the time, and able to detect the truth 67 percent of the time. So we are better at detecting the
truth than detecting lies.

Vrij believes that this is because people have a tendency to believe someone else over being
suspicious. "People are more often confronted with truthful statements than with lies, so it's a
safer strategy to say someone is telling the truth," he explains. If we were always suspicious of
each other, it would destroy the cooperation essential to success as a society.

Out with the stereotypes

The cues we often associate with lying include excessive fidgeting, lack of eye contact, touching
the face and mouth, and scratching the head. But there's simply no evidence for this sort of
behaviour in liars, says Vrij.
So where did these ideas come from in the first place? Influential police manuals might be the
culprits, says Vrij. "They say that liars put their hands before their mouths, look away, fidget and
all these stereotypical types of behaviour, and there is absolutely no evidence for this and
neither do [the manuals] provide the evidence."

Let's get technical

Finding a technique to ferret out liars has been high on the list of priorities for those with a stake
in detecting lies, such as the police, secret service agents, and of course, jealous lovers. And
given the fallibility of human intuition, machines have featured prominently in this quest to
uncover the truth.

The Polygraph

In the 1930's American police officers developed what was to be the prototype of the modern
day polygraph, in which rubber tubes were placed around the chest and abdomen to measure
respiration, a blood pressure cuff placed on the arm, and small metal plates attached to the end of
each finger to measure sweat.

Does the thought of being hooked up to this machine make you nervous? Well, you're not alone.
There's much debate over the legitimacy of this method given that the symptoms of fear, anxiety,
and anger are similar to those responses used to detect a lie.

According to Steven van Aperen, Director of Australian Polygraph Services, the accuracy of the
test is between 96 and 98 percent. Others would dispute these figures however, saying that the
extremely artificial environment in which a polygraph test is performed confounds the results.

Thermal Imaging

Thermal imaging technology that detects heat around the eyes was recently developed by
American scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. This technology is based on
the assumption that more blood flows around this area of the face when someone is lying.

The technology was developed to use at airports to detect potential terrorists who might be
blushing at the check-in counters. The problem is that your poor granny who's feeling nervous
about flying for the first time might get picked up too.

Brain Fingerprinting

Neuroscientist Lawrence Farwell of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories in Iowa has developing a

method of "brain fingerprinting" to detect deception. This method uses a helmet of electrodes
strapped to the head to measure a specific brainwave that is emitted when a person sees a
familiar object. This technology depends on the subject emitting these 'familiarity waves' when
they are shown, say, the weapon they used to kill someone with. A bit of a problem if you just
happened to witness the crime...as you can see, none of these methods are wholly foolproof.
he Layperson's Guide to catching a liar

We've established that firstly, there's a lot of lies out there and secondly that we're pretty bad at
picking up on them. But if you don't have access to polygraphs, thermal imaging or brain
fingerprinting than how can you tell a liar?

There are certain cues associated with lying that you can look out for, and these are split into
three areas: what you say, what your face is doing when you say it, and how you move your
body when you say it. None of these cues actually mean anything on their own, but the more of
these cues a person is exhibiting, the more sure you can be that this person is lying.

Lying with Words

When it comes to verbal cues, you should look out for longer pauses, stutters and slower speech
and if your ear is really good, a higher pitch, says Vrij. But these cues are only present if the
liar is having a hard time telling the lie if he's finding it easy, the lie will come out fluently. So
Vrij recommends paying attention not only to how they are saying it, but also to what they are
saying.

There are fewer details, fewer quotes, and less information about times and locations of objects
and places in a lie. A lie also often has more structure than a truthful story, and flows from
beginning to end in a chronological order. "It is very difficult to invent a lie which is not in a
logical time order," he says. "Just try it yourself. Try to make up a story and start at the end. It's
very difficult."

Lying with Your Face

The face is another place where you can look for lies because, says Paul Ekman, a specialist in
the study of facial expressions, emotional facial expressions are not easy to control at least,
not as easy as controlling your words.

We do learn to control our faces to some extent, but we don't have the tools with which to
analyse and retrain facial expressions like we can with our words. We only have our intuition
about what we think is right, says Ekman.

Facial expressions that are triggered by emotion are pretty much involuntary. We can intercept
these facial expressions to some extent, but not to the extent with which we can bite our tongue.

So how can you tell if a facial expression is true blue, or the result of a lie? Well, the most
important thing is that there should be a match between the emotion of the words and the
emotion of the face, says Ekman. If something is out of whack, there might be a lie lurking
somewhere behind the mask.

When someone is lying, they will do one of three things. They might try to show emotion when
they have none. They might try to show no emotion the poker face when they are feeling
some. Or they might try to mask one emotion with another. All of these tactics are difficult
because the liar will have to remember what parts of the face to move in order to give the
impression of real emotion.

