William C. Butler, PhD
Butler Research, LLC
Evergreen, CO 80439

Everyone lies. It is not abnormal behavior until it becomes compulsive, excessive, and chronic interfering with the individual’s ability to cope with life. These compulsive liars are becoming detached from reality and have a major character flaw. About 60 percent of “normal” people tell one lie every ten minutes during a typical conversation. Everyone to some degree deceives by concealing, omitting, distorting, embellishing, exaggerating, or falsifying information or the truth. The amount of dishonesty displayed in our verbal communications is all relative – some people just tell “little lies” and some people tell “big lies” that later have major consequences. It is not easy or even possible to be truthful 100 percent of the time. All people lie with good intentions – it fulfills a basic need. Tartaglia (1999) suggests that the subtle intention of lying is to be in control. He also states that all children lie to test their parents in order to see how much they can get away with.

Lying is fundamental in the human condition and a crucial dimension of all human relationship (Smith, 2004). It follows that everyone is constantly bombarded by new and possibly inaccurate information from various media and through interpersonal relationships. Conversely, everyone practices detecting the deception they know exits in the world. This plethora of information is therefore automatically, even unconsciously, evaluated for truthfulness. But how do we know what information is accurate and what is not? Among adults, there are vast differences in deceptive abilities – a skill learned early in life (Lewis and Saarni, 1993). We rely on intuition — which may not always be right — and non-verbal communication to help in this process of determining truth. More specifically, a fundamental skill for investigators and interviewers operating in a world awash in deception, misinformation, and disinformation is the ability to know something about an interviewee’s mindset, such as, the veracity of what they might be thinking, and if they are showing defensive, neutral or aggressive signs.

To know when someone is “cognitively challenged”, anxious, and under emotional stress because they are lying, particularly when they are adamant about their truthfulness, has obvious advantages. It is important to note however that just because a person is under emotional stress does not mean that the stress is due to lying. Probably two-thirds (70 percent per Inbau, et. al., 2005) of all human communication takes place through subconsciously displayed (involuntary) body language. According to Wainwright (2003), “Body language is nearly always a better guide to the truth than even the most eloquent words”. Mehrabian (1971) concluded that only 7 percent of our information-gathering comes from the actual language used in conversation – the rest comes from body lingo and voice patterns, volume, cadence and pitch. Therefore, being able to spot these non-verbal warning signals, indicators, or gestures of deception plays a paramount role in the quality of decisions investigators and security professionals make daily. The problem with detecting lies is that most people are poor lie detectors (lie catchers); studies have shown that unless one is very highly trained in this area, there is only a slightly better than a 50-50 chance of detecting lies by intuition. About a fourth of one percent of the population can consistently detect lies (The Associated Press, 2004). Even judges and law enforcement officers are not much better than the general population at detecting lies (Ekman, 2001).

This focus of this article is neither interviewing techniques nor the formulating of interview questions nor the use of polygraph techniques (Moenssens, et. al., 1995; Ekman, 2001). These are topics expertly covered in Inbau et. al. (1986 and 2001); rather, it is a description of the common clusters of non-verbal body signals that individuals subconsciously use when they “talk with their body”. This is a brief introduction to the analysis of body language for the purpose of recognizing clues, signals, gestures, and posturing as they relate to the true emotional state and mindset of an individual, and ultimately to the true meaning of their verbal messages. Most people normally use a variety of gestures, such as hands and facial expressions (illustrators), when they speak to assist the listener. [more...]

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