The Liar's Pose

Freezing (Reduced range of gesture).

Contrary to the popular belief that liars are nervous and fidgeting (fidgeting), the opposite is often true.

When a person is telling the truth, their gestures (illustrators) flow naturally and congruent with their words.

However, when a person is fabricating a story, his cognitive brain (neocortex) is working intensely to construct the lie, verify its internal consistency, and monitor the listener's reaction.

This cognitive load is so high that the brain "freezes" unconscious body movements.

Therefore, a key sign of possible deception is not an increase in movement, but a sudden reduction in gestures.

The person becomes more rigid, their hands stop moving or freeze in an unnatural posture.

Warning (Stress does not equal lying).

This is the most important warning of the entire course: none of these gestures alone means lying.

All of the above indicators (touching the mouth, nose, eyes, neck, postural freezing) are signs of STRESS, ANXIETY or DISCOMFORT.

A perfectly honest person who feels intimidated, unfairly accused or simply nervous about the situation (such as in a job interview or when being questioned by an authority figure), may exhibit exactly the same behaviors as a liar.

Therefore, an isolated gesture means nothing.

The only valid way to analyze is to look for clusters of gestures, observe the context of the conversation and, most importantly, first establish that person's baseline of normal behavior.

Questioning techniques (Breaking chronological order).

If you suspect someone is not being honest (based on a conglomeration of stress signals incongruent with the context), the best way to proceed is not to accuse, but to question.

A person who lies has constructed and often rehearsed their story in a chronological order.

They are usually very familiar with the details in that specific sequence. An effective technique is to ask for more details, but breaking the chronological order.

For example, "I understand, but before you told me what happened in the office, who exactly was in the room when you arrived?" or "You told me you returned the file, but just before that, what did you do?"

Asking questions about specific details in a nonlinear order increases the liar's cognitive load, of