Tells/Bluffs Etc.?

[awisler]

Is there a list of bluffs/tells that people tend to do? By this I mean, usually when people lie they do this with their eyes or stuff like that. Like I once heard that looking up and to the left means your lying.

[Antissa]

Well, I remember a particular quote from the movie "The Negotiator.

Lieutenant Danny Roman:A quick lesson in lying. See, this is what us real cops do: We study liars. Example: If I ask you a question about something visual, like your favorite color, your eyes go up and to the left. Neurophysiology tells us your eyes go in that direction, because you're accessing the visual cortex. So you're telling the truth. If your eyes go up and right, you're accessing the brain's creative centers and we know you're full of ****.

I'm not sure if thats true though.

And as for bluffing.

For example, in a game of playing cards, especially when betting is involved, a person who has a terrible handful of cards will often bluff. He will try to act very confident, as if he actually had very good cards in his hand.

By this show of confidence, he tries to intimidate the other card players into backing down so he can win. So, he will try to look confident and happy as he looks around the table.

And often, this technique will work, because the other players will believe, "If he is acting so confident, he must have good cards. I should just give up now, before I lose too much."

But as David Lieberman points out, if a person truly had a handful of very good cards, he would not be trying to act confident. Why? Because he has no real need to try to make the other players back down.

A person who truly has a good hand of cards would probably try to act quite neutral so others couldn’t guess that he was happy. Or he might even decide to pretend he is worried and anxious to cover up the fact that his cards are actually very good.

A player only needs to put on a show of confidence when his hand is quite poor.

So very often, a show of confidence is actually a sign that a person is bluffing. Because a person who truly has a powerful advantage doesn’t need to try to act confident.

All people who are bluffing have one thing in common – they want you to think that they have some powerful advantage so they try to convey this by acting confident.

Very often, they try too hard. Remember, that when a person is truly confident of their position or their power, they don’t need to try too hard to convince you they are confident.

[Blau&Gruen]

Is there a list of bluffs/tells that people tend to do? By this I mean, usually when people lie they do this with their eyes or stuff like that. Like I once heard that looking up and to the left means your lying.

Aristotle's Rhetoric is a good start.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/Rhetoric/

[Juvenal]

There was a programme on Channel 4 on this subject a couple of years ago. I seem to remember it concentrated on politicians and how to tell when they were dissembling.

As luck would have it the Channel 4 web-site still references it, probably because of the links to the book by Peter Collet on which the programme was based.

http://www.channel4.com/culture/micr...k/telling.html

The subject came up again recently in the news in reference to the presidential nomination candidates. Mitt Romney seems to have a habit of saying something was true while shaking his head, Obama specialises in the penetrating stare even when he's not actually listening to what you are saying, and Hillary flip-flops between masculine and feminine behaviour and posture. Ironically the most truthful and straight-forward of the candidates was judged to be Rudi Giuliani.

[awisler]

While im on this psychology topic, its a field ive been interested in my whole life, and was wondering what type of psychology field would involve these types of things? Not as much mental type of tells, but more physical analysis? Something in forensics im assuming?

[Juvenal]

...wondering what type of psychology field would involve these types of things?

Knowledge of tells must be essential for Mentalists (i.e. mind-readers). It must also be important in sales - a salesman really needs to know which aspects of their pitch are the most successful so that they can reinforce them.

I got the impression form Peter Collet's programme that he was a bit of a lone voice in the field of research. But maybe other researchers are commercially-funded and don't want to talk about their results.

[Simetrical]

There's some fascinating research done on lying. One key person to look at in this field is Mark Frank. Some basic findings:

• Lying is accompanied in the overwhelming majority of people by subtle facial cues that cannot be easily controlled. (Some people, several percent, do not show these cues or do not do so as reliably. Possibly they just believe what they're saying.)
• Almost nobody is capable of discerning whether a stranger is lying by their facial expressions or other cues. The overwhelming way people tell whether someone is lying is by either evaluating the plausibility of the claim on its logical merits, or comparing to baseline behavior if they know the person. But in a video of nurses, one after the other telling either the truth or a lie by chance, most demographics*― including police officers*― scores 50%, only as good as chance.
• However, there are a very few naturally gifted people who get extremely good scores. Some professions do somewhat better than chance, as well, such as clinical psychologists, interrogators, and judges.
• Most interestingly, systematic study can allow people to note the exact movements of facial muscles, eventually just as a habit, and so permit them to notice patterns that should allow them to pick out lying (and similar phenomena) at much higher rates than they previously could.

There's at least one do-it-at-home training regimen from a reputable academic source that purports to allow you to recognize and control facial expressions, IIRC. In principle it should be possible. Some lying researchers have certainly demonstrated the ability to do it*― e.g., individually controlling every or almost every facial muscle, after extremely extensive practice (sometimes involving direct stimulation of nerves to help them mimic the movement consciously). I've always harbored a fond notion that I should try it out one of these days, although I think it will cost a bit of money.