The happiest woman who understands her husband

Chapter 17 Understand the body language of men when they lie (2)
If a man covers his mouth while speaking, he is probably lying.If other people cover their mouths when you speak, it may be a sign that they think you may be hiding something.For a conference speaker, seeing someone covering their mouths while speaking is one of the most disturbing gestures.In this case, he should stop speaking and ask the audience, "Do you have any questions?" or "I found that some friends don't agree with my point of view, let's discuss it together." Presenting their own objections, the speaker also has the opportunity to explain his position and answer questions from the audience.

2. Touch your nose
This kind of gesture generally involves rubbing the lower edge of the nose with the hand a few times quickly, and sometimes it is only a slight touch, which is almost imperceptible.Women make this gesture with less movement than men, perhaps to avoid smudged makeup.

We must keep in mind that touching the nose needs to be interpreted in conjunction with other body language, and sometimes people may only make this gesture because of hay fever or cold.

Scientists at the Smell and Taste Therapy and Research Foundation in Chicago found that when people lie, chemicals called catecholamines are released, causing cells lining the nasal passages to swell.Scientists have also revealed that blood pressure can also rise as a result of lying, using special imaging machines that can show blood flow inside the body.The technique revealed that people's noses increase in size due to increased blood flow during lying, a phenomenon scientists have dubbed the "Pinocchio effect".Increased blood pressure causes the nose to swell, which triggers the nerve endings in the nasal cavity to send an itchy sensation, so people can only frequently rub their noses with their hands to relieve itchy symptoms.

Although you can't see the dilation of nasal blood vessels with the naked eye, it is indeed what triggers the gesture of touching the nose.Similarly, when a person is in a state of restlessness, anxiety, or anger, the blood vessels in his nasal passages will also dilate at the same time.

If a person's nose is itchy under normal circumstances, then he must rub his nose more vigorously, or even pick his nose to get rid of the itchy feeling, instead of just touching his nose lightly.The simple itching of the nose often only triggers a single gesture of rubbing the nose repeatedly, and has no connection with the content, frequency and rhythm of people's entire conversation.

Like the covering-mouth gesture, the speaker's nose-touching signaled that he was covering up a lie, and the listener's gesture indicated that he was skeptical of the speaker's words.

3. Rubbing eyes
The brain rubs the eyes in an attempt to prevent the eyes from witnessing deception, doubt, and unpleasantness, or to avoid confronting the person who is being deceived.A man tends to rub his eyes vigorously while making this gesture; if he's trying to cover up a big lie, he's likely to turn his face away.In contrast, women make less eye-rubbing gestures, and they generally just touch gently under the eyes.On the one hand, it is because of the ladylike demeanor that restricts them from making rude gestures; on the other hand, it is also to avoid smudged makeup.

4. Put your fingers between your lips
The gesture of placing a finger between the lips is closely related to infant sucking at a mother's nipple, a subconscious desire for the security of being in a mother's arms, and is often performed in situations of stress.Much of the hand-to-lip movement is associated with lying and deceit, but the gesture of placing a finger between the lips is just an outward expression of an inner need for security.Therefore, when you meet someone who makes this gesture, you might as well give him promises and guarantees, which will be a very positive response.

5. Neck scratching
The neck scratching gesture is to scratch the area on the side of the neck just below the earlobe with your index finger (usually the index finger of the writing hand).Experts concluded from observations that people usually scratch their index fingers five times each time they make this gesture.The number of index finger movements is rarely less than five or more than five.This gesture is a sign of doubt and uncertainty, and is equivalent to saying, "I'm not sure whether I agree with you." When the spoken language and this gesture do not agree, the contradiction will be particularly obvious.

6. Ear Scratching
The ear-scratching gesture expresses the listener's attempt to "don't listen to evil", that is, to prevent oneself from hearing words that do not want to be heard by covering the ears with hands or pulling the earlobes.There are also many variations of ear scratching gestures, including rubbing the back of the auricle, inserting fingertips into the ear canal to pick out the ear, pulling the earlobe, and folding the entire auricle forward to cover the ear hole, etc.

Like the nose-touching gesture, ear-scratching can signal that the individual is in a state of anxiety.

7. Pull the collar
Lying can tingle the sensitive nerve tissue in the face and neck, so people have to rub or scratch to get rid of the discomfort.Not only does this phenomenon explain why people scratch their necks when they're in doubt, it also explains why liars tug at their collars when they fear being caught.This is because once a liar feels the listener's suspicion, the increased blood pressure will make his neck sweat and heat up, so he can't help but want to pull his collar to breathe, thus showing his feet.

Watch out for the "feint" when a man is lying

In order to verify whether people will turn their faces to the side and move their eyes when they are lying, experts have done such a set of experiments: they arranged the subjects to lie to each other during the conversation, and recorded the whole conversation scene.Then, in an exchange workshop, the experts had the participants watch the videos and point out the lies they had identified.

