Kinesics
By Tan Wei Heng, Toh Wei Chuan,
Khor Yuk Liang, Ch'ng Liyang William
Stress Response
Alignment
Baseline
Context
To detect lines, you have to set a baseline. You need to observe the expression, gestures and other signals one shows in a relaxed condition. By doing so you can compare it to a stress inducing condition, like when someone is lying. This is why experienced interrogators start an interrogation by asking nonthreatening questions, this is to set a baseline.
Lying. It invloves generating a false response and stop the brain from tellng the truth. This requires a lot of work just to create deception and results in accompanying emotions like anxiety, guilt and fear. Lying is also a cognitive challenge compared to someone telling the truth, as it requires more work.
For the vast majority of us, we will have a heightened stress response when lying. However not all people demostrate the same magnitute of emotion and not all liars display cues that are easily detected. To complicate things further, honest people might display signs of anxiety in fear that we may not believe him.
Thus there is no guaruntee that you will be able to detect lies definitively. However by being exposed to non verbal cues linked to lying, you we be more likely to detect a falsehood.
When body language and words are in tune, people tend to believe what they are saying. However when body language contradicts words, you can infer that there is some sort of internal conflict. For example when someone is agreeing to do something they might start shaking their head.
The meaning of non verbal cues changes base on the context. You cannot make any inference if you do not factor in the environment.
Consider a scholarship interview, and you are interviewing a candidate. When you ask simple questions, the interviewee answers them with straightforward answers and shows a relaxed body language. However, when you ask a complicated questions, he frowns, crosses his arms and his eye brows started twitch. Is he lying? No, the stress is most likely due to the fact that he is thinking through a complicated response.
Clusters
Next, look for clusters. Do not jump to conclusion just becaused you observed one classic sign of a liar. For example, if some is leaning away when speaking to you. It might not indicate a lie. He might be late for something important and is in a rush. However he found it rude to interrupt the conversation thus he kept quiet about it.
According to research done by David DeSteno of Northeastern University, there is a specific cluster of nonverbal cues that is proven statistically to be a highly accurate indicator of deception. This cluster is known as the telltale four. It is characterised by: hand touching, face touching, crossing of arms, and leaning away.
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Signals to look out for
