A body language and behavior expert has revealed how to tell if someone is lying to you by looking for specific and often subtle signs.
Scott Taylor said there are a number of facial cues that can indicate a person is not telling the truth, including “blinking,” touching their face, flushed cheeks and unusual eye movements.
The 51-year-old added that there are also a number of clues in the language people use that could suggest they are lying, such as using expanded contractions and assuming language .
Scott trained with the head of the FBI and the lead interrogator at Guantanamo Bay and learned “body language, facial micro-expressions, detecting deception, influencing behaviors, and analyzing statements and words.” and has worked in the safety, security and risk field for almost 30 years. years.
He told FEMAIL that while each “subconscious” sign is not individually an indication that someone is lying, a combination of several is something to watch out for.
Body language and behavior expert Scott Taylor (left) shared the subtle and obvious signs people “unconsciously” display when they lie.
“There is no single indicator of deception, but the combination of body language and certain words gives us some very important indicators,” he said.
According to Scott, two “really obvious signs” of cheating are “eye blinking,” “lip licking” and “difficulty swallowing.”
“We blink 12 to 14 times per minute, and people under stress and duress see their blink rate increase,” he said.
“What we also see is lip licking and difficulty swallowing. When people lie, we release cortisol, the stress hormone, which dries our mouth and slows our saliva production.
Scott said people also “unconsciously” touch “along the lines of their face,” such as on their cheekbones when they are lying down.
They also protect their “power zones” like the chin, belly button and groin.
“They lower their chin or move their body away slightly to prevent you from accessing that ventral area, which becomes pretty obvious once you look for that,” Scott said.
Scott explained that everyone lies in their everyday lives, that partners tell lies to each other in one in ten interactions, and that not all lies are malicious.
“They’re different things, how much something costs, what time I’ll get home, ‘I cleaned that’ when you haven’t, ‘I’m leaving now’ when you’re not there “, did he declare. .
“The majority of lies come from omissions, not from creation of lies.”
Lip squeezing and blushing are another potential sign of dishonesty.
“Under stress you feel a little rush of adrenaline and that causes your blood-carrying elements to expand, which causes more blood to come closer to the surface, which is why you also see redness,” a Scott said.
“You also get things like lip squeezing and pulling, you see that a lot with politicians when they stretch some of the words they’re going to use.”
If someone is spinning a web of lies, Scott said it’s easier to understand them as their eye movements change.
“By creating assets, people will look to a different visual reference point when creating content. It is also more difficult for them to keep things tidy,” he said.
Scott explained that we have two types of memory: episodic, which is what you’ve experienced, and semantic, which is what you know.
“When I ask you a question like: ‘Where did you park your car?’ » Or what is the fifth word of the national anthem? Or “What’s on the back of a $2 coin?” “Your eye will naturally go to a certain point,” he said.
“When we have interactions with people, once you know what that point is, if you ask them something and they go to a completely different point and see one of these other indicators and a speech pattern slightly modified, it’s a higher indicator of deception and these things become really obvious.
The 51-year-old added that there are also a number of cues in the language people use that could suggest they are lying, such as using expanded contractions and assuming language.
Certain linguistic cues can also reveal whether someone is being deceptive.
“Truthmakers convey and liars convince, so you don’t need to say, ‘I’m 100 percent sure’ or ‘sure’ if you’re sure or certain,” Scott said.
“These people sell without saying anything, so they give you more filler or extra eye contact because they think, ‘I want to be more convincing’.”
Scott added that people use expanded contractions when they lie, something Bill Clinton did in the ’90s when he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
“We knew Bill Clinton lied because he said, ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman.’ The word ‘I didn’t do’, he used it regularly, but when someone develops a contraction of ‘I didn’t do,’ it’s a very powerful misleading indicator,” he said. declared.
“Then they add a word like ‘that’: I didn’t have sex with ‘that’ woman. He distances himself. ‘This’ is close, ‘that’ is far away.
Another verbal indicator is when a person uses “assertive language” by adding a lot of things like “you know” and “obviously” to make themselves more convincing.
“We look for congruence in their words and actions,” Scott said.
“Whether it’s in an interview, a personal relationship, or you’re watching Married at First Sight, when people say words and their body language and gestures don’t match that, those would be the indicators of cheating the most obvious and the strongest.”