Lie detectors: body language tells us surprisingly little about whether someone is being honest

By Aldert Vrij, Professor of Social Psychology, University of Portsmouth

Do you ever wonder if you could pass a lie detection test or imagine what it would be like to read people’s body language? Reading body language may be great for adding tension to action movie interrogation scenes, however, the truth is, there isn’t much evidence you can detect lies by watching someone’s body language.

When you try to discover whether someone is lying in an interview, your sources are the behaviour the person displays or the information they provide. Nonverbal lie detection (body language) is more popular than verbal…

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