Forgive me if I seem a little doubtful, but I have just been told that apparently people look left when they’re fibbing and right when they’re remembering something.
Now obviously that’s not approaching definitive, right, I get that. Attorneys are never going to stand up in court and gleefully say ‘Members of the jury, convincing as this man sounds, how can you believe his testimony when he keeps glancing to the right like that?’ with the jurors going ‘ahah. He’s got a point. Lucky he noticed that’
However, is there anything behind this at all? I don’t know I’d be very comfortable knowing there was a fragment of reality under it, but then again it’d be fascinating enough that I could probably cope.
Apparently some studies have been done that indicate people tend to look up and to the left when being creative, and up and to the right when remembering. This is subject to many other factors, and is really only useful as a neat fact that illustrates how your brain works.
Hmm. I wouldn’t think there is much truth to that. I have a really hard time looking people in the eye when doing the talking and tend to look in any direction–not just down at the floor. Looking at the floor seems to convey “I’m shy” very blatantly, while looking somewhere else could represent “I’m distracted by something over there” or “I’m searching for the right word…” Something not so obvious.
I take it that was a jibe aimed at me, Stockton. What can I say? One answer is that when I wrote that I was thinking with that courtroom case you’d be looking at the person face on and it’d be his left, bu everyone elses’ right, not wanting to go into a discussion on the layout of courtrooms worldwide.
However, another more truthful, answer is that it was 2am when i wrote it. And that is just about all the reply you need, really.
Knowing this I could intentionally look to the right before I speak and train myself never to look to the left.
Personally, when I want to give a forcefull impression I make a habit of looking someone directly in the eye - 2 inches past the surface of the pupil to give the appearance I see right through them into their mind.
Knowing this I could intentionally look to the right before I speak and train myself never to look to the left.
I have no problem with the fluid motion of looking to the right, then gently and warmly looking you in the eye and telling you I am God and your hair is invisible.
Personally, when I want to give a forcefull impression I make a habit of looking someone directly in the eye - 2 inches past the surface of the pupil to give the appearance I see right through them into their mind.
Surprising how effective this is.
Also in creating a fib I find my eyes tend to look forward and slightly down…
Skilled liars look one straight in the eye when lying, since “nobody can look you straight in the eye and lie”. We fear being lied to so much that a great deal of superstition has cropped up over surefire “lie detection” methods. Oddly enough, none of them seem to be considered all that useful in a court of law.
My friend, whose father is a psychologist, once told me that when we think and our eyes wander around, they “point” to the part of the brain wherein the thinking process is happening. So if we look left, our brain is searching the left side, and so on.
I know that when I sing (along to the radio, etc.) I tend to look to the left. But that’s only because I spent years in a rock band, and we always set up with the keyboard player to my left (to whom I looked for cues).
This does happen, but it’s not as clear cut as you describe, the bes way to see it is to watch someone’s eyes and ask them to remeber different things, and image, a sound and then imagine something fictional, and watch which way their eyes move.
There have been several threads on this in the past. I may have provided a cite in one of them. I don’t have one to hand now, unfortuantley. [sub]or a spellchecker[/sub]
Eye direction is irrelevent. I wasn’t around but read about a guy named Whittaker Chambers- he was accused of lying to a Congressional ‘Anti-Communist’ panel in the 50’s. A psychiatrist testified "he knew because Chambers kept looking at the ceiling "before he answered. The doc was impeached by Chambers’ attorney who pointed out the psych was looking up before he answered too. So much for eye direction.
In college (about 10 years ago) we had a speaker come in and go over this with us. They watched tapes of people being interviewed and noticed these patterns. There’s upper right, middle right, lower right, and the same three options with the left side of the eye.
The idea was that in order to access certain areas of the brain, the eyes involuntarily moved in a certian direction while accessing the information. One side for memory, and another for creating. Asked to talk about what you did yesterday, your eye will move to the memory region. Asked to invent a science fiction story, it will go to the creative area. If your eye goes there while you are supposedly answering a factual question, they imply you’d be lying because you’re creating the information.
Now, this is NOT a prolonged look. It’s a very fast blip… your eye moves to the region and then instantly back. And sorry, this is from memory, so I can’t remember what the upper/middle/lower section refer to, but they are significant if I remember correctly.
And by the way, the theory also claims that if you know your eye movement is being watched and force your eyes to stare straight ahead, they WILL move to the appropriate region almost immediately after you speak (or as soon as your guard goes down even a little). This is thought to be totally involuntary, and they had us test it out on each other. The results were impressive: it was pretty close to impossible to beat the quick eye movement.
Easily repeatable at home with a friend who is as interested in trying it out as you are.