Eyes Can Not Lie
Elangovan, February 7, 2019
Most of us believe that the through looking deep into someone’s eyes we can find out something about their emotions, intentions or deceptions. Researchers studying the length of time eyes gaze at faces (Millen, Hillstron, Virg, 2016), the frequency they blink (Leal & Virg, 2008) and the dilation of their pupils (Web et al., 2009) have concluded that is there is some evidence that looking at someone’s eyes can give information to whether what they say is truthful.
When people are actively trying to deceive they try and control every aspect of what they are saying; while the popular image of a liar includes fidgeting researchers have observed that people move less when lying, attempting to minimize the chance of inadvertently giving themselves away with nervous twitching or fidgeting (Levine, Asada, Park, 2008) . Eye behaviour is so crucial because so much of it happens without conscious control. There are some aspects of eye behavior that we can exert some control over, but much of what our eyes do we are not even aware of. The number of times we look at different parts of a face, the duration of each glance, the frequency of our blinks and the size of our pupils are all behaviours that we have no ability to control. Engaging in deception however, does impact them, and that makes these behaviours particularly important when trying to determine how truthful a person is being.
We look at a stranger differently than we look at a familiar person, particularly if that known person is someone with whom we we have daily contact and a long history with. We require less time to recognize those close to us, therefore our eyes don’t focus on them for very long and they make fewer eye fixations. When a person already has a clear representation of another person stored mentally, it takes less visual information to identify them. This can be helpful in determining if someone is attempting to conceal a relationship; eye fixations happen outside of conscious control, so these shorter fixations will occur with familiar faces, even when a person is attempting to deny that they know the other person. This will occur strongly with closely known people but is less apparent with faces of people that have been met briefly or faces that are simply familiar due to media.
Lying eyes may blink more often than truthful eyes. Leal and Vrig in their work on blinking patterns have shown that when a person in engaged in something mentally difficult they blink less (2008). Furthermore, when someone shifts from something that is hard mentally to something that is easy, they have a burst of blinking more than their typical rate. Lying is mentally more difficult than telling the truth; it requires constant monitoring to ensure continuity, avoid slips of the tongue and maintain a convincing story. This extra mental work people must do when they lie causes them to blink compared to when they are telling the truth. Additionally, after lying when they switch to telling the truth, which requires less mental work, they have a short burst of blinking often and quickly. This in another way that careful observation of the eye can betray a lie.
While light levels largely determine the size of a person pupils, emotions can also have an effect; people feeling heightened emotions will have larger pupils when compared to calmer people. Webb et al. found that when participants were instructed to lie on a questionnaire their pupils were larger than when they were answering truthfully (2008).Their are limitations to how much this behaviour can be connected specifically to deception; emotion of any kind, not strictly tied to deception can alter pupil size, as can many environmental factors.
Being able to meet a person’s eye is largely thought to be hard or impossible for a liar. However, research has not shown this; in fact, the opposite it often true. Eye contact is one eye behavior that a person can consciously control and therefore can be used to a liar’s advantage. In studies when participants were attempting to convince others with a deception they typically have higher levels of eye contact compared to those telling the truth (Mann et al., 2013); likely accidentally overshooting their attempt to appear sincere. This eye contact was often done knowingly; with those in the studies after explaining that eye contact what part of their strategy to appear honest.
Interestingly when someone has the knowledge that a person is lying, they perceive less eye contact; even when actual eye contact levels are the same or more than those telling truth. Despite being mainly untrue it is a widely held belief that liars can’t maintain eye contact. It seems though that the belief, when paired with the knowledge of deception is enough to cause a person to perceive that the liar is unable to meet their eyes. It is true both that a person’s actions may cause them to appear deceptive, as well as being deceptive can cause a person to appear to act in a specific way.
An accomplished liar can keep a story straight, their voices even and avoid squirming in a chair. They are unlikely to be found by facial expressions alone. However even those most skilled in deception have little control over the small involuntary movements of their eyes. With careful observation, examination of the eyes can betray deception. It is however important to use only research based cues, such as pupil size, blinking and fixation time. Cues that may be popular, such and eye contact, have shown to be misleading and can be manipulated by those skilled. In some very specific cases, eyes can lie.
References
Leal, S., & Vrij, A. (2008). Blinking during and after lying. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 32(4), 187–194. doi:10.1007/s10919-008-0051-0
Mann, S., Ewens, S., Shaw, D., Vrij, A., Leal, S., & Hillman, J. (2013). Lying eyes: Why liars seek deliberate eye contact. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 20(3), 452–461. doi:10.1080/13218719.2013.791218
Levine, T. R., Asada, K. J. K., & Park, H. S. (2006). The lying chicken and the gaze Avoidant egg: Eye contact, deception, and causal order. Southern Communication Journal, 71(4), 401–411. doi:10.1080/10417940601000576
Millen, A. E., Hope, L., Hillstrom, A. P., & Vrij, A. (2016). Tracking the truth: The effect of face familiarity on eye fixations during deception. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1172093
Webb, A. K., Hacker, D. J., Osher, D., Cook, A. E., Woltz, D. J., Kristjansson, S., & Kircher, J. C. (2009). Eye movements and pupil size reveal deception in computer administered questionnaires. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/21410427/Eye_Movements_and_Pupil_Size_Reveal_Deception_in_Computer_Administered_Questionnaires