To detect these facial abnormalities, Ekman recommends looking at the eyes and the upper half
of the face, where the true emotion might leak out. We are more adept at controlling the lower
halves of our faces, says Ekman, probably because this is where our mouth is and where our
speech comes from.

Look for the timing of the facial expressions if they are not in sync with what the person is
saying, they might be lying.

There is also something which Ekman terms "micro-expressions". These are a "squelched
fragment of a facial expression" which the person has only just managed to control, and might
possibly indicate what they are really feeling.

Lying with Your Body

Body movement is the last in a long line of things we think about controlling and so is most
likely to reveal what a person is really thinking. Liars often behave in subtly abnormal ways
because they are under unusual emotional strain and mental stress to make the lie sound
believable, and it's these abnormalities that can give them away.

For example, a liar might be nervous about lying, or angry about the truth. These emotions are
difficult to hide, and might reveal themselves in nervous tapping of the feet, or clenched fists.

A liar often tries to suppress behaviour that they think might give away their deception, which is
why, according to Vrij, liars will probably look you in the eye rather than looking at the floor,
and try to avoid making what they think are irrelevant movements with their hands and fingers.

Probing the Grey Matter

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have been looking into measuring cerebral blood
flow to get some clues on what goes on in the grey matter when you tell a porker.

With the help of a functional MRI machine, which measures increased blood flow to activated
areas of the brain, Assistant Professor Daniel Langleben has shown that an area of the brain
called the anterior cingulate gyrus a small structure that looks like two halves of an apple,
about 10 centimetres behind the middle of the forehead as well as the left prefrontal and
premotor cortex may be culprits behind our lies.

The researchers found that the anterior cingulate cortex, as well as the prefrontal cortex lit up
with the person was lying. Langleben believes that these parts of the brain may be in charge of
inhibiting 'default' responses, which in this case would be the truth.

What about True Lies?

As our understanding of what happens in the brain improves will we see the end of the little
white lie in the future? Does this mean that in the future we won't be able to get away with
stealing the last iced-vovo and blaming it on the dog?

Well, no says Dr Yvonne Skinner, a former prison psychiatrist and NSW President of the
Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. "I think that not
telling the truth is much more complex than just lying, because is there an absolute truth?"

If you reinforce your version of 'the truth' to yourself enough times, says Dr Skinner, you might
actually start to believe it. "There are people who want to believe their lies so much that it does
actually become a truth in their reality." So what might start out as lies and fantasies ends up - in
your own memory at least as the truth. And then this truth in your own mind and physical
brain is indiscernible from any other truth or so-called truth in your mind and brain.

So that old adage that you can believe anything you put your mind to might have some truth in it
after all. Scientists, police officers and secret agents and jealous lovers for that matter will
continue to chase the art and science of detecting the lie, but at the end of the day, you still have
the sanctity of your mind to hide in well, for the moment, anyway.

A WORLD OF LIES
THE GLOBAL DECEPTION RESEARCH TEAM

Copyright and License information

See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.

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Abstract

This article reports two worldwide studies of stereotypes about liars. These studies are carried
out in 75 different countries and 43 different languages. In Study 1, participants respond to the
open-ended question How can you tell when people are lying? In Study 2, participants
complete a questionnaire about lying. These two studies reveal a dominant pan-cultural
stereotype: that liars avert gaze. The authors identify other common beliefs and offer a social
control interpretation.

Keywords: deception, stereotypes

He does not answer questions, or gives evasive answers; he speaks nonsense, rubs the great toe
along the ground; and shivers; his face is discolored; he rubs the roots of his hair with his fingers.

Description of a liar, 900 B.C.

Beliefs about liars may be older than recorded history. In recent years, psychologists have
documented some of these beliefs. To complement Euro-American work on deception
stereotypes, we have assembled a Global Deception Research Team. We present our teams
research after reviewing earlier findings.

THE STEREOTYPIC LIAR IN WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Americans have a number of beliefs about liars. They share beliefs about the way liars act. In
one study (Zuckerman, Koestner, & Driver, 1981), Americans associated deception with 18
different behaviors, reporting that liars avert gaze, touch themselves, move their feet and legs,
shift their posture, shrug, and speak quickly. Western Europeans have similar stereotypes. In a
study by Akehurst, Kehnken, Vrij, and Bull (1996), British participants indicated that liars
reduce eye contact, turn away, blink, and pause while giving inconsistent, implausible stories.
Similar stereotypes are evident in questionnaire responses offered by residents of Germany
(Khnken, 1990), the Netherlands (Vrij & Semin, 1996), Spain (Garrido & Masip, 2000), and
Sweden (Strmwall & Granhag, 2003).

