This is the big pause The body and brain must deal with lying in a complicated way. The truth is first produced by your brain, then suppressed before you can create the lie.
This often leads to a longer pause than normal before answering, plus a verbal stalling technique like ‘Why do you ask that?’ rather than a direct and open response.
Eye darts: Humans have more eye expressions than any other animal and our eyes can give away if we’re trying to hide something.
When we look up to our left to think we’re often accessing recalled memory, but when our eyes roll up to our right we can be thinking more creatively. A common eye contact cutting gesture is to look away, or downward, when someone feels guilty about a lying.
Losing your breath Bending the truth causes an instant stress response in most people, meaning the fight or flight mechanisms are activated.
As the mouth becomes dry and sweaty, your pulse rate increases and you breathe in shorter and shallower breaths. These can be seen and heard often.
Overcompensating: An imposter will over-perform in order to appear more convincing. Over-exaggerated body language routines may involve excessive eye contact (often not blinking). exaggerated gesticulation.
If someone is agitating, it’s more likely that they may be fibbing (stock illustration).
Poker face Although some people prefer to employ the poker face, many assume less is more and almost shut down in terms of movement and eye contact when they’re being economical with the truth.
The hide of the face: A person who tells lies often feels the urge to cover their face for their audience. Sometimes this can result in a cut-off gesture such as the nose touch or cover.
Self-comfort touches: Stress and discomfort from lying can often lead to gestures designed to comfort the lieder, like rocking, hair-stroking, twiddling, or even playing with wedding rings. Self-comfort gestures are something we all do, but it will be more effective when someone is lying.
Micro-gestures: These are very small gestures or facial expressions that can flash across the face so quickly they are difficult to see. Experts often slow down footage to see the real body language reaction.
These facial expressions are easiest to detect in person. You might notice a skew in the mouth or a roll of the eyes as an immediate clue.
Remarks: It is the feet or hands that are most challenging to work with. Liars can often have trouble keeping their mouths shut while lying.
When the gestures and the words are at odds it’s called incongruent gesticulation and it’s often the hands or feet that are telling the truth.