How to Spot Lying Using Hidden Body Language with Dr. Garrison (Complete)

hi everybody my name is dr. John Paul garrison I'm a clinical and forensic psychologist practicing in Atlanta Georgia and today we are going to be exploring hidden meanings in nonverbal behaviors what we're gonna do is we're going to look at nonverbal behaviors related to deceit nonverbal behaviors related to safety or aggression and just ways to enhance your overall observational skills we're going to be doing this by using the arc analysis system which I created the arc analysis system arc AR C stands for action reason concern and what that means is that the action is the nonverbal behavior you see the reason is the the reason that person is engaging in that behavior and the concern is any concerns you might have based on what you've seen it'll make a lot more sense once we get into it so bear with me for just a minute so emotions are handled by the limbic system of the brain and while it's not essential that you remember limbic and the terminology what I want you to understand is there's a part of the brain that handles emotions and that there are involuntary behaviors that come when that system is activated so for example when you feel nervous you sweat when you feel anxious sometimes you might scratch your face if something like that those behaviors come from the limbic system the purpose of the limbic system is to increase our ability to survive okay so the idea that the limbic system is activated we have these certain behaviors in some way we believe that that is going to help us survive a situation on some level ok so when we go back to 10,000 years ago when the world was a very different place when there's a lot more things you had to survive there's certain things that our bodies learn to do when voluntarily to help that one of the best theories behind deceptive behaviors comes from a former FBI special agent named Joe Navarro it is based on the idea that when we're comfortable we don't show deceptive behaviors but when we're uncomfortable we have to do things to make ourselves feel calm so in other words when our body is at rest our limbic system isn't activated for being truthful we have no reason to make ourselves feel more comfortable ok so you know if we're in a conversation and you're telling the truth there's no reason to do things to pass it by yourself and what that means in terms of the pacifying behavior is that when you feel uncomfortable you do certain things to calm yourself down so for example for males in particular when we get very stressed out or when we're getting really bothered by something starts to touch our necks like this and what that does is that calms us down there's a lot of nerves in the neck and it makes you feel calmer so what we're going to be looking for when we talk about deception and lying in behaviours we're gonna look for changes in behavior so in other words if somebody is talking to you in the entire time they're doing this and they're touching their face they're doing stuff maybe that's just some sort of idiosyncratic behavior they have maybe that's just something they do that doesn't really tell you a whole lot about behaviour but if they're pretty calm and then you start talking about something they start doing this so they start doing this then you go okay maybe there's something to what I'm talking about that's making this person feel uncomfortable is it because they're lying or being deceptive that's one idea maybe it's something else but those behaviors are done to calm people down the last theoretical thing I'm going to talk about is one of the reasons that we're able to look at deceitful behavior and the reason that we're able to spot it is because of the leakage hypothesis which in other words means that we have emotional leakage when we're trying to hide something the emotions will leak out and our actions or behaviors are the way that we act so somehow we're going to express how we're feeling is just a matter of knowing how to see that this is extremely important there are no behaviors that absolutely indicate lying or to see period I don't care what anybody says there's nothing that is a hundred percent that means that person is lying so when we go through some of these I don't want you to use these in looking people go that person is definitely lying her this person is doing better that what this is gonna do is it's going to help you understand the fundamentals behind why we engage in certain types of behaviors it'll help you understand to look and observe better but it doesn't mean ok so somebody's scratching a face that means they're lying to me that's not at all what this means in any way it tells you otherwise themselves is probably lying or is just misinformed so let's go on to look at some examples and go through how to better understand reading the seat in line in nonverbal behaviors so I initially developed our analysis to be used by law enforcement the way that I'm going to be talking about it today is specifically going to be focusing on line to seat and safety but it doesn't have to be I'm gonna be doing another series of videos later that's gonna be focusing on more business interaction and things like that so if those aren't on YouTube yet come back and those will be up at some point to reiterate what our analysis means the a a narc is an action so in other words the nonverbal behavior that you observe the R is reason so the reason that person is unconsciously engaging in that behavior and the C is concerned so in other words what concern should you have based on what you're seeing is there no concern is there a concern for your safety is there a minimal amount of concern what type of concern do you have based