These beliefs are probably inaccurate. Although liars are stereotypically attributed with a large
number of behaviors, experimental research shows that only a few actions reliably accompany
deceit (DePaulo et al., 2003). Moreover, the behaviors that figure most prominently in Western
stereotypes of the liar are not the ones Western experimenters find most indicative of deception.
The most common stereotype is that liars avert gaze; yet in a comprehensive meta-analysis of the
experimental literature (DePaulo et al., 2003), gaze aversion was shown to have little association
with lying.

Judgments of deception are correlated with stereotypes. In Western experimental research,

people who exhibit behaviors that are stereotypically associated with lying are often judged
deceptive (Vrij, 2000). Perhaps people judge a suspects deceptiveness by the suspects
similarity to the stereotypic liar. Westerners are generally inaccurate in their attempts to detect
lies from behavior. In experimental situations, where guessing would produce 50% correct
judgments, the average Western perceiver achieves roughly 54% accuracy in behaviorally based
attempts to discriminate lies from truths (Bond & DePaulo, in press).

Westerners stereotypes focus on the liars behavior, but other factors may account for successes
in real-world lie detection. In a study by Park, Levine, McCornack, Morrison, and Ferrara
(2002), Americans were asked to recall an incident when they learned that someone had lied to
them and to describe how they had made the discovery. Students reported that they discover lies
from third-party information, confessions, and physical evidence. Time usually passes between
the perpetration of a lie and its discovery, these Americans say. People are rarely successful in
inferring deception from behavior displayed as the lie is being told.

THE CURRENT PROJECT

Although we can draw some conclusions from the accumulated research on deception
stereotypes, we are left with some questions. How widely dispersed are Western stereotypes
about liars? Are these stereotypes held worldwide? How do stereotypes about liars come into
being? What functions do they serve?

These questions have never been addressed. In fact, there has been only study to date on non-
Westerners stereotypes of liars. In response to a questionnaire administered by Al-Simadi
(2000), Jordanians associated a number of behaviors with lying. They expected deception to
increase self-touching, hand gestures, blushing, stuttering, speech hesitations, negative
statements, and self-references. According to Al-Simadi, these findings illustrate differences
between Jordanian and Western beliefs.

Let us sketch two hypotheses about deception stereotypes. One posits the existence a pan-
cultural prototype; the other proposes that stereotypes of the liar reflect culture-specific norms.

According to the first hypothesis, there is a worldwide stereotype of the liar. People in all
cultures believe that liars experience fear, shame, or cognitive difficulties (Bond & Robinson,
1988; Ekman, 2001). Associating these psychological states with the same nonverbal cues
(Keltner, Ekman, Gonzaga, & Beer, 2003), people worldwide are led to a common stereotype of
the liars behaviors. Although this hypothesis does not identify a priori the actions that would be
attributed to the liar in every culture, research that revealed those behaviors might suggest the
liars presumed psychological state.

An alternative hypothesis is that stereotypes of the liar are culture specific. Cultures are known to
differ in their norms for interpersonal communicationin levels of nonverbal involvement, in
constraints imposed by social roles, in the explicitness of the communicative code (Anderson,
Hecht, Hoobler, & Smallwood, 2002). Thus, they may also differ in beliefs about deception.
Every culture, we suspect, associates lying with actions that deviate from the local norm.
However, norms for behavior vary so radically across cultures that behaviors stereotypical of
deception vary too. Language differences may contribute to this cross-cultural variability, each
language embodying a distinct folk model of those who use the language falsely (Sweetser,
1987). Local beliefs about liars find their way into cultural sayings and lore (Hendry & Watson,
2001).

In the current project, we assess these hypotheses by studying stereotypes about liars worldwide.
Our goal is to sketch the patterning of beliefs across the world, with a view to understanding
international similarities and differences in stereotypes. We pursued this goal with two studies.
In an initial study, we invited people in a large number of countries to respond to an open-ended
question about lying. In a second study, we solicited beliefs about deception with a close-ended
survey.

Go to:

STUDY 1

In response to an open-ended question, participants in each of 58 countries explained how they

could tell when someone was lying. Answers to this question were coded so that the worldwide
distribution of beliefs about deception could be examined. In some highly developed Western
countries, people attribute the stereotypic liar with gaze aversion and a number of other
particular behaviors. Perhaps similar beliefs are held worldwide.

METHOD

Collaborator recruitment

Charles Bond (a native resident of the United States) conceived of this project and recruited an
international research team. Most of the research team members were academic psychologists,
and most correspondence occurred via English-language e-mail. See Table 1 for a list of
participating countries, their languages, and the studies in which they participated.

TABLE 1

Participating Countries

Participants

Study 1 results were obtained from 20 male and 20 female native, lifelong residents of each of 58
countries indicated in Table 1. All participants were literate and older than 16 years old. Most of
them were university students.

Procedure

Collaborators were asked to translate a question from English into the dominant language of their
country. The question was as follows: How can you tell when people are lying?

