LYING SIGNS: SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS

Follow the five-step MAGIC Lie Detection Model.

The three key areas of the eyes to focus on are: eye contact, blink rate, and eye movement.

When you ask a question, an individual’s eyes should:

•   Move either horizontally or diagonally upwards—right (your right), if remembering something that actually happened. This indicates to you the person has actually experienced what is being told to you; or,

•   Move either horizontally or diagonally upwards—left (your left), if creating something in the mind—something not seen or heard before. This indicates to you the person has not seen or heard what is being told to you.

•   The above is for a right-orientated person (right-handed); a left-orientated person (left-handed) will be the opposite.

•   You can identify the orientation of a person during your Control Questioning by simply asking about events the person has actually experienced.

•   Sometimes a person will look straight ahead with little or no eye movement with the eyes appearing to be unfocused. This is also a sign that the person is recalling an actual event.

•   This technique will not work on all people—use it in addition to other lying signs before determining if a person is lying.

Liars like to cover their mouth, and some will touch their nose either as a method of momentarily covering their mouth with their hand or because the tissues within their nose have become engorged with blood, causing an itching sensation.

A genuine smile affects the muscles around the eyes and takes some time to form and fade. A fake smile is created primarily by the lower half of the face only, and appears and disappears too quickly.

Micro-expressions are involuntary and very fast flashes of emotions on the face. They may appear as a twitch. Regardless of culture, race, or upbringing, the micro-expressions of happiness, sadness, disgust, contempt, anger, surprise, and fear are universal and don’t change, so they can be applied to all people.

Micro-expressions are so instantaneous the person expressing them has no control over them. Micro-expressions display the true inner emotion of a person without time to hide it. Look for a conflict between the micro-expressed emotion and the statement made by the person.

Liars will use counter-measures in an attempt to trick you. For example, they may increase the amount of eye contact or reduce the amount of body movement when lying. If this is inconsistent with their behavior when you establish the behavioral baseline, it’s a counter-measure, and they are being deceitful.

Liars avoid contractions such as, “I don’t,” “I wasn’t,” and “I didn’t” and will use, “I do not,” “I was not,” and “I did not” more often.

Some liars provide overelaborate details in their answer or are pushy, like salesmen, in trying to convince you of their innocence.

Look for inconsistencies in speech pattern and tone. Some classic text-bridging phrases that deceivers commonly use in conversation include: “the next thing I knew . . .”; “shortly thereafter . . .”; “coincidentally . . .”; “however . . .”; and “then. . . .”