Detection of deception by words, voice and plastic

- How do you know that I lied?
- A lie, my dear boy, is immediately visible, because it is of two kinds. It happens with short legs, and sometimes with a long nose. Yours seems to be long-nosed.

People would lie less if they thought that there were true signs of deception. But there are no signs of deception as such - there is not a single gesture, facial expression or involuntary muscle contraction, which alone would mean that a person is lying. There are only signs by which it can be concluded that words are poorly thought out or the emotions experienced do not correspond to the words. These signs provide information leakage. A person trying to expose a lie should know how emotions affect speech, voice, body and face, how feelings that a liar tries to hide can manifest, and what exactly gives out the falsity of the observed emotions. And also it is necessary to know what the unpreparedness of the line of behavior can give.
Discovering a lie is not easy. One of the problems is the collapse of information. Too much information has to be read immediately. Too many of its sources are words, pauses, the sound of a voice, a facial expression, head movements, gestures, posture, breathing, perspiration, blush or pallor, and so on. And all these sources can transmit information alternately or overlapping, equally claiming the attention of the verifier. However, the verifier does not need to pay equal attention to everything he hears and sees. Not every source of information can be relied on to the same extent. Some of them give out more than others. Strangely enough, most people first of all pay attention to the least reliable sources - words and facial expressions - and thus are easily mistaken.
Liars usually track, control and hide not all aspects of their behavior. Most likely, they could not do it even with all their desire. It is unlikely that someone could control everything that could give him - from the fingertips to the crown. Therefore, the liars conceal and falsify only what, in their opinion, others will observe most closely. Liars tend to be especially careful in choosing words. Growing up, a person learns that most people listen to words. Obviously, such attention is paid to the words also because it is the most diverse and richest way to communicate. Words can convey many messages much faster than facial expressions, voice or body. When liars want to hide something, they carefully consider their words, not only because they know what attention others pay to this source of information, but also because they will have to answer for words rather than tone, facial expression or movement. Angry facial expression or rude tone can always be denied. It is easy to place the accuser in a position in which he will be forced to defend himself: “I have a completely normal voice. You heard. It is much harder to deny angry words. The spoken words are easy to repeat, and it is difficult to renounce them completely.
Another reason why words are so carefully monitored and so often attempted to be corrected is that it is easiest to deceive with words. Speech can be pre-formulated in the best way and even recorded. Carefully prepare all facial expressions, gestures and intonation can only professional actor. And anyone can memorize and rehearse words. In addition, the speaker has a constant feedback: he hears himself and, thus, is always able to choose the most appropriate manner of presentation. Watching the expressions of your face, plasticity and intonation is much more difficult.
Not less attention than words is paid to the person, constantly hearing from the interlocutor remarks like: “What is it with your face?”, “You should have even smiled”, “What are you looking at me like that?”. This attention is paid in part because it expresses and symbolizes the human “I”. It is thanks to the face that we distinguish one person from another. Individuals are a kind of icons whose images are hung on the walls, placed on desks and carried in wallets and purses ^[53] .
According to recent studies, there is a special area of ​​the brain designed for facial recognition ^[54] .
There are many other reasons why people pay so much attention to people. The face primarily reflects emotions. Together with the voice, it can inform the listener about the feelings that cause the speaker to speak his own words, but not always this information will be accurate, because people can lie. If the noise makes it difficult to hear the speaker, the listener who follows his lips can guess what he is saying. Observing the person’s mimicry also provides an opportunity to see the reactions necessary to continue the conversation. And above all, the speakers want to know whether they are listening. It is assumed that the person looking into the eyes of the interlocutor listens to him, but this is not the most reliable sign. A bored but polite listener can look the speaker in the face, mentally twisted in the clouds. Listeners can also nod or poddakivat, but, in general, and then you can cheat ^[55] .
As a result, the attention so generously given to the words and the face is almost no plastic. However, the loss of information in this case is small, because usually the body reports much less than the face, and the voice - much less than the words. Gestures, however, can carry a fairly rich information (as, for example, in the language of the deaf-mute), but northern Europeans and Americans of northern European origin do not often use them, unless they are forbidden to speak ^[56] .
A voice, like a person, can demonstrate the degree of one's emotionality, but it is not yet known whether a voice provides as much information about the nature of the emotions as it has on facial expressions.
The liar usually follows his own words and facial expressions and tries to control them - he knows that people around him pay much more attention to this than to his voice and body. In addition, words are easier to control than face. And it is easier to distort the truth with the help of words than with the help of mimicry, because, as mentioned earlier, speech can be rehearsed. Hide the truth is also easier with the help of words. People try to censor everything that can give them away, and it is easier to follow the words than the face. Knowing what you say is easy; to know what your face expresses is more difficult. The clarity of feedback, when a person hears his words directly at the moment of their utterance, can only be compared with a mirror. Although the tensions and movements of the facial muscles are accompanied by some sensations, my research has shown that most people almost do not use the information coming from these sensations. Few people can determine, guided only by sensations, the expression of their face, except perhaps in extreme situations ^[57] .