Lying was defined as an intentional false statement. Collaborators were asked to choose a
translation of the word lying consistent with that definition and one that would connote both
small and big lies (e.g., lies about murder as well as lies about a friends clothes). Some of the
collaborators had difficulty understanding the colloquial wording of the question How can you
tell when people are lying? For them, the question was paraphrased as What signs (or
indications or clues) do you use to determine (or judge or decide) that people are lying?

Translation of responses

Team members translated this question into the dominant language of their country and solicited
written responses in that language. Participants were invited to answer the question How can
you tell when people are lying? in any way they wishedby giving a single response or many
responses. After securing 20 male and 20 female participants written responses to our question,
collaborators translated non-English responses into English.

Coding

The English-language protocols required coding before they could be assimilated in any
quantitative form. There were two coders: a female and a male. The female coder examined all
participants protocols, scoring the 40 protocols from a given country in succession while
unaware of the countrys identity and each participants sex. From her reading of these
responses, the female developed a scheme of 103 belief categories. The male coder then used
that 103-category scheme in an independent scoring of each protocol. He too was unaware of
participants nationality and sex.

We quantified composite intercoder reliability country by country with Cohens kappa statistic
(). Across the 58 countries, the two coders achieved a mean of 67.98% agreement in applying
the 103 belief categories. This yielded a mean Cohens = .66, 95% confidence interval = .65 to
.67.

All analyses of the Study 1 data were conducted on the average of the two coders scorings.
Below, we report results at the level of belief category. Effective reliability for these data is
much higher than for the coding of a single belief. For example, the female coders relative use
of the 103 belief categories was consistent with the males; for consistency in the number of
times a category was used, r = .92.

RESULTS

In Study 1, 2,320 lifelong residents of 58 countries were asked the question How can you tell
when people are lying? To that question, they gave 11,157 responses. Some of the participants
offered only one response to the question, whereas the most prolific participant offered 20
responses. When asked How can you tell when people are lying? females offered more
responses than males (Ms = 5.00 and 4.62 beliefs, respectively), F(1, 2004) = 22.74, p < .0001, d
= .20. From participants 11,157 responses, coders identified 103 distinct beliefs.

Belief prevalence

We tabulated beliefs by their prevalence. As one measure of the prevalence of a belief, we noted
the percentage of participants who offered that belief as one of their responses to the question
How can you tell when people are lying? Figure 1 lists each belief that was expressed by more
than 15% of the participants. As the figure displays, the most common belief about deception
worldwide is that liars avoid eye contact. Indeed, 63.66% of our participants mentioned gaze
aversion as a way to tell when people are lying, far more than expressed any other belief.
Roughly one fourth of our respondents believed each of the following: that liars are nervous
(28.15%), that deceptive remarks are incoherent (25.30%), and that lying can be detected from
movements of the liars body (25.04%). Also common are the beliefs that one can tell when a
person is lying from the liars facial expression, from verbal inconsistencies, from speech fillers
(uhs), from facial color, and from pauses while the liar is speaking. Altogether, the nine beliefs
in Figure 1 garnered 37.55% of our participants 11,157 responses.

Figure 1

Most Common Beliefs About Lying: Study 1

Next most common were 10 other beliefs: (a) Liars can be detected from arm, hand, and finger
movements; (b) liars can be detected from changes in their speech rate; (c) liars can be detected
because they make noises (like sighs); (d) one needs to know a person to tell whether the person
is lying; (e) lies can be detected from tone of voice; (f) they can be detected from cues in the eyes
other than direction of gaze; (g) liars sweat; (h) liars play with their hair, clothes, or objects; (i)
lies can be detected from unspecified changes in the liars behavior; and (j) lies can be detected
from weak arguments and logic. Each of these beliefs was mentioned by 10% to 15% of
participants worldwide. Together, the latter 10 beliefs accounted for 18.33% of our participants
11,471 responses.

The results we have been reporting assess the prevalence of a belief by the percentage of
participants who offer it as one of their responses to our question How can you tell when people
are lying? For a second measure of belief prevalence, we noted the number of responses a given
participant had offered to our question and assessed belief prevalence as a percentage of this
participant total. Thus, if a given participant gave four responses and one of those responses was
that liars sweat, sweating would constitute 25% of that participants responses.

By this second measure, the most common belief in the world is that liars avoid eye contact. It
constitutes 13.87% of a typical participants responses. The second most common belief is that
liars are nervous (4.53% of a typical participants responses).

