Eyes to Spot Lies: What Liars Have to Say

By Alan Elangovan

“Eyes to Spot Liars: What LIARS Have to Say” does not fall short of being categorized as a classic. It is a book that is embellished with knowledge, practical illustrations of the subject matter and straight to the point. It hits the nail on the head by aptly painting what deception looks like in all circumstances. People are trapped in the web of regrets because they were never suspicious of deceitful people. This book arms you with the weaponry of deception detection. It digs deep into the inner most part of a criminal’s mind and exposes their dark thoughts. It discusses how lie can be detected by relying on verbal, vocal and non-verbal communications. It is a book that stands out in terms of quality and style in which the subject matter is handled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781543765953

Alan Elangovan

Alan Elangovan is a renowned body language expert. With experience spanning over three decades in the field, Alan is surely a shining light in the industry. Over the years, he consciously learnt how to read people’s facial expressions and has applied the tricks learnt on countless occasions without fail. This book is a summary of what one can achieve with “the inner eye.” The author is deeply concerned with the increasing rate of deceits in the contemporary world and how officers are falling prey. In this book, he surmises what officers need to know, how they should look at their subjects and how to see unseen to be able to establish the truth in a case. He shares from his personal experiences to make the book practical and simple to apply.

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Copyright © 2022 by Alan Elangovan.

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CONTENTS

Abstract

Synopsis

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Importance of Spotting Liars

Chapter 2 Olden Days’ Handling Techniques

Chapter 3 The Difficulty We Have in Calling Someone a Liar

Chapter 4 What Deception Sounds Like

Chapter 5 The Human Lie Detector vs. Machine Lie Detector

Chapter 6 Speech Analysis

Chapter 7 Sound Analysis

Chapter 8 Statement Analysis

Chapter 9 Can Body Language Spot Prevaricators?

Chapter 10 Truth in the Lie: Spying the Unintended Messages

Chapter 11 Eyes Do Not Lie

Chapter 12 What A LIAR’S Face Has To Say

Chapter 13 If You Don’t See, You Won’t Know

Chapter 14 Let’s Be Careful Out There

Chapter 15 Learning To Be An Expert

Conclusion

References

ABSTRACT

The need to spot liars among a crowd or even during personal investigation is the major preoccupation of law enforcement officers across board. All forms of criminal acts are embedded in people’s ability to lie. It means our ability to unravel lies will make us understand the inner intents of people and trap down criminals in society. The generic problem, however, is that liars have masterfully devised ways of blending themselves into society without suspicion. That is why it is uncommon these days to see the innocent being picked on the street while the guilt walks about freely. This unfortunate situation is bemoaning and calls for urgent attention of all concerned agencies. In a bid to proffering a lasting solution to this security void, this book was written. The book teaches law enforcement officers how to develop inner eyes that identify deception in all given circumstances. It also states some of the ‘hard’ situations where law enforcement agents might be caught in dilemma and then how to calm down and solve any of the issues.

Another major point of discussion in the book was that deception can hardly be detected solely on body language cues. This has been a major source of controversies among psychologists and related scholars in the field. In order not to be trapped in this chain of arguments, the book discusses all the components of communication—verbal, vocal and non-verbal—and the role each plays in deception detection. When we trivialize any of these three, this book explains that that might serve as an undue advantage to criminals. For human society to be cleansed of evildoing, law enforcement officers must always be on the lookout for liars. Lies serve as the foundation to evil. This cannot be done without the mastery of the essential skills. This book proves that reading people and paying attention to language inconsistencies in a subject’s narration can be taught and understood.

Another finding made by this book is that human intelligence supersedes machine detection when it comes to lie detection. The results of software can always be manipulated by hardened criminals who understand how the software works. In cases like this, human intelligence can identify the loophole and manually get the error corrected. Most of the lie detection machines are regarded as pseudoscientific, and that is why their results are turned down in court. This book teaches how to create a balance between the results of machine and human feeling.