on what you're seeing there are four levels of concern with our analysis one being minimal concern which means exactly what it sounds like which is that there's not much concern really into a certain behavior the second behavior would be what we call an examine prompt so in other words there's something that is worth examining more so you start seeing a behavior that you think that's interesting maybe I need to look a little bit more into that then there's the suspicion problem for somebody's showing some pretty strong signs of lying or deceit and if they're starting to act rather suspicious so you really need to push more and then there's the safety prompt which means this person's engaging in behaviors that can very literally impair my safety so now that we've gone through the fundamentals of why we engage in certain nonverbal behaviors let's look at specific examples we're gonna start with the torso so let's go through a scenario let's say that you asked somebody what were you doing last night and they said I don't remember I really it was late I don't know I'm not sure what I was doing I don't remember or you ask somebody the same question what were you doing last night they go I'm not really sure I don't remember what I did last night okay so there's a lot there I don't know what your initial impression is I want you to figure out which one of those is suggesting lying or deceitful behavior if you saw the first action as being the one was more likely to be truthful than your correct so now let's explain why that is what's the difference between the first one and the second one how can we tell the difference well the first one what I did is I had my arms wide open and what that does is that leaves my torso totally vulnerable okay so if we're going back in evolutionary terms your head and your body need to be protected this is where all the important stuff is your hands are important but not so important the bear attacks you when it tears your hand off you're gonna live the bear attacks woman takes your head not so much so we try to protect this stuff all right so when I leave my arms wide open I'm leaving myself open and that's more likely that I am being open and honest I'm being expressive I'm being open and being honest I'm moving around I'm allowing myself to be seen okay and now the second example you know I pulled up one shoulder and it's kind of non-committal I'm not really sure that that I want to open myself up that much I'm moving less the less you move the more you feel like maybe I can stay hidden maybe if I stay hidden I won't be noticed and I was also shaking my head yes when I said that I didn't remember there's all these very subtle things that you can observe when people are engaging in behaviors that are in some ways trying to be deceptive so it is a general principle the more open you are the more open your body is the more likely you are to be telling the truth the more closed your body is the more likely you are not to necessarily be lying with the more likely you're trying to protect yourself in some way no single behavior in isolation means a whole lot it's when you got a look at the big picture so understanding this system and understanding everything it takes a lot of work on your end so now let's talk about some things you can observe from watching some of these torso and shoulders our torso houses many vital organs and so oftentimes comforting behaviors that you're gonna observe are going to be about blocking your torso or or protecting in some way the next action we're going to talk about is body sealing or crossing your arms like this the reason that people do that I consciously is to calm themselves or to make themselves feel comfortable so it could just be a normal putting behavior but if you see people do this with clenched fists that might mean something else they might be a lot more tense they might be more anxious or nervous or something like that the action of a torso display or in other words taking up as much room as you can with with your torso is typically done as a sign of disrespect so the reason people do that is to be disrespectful it is to show that it's their territory and the concern that comes with that it could be a safety concern you know in particular we're talking about law enforcement when people start doing that it could indicate that they are aggressive in there they're hostile now if you observe the action of somebody bearing the torso or in other words taking off their shirt then the the reason they're doing that typically is to get ready for a fight now I know that may sound obvious but the if we're talking about on an unconscious level that really is why somebody would bare their torso this would be prepared to fight so that once again would be a safety concern if you get a to shoulder shrug the the reason people typically do that is genuinely because they don't know that generally means I don't know and so there's a minimal concern if the actually observe is a one shoulder shrug sometimes that means that they're trying to be deceptive or that they're trying to deflect in some fashion so that could be a suspicion concern that could be something that is a highly suspicious behavior under the right circumstances arms are very versatile and I think that for a lot of people they are underutilized when it comes to observing nonverbal behaviors arms can be used to defend ourselves or to show aspects of ourselves like wearing a watch or having tattoos it can try to help us express who we are hands are extremely complex and extremely useful for people when communicating people who are open and honest tend to talk a lot with their hands and people who are liars tend to not talk as much with their hands