The popular belief that a liar can be spotted by their gaze has turned out to be one of the most debunked myths in psychology, according to Silicon Canals.
There is still some truth to the old saying that the eyes are the window to the soul, but it lies in involuntary reactions a person cannot physically control, such as the dilation of the pupils. Psychologist Eckhard Hess showed as far back as the 1960s that pupils widen in response to interest, excitement or mental strain, and that people cannot consciously control this response.
What genuine smiles reveal
Another reliable signal backed by science is a genuine smile. When someone is truly happy, the muscles around their eyes engage, creating distinctive creases, while a polite but forced smile usually stays fixed on the lips and does not reach the eyes.
The eye contact myth
The idea that liars avoid eye contact has not held up, according to the available evidence. Research by psychologist Aldert Vrij and colleagues found that people telling a lie often do the opposite, deliberately holding a listener's gaze to appear more convincing.
Reviews of the scientific literature on deception have consistently found no reliable link between where a person looks and whether they are telling the truth. The explanation is simple: controlling the direction of one's gaze is far easier than controlling one's pupils, which makes it the easiest signal to fake.
A risky assumption
The authors stressed that believing in one's own ability to read honesty from someone's eyes actually makes a person more vulnerable to manipulation. Anyone who relies on that shortcut risks wrongly suspecting a shy but honest person, while being taken in by a practiced liar with a confident gaze.
UNIAN previously reported on why the brain easily recognises faces but forgets names. It turns out this is not about poor memory, since the brain processes faces and names by entirely different rules. Researchers described the so-called "Baker paradox" as far back as 1987, showing that a word denoting a profession is remembered better than the same word used as a surname, because proper names carry no associations of their own.
