I remember watching a show a long time ago about psychologists studies in regards to lying… And for example, one of the things they found was that, I believe, when asked to recall something, when people raised their eyes up and to the left (to think), they were making up a story, but when they looked up and right, they were actually accessing memory - stuff like that…
Have there been any studies done to find an objective way of analyzing the veracity of statements? If so, any general guidelines you can use to ‘detect’ lies?
what i think you are talking about is nlp, short for neuro-linguistic procedure (programming?). basically, nlp was (is) a psychological theory that said accessing different part of one’s consciousness causes one’s eyes to move in a certain direction.
like, when you’re actually remembering something visually, your eyes move up and to the left. but if you made something up, and were examinging it ‘visually’ in your mind’s eye, you’d look up and to the left.
but it also gets more complicated than that. first of all, if it’s an auditory memory, the same rules don’t apply. i think it’s the opposite.
to complicate things further, nlp is not an established fact. there is a lot of disagreement within the behavioral psychology world as to whether people actually do look one way or another. so nlp is hardly a settled matter.
and most complicated of all, what most law enforcement is being taught is a bastardization of nlp (think motivational speakers and ‘left-brain-vs-right-brain’ nonsense).
so yes, people may give certain nonverbal cues as to whetherthey are lying, but there is no established correlation between (and certainly no linked causation with) certain non-verbals cues and lying.
The Learning Channel (US cable/satellite) recently rebroadcast The Human Face, a joint BBC/TLC production. One episode addressed lying and how it affects facial expressions.
In that segment, the host (John Cleese of Monty Python/Fawlty Towers fame) described an experiment in which so-called experts were asked to determine the veracity of videotaped statements by judging the facial expressions of the speakers. Most of these experts (forensic psychologists, criminal lawyers, cops, etc.) did no better than chance; however, US Secret Service agents did much better, picking the liars about 80% of the time.
It turns out the agents were picking up on micro-gestures (facial expressions lasting less than 1/2 second) that betrayed the speaker’s true feelings. Granted, this isn’t exactly objective, and it’s apparently not foolproof, but it seems quite a bit better than the techniques generally used in the criminal justice system.
that should be left formerly, and right latterly. but, for all i know, i got these specifics wrong and it’s really right/left.
also, my last paragraph was a bit hyperbolic. while there are definite correlations between certain non-verbal cues and deception, they are not absolute, and most of them are invisible (unless you wanna get all obtrusive and invasive and shit).
I think you also need to look at the voice. I saw something a couple of weeks ago on point and it said pitch, speed of response and pace of response should all be factored in.
Must be stuff online about this – as a strating point, isn’t it an aspect of ‘body language’ ?