The Biggest Lie About Body Language

Most people have been told that liars avoid eye contact, fidget, touch their face, or reveal the truth through a fleeting expression. The problem is that the science does not support the idea that any single body-language cue can reliably prove deception.

In this episode I discuss:
Why there is no single "tell" for deception
The science behind body language and lying
Why emotion is not the same as deception
The biggest mistake people make when interpreting nonverbal behaviour
How body language can actually improve communication, leadership, trust, and relationships
The approach I teach to federal agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and leaders around the world

Transcript

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Imagine I told you that by the end of this episode you'd be able to tell whether someone was lying just by watching their body language. I've probably got your attention. After all, we've all been told that liars avoid eye contact or they fidget more or they touch their faces or they accidentally reveal the truth through fleeting facial expressions, and entire careers have been built on the promise that if you just learn to read the right signals, you'll be able to see through people. The problem is that almost none of this is supported by scientific evidence. In fact, I think one of the biggest lies we've ever been told about body language is that its purpose is to tell us whether someone is lying. There is no movement, no expression or posture or gesture that reliably tells you whether someone is lying across different people and different situations. Now that does not make body language useless. It means we have been using it to answer the wrong question. I'm Dr. Abby. I am a behavioral scientist, a keynote speaker, and author. I use my background in psychology and my experience training elite professionals all around the world, including the US Secret Service, the FBI, Interpol, and Fortune 500 companies, to help you understand people, make better decisions, and take control of building the life you want. When an individual is attempting to deceive someone, they often experience feelings of distress and discomfort associated with the guilt and the fear of being caught. Additionally, telling a lie is a lot more cognitively demanding than telling the truth. Thus, an individual who is being dishonest needs to devote more of their cognitive resources to navigating the interaction and they're constructing a sequence of events whilst also ensuring that their story is plausible. This means that they have less cognitive resources available to control and regulate their nonverbal expressions of emotion. And as such, their true emotions may leak out through their body language and facial expressions. Hence, when people claim that they're reading cues to deception, that's not quite right. What they're actually reading are the nonverbal cues associated with changes in emotion, high emotional arousal, and psychological discomfort. However, and this is the really important bit. These emotions are also experienced when someone is being truthful. Someone may experience emotional arousal after being asked a question due to the stress of being accused of lying, the fear of being wrongly accused, or for an entirely unrelated reason. Maybe they had an argument with their partner and it's playing on their mind. The point is you do not know what caused the emotional response, only that there is one. And not only this, but not everyone experiences an emotional response when being dishonest. Research has shown that people may impose self-deception, which is where they believe their own lie, in a bid to better deceive others. And when they're successful, neither the nonverbal cues associated with the high emotional arousal nor the cognitive load may occur. So simply there is not one single nonverbal behavior that can tell us when someone is being dishonest. And it can be really dangerous to assign deception to those expressions of emotion. Of course, I understand why the idea of being a human lie detector is so appealing. Most of us, if not all of us, have been in situations where we desperately wanted certainty. We wanted to know whether someone was being honest, whether we could trust them, and whether they were hiding something important from us. And when you're in those kinds of moments, this uncertainty feels awful. So when someone is telling you that there are signs you can look for, we are so desperate for those answers of deception. And this is why the idea has spread so easily. If someone looks away, they must be lying. If someone touches their face, they must be hiding something. If their expression changes for a split second, the truth must have slipped out. It sounds useful because it makes people seem simple and predictable. But people are not simple or easily predicted. The same behavior can have many different meanings. I learned that lesson in a particularly embarrassing way while I was delivering training for the US Secret Service. I had packed an outfit for the event without trying it on before leaving Florida. And I had forgotten that I had it tailored before I went on a significant fitness journey. So about 15 minutes before I was due on stage, I went into the bathroom and my zipper burst open. Now there are very few situations that create panic, quite like standing in a bathroom stool, knowing you are about to walk on stage and teach a room full of federal agents with your trousers down. So after some emergency repairs