There is one more, more important reason that it is easier to notice deception by facial expressions than by words. The face is directly connected to the areas of the brain responsible for the emotions, but the words are not. When something causes an emotion, the muscles of the face are involuntarily triggered. People can learn to influence these expressions and more or less successfully hide them. But this requires effort and constant training. The initial facial expression that appears at the time of the onset of emotion is not specifically chosen. However, facial expressions can be intentional and involuntary, lying and truthful - often at the same time. That is why human facial expressions are so complex and captivating, which is why it so often misleads us. In the next chapter, I will discuss in more detail the neurophysiological basis of the differences between intentional and involuntary facial expressions.
People suspecting their interlocutor in a lie should pay more attention to their voice and body. The voice, like the face, is associated with the areas of the brain responsible for the emotions. It is very difficult to hide some changes in the voice caused by the appearance of emotions. The liar needs to know how his speech sounds, and the feedback on the sound of the voice probably acts worse than on the meaning of the words. People are surprised when they first heard themselves in a tape recording, because they hear their own voice partially through the bone, and with a change in the conducting medium, the sound of the voice also changes.
The body is also a good source of information leaks and other signs of deception. Unlike a face or a voice, most body movements are not directly related to the areas of the brain responsible for emotions. Controlling body movements is not so difficult. A person can feel, and often see his body. Hide body movements is much easier than any emotion caused by facial expressions or changes in voice. But most people do not. They are used to thinking that there is no need for this. Few people managed to catch on the basis of plastic. And since so little attention is paid to the body, it gives a constant leak of information. We are too busy looking at faces and listening to words.
Although we all know that words can be lied to, my research shows that people usually perceive others based on words, and often fall into a mess. I do not want to say that the words should be completely ignored. Many people make verbal mistakes, which, being signs of deception, provide information leakage. And even if everything goes smoothly in words, a lie can often be found due to a mismatch between what is being said and what the voice, body and face testify to. But most of the signs of deception, which can be seen by voice, face or body, are ignored or misinterpreted. I discovered this as a result of a series of experiments in which I asked people to evaluate the behavior of others through video recording.
Some of those who watched the film paid attention only to the face, others only to the body, some listened to a speech that was passed through a special filter that made the words vague, but left intact the intonation, while the other group heard only the sound. Everyone saw or heard the same people - the student nurses described in the previous chapter, some of whom spoke the truth, and some lied about the feelings they had while watching a movie. Recall that the students who spoke the truth watched a pleasant film and had instructions to honestly describe their feelings. Those who had lied watched a film containing unpleasant medical scenes with an abundance of blood; their task was to convince the interlocutor that they were also watching a nice movie. The man who interviewed the students did not know which film the students watched, and they tried very hard to mislead him, because the stakes were high. They believed that our experiment was conducted to test their ability to control their emotional reactions in critical situations or in the operating room.
Investigating whether it is easy to determine whether students are telling the truth or untruth, we not only wanted to reveal the optimal source of information about lies (face, body, voice or words), but also who better reveals deception — those who were warned about it, or those who do not suspect deception. We divided the people who were supposed to watch or listen to the video into two groups. In one group we raised suspicions by telling them something about those whom they were supposed to evaluate, while in the other group we tried not to arouse any suspicions about students. To them, we did not say a word about the experiment and did not even hint at the possibility of deception. We just told them that they would see or hear people talking about the film. And so that no suspicion arose among them, we set before them the task of assessing the behavior of girls on the subject of friendliness, extravagance, ability to speak convincingly, ability to hold, balance and so on and, among other things, honesty, put in a long list of qualities first place.
Despite the fact that some students turned out to be worthless liars, and everyone easily noticed this, most of the girls managed to mislead unsuspecting “judges”. The worst results were shown by those who watched only the face or heard only the sound recording: it was the students who lied that seemed more honest to them. But the results of people who suspected deception were not much better. These “judges” were told in detail about the instructions received by the students, and warned that some of the girls they were to evaluate were lying, while others were telling the truth. They were asked to answer only one question - the student is lying at the moment or telling the truth. At the same time very few people showed results above random ones. Those who followed only the body coped best of all, but even they gave a correct assessment only in 65% of cases, while simple guessing gives 50% ^[58] .
A small number of subjects showed a very good result - 85%. Some of them turned out to be very experienced psychotherapists, known for their high qualifications. The rest were simply extremely attentive people of other professions ^[59] .
However, such results are not required. Recognizing the signs of some types of deception can be fully learned. People who briefly retold the contents of this and the next chapters, acted much more successfully, determining whether or not students are lying, not worse than experienced psychotherapists. In addition, the verifier is much more likely to reveal deception, if the deceiver is emotionally excited, does not have much experience of lying, is not a born liar and not a psychopath. The main tasks of the verifier are as follows: to notice a lie, not to accept the truth as a lie and, most importantly, to clearly understand when it is impossible to determine either of them.