How Do Criminals Leak Information Through Their Body?

Criminals are very smart and if you are not productive, intelligent and experienced, you would end up being fooled in all fronts. As a law enforcement agent saddled with the duty of questioning and interrogating criminal suspects, you must be ready to go the extra mile in order to stay afloat of their deceptive ways. One thing is very glaring; all criminals are liars. In fact, lies are potent tools in their hands with which they torment their victims and get themselves undeserved victory. Fortunately, body language has proven to be the way out in such a big mess. When interpreting the body language of a liar, you should rely on signs that are not under his cautious control, for example, gestures and signs that happen automatically. In the liar’s case, the least reliable signs are the those that he has the most control over, like his words or exposing his palms; exposing palms generally means openness, but in this case can be easily faked (Psychologia, 2018).

A small child will instinctively cover her mouth when lying. If she hears something she doesn’t like to hear, she will just cover her ears as if she is trying to block out the sound. If she sees something she doesn’t want to see, she would cover her eyes. As she gets older, the face touching gestures become quicker and subtler but do not disappear altogether. Face touching gestures will still be there when lying, covering up for someone, exaggerating, doubting or even being uncertain. Increased swallowing of saliva is another automatic gesture that is often displayed when lying, but it is usually more noticeable with men than with women (Psychologia, 2018).

In addition, separate gesture should not be interpreted without considering other signs that are displayed at the same time, and circumstances under which it is happening taken into consideration. The reason for that, is that one and the same gesture could mean different things at different times.  For example, scratching the head can mean forgetfulness or lying, but it could also mean dandruff (Psychologia, 2018).

Having said that, here are the signs to be looking for in a criminal suspect:

Nose touching.  If the target person is not used to tell lies or if his values and beliefs made him think that lying is immoral then he won’t feel comfortable while telling the lie and he will take one of the negative evaluation postures (touching nose or ears). Negative evaluation Postures in body language are taken when someone considers something to be negative. In this case the guy doesn’t like the fact that he is lying and thus he took the negative evaluation body posture. Note that this only happens with people who consider lying a bad thing and not with everyone else. Those whose sense of compassion and empathy is dead will not feel anything; they have intentionally suppressed their conscience (Radwan, 2018).

Weak eye contact. Eye contact becomes poor when someone is lying: while telling a lie the person may keep looking at other stuff around him just to avoid looking at you. Most of them, especially newbies in lying, would find it difficult to look you in the eyes. They are afraid that you would be able to see the lies written on their face. Hence, they do everything humanly possible to avoid a direct contact with you (Radwan, 2018).

Bending of the back. The back is rarely kept straight and the posture is rarely kept upright when someone is lying, unless the person is proud of lying. One study has found that thugs tend to choose their victims based on their degree of submissiveness. If a person appeared submissive, had a curved back and an innocent look on his face then he is more likely to be mugged. Also, criminals may put on this look in order to deceive us so as to be acquitted of a crime they actually committed (Radwan, 2018).

Hands in pockets. Putting the hands in pocket isn’t a sign that a person is lying but it could be a sign that the person wants to hide. In such a case a person could have felt guilty for lying and as a result felt like he wanted to hide (on the subconscious level). Note that putting only one hand in pocket could have a totally different meaning (Radwan, 2018).

Scrawling the face. According to a study people are more likely to frown and scowl when they lie. This doesn’t mean that each frowning person is a liar but it just means that the probability of lying is considered higher when a person does those things (Radwan, 2018).

Forced eye contact: Some liars have learned to force eye contact in order to appear innocent. Those people might actually look in your eyes more for longer periods of time. While the healthy eye contact percentage should be around 70 to 80% of the time a liar could keep his eyes focused on you to seem innocent (Radwan, 2018).

Just like I’ve always noted at every point in time that you cannot rely on just a single cue to conclude if a person is lying or not, there are some so-called “tells” of liars which are actually not foolproof. Some of them are:

Fidgeting: It’s the classic sign of lying. However, “liars generally don’t appear to be more fidgety,” says Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored a large meta-analysis of studies of lying. In fact, “some truthful people who know they’re under suspicion will fidget” (Ekman, 2015).

Blinking: Lying can require more concentration than usual. Some research suggests that people blink less when they’re thinking harder — for example, when they’re recalling an eight-digit number, compared to one with four digits. In experiments in which some people were instructed to lie and others weren’t, the liars blinked less. But … it depends why you’re lying and how you feel. Anxiety can cause more blinking, says DePaulo, especially if “people were lying about a transgression” (Ekman, 2015).

So, what is important is that you first establish a baseline and then take the context of the appearance of the signals into cognizance before reaching a conclusion on your suspicions.