While there are lots of body language signs that will give away a lie, the eyes often provide the quickest shortcut to determining the truth.
Most liars will look anywhere but into your eyes while lying. Look for glances away, over your shoulder or down. But remember that we all look away from time to time – if we locked eyes continually during a conversation we’d tend to come across as over-intense or aggressive.
In addition, one study (University of Stirling, British Journal of Developmental Psychology) found that children who look away while answering questions actually achieve more correct answers – possibly because looking away from the questioner means they have less to process and can devote more brainpower to the question. So someone who stares off into the distance when asked a tricky technical question may just be thinking hard, but this is unlikely to be the case if all you’ve asked them is ‘where were you last night?’
Eye Direction
Some scientists believe that the direction in which a person looks can allow you to tell if they’re lying. In theory, if a person looks to the left (as you look at them, so to their right) it means they’re imagining something – for our purposes, lying. If they look to the right, it means they’re remembering something – telling the truth. However, it isn’t quite as simple as that. For one thing, thoughts associated with some senses (such as smell and touch) result in people looking to the left even when they’re remembering rather than imagining. When people access their ‘internal dialogue’ (talk to themselves in their head) they tend to look to the right, but this doesn’t necessarily mean what’s coming out of their mouths is the truth.
Worst of all, all of these signs are usually reversed if the speaker is left-handed. If you’re in a relationship with someone you might well know whether they’re left or right-handed, but if you’re meeting someone for the first time you’ll need to watch them closely before you can tell if they’re lying. Eye direction signs aren’t completely reliable, either – ideally you should first find out where the person normally looks to establish a norm before trying to tell if they’re lying.
Pupil Dilation
So what can we tell from the eyes? Is it possible to tell if someone likes you? One sign that’s hard to fake is pupil dilation. Generally speaking, when we’re experiencing pleasure (be it physical or psychological – such as seeing something or someone we like) our pupils dilate (grow larger). Pupils also dilate in other circumstances: when entering a dark room, our pupils dilate to let more light in, and certain drugs (prescription or otherwise) can cause pupil dilation. Interestingly, we also tend to find dilated pupils attractive – that’s why cute fluffy animals in cartoons always have huge, shiny black pupils (think of Bambi) and why women used to drip Belladonna (also known as the poisonous deadly nightshade) into their eyes to cause their pupils to dilate. So if the object of your affections looks towards you and you notice his or her pupils suddenly dilate you can be fairly sure the attraction’s mutual. The eyes can tell us something useful after all.
Phil Marley - My writing aims include: Applying psychological theory to real life relationshipsExplaining how body language can reveal meaning beyond ...
