Research Paper #3 [rewritten]
To explore different aspects of lying.
11/08/05
Telling a lie
There are sometimes when we really have to tell a lie. Suppose your partner looks really bad in his or her outfit today, but you are asked, “Am I looking good today, darling?” What would you say? Would you tell the cold truth that will hurt your partner, or would you just say “nice outfit!” just to avoid a possible disaster? And suppose your son asks for your opinion about his freshly drawn naïve and chaotic picture, what would you say? Would you disappoint him or would you encourage him that the picture is a good one? In these two cases, most people would prefer to tell a lie, so as not to hurt their loved ones. In the following we will explore different aspects of lying, such as how our body may give us away, which kind of people are harder to deceive, and how to appear more honest.
When we are telling a lie, our body usually displays some common gestures or poses; sometimes we may talk differently when we lie. However, these common little movements of the body and changes in the way we talk are usually involuntary. According to Allan and Barbara Pease, two internationally renowned experts in human relations and body language, one most common reference that liars always leave is that they usually avoid the words “I” and “me”. For instance, when one wants to lie about his absence at a meeting, he would say “the car broke down and the cell phone had a flat battery” rather than “my car broke down and I couldn’t call you because my cell phone’s battery was flat” (275). Other than vocal clues, we can look at a person’s hand-to-face gestures to see whether he or she is lying, such as “eye and nose rubbing, ear pulling and collar tugging” (Pease 284). An example given by Pease is that when Bill Clinton was in front of the Grand Jury answering questions about Monica Lewinsky, he was recorded touching his nose and face 26 times (284). Similarly, Hartland and Tosh suggested that covering the mouth while speaking indicates deceit (149). They also provided a good example that when you shout “Fire!” in a rich man’s house, he will immediately run to where his treasure is hidden. Equivalently, when we think our words are not true, we go to the where something is hidden: the mouth (156). Other fairly obvious activities to watch are “blushing, perspiration, voice tremors, gulping, shaking and playing with pencils or spectacles” (Wainwright 151).
Besides these observable body movements, there are some internal body changes which occur when somebody is lying; a liar doesn’t want the other person to discover that he is being untruthful. Thus, anxiousness experienced by the liar triggers increases in heartbeat and blood pressure, the depth of and frequency of breath, and amount of sweat. These changes are similar to what will occur when we want to escape from a dangerous situation. A device called polygraph is used to detect these fluctuations in the body. “The polygraph is basically a combination of medical devices that are used to monitor changes occurring in the body” (Bonsor 2). According to Bonsor, polygraph exams are most often associated with criminal investigations, but they are also used in other instances, such as before hiring a person (2). During an investigation, the examiner will ask two types of questions: control questions and the questions relevant to the crime. The control questions are very general questions such as “Have you ever stolen anything in your life?” These questions are too general that no one would actually answer “no.” In this way, the examiner can get a general idea what reaction the examinee will demonstrate when being deceptive (Bonsor 6). Pease remarked that recent research shows that the accuracy of the polygraph system nowadays is close to 100% (281). However, people do find some ways to trick the machine: using sedatives and antiperspirant on fingertips, tacks placed in the shoe, biting tongue, lip or cheek. The sedatives and antiperspirant work because they can reduce body reactions and perspiration. On the other hand, the tack is used to cause pain on the subject himself so that the physiological response towards the tack may overpower the physiological response towards the questions, and eventually creating identical responses to every question, both the control ones and the normal ones (Bonsor 9).
In a relationship, men are always amused how women always discover their lies. This is because men and women are different. By studying the relationship and differences between the two sexes, Allan and Barbara Pease discovered that women are better at spotting lies. They explained that women have 14 to 16 key locations in the brain activated during communication under the MRI brain scans (270). “These locations are used to decode words, tone of voice changes and body signals, and largely account for what is known as ‘a woman’s intuition’ ” (Pease 270). They pointed out that men have only 4 to 7 brain locations that perform similar tasks. This difference, according to Pease, is due to human evolution. In the long period of evolution, men and women became totally different. In primitive times, while men were responsible for hunting for the family and women taking care of the offspring in caves, their wirings started to differ. The male brain has evolved into a hunting-oriented one. It is better at measuring distances, spaces, and sizes, and other kinds of spatial skills. On the other hand, the female brain is better at communication, caring, awareness and love. This is because women have to know what their offspring need, and to notice possible danger approaching their offspring. In this way, women has developed a skill to measure the trustworthiness of a stranger and look through his feelings because her responsibility is to know exactly what are the intentions of the intruder, so as to evaluate if he is dangerous (Pease 12). And therefore, a woman can easily identify if a person is lying to her. Should a man want to tell a lie to his partner, Pease’s advice was: “call her on the phone or send her an email”, because women can only use her “intuition” during face-to-face conversations (272).
We always want people to believe what we tell them, not necessarily when we are telling a lie. We always want to appear honest in front of our boss, our clients, and during interviews. In their book Guide to Body Language, Hartland and Tosh suggested several approaches. One way to do this is to put a flat hand on the chest, which is commonly used as to say “I am telling the truth” (65). Besides, we should avoid using the phrase “to be honest…” or “to tell you the truth…”, these will ring the “automatic alarm bell” (217) because we do not have to let people know when we are really honest. To reinforce our honest image, we can talk to people with an “open” posture. This is done by wearing a smile and showing your opened palms, as well as leaving the arms and legs uncrossed, during a conversation. A person is considered as approachable and has nothing to hide when maintaining these postures (218). Most importantly, we should maintain enough eye contact of no less than one third of the time. Otherwise, people may be suspicious that we are bending the truth (109). It is generally believed that liars would avoid eye contact, and this is true. Having said that, maintaining enough eye contact does not mean that we should stare at another person during the whole conversation, because this is considered as aggressive and hostile (111). The best way to do this is to have some breaks in eye contact, but this would be tricky. According to Allan and Barbara Pease in the book Why Men Lie and Women Cry, if a right-handed person looks to the right-hand side during a break, he is recalling an event as the left hemisphere of his brain engaged. This is because a right-handed person’s left brain hemisphere is responsible for facts. On the other hand, when the same person looks to the left-hand side, the right hemisphere, which is the key location for creativeness, is engaged (285). For left-handed people, these rules apply inversely. “In simple terms, right-handed liars look toward their left, left-handed liars look to their right” (Pease 295).
We cannot hide when we are lying, because our body will always leave some clue. Avoiding these involuntary actions does not really mean that you can get away from it, because you cannot control your heartbeat and sweat. It is interesting to look at how people act differently when telling lie. Next time when you encounter a cunning salesman, look at his body language and it will tell you how honest he is. “We may lie with words and with verbal communication, but not with the language of the body” (Hartland and Tosh 225).
Works Cited
Bonsor, Kevin. “How lie detectors work” Howstuffworks.com n.d. 19 Oct 2005
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “Gestures and Gesticulation”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “Conscious and Unconscious Body Language”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “Eye Contact”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “Head, Face and Neck Language”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “Body Language in the Workplace”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Hartland, Dilys, Tosh, Caroline. “In Conclusion…”. Guide to Body Language. London: Caxton Publishing Group Ltd. 2001.
Pease, Barbara, Pease, Allan. “Same Species, Different Worlds”. Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. 1999. London: Orions Books Ltd. 2001.
Pease, Barbara, Pease, Allan. “Does This Outfit Makes Me Look Big?”. Why Men Lie and Women Cry. 2002. London: Orion Books Ltd. 2003.
Wainwright, Gordon R. “Everyday Encounters”. Body Language. 1985. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group. 1993.