SYNOPSIS

The book gives an invaluable insight on how to spot liars. It critically discusses ways in which this can be practically done without sounding like a novice or being seen as naïve. The book is divided into fifteen chapters and each caters for unique but related concepts. Each topic is made to reflect the subject matter—lie detection. The practical manner in which this book is written sets it out from its peers. It showcases the author as an authority in the field who understands the intricacies of communicating with professionals from different backgrounds in the best language and style possible. The first chapter sets the stage ablaze by discussing the importance in spotting liars. What this is meant to achieve is to establish the importance and essence of the subject matter in the hearts of the readers. Readers are made to know the necessity of unraveling the identity of liars—law enforcement officers simply have no other responsibility that is beyond this. The segment also discusses the advantages of body language reading.

The second chapter takes a journey back into the old age—it talks about how lies were handled in the past. Before that, it gives an insight into history of select notorious liars; how they fabricated the lies, what was the aftermath on society and how they eventually met their waterloo. Even most of the techniques used in the past were pseudoscientific; it is worthy to note that they signal the level of human reasoning then. Also, criminality was not as complex as it is today. Chapter three pushes the reality to readers—we are not mind readers. The book makes us know that it involves supernatural power to be referred to as a mind reader. Anything that transcends the scope of science and logic, it is not admissible in a law enforcement work. However, the chapter aptly explains that ‘mind reading’ is possible through an improvised means. The author provides us with five make-do means that have been proven and tested. Even though we are expect everyone to be honest to us but we also are liars. In one way or the other, we are always trapped in tight corners and the only way out is to tell lies. Chapter four highlights some of the reasons why people take to falsehood and their features. Two types of liars are explained under this segment—the imploders and the exploders. The imploders are everyday liars and are very fearful; they lack the confidence to be convinced of their own lies let alone but the other person into their views. Hence, they are very easy to apprehend. On the other hand, the exploders are ‘professional’ liars. Enforcement officers will need high level of professionalism before they can be caught. They feel larger than they are, threaten those who oppose them and see themselves as all-knowing.

Criminals tell five major types of lies. Each of them is explained explicitly in Chapter four. The following chapter explains the correlations between human and machine lie detectors. The major point of discussion here is that the use of software alone in detecting lie is not a credible means. The result is bound to be subject as it doesn’t take into cognizance, some major variables that occur to people. For instance, a naturally fearful but innocent people will be indicted of a crime which they never committed while a guilty fellow who is confident and can withstand all odds would be adjudged innocent. That is why human involvement in such test becomes inevitable. The subsequent three chapters discuss speech, sound and statement analysis. The linguistic utterances of people can be subjected to analysis to determine if the person is being deceptive or not. The book gives thirteen different instances when a statement made by a person can indict them. Even many a law enforcement officer has played down the place of sound in determining deception. The way a person reacts through the pitch of their voice is a reliable way of affirming if they are being truthful or not. Pauses, filler words and silences are also vital parts of the components through which we establish if a suspect is truthful or deceptive. Chapter eight adopts the SCAN model to explain the techniques in which statements written by suspects can be analyzed. Most times, suspects feign bad memory of the events in which they played leading role in. That can’t be very suspicious and with diligence and expertise on the part of the officer, you can always get them to confess.

The whole of chapter nine is dedicated to how body language can be used to detect all kinds of liars. However, due to the nature of the book, attention is given to criminal liars. Chapter ten teaches officers how to spy for unintended messages. In order to understand the real intents of people, we must try to understand what their emotions are. While they can present a packaged, distorted or manipulated form of external emotion to us, the internal emotion is mostly untouched, undiluted and hence, said to be somewhat truthful. Also, an array of messages can be uncovered in the face. Above all, exercising caution while reading a person is the key to professionalism! All the techniques and nuggets shared in the book are not absolute; there are situations and circumstances that can cause changes to them.