it's a very basic rule and it's not a hundred percent but generally that speaking that that's that's something that we've observed so if you see a significant amount of our movement if that's the action you're observing then the reason people oftentimes are doing that is that they're being open you know usually when people have significant arm movement they're leaving themselves open and so there do that is that they're probably being genuine or being open to you so you know that doesn't mean everything they're saying is true but it means that they're trying to be open if you're to see the action of restricted our movement or when somebody's walking and they're not moving their arms or something like that oftentimes they're trying to appear invisible so the reason people do that is that they do not want to be noticed so whether that's because they're trying to stay safe or whether that's because they've engaged in something they shouldn't have and they don't want you to see them the less somebody moves their arms the more likely they are trying to hide something so if you observe that action of somebody putting their arms behind their back now they are trying to hide their hands but they're also leaving their chests open which would be unusual in terms of like a suspect as far as law enforcement goes if they were and I'm not talking over their handcuffs but if they were just standing with their hands behind their back yeah they may have something to hide but it would be not necessarily something you're gonna see a whole lot because that leaves them very open now people putting their hands on their hips like this which is something that people in law enforcement often do it often be a sign of dominance and in a job like law enforcement you need to be able to show dominance and so that's it's not a common that you'll see a police officer for example with his hands on his hips now if the role is reversed and a police officer is approaching somebody and that person stands there with their legs open and their hands on their hips that could be a concern for safety because that could mean that this person is hostile or aggressive because they're trying to show dominance over somebody else now if you're sitting and your hands go between your knees that can be a loss of confidence so if you're in a meeting with somebody for example and you know you negotiating with somebody you feel like it's going really well then things go south really quickly your hands might go right between your legs because you are now feeling not as confidence as you once were in the context of law enforcement this would be something worth examining in the context of just general interaction it still means the same thing but it would elicit a different level of what should be paid attention to now if you have arms crossed with the hands of the biceps if you're sitting there and gripping your arms usually that means defensiveness I mean if you think about how much tension it takes to do something like this this is not a comfortable way to sit you know it's almost like you're gripping holding on getting ready for something I mean that's that's why you grip like that so if you see somebody standing that way they're probably pretty uncomfortable you know it's it's not so much a typical pacifying behaviour like some of the other ones we've talked about but you know it's it's like somebody breaks in themselves getting ready for impact or getting ready for something bad so this is this could often have to mean that somebody isn't engaging and being defensive so there would be a reason to examine that more order to Asiya this suspicious if somebody's doing it excessively next we're going to talk about hands so open hands away from the body oftentimes that can mean sincerity oftentimes people can see that it's sincerity and it makes sense we're leaving ourselves very open so as far as concerns go there's minimal concern with that now for people with withdrawn hands you put them in your pocket you put them on your back you put them somewhere I mean oftentimes it can be people associated with deceptiveness but it could just be discomfort it could just be that people feel insecure and they just don't know what to do with their hands so don't worry too much into people hiding their hands finger-pointing is a big one I hate to do this to people and I always make sure that I don't do this when I'm talking to people I'm doing all right now because I'm trying to demonstrate it but if somebody points at you we are wired to dislike that even at a very young age if your mother points at you you're you know automatically like that's not good even if it doesn't mean anything in the context to your family necessarily like we are wired to know that getting your finger somebody pointing their finger at you is not a good thing it's a hostile act when I work with couples I oftentimes see couples pointing at each other and that's what I can tell things are starting to get disrespectful people we're really starting to get angry and if it's law enforcement and somebody starts pointing their finger in law enforcement or they start you know trying to poke it at a police officer or something like that that is extreme hostility that is definitely something that could indicate a concern for safety or and concern for work for the type of behavior they're engaging in now sweaty hands that's that's another one that we see a lot and it's so common it's hard to read too much into it other than you know is it nervousness causes people's hands to swell there's a million reasons people's hands sweat if somebody has sweaty hands don't think you know if you've just gotten done talking to somebody and they shake your hand don't think that