Uncovering Deception

An often asked question in my training classes, is “how do I know if a person is telling me the truth or not?” To some extant this relies on common sense, intuition and awareness about non verbal indicators of concealment, falsification and lying.

My experience is that 99% of people I’ve interviewed in health and safety situations are cooperative and truthful; the other 1 % stand out so much that it’s obvious they are being less than truthful.

People involved in deception usually try to avoid lying by initially attempting to conceal the truth. For example, they may

• fail to answer the question,
• pretend not to understand,
• remain silent,
• feign emotion, such as anger, or
• pretend they are ill.

If that doesn’t work at concealing what they were doing, they may begin to water down their statements so they sound less blatant or they may falsify the situation by

• inventing a scenario,
• telling a tall tale, or
• telling a lie.

The body language of deception has its own particular signature—stress. This becomes noticeable in behaviour that seems out of place or uncharacteristic of the person.

As early as 1905 Sigmund Freud wrote, “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of every pore.”

Stress can indicate deception through

• making odd facial expressions,
• feigning yawns,
• rubbing hands together,
• picking fingernails, stretching,
• avoiding eye contact, pausing for longer than usual, or becoming silent,
• exhibiting glazed expressions,
• repeatedly clearing the throat,
• making speech errors,
• grinding teeth, biting lips, or nose touching.

Nose Touching

It is understood that when people tell lies, or even hear other people lying, they tend to touch their nose. There are two possible explanations for this. First, by touching the nose the hand covers the month where the lies are coming from—children often cover their mouth when telling lies. Cover the mouth, cover the lie. Second, when people tell lies it causes stress, and stress causes the skin to get slightly hotter—the basis of the lie detector machine. When the skin gets hotter, the nose, which is a sensitive organ, may itch or expand slightly, so the individual touches the itching nose.

Source: Understanding Body Language. Barron’s Education Series Inc.

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