INTRODUCTION

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Not everyone that has eyes can see. People are always more concerned about physical things than beyond-the-surface-level issues. The truth is most of what we see physically are products of conscious actions. Hence, they are perfections of men. Words uttered are mostly thought of before being released, actions taken are aftermaths of our thinking. However, the deeper issues are mostly raw, never thought of and truthful. All the above sentences are meant to charge you in developing eyes to spot liars. Your two eyes can see beyond the physical if well-trained. In order to do this, you must consciously link them up to your guts. When our instinctive feelings are made to take charge of our eyes, they will direct us to things we never could have imagined through our consciousness. As a law enforcement officer who is keen on ending crime in his/her territory, this is the level you must long for—the quest to be extraordinary must be in you. When the mind is not ready, there is no amount of teachings that can put you on the path to success. Having said that, you must be mentally prepared to fish out liars during investigations before you can see the physical manifestations of your actions!

Furthermore, I want you to look beyond stereotypical thoughts as you devour the contents of this book. In fact, you will be taken aback by the number of insinuations which I aborted during the course of your reading. Liars are not very different from truth tellers in their tendencies either to look you in the eye or fidget or shift around in their seats. But these misconceptions have led to countless articles and blog posts promising to reveal what cues you really should be using to figure out when someone is lying, and unfortunately, many of you have consumed such misleading contents without questioning their veracity (DePaulo, 2015). Relying on the wrong cues in making judgments is one of the surest ways to misinterpret people. Make a conscious effort to establish the truth baseline. A person whose normal behavior you don’t know, you cannot say when they behave abnormally. In our study, I will lay emphasis on how to set baseline for your subjects.

Body language should be read in clusters. Until you notice a minimum of four indicators pointing to the same direction, it would be out of place to accuse anyone of deception. These are some of the mistakes commonly made by law enforcement agents. Let me start discussing the issue of emotions from this introductory aspect so that the concept will stick into your inner mind. Smiles are often used as a polite response and to cover up other emotions, but these faked smiles involve the mouth only. Unless someone is expressing genuine pleasure or happiness, it’s hard to produce a real smile – the kind that crinkles the corners of the eyes and lights up the entire face. There is another way that real emotions emerge, regardless of the effort to suppress them. When someone conceals any strong emotion, chances are his face will expose that information in a split-second burst called a micro expression. Difficult to spot because of it happens so quickly, but that instantaneous flash of anger, dismay, joy, etc. is an accurate indicator of someone’s genuine emotional state (Goman, 2013).

There are ways liars behave that are different from how truth tellers behave. Most of those cues as noted earlier, however, are not very strong. For example, liars tend to speak in a higher pitched voice than truth tellers, but the difference is minimal; in some studies, it does not show up at all. There are people who may not speak in a higher pitch at all when they are lying and there are situations in which lies are not told with a higher-pitched voice than truths are. And occasionally, people speak in a higher pitch for reasons having nothing to do with lying: They may be excited about something, or they may be talking to a baby. This is to prove to you that the process of detecting deception is unarguably very complex. However, this is not meant to frighten you make you erroneously believe that it is not feasible (DePaulo, 2015).

Researchers now believe that the most promising strategy is to figure out how to get liars to give away what they know and to behave in ways that differ more clearly from how truth tellers behave. It is not enough to sit back and observe: You need to know how to steer the interaction in ways that trip up the liars. In order to groom you for this task, that is why I didn’t focus only on reading body language but also on verbal and vocal cues. You must know how to be in charge of the interaction with suspects rather than sitting back to see them demonstrate falsehood to you. In forensic contexts, for example, Maria Hartwig and her colleagues found that the strategic use of evidence is important. Suspects are more likely to get caught in their lies when investigators don’t reveal the evidence they already have too early in an interview. Here is the falling point of most officers; they are always quick to tell the suspect that they’ve got hold of their lies. An experienced officer listens carefully to suspect, asks relevant questions, takes note of the telltales, keeps evidence behind and hit the ground running without making the subject feel there is really anything great at stake (DePaulo, 2015). Self-improvement is also crucial in the whole process. When you follow things, you are taught dogmatically without giving room to new ideas, you can easily go astray. You unlearn and relearn some things through personal experiences. Important issues are masterfully discussed in each of the chapters of this book and once again, remember to be open-minded as you digest the contents of this piece.

