2019/01/04 by Aldert Vrij, Maria Hartwig, Pär Anders Granhag · 187 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognitive psychology #Communication #Deception #Deception detection and forensic psychology #Lie detection #Linguistics #Lying #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Nonverbal communication #Psychology #Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending #Reading (process) #Social psychology
paper · open access · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103135
published in Annual Review of Psychology 70(1), 295-317 (Annual Reviews)
openalex publication_date 2019/01/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The relationship between nonverbal communication and deception continues to attract much interest, but there are many misconceptions about it. In this review, we present a scientific view on this relationship. We describe theories explaining why liars would behave differently from truth tellers, followed by research on how liars actually behave and individuals' ability to detect lies. We show that the nonverbal cues to deceit discovered to date are faint and unreliable and that people are mediocre lie catchers when they pay attention to behavior. We also discuss why individuals hold misbeliefs about the relationship between nonverbal behavior and deception-beliefs that appear very hard to debunk. We further discuss the ways in which researchers could improve the state of affairs by examining nonverbal behaviors in different ways and in different settings than they currently do.