Cross-cultural consensus

For a cross-cultural comparison of beliefs about lying, we conducted a statistical analysis. For
each of the 58 countries, we noted the percentage of respondents who mentioned each of the 19
beliefs about deception volunteered by 10% or more of the global sample as whole. We then
correlated that countrys percentage mention of these 19 beliefs with a world profile that omitted
the country in question. The resulting 58 Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients show
that there is substantial cross-cultural agreement in the relative prevalence of beliefs about lying.
In fact, a countrys belief profile shows a median correlation of .80 with the corrected world
profile. For a cross-country reliability analysis, we arranged the country-by-country percentage
generation of these beliefs into a 19 58 matrix. By standard psychometric criteria, these 58
countries show very strong agreement in relative generation of beliefs (Cronbachs = .98).
Alongside this worldwide consensus in beliefs about lying, there are some cross-cultural
differences. Gaze aversion, the most common belief about lying worldwide, constitutes a
significantly higher proportion of the responses to our open-ended question in some countries
than others; for the country main effect, F(57, 2262) = 6.36, p < .01. Even so, country explains
only 13.81% of the variance in this belief. In 51 of the 58 countries we studied, gaze aversion is
more prevalent than any other belief about lying. Gaze aversion shows the lowest prevalence in
the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Still, 20% of the participants in our UAE sample mentioned
gaze aversion as a cue to deception, making this the eighth most prevalent UAE belief of the 103
in our coding system.

Accessibility

Inspired by work in cognitive psychology, we examined the order in which participants

generated responses to our open-ended question. Theoretically, the strongest, most accessible
beliefs should be mentioned first in response to a question. Operating on this theoretical
assumption, we noted the number of times a belief was offered as the first response to our open-
ended question, as a percentage of the number of protocols on which that belief appeared.

Of the 38 beliefs mentioned by more than 5% of respondents, the most accessible is that liars
avoid eye contact. Among participants who mention gaze aversion as a way to tell when people
are lying, 43.90% mentioned it first. Also highly accessible are other references to the liars eyes,
the belief that deception can be detected from the liars facial expressions, and the belief that one
needs to know a person to detect that persons lies. These three beliefs are mentioned first by
43.06%, 38.30%, and 35.49% (respectively) of the participants who mentioned them.

Nonbeliefs

Poring more than 11,471 beliefs about lying, we were struck by the infrequency with which
certain factors were mentioned. Because our sample included residents of several collectivist
cultures, we had imagined that group membership might be mentioned as a cue to deception.
Averaging across 58 countries, a mere 0.26% of participants responses made any reference to
group membership. Also conspicuously missing were beliefs about situational cues to lying,
incentives, and other motivational factors. These constituted only 0.33% of responses in 58
countries. Confessions of deceit accounted for only 0.10% of responses. By contrast, when asked
to recount the discovery of a particular lie, Americans frequently mention confessions (Park et
al., 2002). Perhaps this reflects a difference in method.

DISCUSSION

Study 1 is the first worldwide investigation of beliefs about lying. The study reveals several pan-
cultural stereotypes, most notably that liars avoid eye contact. Global stereotypes also include
references to the liars nervousness, speech disturbances, and torso movements.

Study 1 drew conclusions about deception stereotypes from responses to the open-ended
question How can you tell when people are lying? Although this study yielded a striking
finding, people may have beliefs that do not occur to them when they are asked an open-ended
question. It is also possible that the wording of our Study 1 question somehow cued the
responses obtained.

Go to:

STUDY 2

To complement our open-ended exploration of deception stereotypes, we developed a

questionnaire. It asks whether lying is related to a number of behaviors, including the ones most
often mentioned in Study 1. Responses to an open-ended question suggest a worldwide
stereotype: that liars avert gaze. In Study 2, we probe for that belief with a direct question. More
generally, we assess whether responses to a survey will corroborate behavioral stereotypes that
seem to emerge from open-ended descriptions of deception.

METHOD

Participants

Completed Study 2 results were obtained from 20 male and 20 female native, lifelong residents
of each of the 63 countries noted in Table 1. Forty-six of these countries had participated in
Study 1.

Questionnaire construction

After examining preliminary results from Study 1, Bond drafted an English-language

questionnaire. He circulated the draft to collaborators and invited their comments. With the aid
of these suggestions, Bond developed the 10 English-language items that appear in Appendix B.1

Questionnaire translation

Collaborators were sent the English text in Appendix B. They were asked to translate and back
translate this questionnaire using two independent bilinguals, altering the original translation in
any way necessary so that the questionnaire would back translate correctly. The English-
language questionnaire was translated into 32 other languages. The most widely used translations
were Spanish, Arabic, and French.

Participant recruitment and questionnaire administration

Each collaborator administered the questionnaire to 20 male and 20 female native, lifelong
residents of the collaborators country in the dominant language of that country. No Study 2
respondent had participated in Study 1, and most were students. Each respondent was literate and
older than 16 years old. Each responded to the questionnaire in writing and worked
independently of others.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 2 displays worldwide results on some beliefs about deceptive behavior. As shown in the
figure, 71.5% of respondents worldwide believe that liars avoid eye contact, 65.2% believe that
liars shift their posture more than usual, 64.8% believe that liars touch and scratch themselves,
and 62.2% believe that liars tell longer stories than usual. No other behavioral sign of deception
was endorsed by more than 60% of the respondents.