that means they were lying to you that might just mean there were hurts you know so don't worry too much in the hands sweating it maybe it means something maybe it doesn't it is there's too many possible meanings it's not worth paying attention to too much now shaky hands now some people are more sensitive with having shaky hands another some people do tend to shake a little bit more but in general shaky hands means that you've got adrenaline going that and that just like feeling a little nervous it's means that's a lot of adrenaline like if your hands are actually shaking so what that would usually indicates an elevated heart rate so if you're talking to somebody or if you're talking to somebody who's suspicious and they start she's literally shaking that probably means they're feeling quite nervous that doesn't necessarily mean they're lying but it means that whatever you're talking about at that time is probably worth exploring more and this is something it's called steepling you see the fingers put together like this I'm sure everybody's seen executives do this on TV Donald Trump can be observed doing this quite a lot there's a lot of people that we see who have to do who tend to do this behavior and if it's high up and it's like this that's an extreme sign of confidence the research has shown that people that do this are actually observed to be more believable when they're when they're talking about something so you see this a lot with with executives and things like that now in law enforcement side of things if you were to be talking to someone who's a suspect and they start doing this that can be a sign of arrogance or overconfidence or trying to try to express the their they know more than you or trying to belittle somebody else so while it can be effective in certain situations there are also situations where if you start doing this people are going to feel disrespected so if people don't use many hand gestures or they don't move your hands around much typically that's associated with people observing that person to be less honest whether or not that's always the case I'm not sure but it's perceived that way and unconsciously so if we see somebody or we know somebody that talks and they just don't move their hands we tend to think of that person as being less honest and if we're in a situation where lying her to see is relevant or important and then it's going to be likely that if we see them try to not move their hands at all that that's going to be associated with dishonesty the face often shows signs of stress and is our primary method of communication so it's our most prone to be really good at lying so the face is one that can be hard to interpret because we've got a whole lifetime of practice thinking that this is how we should live if we're gonna make something up or if we're gonna hide something this is how we should do it okay so the face will be hard to interpret but when people touch their neck when people touch their face that often is very much a sign to try to pacify ourselves it or calm ourselves down so gaze aversion so looking away or not wanting to look at somebody is often times thought of as being related to lying or to see but it's often way overused in that regard frankly I don't even pay attention to that when I'm trying to figure out information related to lying in a seat so there's too many reasons people can look away they can be uncomfortable they can just be shy I mean there's a million reasons people can look away or not want to look you in the eye so you know honestly I would write that off and not pay too much attention to that now squinting eyes is an interesting one and this is something that when I'm in therapy with a client or when I'm doing an evaluation on somebody I notice quite often so when people Swit their eyes if you say something they don't like or you know for example this is an extreme example I wouldn't say this is somebody but if you said to somebody you know I really don't like that shirt a lot somebody starts doing this they start squinting their eyes you said something that they don't like they're trying to block their mind from sort of getting that so that's why they swing their eyes it's it's called ice yielding and so there's sometimes people just literally will close their eyes if they're talking about something really intense but when you watch somebody squint if you're saying something that might mean you said something that bothered them or that might mean that you're saying something that is making them feel irritated or something like that so ice wenting if you pay very close attention to it can be very important if you see somebody blinking excessively oftentimes that's associated with stress or anxiety so it might be worth examining that behavior more now flaring nostrils is an interesting one so you probably can't see my nostrils flaring right here but when you flare your nostrils that means when that when the when the window of the nostril is is open that means you're taking in more oxygen and why that's important is that if we are oxygenated we already deflate it okay when we are oxygenating ourselves when we are flaring and also that means we are preparing for action it doesn't necessarily mean like if law enforcement saw somebody doing that it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get attacked but that means that person is if not mentally preparing for action which could just mean they're thinking about doing something they're physically preparing to either run or fight or something but that oftentimes could be an important clue to avoiding hostile confrontations so you know if somebody's going to have an explosion of energy they're gonna be taking in more oxygen so if