Unless trained, most people wouldn't even recognize signs of deceit, nor would they necessarily know how to correctly interpret them even if they did notice them. Successful determinations of deception depend on successfully decoding shades of emotion. According to Dr. Paul Ekman, an eminent psychologist and researcher who has studied deception for over 30 years: "You have to be able to read an emotion that a person is aware of, recognize emotions that a person is experiencing that he or she is unaware of, and recognize emotions that people are aware of but don't want you to know." (1) The most reliable signals of deception pertain to the cognitive effort and emotion that surround the lie itself. Deception pertaining to emotion is the most difficult for most people - trained or untrained - to discern.
Tiny flashes of expression (termed 'microexpressions') which show on an individual's face for only the briefest amount of time - less than a mere second - are key. Things like fear, or anger, or perhaps a compressed smile may flash across a face revealing much more than the person himself realizes that he is revealing. One example which quickly comes to mind, is of a young woman being asked whether or not she took fifty dollars from an envelope. Her eyes do a pretty good job at conveying sincerity when she denies having taken the money, but her microexpression of a very brief pout gives away her lie because it does not fit with her other facial expressions, nor does it fit with the words she is speaking. Additionally, while speaking, changes in word usage, word flow, tone, or voice pitch may signal the extra cognitive power that is required to lie.
Accurate signal reading is only the first step in decoding lies. Why an emotion is in play is the next piece of the puzzle. In other words, what motivates this person in this moment?
Establishing rapport with a person puts that person at ease, and asking innocuous questions provides a baseline against which the answers to more probing questions can be measured. It is possible to obtain a baseline simply by observing a person. In addition to facial expressions (both macro and micro), body language is an essential piece of the puzzle. "Gestures are often deployed in moments of stress, making them all the more critical to grasp, because stressful reactions are worthy of further exploration." (2)
A baseline reading allows an interviewer to distinguish between a personal quirk and a 'tell' or 'hotspot'. Some people are naturally jittery, agitated, or move around a lot even when relaxed. Others are not. Hot spots show up as contradictions in behaviour or demeanour: a gesture (like the graze of a hand against the forehead), or the shaking of the head from side to side indicating 'no' when stating how much they like/love someone (a technique well-used in the world of soap opera characters), can be revealing as can the type and direction of a gaze. Hotspots don't necessarily signal deception per se, but rather they may simply suggest that there is more to the matter than first meets the eye. If you call out ' a lie' you could very well be wrong, but a hotspot is never wrong if it is simply used to notice that a person's account of a situation or event is not consistent with how he or she normally displays information. Training in the differences between cultures is essential here.
A shrewd interviewer foments hotspots - he doesn't just look for them. One highly trained FBI investigator found a fugitive hiding in his mother's closet after he questioned the mother several times with respect to her son's whereabouts. Each time the mother was asked if the son was in the home, her hand went to, and lingered on, the suprasternal notch just below the neck as she stated that she did not know where he was. Research had previously shown this to be a protective gesture that indicates discomfort, especially in women. (In men, stroking of the neck is the more likely gesture.) The mother's consistent denials were to no avail: a search of the house was launched and her son was found hiding in a bedroom closet.
While microexpressions, gestures and gazes are all critical cues to discomfort (and possible deception), words also play a key role. Verbal signals that important facts may have been omitted include qualifying words like 'sometimes' and 'most of the time' and words that provide opportunities to omit facts such as 'so' and 'while'.
The speed-reading of multiple incoming messages - words, gestures, gaze, microexpressions - add up to expert intuition. The more that recognizing the basics becomes automatic, the more room the questioner has left for evaluation and the higher the success rate in the detection of deception.
Good 'lie detectors' can often be found working as therapists, writers, lawyers and, of course, as law enforcement officers. Many of these people have inborn talents like visual acuity, pattern recognition and emotional sensitivity. They also have the motivation to read people. One study has found that children raised in adverse circumstances have more highly tuned radar for detecting lies than do those raised in stable environments.
D.
(1) and (2) Psychology Today, "Secrets of Special Agents", Kaja Perina, p. 61 and p. 63.