The end result was surprising, with liars behaving differently than we would normally expect.Only about 30% of liars move their eyes while lying, and the lies of this part of liars are also the easiest to see through.About 80% of the lies were pointed out by the workshop members, and the success rate of women was higher than that of men.The other 70% of liars look steadily at the poor victim when they lie. Maybe they know that looking left and right will attract suspicion, so they do the opposite to avoid getting caught. That's right.

This reminds us to pay attention to the "fake actions" of liars, so as not to be deceived by others in circles.

Some men have to hide two things when they lie—the truth first, and any emotions that might reveal the amount of effort they put into hiding the truth.The emotions that liars experience are often negative, such as feeling guilty or fear of being found out.But liars also experience excitement when they lie.Paul Ekman calls it "the joy of fooling others."People usually feel little negativity when they tell a small, harmless lie.However, when the stakes are high when it comes to telling a big lie, they often experience strong negative emotions.These emotions must be kept hidden if the lie is to be sustained.Negative emotions can be disguised by turning your head, covering your face with your hands, or using a neutral or positive emotion.Head-turning and face-covering tactics don't always work because they tend to draw attention to what the liar is trying to hide.On the other hand, camouflage allows liars to display expressions that are not necessarily associated with lying.

The most common disguises are "blank face" and smiling. It takes a little effort to get the "blank face" right, and men (and not only men, but all liars, in fact) need to keep their faces calm in order to camouflage their negative emotions.It takes more effort to disguise a smile, because it means that a person is happy and at ease.

Of all the facial expressions, smiling is probably the easiest to do.It also tends to dissuade people, since smiling makes others experience positive emotions and makes them less suspicious of liars.

But what really makes smiling popular is that most people are pretty bad at distinguishing a genuine smile from a fake one.The reason why they are not good at distinguishing is that they pay too much attention to the superficial meaning of smiles.People can often identify "mixed smiles" that display negative emotions.For example, they found that "bitter smiles" can be easily identified.When people send out a "bitter smile", the inner corners of the eyebrows will rise, and the corners of the mouth will either lift up or down.But people are terrible at spotting fake, unmixed smiles.This is why men hide the negative emotions associated with lying.

If you ask people how to spot a liar, they will often mention smiling.They will tell you that when a person is lying, they are more likely to smile to hide their true feelings.Research on lying, however, shows the exact opposite: People who lie smile less than people who tell the truth.It seems to be the case that liars sometimes adjust their behavior to be the exact opposite of what is expected of them.But that doesn't mean that liars don't use smiles.It just goes to show that they are often seen through for having a fake laugh.A fake smile has several identifying characteristics:
(1) Lasting: Fake smiles tend to last longer than genuine, heartfelt smiles.

(2) Assembly: Fake smiles were "assembled" faster and "dismantled" more quickly than genuine smiles.

(3) Orientation: A counterfeit smile tends to be confined to the lower half of the face, whereas a genuine smile involves both the muscles that lift the corners of the mouth and those that tense around the eyes and gently pull down the eyebrows.Fake and genuine smiles are controlled by different parts of the brain: Conscious centers produce fake smiles, while genuine smiles are spontaneous.

(4) Symmetry: Genuine smiles appear evenly on both sides of the face, while fake smiles sometimes appear more strongly on one side of the face (usually the right).This is so because the neural pathways associated with conscious facial expressions differ from those associated with spontaneous facial expressions.If you see a symmetrical smile, it could be genuine or fake.However, if you're seeing an asymmetrical smile, it's most likely fake.Although a symmetrical smile is very different from an asymmetrical one, people tend to respond to an asymmetrical smile as if it were a genuine smile.That's why we're so indifferent to smiling: if someone else smiles at us, we don't care much about which kind of smile we get.

When identifying a man's lies, you also need to pay attention to how the lie unfolds.Lying generally has a certain purpose, so many clever liars have a set of lying routines.They found that it was easier to win people's trust when they lied in the following ways.

When some men lie, they don't lie in one mouth. In order to increase the credibility of what they say, they often tell some truths.The role of the truth here is to cover up the lies, and it is a way to win the trust of others.For example, some doctors know that the patient's illness is not serious, but after telling some real conditions, they suggest that the patient take a series of medical examinations, or buy some medicines, claiming that it is good for the body, otherwise the condition may become serious.It is difficult to distinguish such mixed words of truth and falsehood.

Clever liars are often able to move people with emotion, and they often take the initiative to express their "selfishness" in front of others. Of course, this is just a cover.In addition, some men are good at finding out the other party's mind when lying, and put on an objective angle to analyze for the other party.Let's take some salesmen as an example. These salesmen know that customers will worry about a series of issues such as "the overlord clause in the contract" and product quality.When they meet customers, they will use the prepared lines to dispel customers' doubts one by one, but they will explain the key points in an evasive manner.At this time, customers are easily moved by his objective analysis and unknowingly fall into the trap set by others.

(End of this chapter)