somebody starts flaring their nostrils as odd as that sounds keep an eye on that and watch that that could be important now if you see somebody tightening their jaw you know seeing the muscles flex right here as you might expect that usually means anger so that one is pretty easy to interpret now if somebody has a very strong or not strong somebody is a very flat emotion or if they have no expression and they're not somebody who is experiencing some sort of mental health crisis because that can be a whole different thing but if somebody who has no emotion at all you know they're trying their best to not allow any of that emotional leakage so if they're trying to be very neutral and very calm and very flat oftentimes that could be a sign that somebody is trying to hide emotion that doesn't necessarily mean they're lying but it means they don't want you to know how they're feeling now if somebody is rubbing their forehead if you observe that action often times that can mean significant distress you know so if in the context of law enforcement if they're talking to somebody and they're starting to get nervous they may really start doing this because that's really gonna help calm them down or it's it's a behavior that helps try to pacify them when somebody runs their hand over their neck like this it can often times we doubt insecurity can be an extreme and an intense way for somebody to try to calm himself down we observe this mostly in males women tends to play with jewelry it's the same kind of concept or tend to play with the the spot and the bottom of your neck right here they'll they'll touch that spot or or play with the necklace or something like that but that often times could be a significant sign of discomfort for men it's not a comment that we touch our cheeks like this that we try to calm ourselves down it's like a less extreme version of this it can mean this nervousness discomfort whatever but if you see somebody starting to do this that means they're trying to calm themselves down and you know this is one of those behaviors that you were going to start to notice a lot if you pay attention to for us you know this is something that you may not off the top of your head but yeah I know people do that but you're gonna start paying if you start paying attention to it especially in social interactions you're gonna see people especially people that tend to be more nervous doing this in relation to you know nonverbals of related to lying and aceton things like that you know that's something that if somebody starts to tell you something that it's not true they might start doing that to something so let's calm down a little bit about a lie now if I was wearing a hat as a male sometimes we do something called ventilating which is lifting the hat off so which is sort of trying to calm down it's like and it's it's like letting the heat out you know and for women it tends to be more hair flipping so if you see a woman flipping her hair that's ventilating as well it could be their body they're trying to sort of calm themselves down let the little extra heat off is is really basically what they're doing so watch for that ventilating the hair flipping behavior that's not always what that means but it's associated with that all the time well you see eyebrows come together it may sound obvious with that typically means anger so if you're talking with somebody and their eyebrows come together even if the rest of their face doesn't seem as extremely angry as you might think what's important about this is when you see it quickly or when you see it subtly dr. Paul Ekman is someone who a lot of this information is based off of he's the king of the research in this area if there's anybody you want to know that is is sort of the the originator stuff that started Paul Ekman but he works with micro-expressions and the idea is if you very briefly see somebody doing this or very briefly throwing their brow even if it's just for a quick second that could mean that there's anger associated with what you're talking about or whether they're thinking about at the time so watching not so much for something just sitting there with their eyebrows for a but watching for it to happen subtly can can be an indication that they're feeling some anger that they're feeling something that they're not expressing so somebody is using a really intense look of thinking deeply if they're really doing this sometimes people that are not telling the truth or taking the time to concoct lies it takes a lot of brainpower sometimes to make it make something else so if you have somebody a fairly simple question and they're really having to think hard about it it could be just a matter of them using a lot of brain power to try to make something up repeating questions is a great method for finding out more about whether or not somebody is being truthful or not oftentimes people don't like to lie unless we're talking about somebody who's a sociopath and then they can lie easily to those so you know that's a whole other thing but for most people we don't like to lie so if you keep repeating something and you keep making somebody have to lie more they're gonna get more bother than the more of these emotional leakage and all this that we're gonna observe an out of saint head shake can be a sign of inauthenticity so in other words if you ask me a question I said no then that might be inauthentic so there's a big difference between no and no like that you know there's the the delay can sometimes suggest that there's something an authentic about the response not an agreement is something that's a fascinating thing to watch know what that means is that somebody who's not in basically doing this when you know in terms