In this article we are going to talk about the body language of a liar. All the things you can look for when you want to know if someone is lying.
Always look for clusters of signals
One very important thing to understand is that there’s no single sign that tell you if someone is lying. We are going to go through a lot of different signs you can look for, but understand this, these signs doesn’t tell you much on their own. It’s when you start seeing multiple signs of lying that they become more reliable.
Some people want to say that someone is lying so bad that they do so just because someone is touching their nose. One common phrase that is used is “you will always find what you are looking for”. What this means is that if you’re already determined that someone is lying even before you start observing their body language. It can be easy to say that someone is lying just because that person shows a sign of stress for example. It’s important to be aware of your beliefs and what you already think about a person. This allows you to be less biased and rely on facts instead of beliefs and emotions.
Incongruent body language
Just looking for incongruent body language is going to take you a long way. If I could only give you one tip about the body language of a liar it would probably be this. Because when someone is confident in what they are saying they are going to show that to you both trough their words and their body. On the other hand when someone know that they are lying, they aren’t going to feel confident about what they are saying. This is then often going to leak out through their body language.
What does incongruent body language look like?
Incongruent body language is when a person says one thing but their body language tells a different story. We’re going to tell you some signs that are easy to spot.
Head shake and head nod
Does his head shake or head nod match what he is saying. For example, if you ask a person if he was out drinking last night and he answers “no” but his head nods yes. Then his words and body language doesn’t match. This is a sign that he might be lying. This is something that is hard to control because we often aren’t aware of our body language. Of course the same thing is true if he answers “yes” to a question but his head shakes no. As I said earlier, don’t trust any single sign by itself, but if you see this you’re definitely right to be suspicious of his answer.
Just think about it, why would someone say “yes” and then shake his head, that doesn’t make any sense. There are of course cases when we happen to see something or have a negative thought that makes us shake our head. But it’s rare that it would happen exactly at the same time as he answers your question.
Shoulder shrug
The same goes for shoulder shrugs, if you are confident in what you’re saying you rarely shrug your shoulders. Shoulder shrugs is something we do when we don’t have an answer to something or we are unsure. If someone makes a statement and then does a shoulder shrug it’s a sign of low confidence and that’s an indication of lying. Of course having low confidence in itself doesn’t mean that someone is lying, but if someone makes a statement and sound confident in his words his body language should also show confidence.
When facial expressions are incongruent
This can often be seen when a person has done something wrong and tries to play the victim card. They are telling you a story of how sad and hurt they are but when you look at their face you can see a smile shine through for a short time. This happens when they’re trying to look sad in their face, but at certain times they get so excited when they think that they have fooled you that they start smiling. This behavior is what people often call “duping delight”. Of course when they recognize that they’re smiling, they immediately stop. In some cases though they just can’t control themselves and they just keep on smiling.
Other facial expressions to look for is anger, disgust or contempt. For example, saying that you are okay with someone while showing any of those facial expressions is an indication that you’re lying.
Whenever a facial expression doesn’t match what they’re saying, you should ask yourself why?
Stress
The bigger the lie that someone tells the more stress they feel. This is a great thing to look for but remember that many people jumps to a conclusion too fast though. Just because a person is stressed doesn’t mean he has to lie. There are a lot of other things that can make another person stressed. Just the feeling that someone doesn’t believe what you’re saying might make you stressed. So don’t jump to any conclusion just because someone shows you signs of stress.
Ask yourself why?
If someone shows you signs of stress through their body language, you should ask yourself why they’re feeling stressed. Is it because they’re lying or could it be because you don’t believe them or are there any other reason?
Lance Armstrong doping case
Lance Armstrong is a good example, when he was asked in an interview if he was doped. He showed huge amounts of stress. If he was innocent, there would be no reason to feel stressed, because test results would prove his innocence. Therefore I would be suspicious and look for further signs of lying. As most people know he later admitted to have been using performance-enhancing drugs throughout much of his career.
Scratching
Scratching is another sign of stress. This can includes all areas like neck, hair, arms, legs etc. The most common to see is neck and arm scratching. Also hair scratching is common in some people. If they are only done once for a short period of time it doesn’t mean much. It’s when a person keep on doing this repeatedly and precisely when asked a question that it becomes more reliable.
Swallowing
This is a common thing that people do when they’re feeling a lot of stress. People do this because the stress makes their throat dry, which makes them do these hard swallows.
