Nonverbal Communication and Lying
Background of Nonverbal Communication
“Nonverbal communication can be described as behaviors or characteristics that convey meaning without the use of words,” (Floyd, K. 2011). Nonverbal communication is not however sign language since that is the use of words but not sounds. Nonverbal communication is intrinsic for all humans but varies in meaning from culture to culture, however, nonverbal communication is usually used more to understand meaning than verbal communication across the board (Floyd, K. 2011). People believe nonverbal communication over verbal communication because it’s much harder to control nonverbal communication. Anyone can say they had a great day but if they sign and roll their eyes and have a lot of tension in their voice, then this can be much harder to control. Your words convey that you had a great day but your nonverbal communication says you’ve had an awful day. People could become better at understanding liars by examining their nonverbal communication. People also can tell a lie very easily from nonverbal communication. People who are bad at lying will become tense, nervous, dry mouth, sweat a lot, and have stiff posture (Floyd, K. 2011). But there is more to lying than just this.
Pop Culture of Finding a Liar
Every BuzzFeed and Cosmopolitan article will try to tell you how to spot whether or not your significant other is lying to you by exaggerated and misleading explanations. Of course these articles will focus on things such as having a partner that won’t let them have a look at their phone right away, and them being vague about what they are doing or where they are going at a given time. These things will probably not catch a good liar and might have something more to do with the other person having bad communication skills and not being nice to them. However, there is no clear-cut Pinocchio effect with people who do lie. If people’s noses grew every time they told a lie, life would be perfectly easy to stop people from lying; except when your significant other asks you if that dress makes them look fat.
Why Do We Lie?
People lie for many reasons. We lie to help people, let children believe in Santa, to not hurt someone’s feelings, or to get something we want. Bhattacharjee from National Geographics stated: “Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, which ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies (2017).” We all lie because it’s what we have done since the dawn of time but we still need to trust others even when we lie so much ourselves. It is a common saying that people lie three times in about ten minutes. These lies Range from white lies about the tooth fairy to serious lies about for example infidelity or theft.
The table shows the type of lies are told and how frequently they are told by percentages.
Lying and Nonverbal Communication
As bad as most humans are at detecting lies, there are plenty of ways to spot when a person is lying, whether they think they are a good liar or a bad liar. Now finally the point of this blog: How to tell through nonverbal communication if someone is lying to you.
Firstly every person is different. A stranger could be lying to you and you’d be known the wiser. When someone you know better, such as a friend however, tells you a lie it can be easier to pick up on. The reason for this is that you have set up a baseline, the way a person normally acts.
The key to finding their lies is when they deviate from this baseline, and act abnormally. For example a friend that usually doesn’t make eye contact a whole lot starts making a lot of eye contact. This change of behavior can be very noticable and vise versa when they make eye contact and then don’t. Eyes are very important to nonverbal communication and can explain a good amount of what is needed to know. However, this is not the only way to detect lying through nonverbal communication.
People will do many things to try and hide that they are lying to people. However, they will also give red flags that will show they are lying. Since lying triggers the fight or flight response, and the stress that accompanies this, people will clear their throats. The reason for this is that when people lie their throat goes dry from stress and the moisture that was once in the throat is now turned to sweat. Because of the sudden loss of moisture in the throat the liar will have to hard swallow causing a jump in the Adam’s apple. Liars will also manipulate their jaw. They will move their jaw forward and backwards slightly to active the salvation glands, again to gain moisture. An eye movement that liars will use is eye pointing. They will have their eyes dart to exits, either psychical exits or “technological exits”. Such a technological exit will be that the liar will look at their phone, watch. Another way of recognizing liars is them wanting to cut conversations short because they want to leave the physical stress they are under. They will both point their eyes and their feet to exits so they can flee much easier.
Liars will also lean their heads backwards. This is a sign of distancing themselves from anxiety. People will lean forwards when they like a person or a situation but then will lean their head back when they dislike someone. Along with a head being leaned backwards people will also sway their bodies backwards or lean back against something. Lastly, people will want to protect their Suprasternal Notch. This is the base of the neck, one of the most vulnerable places on a person’s body. People will rub the back of their neck or if they are wearing a necklace they will pull and tug at it as a way of protecting it. These are a few ways to tell if a person could be lying to you (Schafer, 2014) .
However, These are not sure fire ways. As said in the earlier paragraph the best way to tell if a person is lying is noticing any big changes in their behavior. In the first paragraph we went over the fact that people will trust nonverbal communication much more than verbal communication, so it’s definitely good to learn more about these signs. When a person looks for either physical or technological exits this also very much signals this person wants to leave because they are lying even if they say they are telling the truth.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/video/how-to-tell-if-someone-is-lying-to-you-1024397891586
References
Morris, R., & BHATTACHARJEE, Y. (2017, June 05). Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/lying-hoax-false-fibs-science/
Schafer, J. (2014, November 4). 9 Red Flags That You May Be Talking to a Liar. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/201411/9-subtle-signs-someones-lying-you
Steinhilber, B. (2017, August 15). 5 signs someone’s lying to you. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-tell-if-someone-lying-according-behavioral-experts-ncna786326
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