It is a common notion that a person’s eye movements can betray whether they are being truthful. This belief is frequently portrayed in popular culture, from television shows to movies, suggesting specific glances can reveal a lie. Many people adopt this idea, relying on eye behavior as a direct indicator of sincerity or deceit in everyday interactions.
Common Beliefs About Deceptive Eye Movements
This notion often originates from interpretations of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) concepts. NLP, developed in the 1970s, proposed that eye-accessing cues could reveal a person’s thought processes. For instance, a common belief suggests that looking up and to the right indicates someone is fabricating information or constructing a visual image, while looking up and to the left signals memory recall.
Other specific eye directions were also associated with different internal processes. Looking horizontally to the right was thought to signify constructing auditory information, whereas looking horizontally to the left supposedly meant recalling sounds or words. Downward glances were also assigned meanings, with looking down and to the right believed to reflect kinesthetic or emotional feelings, and looking down and to the left often linked to internal dialogue or self-talk.
These specific patterns have been largely debunked by scientific inquiry.
What Science Reveals About Eye Movements
Robust scientific studies have consistently found no reliable correlation between specific eye movements and deception. Experiments where participants were filmed while lying and telling the truth, with their eye movements analyzed, have shown no consistent patterns that differentiate honest from dishonest statements. The FBI has also publicly stated that such eye movement claims are not credible for lie detection.
Eye movements are primarily linked to cognitive processes, reflecting how the brain processes information rather than signaling truth or falsehood. When people look away or shift their gaze, it often indicates cognitive effort, such as retrieving memories, constructing complex thoughts, or engaging in internal reflection. For example, increased cognitive load may lead to changes like increased blinking, longer fixation durations, or pupil dilation. However, these are general indicators of mental activity and do not point to a specific direction for lying.
The Complexity of Detecting Deception
Relying on isolated cues like eye movement to detect deception is flawed because human behavior is complex and influenced by many factors. Deception is not a simple, uniform act but rather a sophisticated behavior affected by individual differences, emotional states, and the context of the situation. There is no single, universal “tell” that reliably indicates when someone is being deceptive.
Scientific consensus indicates that even trained professionals, such as law enforcement officers, struggle to detect deception with high accuracy using non-verbal cues alone. People are often no better than chance at distinguishing truths from lies. Eye movements are particularly unreliable indicators, as they are more closely tied to cognitive processing and attention. The idea that specific eye patterns can reveal a lie is not a scientifically supported method of deception detection.