Can I Use Body Language to Determine If a Person Is Lying - Essay Example

Sociologists call body language dramaturgy or nonverbal communication, while psychologists interpret body language in extrasensory perception (ESP). Lying is just like another emotional state where many gestures and postures of the human body change. Reading, understanding, decoding, and applying these body changes in a given social situation enables a person to detect the state of mind of a person who may have been lying at a given point in time.

While lying a person’s body language substantially changes in a given social interaction and is consciously disarrayed from a normal expected body behavior. Mind and body actions are not in total harmony with each other. The body language of a person can be read in the following simple ways.

1-A lying person cannot have full eye contact with the questioner. He/she would usually avoid direct eye contact and eyeballs are normally found rolling around and upward.
2-The palms are usually put into the pockets or moved downwards. It can be construed that the liar is trying to hide something. The eye's pupils are wide open in the state of lying. Usually, sweat appears on the forehead and hand palms become cold.

3- The liar would usually be touching repeatedly the nose and forehead, and would normally not stand with a straight back according to McDougall’s theory of emotions, the instinct to escape comes into play. Therefore an escapist behavior would be shown more than once.

The more accurate and scientific method of detecting a liar by studying internal body behavior is a lie detection machine. This machine uses different human impulses and their change before and after the test. The normal blood pressure of a person in a normal state of mind is usually less than while lying. The heart palpitation and therefore electro cardio grapy measures are higher. The nervous system starts abnormal behavior.

Lie detection is both a simple and a complicated process. Body language is simple in the case of children and women. While in the case of experienced politicians, habitual liars, and professionally trained anti-social elements it becomes a specialized job of investigators and detective agencies to decode interpret, and report on lies.