How to tell if someone is lying to you by watching their eyes.
By skirvy
@skirvy (250)
United States
January 12, 2007 8:08pm CST
How to tell if the person you are speaking with is telling the truth or not! The basics into eye signals, what the various eye positions mean and whether the person is generally telling the truth or not.
When speaking with someone and you ask them about how their day has been and they usually will reply “Oh, it was fine. How was yours?” You won’t see a lot of eye signals from this; these are almost pre programmed responses.
When engrossing in a conversation with someone and the topic you are talking about has some impact on them, or they are fully giving you their attention, you will generally be able to receive unconscious eye signals that will allow you to get a deeper insight into what is going on in the other person’s head.
Let’s first talk about looking to the left hand side. The left hand side is predominantly to do with accessing material from your past, like images and sounds.
So imagine for a moment that you are speaking to a friend of yours. You are discussing the plans for the weekend and what you want to do.
You mention to your friend about a new disco that opened recently, downtown.
Your friend looks up and to the left and says to you that he has been there already and that he had a great time.
You ask your friend what the music was like the night he went to the disco.
He looks left, towards his left ear, then says the music was great and he really enjoyed the night out.
what has popular psychology told us about the responses from the friend?
Well firstly he looked up to the top left
This reaction tells us he is looking up to access images in his memory. This means he is “looking” at images of his time at the disco, a strong suggestion that he is telling the truth. Up and to the left signifies accessing images, therefore it has happened in the past.
Be careful, he could be accessing images for “downtown” so make sure you pick your questions carefully. He may say he hasn’t been there and still look left, thinking of “downtown”.
You asked your friend about the music at the disco. He looked left towards his ear. This tells us he is accessing the audio part of his brain and is trying to recall the music.
A good one to try this one out is to ask your friend to describe to you what their door bell sounds like. Watch as their eyes move level with their left ear as they access the audio part of their brain. Even if they don’t have a door bell they will still look left, looking for a sound that they may have had.
After understanding the above eye signals we can look forward to what the right hand side has to offer.
Imagine for a moment you are talking to your friend about your car that you lent to him for the weekend.
He hands you the keys and doesn’t mention anything about the smashed headlight.
You ask him about it and he looks to the top left. This suggests he is looking for images to associate with the smashed headlight.
He then immediately looks to the top right. Now you await his response.
He tells you someone must have reversed into him at the supermarket and driven off.
Looking to the top right suggests the creation of images. This is a strong indication that he is lying to you.
Bear in mind that your friend may not react in this way as he may have had a lot of time over the weekend to conjour up an excuse. In this case always try to ask something that they may not necessarily be unaware of, like were they smoking in your car as there is a cigarette hole in the seat. See how the eyes move!
Next let’s take a look at creating sounds… Yep, you guessed it. Looking to the right ear is a strong indication your test subject is creating a sound.
There aren’t any strong examples that can be used in this context, only that you should be aware of it happening.
You could try asking your friend to image a really loud noise, the loudest noise they could ever imagine, and watch their eyes move.
Please note that what you have read may not be 100% accurate and that people vary immensely. This can be used as a guide only, to help you with your investigations.
Just because someone looks to the right does not mean they are lying or making something up. They may be a nervous person, easily distracted, seen something to their right, whatever the case may be. So be careful if you are going to accuse anyone of telling fibs!
1 person likes this
4 responses
@garimabatra (58)
• India
20 Jan 07
Hey, all this is pretty interesting though I'll have to experiment and see if this really works!
However, I feel that I always seem to figure out when people are honest and when they aren't! I've seen this in many cases that I'm almost always correct. But the fact that gets me a bit worried is, that I've seen people lying a lot to me! That makes me wonder sometimes if I have a very dumb and stupid appearance which makes people think that I'm pretty easy to fool! I hardly am bothered about it though, because who cares what the world thinks of you when you know what you really are! Oops, I seem to have rambled a little there!
@navinshan (3933)
• Canada
13 Jan 07
When a person feels nervous, when he is talking for sure he saying a lie but when he speaks so fluently then he is speaking the truth.