How to Tell if Someone is Lying

Building on the previous post about Sensory Acuity I wanted to share what I’ve found when trying to tell if people are lying. There is a lot of time given in some NLP books to the meaning of eye movements. For example, if the eyes move to the left (As you look at the person) they are more likely to be constructing a new thought, while if they look to the right they are more likely to be recalling a prior thought. There is a bit of a myth out there that if people look up and to the left then they are lying, but there are much simpler ways to tell if someone is lying. This is what I’ve found useful:

Eye Movements

The movement of peoples eyes is normally entirely unconscious. The eyes can provide a lot of insight into what is going on for someone if you have enough sensory acuity. Most emotions will be reflected through changes in the eyes, especially crying – the tears are the giveaway

When trying to tell if someone is lying it is true that for most (NOT all) people they will move their eyes upwards and to the left (As you look at them) when they are creating a new image in their mind. For reverse organised people it is likely to be upwards and to the right. When their eye movements become useful is when you calibrate to how their eyes move. For example, if you’ve been talking about the colour of their car, pre-existing information in their mind, and their eyes have reliably been moving in one direction then that is a fair indication that when it moves the other way it is a new creation in their mind.

There will be times when people are telling the truth though and their eyes move to create images. An example of this is if I asked you whether you’d sky dived from a plane and landed on a bright orange bouncy castle – the answer could be truthly spoken as NO but the eye movements would suggest you are creating an image. You would be creating an image, but in this situation you’d also be telling the truth.

For some reason most people seem to think that we maintain eye contact when we speak the truth and look away when we lie. The reverse is actually true. It is much more likely that someone trying to tell you a lie will maintain eye contact so that it doesn’t look like they are lying! They also don’t need to retrieve any information from their mind so their need to move their eyes is also reduced.

Face Touching

The classic indicators that someone is telling a fib including when somebody brings a hand to their face. Classic examples to watch out for include chin stroking, nose touching or resting their hand against their lips. The movements will often unconsciously focus around the mouth as if the liar wants to cover up their mouth as they tell the untruth.

Sensory Acuity

This varies incredibly from person to person though most people have a ‘tell’ that shows when they are lying. It could be a subtle movement in their face, a movement in their shoulders or they could break a light sweat. Whatever it is, if you have developed good enough Sensory Acuity you will be able to spot it with enough practice. This is especially useful for the Poker players amongst us as you’ll know when your opponents are bluffing!

What next?

Now that you’ve got the basics of the theory explained you can give this a go with your open minded friends. There is a really fun game that you can play with a group of people. You take it in turns and each person has to tell five statements about themselves, four of them are true and one is a lie. The person wins if nobody in the group is able to guess which is their lie. If you’ve developed your Sensory Acuity and grasped the basics from this post then you’ll have them figured out in no time!

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