In the same vein, it is very essential to discuss the ground-breaking research findings of Professor Ekman about this subject matter at this introductory point to lay a more solid foundation for this book. The researcher talked extensively about micro expressions. It was earlier observed in this section that micro expressions are difficult to spot because they appear and disappear within a twinkle of an eye. However, this does not mean that they cannot be spotted. The fact that Paul Ekman was able to conduct a study on this subject matter and got verifiable outcomes, is testament to the fact that you can also read people’s micro expressions. This is the first belief I want you to subscribe to and hold dearly to yourself if you want to sharpen your eyes to spot lies in all circumstances.

Ekman states that micro expressions are involuntary emotional leakages that expose the true emotions of an individual. As I have maintained in different forums, no liar will tell you they are about to play on your intelligence or trick you; you have the responsibility of sieving everything through so as to be able to discern between truth and lies. Your knowledge of micro expressions serves as the sieve in this context.

We need to take out time to discuss micro expressions because of its importance. First, they appear in every human, even without their awareness. This is the more reason why you should strive to understand this concept. Micro expression is a universal concept. Hence, it comes to play whether you are conversing with an Asian, American, European or African. Yes, Paul Ekman has made it known that there are 7 universal emotions! It is very difficult to rely on macro expressions in spotting lies. This is because macro expressions are voluntary and as such, open to manipulations. By the end of this section, we will highlight the differences between micro and macro expressions as explained by Ekman to emphasize the reasons why you need to strive to have a better understanding of this subject matter.

Further, micro expressions are important because there is no one can stop them from occurring. Since they are involuntary movements, they do not need your permission before occurring. Invariably, whenever an individual is telling lies, they will betray their emotions, no matter how little it is. But the question is: do you have the inner eyes to spot these emotional betrayals? This is the Achilles’ heel of many people across the world and that is why they take you for a ride with ease. Well, with this book, such a sorry state has come to an end. The different chapters of this book have been tailored to remove the veil from your eyes so as to make you see better.

If you do not learn how to detect emotional leakages, you cannot be emotionally intelligent. In other words, you cannot detect deception. For a moment, I want you to pause and reflect of the consequences of deception in your life. Can you recall the investments, opportunities and relationships you have lost because you were lied to? Obviously, they are innumerable and I am certain that you would not want such an evil trajectory to continue any more. Then, you need to arm yourself with the understanding of micro expressions. You will use this knowledge in conversations you have with people to understand their level of honesty.

Paul Ekman makes asserts that when you are trained on micro expressions, it increases your emotional awareness. Unlike gestures or verbal communication, facial expressions contain universal signals that reflect fluctuations that occur in an individual’s emotional state per time. If you are conversing with an individual and at some point, they decide to tell lies, their emotional state will suddenly fluctuate. This is a pointer that something is wrong—it shows there is a deviation from the known path of discourse.

Let me also say with some degree of pun that you need to face the face to detect deception. That is, if you want to read people’s emotions correctly, you have to see their facial expressions. You cannot be looking at a person’s lower part and know how they feel. Paul Ekman’s research is based on facial expressions. He is able to make his widely acceptable findings by looking into the eyes of his participants. When you feel that someone is being deceptive, you have to look into their face to affirm your doubts. The face gives us the greatest and most-valuable hint into the emotional lives of our co-interlocutors. Again, let me reiterate that regardless of religion, culture, personal background or language, everyone shares this common form of non-verbal communication.

