Is it possible to find out that they are lying to you by analyzing facial expressions, gestures, movements? Unlikely. Then how to determine that the interlocutor is telling a lie? It turns out that the surest remedy is to relax and listen to your own feelings.
Our brain is able to notice and fix even the most insignificant details in the behavior of another person – they give out a deceiver. Often this happens completely unconsciously, before we begin to understand the real reasons for our suspicions. Therefore, you should listen to your intuition and trust yourself, then your brain will tell you who is a liar and who is honest.
The best lie detector is hidden within us. You may not be aware of this. However, trying to understand subtle signals logically can be confusing. The brain stops tracking clues coming from the body, face, voice, which involuntarily betray your interlocutor.
To “turn on intuition” again, you need not to focus, but, on the contrary, to relax, explains the famous researcher of emotions Paul Ekman *. Become more attentive to your feelings and premonitions, hear a quiet voice: “I don’t know why, but I’m sure that I have a deceiver in front of me.” In psychology, this is called the unconscious definition of a lie.
Consciously or unconsciously
Researcher Lin Ten Brinke and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley conducted an interesting experiment**. They invited the participants to watch several videos in which the characters were lying or telling the truth.
Then it was necessary to complete a simple task: to sort the words into two categories as quickly as possible – false or true (for example, “reliable”, “authentic”, “deceitful”, “artificial”, “honest”, “deceptive”, “legitimate” ). Before each word on the computer screen, for a fraction of a second, an image of one of the heroes of the video, a deceiver or a truth-seeker, appeared.
It turned out that when a photo of a liar flashed on the screen (you can only notice it at an unconscious level), the participant in the experiment quickly identified words belonging to the category “lie”. And if an image of a person speaking the truth flashed on the screen, terms belonging to the category “truth” were more easily selected.
Changes in facial expressions that take from 1/25 to 1/5 of a second, Ekman called microexpressions.
The explanation for this phenomenon is simple and curious: our brain unconsciously determines the signals of deception – facial expression, voice tone, posture. He grabs them literally on the fly (he manages to notice how the image flashed on the screen) and sends us in the form of vague sensations that we can ignore for one simple reason – they pass by our consciousness.
In order to identify the signals that the brain picks up, Paul Ekman spent more than a hundred hours watching the twelve-minute film repeatedly: this is how he studied the facial expressions of a person who lies**: film, a shadow of deep suffering ran through.
The expression is visible in only two frames, the image remains on the screen for only one twelfth of a second and quickly disappears under a smile.
Such changes in facial expressions, which take from 1/25 to 1/5 of a second, Ekman called microexpressions, and noted that only they reveal the true feelings of a person.
Mind Clues
Do not try to discern something special in the facial expressions of the interlocutor. We still will not be able to recognize the external signs of deception – only if we specifically studied it. It is better to spend a few extra minutes in the company of a person. Ask him a couple of questions… Maybe off topic…
Don’t worry, your brain will do all the work for you. The important thing is to let your feelings come to the surface. Should they be trusted? It all depends on the ability to trust yourself. Which of course requires some work on your part.
* Author of the bestsellers “Psychology of lies”, “Recognize a liar by facial expression” (Peter, 2013).
** For more information about the experiment, visit the University of California website newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research-news/unconscious-mind-can-detect-liar-even-when-conscious-mind-fails
*** The experiment is described in Paul Ekman’s book The Psychology of Emotions (Peter, 2010).
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