Figure 2

Beliefs About Lying: Study 2

For a comparison of beliefs across cultures, we began by noting the modal response worldwide
to each of the 10 items in Appendix B. We then noted the percentage of respondents from a
given country who gave each of these 10 responses and correlated that countrys percentage
endorsement of the 10 beliefs with a world profile that omitted the focal country. Results show
that there is substantial cross-country consensus in percentage endorsement of the modal
responses to these questionnaire items. As indicated, the median of 63 rs, the typical countrys
profile of beliefs, correlates .58 with the corrected world profile. Cronbachs = .96 for this 10
63 matrix.

These close-ended responses complement the Study 1 open-ended descriptions of liars. As in our
earlier investigation, the strongest belief is that liars avoid eye contact. In 61 of the 63 countries
we surveyed, respondents were likelier to believe that liars decrease eye contact than believe that
they increase eye contact. In Study 1, natives of the UAE were least likely to mention gaze
aversion as a way to tell when people are lying. Thus, it is noteworthy that among UAE
respondents to our Study 2 questionnaire, 65% indicate that people make less eye contact when
lying.

Although verifying that gaze aversion is the most common worldwide belief about lying, Study 2
yielded other interesting results. In Study 1, the second most frequently mentioned belief about
deception was that liars are nervous. Although 54.9% of the Study 2 respondents agree that liars
are nervous, 27.0% believe that liars are calm. Open-ended descriptions do not portray the liar as
calm.2

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GENERAL DISCUSSION

In two worldwide investigations, we uncovered a pan-cultural stereotype: that liars avoid eye
contact. This belief was expressed in every one of the 75 countries we studied. It appears in both
open-ended descriptions and in questionnaire responses. It is apparent when stereotypes are
expressed in the English language. It is also apparent in translations between English and 42
other languages. University students believe that liars avert gaze, as do older people. This is not
only the most prevalent stereotype about lying in the world, but it is also the most accessible.
When describing liars, people mention gaze aversion before mentioning anything else.

There are other common stereotypes about the liar, and these should not be ignored. Liars shift
their posture, they touch and scratch themselves, liars are nervous, and their speech is flawed.
These beliefs are common across the globe. Yet in prevalence, these stereotypes are dwarfed by
the most common belief about liars: they cant look you in the eye.

As psychologists, we have wondered about the global stereotype of liars. Why does the
stereotypical liar avoid eye contact? Why does this belief so dominate the stereotype? Why does
the global stereotype of liars also include allusions to speech disturbances, nervousness, postural
shifts, and self-touching? How do these beliefs come into being? What functions do they serve?

The worldwide stereotype of liars would be less puzzling if we had more reason to imagine that
it was true. Then, we would infer that people abstracted their beliefs about liars from
observations of deceptive behavior. However, a large Western research literature shows that
people are nearly as likely to avert gaze when telling the truth as when lying and (more
generally) that stereotypic behaviors bear negligible relationships to deception (DePaulo et al.,
2003). Another large research literature indicates that judgments of deception are frequently
wrong (Bond & DePaulo, in press). This leads us to suspect that the judges beliefs are invalid.

If stereotypes about lying do not reflect observations of deceptive behavior, how do they arise?
Let us propose an answer to this question. Stereotypes about lying are designed to discourage
lies. They are not intended to be descriptive; rather, they embody a worldwide norm. Children
should be ashamed when they lie to their parents, and liars should feel bad. Lying should not
pay, and liars should be caught. Stereotypes of the liar capture and promote these prescriptions.
As vehicles for social control, these stereotypes are transmitted from one generation to the next.
Worldwide, socialization agents face a common challenge. They cannot always be present and
must control misbehavior that occurs in their absence. If the ultimate goal of socialization is to
inculcate a wide set of norms, children must first learn to report their misdeeds. Thus, caregivers
have an incentive to pass along the usual lore: that lying will make the child feel bad, that the
childs lies will be transparent, and that deceit will be more severely punished than any
acknowledged transgression. The hope is that lying will be deterred or (at least) that the
caregivers prophesies of shame will be self-fulfilling. By vilifying deception, stereotypes of the
liar are designed to extend the reach of societal norms to actions that go unwitnessed.

Consistent with this hypothesis, there are moral strictures against lying worldwide. As part of a
World Values Survey (Inglehart, Basaez, & Moreno, 1998), adults in 43 different societies
answered the question Is lying in your own interest ever justified? Of 43,000 respondents, 48%
said that self-interested lying is never justified. Dishonesty is seen as one of the gravest ethical
lapses. Indeed, American research participants rate the word liar as the least likeable of 555
personality trait terms (Anderson, 1968).

