Body Language Expert: The Body Language of Lie Detection

It’s common knowledge that body language can indicate a lie or the truth.  Do you know how to interpret that?  It happens really quickly, so you’ve got to have a sharp eye and you’ve got to believe what you see the first time.

Let’s talk about a couple ways that you can start to interpret if someone’s lying or not, just try to sniff that out.  Well, the way the FBI does this, their favorite tool is to start to understand if someone significantly changes their behavior.  Does their pace of speech change?  Does their tone of voice change?  Do they go from still to fidgety, or generally fidgety to still?

To do this, you have to baseline people.  There are a lot of ways to do that.  It helps the more you’re around them, the more you’ll be able to tell what their normal behavior is like.  If a sensitive subject comes up and someone’s behavior totally shifts, that’s one red flag.  You don’t want to incriminate on just one red flag because you really want to look for a cluster so that you have a better idea of truth or lies across from you.

Another thing to look for is if people generally start to itch their face.  It can be that people rub their nose, rub their ears, scratch their neck.  These are very sensitive areas.  They have a lot of capillaries.  The thing is, the body can’t lie.  When you tell a lie for 80% of people that’ll create anxiety which will raise your blood pressure which will cause your capillaries to swell which will cause an itch.  If you ask people, you say, “Hey, you know what, I think you’re lying because you itched your face just a little too much at some pretty opportune moments.”  Well, they’ll say, “Well, yea, I had an itch.”  Of course, you did because your anxiety went up and your capillaries swelled, so it creates an itch.  Watch for these.  Believe them the first time.  They happen quickly.  And then build your case from there.

Want to know more?  Check out a few videos from my Fraud Spotting online training.