there was a very memorable article in competitive intelligence magazine this summer by nancy potter from bennion-robertson…this 3-pager (”detecting deception - verifying veracity” v7, number 3) examined a list of items related to how our eyes tell lies…this is some seriously interesting stuff, so for those of you with the attention span of a budgie, i’m gonna just highlight the major shares (there was much more to it)…the prose confirms that when it comes to reading lies through the eyes, you can bust that prestidigitator with simply a sharp ass set of observation skills…

we already know that our bodies don’t like to lie (think polygraph, body heat, face touching, foot movement et al)…but what made this article resonate with me were these insights:

about eye direction during conversation - and please reverse this for left handed people - right handed people tend to look to the left when recalling something from the recesses of their minds…for a visual memory, they’ll most often look up and to the left…for a sound memory, they’ll most often look in the center and left…for the other memories, they’ll look down and left…

…but when it comes to lying and creating what global military intelligence experts call ‘a whopper,’ right handed people will generally look to the right..

sound strange? try it out on yourself by answering these questions (and don’t prep, just read ‘em and note eye movement):

without looking down, what color are your shoes?
what’s that cool theme song from the james bond movies?
did you ever drink your dad’s fancy liquor in high school and then try to fill the bottle back up with water?
if you could be any animal, which would you be?

another great general comment - most people break eye contact right before speech, typically to compose thoughts…a liar might often be found avoiding eye contact in volume…a skilled liar might deliberately hold eye contact and raise his/her eyebrows to suggest innocence - but the lack of break in the eye contact is a telltale sign of possible deceit

…btw, getting competitive intelligence magazine 6 times a year is just one of the countless benefits of being a scip member (nope, not being paid to say that, just evangelizing).

Powered by Gregarious (21)

Share This

Some similar nonsense, if you like that kind of thing:

Links that were in this post, but only if there were any: