No truth in lying eyes conjecture say scientists

Published on 12/07/2012 01:18

EYE movements do not give away a liar, researchers have found.

Many psychologists believed that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be telling a lie. Glancing up to the left, on the other hand, is said to indicate honesty.

But the experts are wrong, according to Professor Richard Wiseman and his team of researchers, who tested whether eyes really can reveal lies.

The claimed link between lying and eye movements is a key element of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a method of enhancing people’s lives using psychological techniques.

An important aspect of NLP involves teaching people about the relationship between eye movements and thought.

According to the theory, when right-handed people look up to their right they are likely to be visualising a “constructed” or imagined event.

In contrast when they look to their left they are likely to be visualising a “remembered” memory. For this reason, when liars are constructing their own version of the truth, they tend to look to the right.

The idea was tested by filming volunteers and recording their eye movements as they told the truth or lied.

A second group of volunteers was then asked to watch the films and try to detect the lies by watching the eye movements.

Prof Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, said: “The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills.”

A follow-up study involved analysing videos of press conferences in which people appealed for help in finding missing relatives, or claimed to have been victims of crime. While some were telling the truth, others turned out to be lying. Again, there was clear link between lying and eye movements.