How to detect lies - body language,...

Reviewed by runa27 on Nov 06, 3:43pm

klance74 has it exactly right (he's probably a page behind this review once it gets posted): this is NOT a foolproof test for "lying", rather it is an excellent test of Social Anxiety; something I also noticed immediately myself. These tips, in other words, will work very well to detect a lack of truthfulness on the part of socially normal people who don't have a lot of general anxiety when it comes to social interactions, especially if they aren't a very good actor. I.e. it works great on extroverts and mellow ambi-verts who don't act well, and who are capable of feeling guilty (and thus nervous and anxious) about a lie. It will, however, NOT work on people who are so narcissistic or sociopathic that they feel you will buy any lie they tell you and/or feel no compunctions or tension about lying whatsoever (because none of the signs of nervousness - which is most of the signs - show up), it will NOT work on people who are good actors who are hyper-aware of their body language and manage it well, and it will give you a LOT of false positives on people who are: shy; depressed (the "faking a smile" bit); or have a condition such as autism or Asperger's disorder, which renders them socially awkward. Good god, ESPECIALLY Aspergers! A lot of "Aspies" are well known to have problems with reading (or showing) emotion, and can be hyper-logical, hyper-precise, and awkward in their mannerisms and speech, and very mentally "closed in". This means that signs such as "holds their gestures closer in", "forces a smile", or "less likely to use contractions in their speech" are ALL likely to ping any given Aspie as a major "liar" when they're actually just socially awkward or odd when it comes to communication of ideas or expression of emotions. All in all... not useless, but not nearly as clear-cut a guide as it wants you to think it is. What's a little annoying is that only at the VERY bottom of the page does it finally include a halfway decent disclaimer: "Obviously, just because someone exhibits one or more of these signs does not make them a liar. The above behaviors should be compared to a persons base (normal) behavior whenever possible." Funny how they assume that this is, and describe it as, "obvious" but only after making across the majority of the page above it numerous statements in a manner that suggests that their "lie detection" methods are universal and close to fool-proof. If you only skimmed this page and never caught that bottom part, you would be getting quite a few false positives and might never be the wiser. A useful page, but only to a point.