According to our normative hypothesis, behavioral stereotypes of the liar have a moral
underpinning. Because liars should feel ashamed, they should show signs of hiding, withdrawal,
and submission. No doubt, gaze direction is subject to a variety of culture-specific
interpretations, but our results reveal a pan-cultural construal. People throughout the world
associate gaze aversion with shame (Fessler, 1999; Keltner & Harker, 1998), and even non-
human primates signal submission by looking away (Argyle & Cook, 1976; Emery, 2000).

Although the developmental trajectory of stereotypes about lying remains to be charted, a few
milestones can be identified. With neural structures that are specialized for perceiving eye
contact (Kawashima et al., 1999), humans are sensitive to gaze direction from birth (Farroni,
Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). Eye contact functions as an early vehicle for mother-infant
interaction (Keller, Schoelmerich, & Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1988), and the mothers breaking of mutual
regard may be the first signal of disapproval infants encounter (Schore, 1994). By the age of 3,
most children know that adults react negatively to intentional falsehoods (Siegal & Peterson,
1998), and soon thereafter, they are inferring deceit from gaze aversion (Rotenberg & Sullivan,
2003). Although they often disbelieve fishy-looking truth tellers, perceivers rarely learn from
their mistakes. Sensing that they are falsely suspected, truth tellers show signs of discomfort that
function to reinforce the perceivers stereotypes (Bond & Fahey, 1987). Meanwhile, incoming
behavioral data are assimilated to pre-existing beliefsliars being attributed with less eye
contact than they display (Levine, Asada, & Park, 2004).

Some may view stereotypes about lying as idle curiosities (of no more than academic interest),
but we take a different view. If designed to discourage deception, these stereotypes in fact
promote deceit. In sketching the liar as conscience stricken, they ignore deceivers abilities to
self-rationalize (Bok, 1999). In predisposing perceivers to miss lies, stereotypes reduce the
likelihood of deceit being punished. These beliefs embody noble sentiments but are
counterproductive.

Although our ideas about lying stereotypes may be speculative, we hope that scholars will
consider societal prescriptions as they study deception around the globe. Perhaps cross-cultural
differences in beliefs about lying reflect differing socialization requirements. A universal of
experience, deception captures human imagination.

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APPENDIX A
The Global Deception Research Team