Increased blink rate
Our blink rate can increase because we are aroused, troubled, nervous or concerned. By being aware of the context you can probably guess if the increased blink rate is because of stress or something else.
To know if someone’s blink rate has increased, it’s best to have a baseline to compare against. A normal blink rate for most people is between 10 and 20 blinks per minute. If we focus on something though, like reading, then our blink rate can go as low as a few blinks per minute.
Stuttering
Stuttering can be a sign of stress or it can mean that a person simply is trying to buy himself time to come up with a lie. Of course you have to use common sense with this one, some people have a problem with stuttering. You have to establish a baseline to know if the stuttering is normal for that person.
Especially when we have to come up with an unprepared lie, we tend to stutter a lot. Because we don’t know what to say.
Signs of guilt
People doesn’t always feel guilty because they’re lying, but sometimes they do. This can be seen in their body language.
Eye contact
If you have been feeling guilty you have probably noticed that it’s hard to hold eye contact with the other person. A good example is when a kid’s parents can see that their kid has done something wrong because he can’t look them in their eyes.
Face touching
When people thinks about the body language of a liar this is one common thing that a lot of people know about. Whenever someone touches their face when they’re asked a tough question it’s a sign of a lie. Especially when they touch their nose or mouth. When we tell a lie it’s like our subconscious mind tries to tell us to stop by making us block our mouth with our hand or fingers. This is also true when people are withholding information, they physically blocks their mouth so that nothing slips out.
Avoiding a question
This is a classic signal that tells you that a person doesn’t want to talk about something. He might not feel comfortable lying about it, so he just avoids the question.
If you have watched politicians debate each other, you have probably noticed how good some of them are at avoiding questions. Sometimes it can even seem like they’re answering a question, but when you think back to what the question actually was, you realize that they never answered it.
Acting slowly to buy some time
Whenever someone suddenly starts to act slowly, this includes talking slow, thinking a lot, drinking water etc. All kind of things that buys a person time. This is something that people do when they’re put on the spot and they doesn’t have an answer or they simply doesn’t want to tell you the truth. So they buy themselves some time to come up with an answer. Pay close attention to what his answer is after this is done, if his answer sounds like rubbish, it might be because he had to come up with a lie within seconds.
Rambles about a bunch of unimportant information
Whenever you ask someone a serious question and instead of answering the question they starts telling a bunch of unimportant information. I get suspicious. This is another way to avoid a question and at the same time buy some time to come up with a lie.
Doesn’t want any attention
Someone that’s lying doesn’t like to have a lot of attention on him. Because most people aren’t comfortable with lying, they want to have as little attention on them as possible. So if someone tells a lie you can assume that they aren’t going to make more noise than necessary. There are a couple of things you can look at.
Decrease in hand gesturing
When we’re in a discussion with someone and we are excited and confident in the topic we’re talking about, we tend to move around and gesticulate much more with our hands. Because we aren’t afraid of getting attention from other people if we feel that we know what we’re talking about.
So when we’re lying, we aren’t going to feel very confident. Because we know that what we’re saying isn’t true. This is often going to make a liar gesture less, to not draw any extra attention.
Putting the attention on other things
Another way for a liar to avoid attention is to put the attention on other things. This is also sometimes done to avoid a question. It’s important to remember though, that this is something that people also can do if they’re feeling uncomfortable. For example if they’re uncomfortable having attention on them in a big group of people, they might try to get the attention of themselves this way. Therefore it’s always good to look at the context to understand if he simply is uncomfortable.
If you suspect that someone is lying and you recognize that he starts to put the attention on other people or things. It should for sure strengthen your suspicions. Especially if he starts to act weird and say totally random things, just to get the attention off himself.
Watch for micro expressions
This is a little more advanced stuff, so if you aren’t already good at reading micro expressions you should focus on all the other things first.
If done right, micro expressions is very reliable because they are almost impossible to fake or hide. The way to use micro expressions when you’re trying to decide if someone is lying is to look if their micro expressions is congruent to what they’re saying. I’ve seen it countless times when people try to act nice to me or they say that they like someone just to be polite. But their face shows the actual truth when you spot their contempt or disgust. Another alarming thing is when someone pretends to be sad but you can see micro expressions of happiness.
If you want to learn to read micro expressions I can warmly recommend the training tool that I used to learn it. I have a review of it if you’re interested.
Conclusion
This is probably more than you need to spot the body language of a liar, just remember to not be too fast to jump to a conclusion. Also if you’re a beginner at reading body language it can feel overwhelming at first but remember that practice makes perfect!