With the detailed and insightful lessons in this book, you will be able to notice the rising of an emotion, when an individual is trying to hide their emotions and when a person is not even aware of their own feelings. Without sounding boastful, this book is your best companion to help you to identify liars with ease and deal with them appropriately.

Here are some more facts you need to know about micro expressions, as stated by Ekman, so as to heighten your interest in the concept:

When an individual tries to hide their emotions, there would be leakages on their face. In other words, no matter how perfect a liar acts, you will see traces of change of emotions on their face. You were not able to see them in the times past because you were oblivious of things to pay attention to.

Another fact is that the leakage may be limited to a particular region of the face (a form of subtle expression). It may also be a quick expression that is flashed on the entire face.

Micro expressions occur at 1/25th of a second and this is why I have said at different instances that they are difficult to spot. However, with the right training, you can understand how to spot them in real-time as they take place.

Micro expressions can be seen as a unifier; they help us better understand people, whether or not we speak the same language. Come to think of it, there are about 6,500 languages in the world and I have seen anyone who claims to understand even a half of them. Yet, due to globalization, we are bound to meet anyone from any region of the world. While we may look for an improvised way to communicate with them verbally, if you do not understand their non-verbal cues, you may be easily deceived. This is where the knowledge of micro expressions becomes very useful. You can understand people’s facial expressions across cultures. After travelling across the world to understand the emotions of others, Paul Ekman found that there are seven universal facial expressions which are happiness, anger, disgust, surprise, fear, contempt, and sadness. These are referred to as basic emotions. If you say something disgusting, your co-interlocutor will wear this expression. Even if they verbally tell you that they love what you are saying, their facial expression is telling you otherwise. Of course, you know which to go with! Ekman explicitly stated after more study that when an individual experiences an emotion, we cannot help but express them, no matter how little. Our brains are linked to the muscles of our emotions that we cannot help but perform the right expressions.

As we prepare to go into the pool of this work, let’s try to make the faces of the universal emotions identified above. The reason for this is to make you understand how to identify micro expressions in different contexts. So, let’s get started!

Here are the items you will need: a mirror, yourself, and a partner (this is optional).

First, you need to relax your face. You first need to maintain a neutral face—you should wear no expression. This is how you look like without thinking of anything. Take note of how your facial muscles feel in this state. Then, you are ready to start.

Happiness Expression: Wear a smile. Then, take a look at your eyes. What did you observe? Are the eyelids narrowed? Real smile will combine the contraction of the zygomaticus major at the mouth and the orbicularis oculi at the eyes. Now, try thinking of a joke and see the changes in your expression.

Sadness Expression: Turn your lips down as if you are frowning and raise the cheeks as high as you can. Then, try turning the inner corners of the eyebrows upwards (this part is somewhat tricky). If you take note of how your face feels in this state, you will discover that there is a lot of tension in the face due to the sad thought you are experiencing at the moment.

Anger Expression: Tighten the eyelids and lower the eyebrows and draw them together. Also, try pressing the lips together. How do you look like? Angry, right? That is the aim! In moments of more intense anger, the jaw will draw forward.

Disgust Expression: First think of something smelling nasty. Then, wrinkle the nose and bring down the eyebrows. And together, make the upper lip into an upside down ‘U’ shape.

Contempt Expression: Contempt means that you think that someone is beneath you. It is a bad emotion. To practice contempt, you have to raise a corner of your lips and then try to look over-confident. It is very important to note that contempt is the only emotion displayed unilaterally. That is, it only appears on one side of the face.

Fear Expression: Begin by thinking of being scared by opening the eyes wide and tense the lower eyelids. Then, raise the eyebrows and bring them down all together. Try pulling the corner of the mouth backwards, towards the ears.