Toivo Aavik (University of Tartu, Estonia), Maher Abu-Hilal (United Arabs Emirates [UAE]
University), Farrukh Z. Ahmad (Institute of Professional Psychology, Pakistan), Ramadan A.
Ahmed (Kuwait University, Kuwait), Barbara Alarco (University of Lima, Peru), Benjamin
Amponsah (University of Ghana, Ghana), Adnan Atoum (Yarmouk University, Jordan), Hadi
Bahrami (Tehran University, Iran), Peter Banton (University of Aix-Marseille, France), Veronica
Barca (State University of Moldova, Moldova), M. Basualdo (University Columbia of the
Paraguay), Corina Benjet (National Institute of Psychiatry, Mexico), Uma Bhowon (University
of Mauritius, Mauritius), Charles F. Bond, Jr. (Texas Christian University), Trevor I. Case
(Macquarie University, Australia), Letizia Caso (University of Rome, Italy), Derek Chadee
(University of West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago), Robert Churney (College of Micronesia,
Micronesia), Marjorie Courtoy (Universit Catholique de Louvain, at Louvain-la-Neuve,
Belgium), Hrach Datevyan (Yerevan State Linguistic University, Armenia), Dahourou Donatien
(University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), Cecilia Gastardo-Conaco (University of
Philippines, Phillippines), Guido Gendolla (University of Geneva, Switzerland), M. Arif Ghayur
(Slippery Rock State University, Slippery Rock, PA), Vijai N. Giri (Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur, India), Raja Gunawardhane (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka),
Hyuseog Han (Chonnam National University, Korea), Maria Hartwig (Goteborg University,
Sweden), Nida Ul Hasanat (Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia), Dora Herrera (University of
Lima, Peru), Angelika Hofhansl (University of Vienna Medical School, Austria), Roberta
Holland (University of Malta, Malta), John Horgan (University College of Cork, Ireland), Shih-
Tseng Tina Huang (NCCU, Taiwan), Rosnah Ismail (Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia), Tina
Javahishvili (Academy of Sciences, Georgia), Lucy Johnston (University of Canterbury, New
Zealand), Andreas Kapardis (University of Cyprus, Cyprus), Mujde Ker-Dincer (Ege University,
Turkey), Maria Kerslake (National University of Samoa, Samoa), Anna Khaltourina (Academy
of Sciences, Russia), Darya Khaltourina (Academy of Sciences, Russia), Jennifer Ah Kion
(University of Mauritius, Mauritius), Guenter Koehnken (University of Kiel, Germany), Flora
Kokkinaki (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece), Mladen Koljatic (Pontifica
Catholic University of Chile, Chile), Aleksandra Kostik (University of Nis, Serbia and
Montenegro), Jenny Kurman (University of Haifa, Israel), Kang Lee (University of California
San Diego, San Diego, California), Elena Levintsa (State University of Moldova, Moldova),
Ladislas Lovas (University of P.J. Safarik, Slovakia), Jaume Masip (University of Salamanca,
Spain), Carlos Ruiz Matuk (University of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Annika
Melinder (University of Oslo, Norway), Harald Merckelbach (University of Maastricht,
Netherlands), Rachi Messili (University of Algiers, Algeria), Lynden Miles (University of
Canterbury, New Zealand), Patricia Thuli Mngadi (University of Swaziland, Swaziland),
Margaret M. Munyae (University of Botswana, Botswana), Jasmina Nedeljkovic (University of
Nis, Serbia and Montenegro), Felix Neto (University of Porto, Portugal), Marika Niemi (Institute
of Occupational Health, Finland), Shanta Niraula (Padma Kanya Multiple Campus, Tribhuwan
University, Nepal), George Nizharadze (Academy of Sciences, Georgia), Takashi Oka
(University of Tokyo, Japan), D. E. M. OSullivan (University College of Cork, Ireland),
Boguslaw Pawlowski (University of Wroclaw, Poland), Marcos E. Pereira (Federal University of
Bahia, Brazil), Carolina Platon (State University of Moldova, Moldova), Sandhya Rao (Texas
Christian University), Shawn Reynolds (Institute of Behavioral Research), Bernard Rime
(Universit Catholique de Louvain, at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), Olga Rodriguez (National
University of Colombia, Colombia), Ruthie Rono (U.S. International University, Kenya), Incze
Roxana (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania), Velko S. Rus (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia),
Marion Schulmeyer (University Privada de Santa Cruz, Bolivia), Li Shu (Institute of Science,
China), Monica Silva (Pontifica Catholic University of Chile, Chile), Roma Simulioniene
(Klaipeda University, Lithuania), Iva Stuchlikova (University of South Bohemia, Czech
Republic), Iva Sverko (Institute of Social Sciences, Croatia), Victoria Talwar (McGill
University, Canada), Therese M. Tchombe (University of Yaounde, Cameroon), Sonia Tifner
(National University of San Luis, Argentina), Colin Tredoux (University of Capetown, South
Africa), Martin Voracek (University of Vienna, Austria), Aldert Vrij (Portsmouth University,
UK), Kip Williams (Macquarie University, Australia), Rex Wright (University of Alabama), and
Yuching Zhang (Institute of Science, China).

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APPENDIX B
Questionnaire: Study 2

Beliefs About Deception

Instructions

We are interested in your beliefs about deception. Consider each statement and mark one of three
alternatives listed below the statement. Mark the alternative that best expresses your belief.

1. When people are lying, they act

______ calm ______ nervous ______ neither calm nor nervous

2. When people are lying, they act

______ silly ______ serious ______ neither silly nor serious

3. When people are lying, their stories are

______ more consistent than usual ______ less consistent than usual ______ neither more nor
less consistent than usual

4. When people are lying, their stories are

_____ longer than usual _____ shorter than usual _____ neither longer nor shorter than usual

5. Before answering questions, people who are lying pause

_____ longer than usual ____ shorter than usual _____ neither longer nor shorter than usual

6. When people are lying, they stutter

____ more than usual ____ less than usual ____ neither more nor less than usual

7. When people are lying, they shift their posture

 ____ more than usual ____ less than usual ____ neither more nor less than usual

8. When people are lying, they look at the other persons eyes

____ more than usual ____ less than usual ____ neither more nor less than usual

9. When people are lying, they touch and scratch themselves

____ more than usual ____ less than usual ____ neither more nor less than usual

10. When people are lying, they use hand gestures

____ more than usual ____ less than usual ____ neither more nor less than usual

The Global Deception Research Team consists of the 90 individuals whose names appear in
Appendix A. Recruited via e-mail by Charles F. Bond, Jr., most team members are academic
psychologists who have English as a second (or third) language. Having studied deception as
coequals in a worldwide collaboration, we encourage others to pursue similar research
partnerships.

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Footnotes
1
The survey also included questions about deception abilities, deception frequency, and the
demography of lying. These will not be discussed.
2
The belief that liars avoid eye contact is not unique to English-language users nor to young
people. In Study 2, 69.95% of non-English-language participants and 66.5% of participants who
were at least 30 years old indicated that people make less eye contact than usual when lying. In
Study 1, gaze aversion was mentioned as a cue to lying by 63.04% of non-English-language
participants and 64.90% of participants who were at least 30 years old.

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