involving a safety pin, I managed to get myself on stage. But I spent the entire presentation aware that my dignity was essentially being held together by office supplies. And every now and again I would look down and glance down and adjust the oversized blazer that I had borrowed and just check that everything was still where it was supposed to be. After one of the agents had made a comment that I didn't seem like a particularly confident speaker. So they had obviously observed that I was showing behaviors associated with anxiety. They saw me checking my clothing, they saw me making protective movements around my torso, and of course, occasionally looking down because I was showing the behaviors associated with nervousness. Those behaviors were absolutely real. But the interpretation of those behaviors was wrong. I wasn't nervous about being on stage. I love being on stage. I was nervous about flashing a room full of federal agents. So I need you to remember that behavior is not a dictionary, it's a compass. It doesn't give us all the answers, but it can give us direction. Someone might look away because they're lying, but they might also look away because they're thinking. Maybe they're uncomfortable or they're distracted or they're just trying to manage their emotion. Someone might fidget because they are hiding something, but they might also fidget because they're cold or they're stressed or they're just simply someone who moves around a lot when they speak. If someone suddenly becomes tense, the tension may direct your attention to a particular topic or moment in that conversation that triggered high emotion. If they begin with drawing, that may tell you to slow the conversation down and change your approach so you can explore what made them feel less comfortable. If they begin being more animated and expressive, that may indicate things like greater interest or confidence or emotional investment. But the behavior does not provide the full explanation. You still need context. You still need conversation and questioning to determine the why behind the what changed. So what can nonverbal behavior actually tell us? It can tell us a lot. So first, it can help us identify changes in comfort, and comfort is not the same as honesty. A truthful person can feel deeply uncomfortable if they're being accused, judged, or asked to discuss something painful. But changes in comfort can still tell us which parts of the conversation are affecting them. So imagine someone is relaxed while they're discussing most of their work, but become noticeably guarded when a particular project is mentioned. That doesn't prove there's any wrongdoing, but it may tell you that that project carries an additional emotional weight that's worth exploring in your questioning. Second, nonverbals can tell us whether someone is more or less engaged. Are they leaning into the conversation gradually or withdrawing? Are they orienting towards you or repeatedly shifting their attention somewhere else? Do they become more expressive when discussing one subject and less expressive when discussing another subject? All of this information can help you understand what interests someone, what's losing them, and where your communication approach may need to change. All of this is extremely valuable in things like leadership and negotiation and just in relationships in general. Third, nonverbal behavior can help us recognize emotion before it's expressed clearly inwards. So a person might say that they're fine while their voice becomes quieter or their body begins closing inwards. Someone may insist that they're not frustrating, while their movements become sharper and their speech rate increases. The body does not provide this perfectly translated label for emotion, but it may alert you to a mismatch between what's being said and what appears to be happening internally. And this gives you an opportunity to respond much more effectively. And I could just keep going because nonverbal communication sits at the foundation of every human interaction. Every day we use it to show people that we're listening. We use it to communicate confidence before we've said a single word. We use it to create trust, create rapport, signal empathy, reduce tension, encourage cooperation, and make other people feel understood. When someone tells us something difficult, we need nonverbal communication to validate them. We validate them with our facial expressions, with our posture, with our tone of voice, whether we lean in, whether we give them our full attention, whether we look distracted or present. All of these things are essential signals. And we want the same thing from other people. We also want them to have confidence in us. And our nonverbal communication often matters much more than what we say. Our body language influences whether we appear calm under pressure, if we appear approachable or genuine or trustworthy. This is why when I teach and train federal agents and other professionals, I'm not teaching quick tricks that supposedly allow you to read minds or quickly detect deception. I'm teaching people how to observe behavior, recognize meaningful changes, and understand what those changes might suggest, and then adapt their own communication accordingly. When we reduce nonverbal communication to that narrow question of lie detection, we overlook where the real power lies. If today's episode challenged the way you think, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Until then, keep challenging conventional thinking. I'm Dr. Abby, and I'll see you next time.