Surprise Expression: This emotional expression is very similar to fear emotion. Perhaps, to properly display this, you need to first think of being startled. When a balloon pops, how does your face look ? Raise the eyebrows to ensure that it has less tension but make sure that the eyebrows do not come together. Relax the lower eyelids but keep the eyes wide. When you look into the mirror, you will notice that you look surprised.

Now that you have made all the 7 basic emotions, how did you feel? Did you observe any emotions beginning to form? Did you recall any memory during the process? The emotion centers of our brain are well connected with the muscles of the face.

What we have discussed is a summary of what the book is all about. Unlike some authors do, it will be unethical for discuss how to spot lies without telling you how things should ordinarily look like. I wouldn’t want my readers to be paranoid; you should not think that everyone conversing with you is deceptive. If you have the mindset, you will raise an alarm when there is absolutely no need for that. You have to know what these emotions look like as described above. I intentionally told you to practice them because I want you to have a practical understanding of micro expressions from the outset; there is no need to imagine anything when you can put them into practice. Another reason why you were asked to carry out the task is to make you take note whenever anyone displays any of the emotions.

You have relied on macro expressions long enough and that is why you have always missed vital signs of deception. Now, it is time to focus on micro expressions so that you can be sure of your doubts. As we draw the curtain on this segment close, here are the differences between macro and micro expressions:

Macro expressions are normal or obvious facial expressions. In other words, they are what we are used to but micro expressions are missed altogether. Also, macro expressions last between half a second and 4 seconds, and that is why they are hardly missed but micro expressions occur within half a second or less. Thus, it takes a very active and observant fellow to notice it. And finally, macro expressions align with the tone and content of what is said but micro expressions involuntarily display hidden emotions.

CHAPTER ONE

The Importance of Spotting Liars

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What defines our success in life is how we are able to maintain human relationships. The way we relate with people who cross our path on daily basis greatly determines how far we achieve our set goals per time. Unfortunately, the world has become so porous and unreliable. While you make up your mind to be honest with everyone you deal with, some people are unimaginably fraudulent; their words are unreliable, laced with deceits and cooked up to achieve selfish intents. Hence, this is why it becomes very crucial for anyone who wants to stay above disappointments and heartbreaks to know the techniques in spotting liars. In this chapter, I will entrench the essence of spotting liars and launch you fully into business in subsequent chapters.

The Necessity of Knowing the Identity of Liars

It is very necessary and crucial to know the identity of liars in our interpersonal relationships. First, if we are aware of their antics, we can always be on guard and stay on the safe side. Those who are victims of disappointments and devilish ways of liars are the unsuspecting ones. Nothing happens out of the blue—there would have been tell-tales that they never paid attention to. Liars are selfish set of people who are not concerned of what becomes of you in as much as they own needs are guaranteed. They can be described as people who have consciously suppressed their conscience just in a bid to appear wicked. When we know their identity, how we relate with them, converse with them, do businesses with them, and build our expectations around them would be done within limits—we will always leave out the place of imminent disappointments.

The necessity of knowing the identity of liars is not only limited to interpersonal affairs; it also overflows to the professional realm. There are colleagues who are never after promotions. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They come off as though they are the best in the world but their intents towards us are despicable. For law enforcement officers, knowing the ways of liars is an indispensable way of achieving success in your calling. Liars, especially those who have taken it as a profession, will hardly confess to their lies. So, we must devise way of spotting them. There is a need for us to operate with the same mindset right from the start of this book. If we all believe that liars have the possibility of being stubborn in admitting the truth, then we can now speak of ways to adopt in fishing them out of their falsehoods.

One of the best ways in which we can know the identity of liars is through their body language. Body language reading is an invaluable asset to everyone who is skilled in the act. ‘Skilled in the act’, as used here, refers to those who are conscious about identifying the thought of others through their non-verbal behavior and have taken the pains to read the relevant books on this concept so as to be sure they make informed interpretations. From the foregoing, it is crystal that even if you are not endowed with the ability to read people through their body movements,