Deceptive Body Language

Deceptive Body Language

Deceptive body language should be necessary for everyone to learn. It can help you to distinguish if someone is being honest with you or trying to pull a fast one. Mind you, there are those that are quite good at covering deceptive body language, such as sales people, psychopaths, and criminally minded individuals. One common way to tell if a person is being deceptive by their body language is to watch for anxiety cues. Some common anxiety cues are sweating, tension, rubbing back of the neck or other body parts, sudden movements, body twitches, voice changes and increase in speed of speech, chewing on the inside of one's mouth, and shoving hands in pockets or acting very fidgety. A person, when lying, will often times try to hide their deception by attempting to gain control over their body language through forced smiles and exaggerated hand gestures. This may present as odd clumsy or jerky presenting movements. Their speech may present as hesitant because of their attempts to slow it down and think intensively as to what to say next. They will often speak looking distracted and avoid eye contact. If standing, they may shift their weight from one foot to another more often than normal as well. Law enforcement is trained to read body language. As part of that training, they learn about how the brain works and how the body reacts when using different parts of brain when thinking, such as eye movement. It is believed that the direction one looks when responding to a question can help in determining if the person is lying. This is not always a good indicator to be used in truth finding; however, if a person looks to the right while answering a question, you should at least pay close attention to what they are saying. It is thought to be instinctive action to look to the right when one is utilizing the left side of their brain, the logic and analytic side and to look to the left when using the right side of your brain, the emotional and creative side. It is thought that when a person lying they utilize the left part of their brain to create the lie which causes their eyes to gaze to the right. There is documentation that states differing views on lying and eye gaze, some say a person is lying when they look to the right where others say the left. So do not be judge and jury just because of the direction a person looks when they respond to a question you ask or are telling you a story. Pay close attention to all their body language, as well as their words before throwing the book at someone. Here are a few more interesting things about eye gaze when trying to recall a memory or store data. When we are trying to recall a memory, we use the right side of our brain, making our eyes gaze to the left. When you are seeking visual memories your eyes gaze upward, and when a person gazes downward, they are trying to recall emotional memories. However, the shifty eye, gazing right to left does not mean the person is a shyster, it only means they are trying to recall or process auditory memories.