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Body language is a universal way of communicating emotions and motivations. Worldwide, people’s body language expresses their true feelings about a situation or subject.

Many of us have developed instincts about the meaning of certain body language, such as leaning in, stepping back, or looking down. While our instincts are often correct, they are also prone to be misinterpreted in many circumstances.

Detecting Deceit

One of the most useful applications of deciphering body language is determining when someone is being deceitful. Numerous scientific studies have noted that certain behaviors, when they occur in clusters, indicate stress, which correlates with attempts to deceive. Most individuals who are attempting to deceive others experience stress or physical tension related to their sense of guilt. When several of these behavioral signs of stress occur in succession, they might indicate that the person is trying to deceive others.

To be clear, there is no single indicator of deception, but there are multiple indicators of stress. For example, common signs of stress while speaking include, frequent eye blinks, pressing lips together, and massaging one’s own hands.

There are other possible causes for each of these behaviors, which is why none of them are signs of either stress or deceit when observed alone, in the absence of other signs (Body Language Misreads).

6 Challenges to the Detection of Deceit

Even certified body language experts must deal with some challenges to detecting deceit. The core questions are: “Is this person appearing stressed because they’re lying?” or “Do they appear stressed for another reason?” A related question is how to detect deceit when there are few or no signs of distress.

Challenges to the detection of deceit include:

1. Fear of not being believed might look like the stress of a liar. It can be intimidating to be questioned about an event, particularly for someone accused of doing something wrong or harmful. They may be innocent but still feeling stressed and showing nonverbal signs of distress, which then might be misinterpreted as signs of deceit.
2. The questioning technique may be incomplete or suggestive. When questioning is incomplete, the person may not have the opportunity to explain themselves clearly. Suggestive questioning can lead to the respondent filling in details or providing different versions of an event, which might be misperceived as deceitful.
3. Recall of traumatic events often includes the body language of stress. For example, an innocent witness to a serious crime might show signs of trauma related to what they have seen. However, a person who has committed a serious crime might also show signs of trauma when recalling events around the crime.
4. Memory is known to become less reliable and less accurate over time. A person questioned about events from the remote past might find it difficult to accurately remember the details even if the basics of their account are true. Memory expert Elizabeth Loftus said of remembering: It is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.”
5. Mixed emotions can all be genuine, neither suggesting innocence nor guilt. An example is the case of Casey Anthony, who was on trial for the murder of her young daughter and has expressed deep grief. Although she was acquitted, many continue to question her innocence. They note that a person can be both guilty and remorseful. Only the most heartless sociopath would feel no sadness or remorse about the death of their child, even if they were responsible for that death.
6. Compulsive liars are capable of lying without feeling guilt. When lying is done in the absence of feeling guilty, the person will not appear to be stressed, and therefore their deception might be overlooked.

Final Thoughts

It isn’t possible to detect deception based on one single body language sign or one aspect of speech, such as eye blinking or giving various versions of past events. A person under duress can act in similar ways to a person trying to deceive others. The main challenge is distinguishing signs of stress due to other factors vs. signs of stress due to guilt.

Next time you find yourself trying to figure out if you’re being deceived, you may want to evaluate the cluster of body language cues more carefully. As stated by Leonardo da Vinci, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”