By some estimates, the average person tells at least one little white lie per day. A small fib here or there likely doesn’t do much damage, but when it’s someone you love and trust that’s struggling to stick to the truth, it’s a bit more worrying.
When attempting to interpret someone’s behaviour, especially a romantic partner, it’s important to first determine their normal habits.’When you see a change in their baseline behaviour, that’s your “aha moment”,’ says Blanca Cobb, body language expert and author of Method of the Masters.
It’s also important to note that unusual body language doesn’t necessarily mean deception. Work stress, anxiety, or nervous jitters – which often result in fidgeting, breaking eye contact, and filler words (like “um” and “you know”) – could be influencing your loved one’s behaviour.
So, what’s normal fidgeting, and what counts as deceptive body language? Timing is everything: ‘Truthful people gesture just before they speak, whereas liars gesture just after they start talking,’ explains Traci Brown in her book How to Detect Lies, Fraud and Identity Theft.
Here are a few ways to interpret potentially deceptive facial expressions, hand, and foot gestures:
Facial Expressions: Twitchy Eyes and Lip Movements
‘When under stress, you’ll show snippets of your true emotions on your face,’ says Cobb. ‘These micro-expressions occur within 1/15th of a second.’
Shifty eyes and reduced eye contact are not indicators of shady behaviour. What is: twitching of the eyes and mouth, pursed lips, and excessive blinking (we’re talking more than 70 blinks a minute), Cobb explains.
A disingenuous smile is another indicator of a lie, according to Brown. ‘Duper’s Delight’, for example, happens when someone smiles at an inappropriate moment, like when they have just been caught in a lie.
Hand Gestures: Too Much Touching
In uncomfortable situations, adults try to comfort themselves (somebody has to, right?). To do so, they’ll touch their mouth, eyes, ears, and nose to alleviate their sense of stress or worry. ‘This changes the body chemistry and acts a prescription to help calm the body down,’ says Patti Wood, body language expert and author of SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma.
Every person has different gestures that provide comfort – just like every child reaches for a different blanket or teddy bear at night. The most common comfort cues in adults are knuckle cracking, increased yawning, crossing legs, tapping fingers, humming, rocking, wiggling, and hair touching, according to Brown.
You might even notice that a suspected liar begins to scratch himself. ‘Stress negatively affects nerve endings, which causes people to feel itchy,’ says Wood. The eyes, nose, ears, and mouth have the most nerve endings, so they are often the first areas for which someone may reach.
When wrapped up in a lie or abnormally stressful situation, they may hide their hands under a table or desk, or tuck their hands into their pockets. ‘When the conversation moves to tough questions where you need direct answers and their hands suddenly move below the table, it’s likely they’re hiding something and aren’t 100% forthcoming,’ says Brown.
Fidgety Feet: Twisting, Tapping, and More
Last but not least, fidgety feet are a major indicator of guilt. ‘We have the least control over our feet,’ Brown says. ‘When people are answering tough questions and are on the spot, they’ll look like they’re rocking.’ By twisting, tapping, or bouncing legs, adults will create a lack of symmetry in their body.
‘While doing this, they are saying one thing but feeling another,” says Wood. This off-centre behaviour mimics the distance between the truth and the lie.