of law enforcement if somebody is talking to a suspect and they're asking them if they did certain things they may actually nod that they did they may not be saying it but they may just actually be nodding it's a really fascinating phenomenon sometimes when people are or are trying to hide things they can unconsciously go ahead and agree with you that's not enough to go on a hundred percent but watch for that because that's something you may observe with people there's also the opposite head shake which is to me that was one of those things that I've observed a bunch of times and it never fails to seem strange to me that sometimes people will say no I'll be shaking their head yes so you ask you know did you go out with this person last night were you out you know here and there and they go no I wasn't they may actually be shaking their head yes when they mean no it's a it's it's more common than you think it if you pay attention you may notice it and like I said don't take anything isn't under percent that doesn't mean that somebody necessarily agrees with what they're with what you're saying but you can clue you in that it's worth exploring more now if somebody's eyes look down or their head turns away I mean it's just an attempt to shut out somebody else so they're doing their best to block them for whatever reason and there's a multitude of reasons I wouldn't say that that necessarily has to do with lying or deceit that just means they're trying to block them out so in the context of law enforcement if somebody has to suspect something and they just start doing this it's you know whether it's just because they are feeling angry or feeling defensive or whatever they're trying to block the other person out we use our mouths throughout our lifespans even before we're born to calm ourselves so oftentimes things relate to the mouth and the lips is going to be related to feeling stress or trying to feel calm so if somebody claims to feel one emotion and doesn't show it oftentimes that's an attempt to mislead there's some very basic things that we can do to understand and recognize emotion in people's faces and one of those is that all of oceans except for contempts you can observe on both sides of the face so if somebody smiles if they only smile on one side it's not a real smile that's not real happiness if somebody seriously smiles on one side that they're not feeling happiness they may say they over they're not feeling it you know just like sadness if you don't see it on both sides are anger all of these are gonna be what we call bilateral which means both halves the only unilateral which means one half the only unilateral emotion is contempt which you know something like that you know it is so that's that's a really interesting and key way to spot when somebody is is trying to convey an emotion and they don't feel one when we hear things that we don't like we oftentimes purse our lips like that if if somebody's talking to a suspect and they say something that is related to something they don't want to hear you may see them person their lips because they're feeling frustrated they're feeling nervous and oftentimes that just means they don't like what they're hearing so when you see people with your tongue pushing the inside of their cheeks are their lips that's a way that we calm ourselves down you know even back in the in when we're when we're young infants the reason that people suck their thumb or that we have pacifiers and things like that is that the mouth is a very soothing thing so a lot of things related to calming down the mouth or lips is is worth looking at if you see observe some lady's lips shrinking either that very literally means somebody doesn't want to say something so I mean it may seem obvious but it can be subtle at times but if somebody keeps you know doing that there's something that they're trying to avoid saying and they don't want to open up sometimes people add Emma still put their tongue between their teeth like this and sometimes that means that somebody thinks they just got away with something so if that's definitely a notable expression because it's sort of unusual and one-sided smirk so if somebody's you know doing a one-sided smirk then they're feeling contempt maybe they feel like they just got away with something so keep that keep that in mind when you see somebody smiling with one half of their mouth so now we've covered everything from the head down to the waist the legs and feet are going to be a different video but there's plenty to say about them as well I hope you come back and check out some more videos that I do on this if there's certain subjects that you like for me to cover please let me know in the meantime I highly recommend checking out former FBI special agent Joe Navarro's book what everybody is saying and he's got several others that are fantastic I highly recommend that and dr. Paul Ekman who has created some really amazing research in this area he's really a pioneer in the field and if you're interested in nonverbal behaviors if you're interested in learning more there's an infinite amount more information there is to learn than what I have demonstrated today so if you have any questions about this feel free to leave a comment if there's other videos you want me to make on psychology you know let me know and anyway thanks for watching you

Channel: WhatThePsych

Views: 285,808

Rating: 4.7585073 out of 5

Keywords: psychology, body language, nonverbal communication, communication, forensic, clinical psychology, forensic psychology, police, trump, politics, law enforcement, reading people, lying, lie, liars, liar, psychological

Id: RN92zQj9b8w

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 18 2017