Lying is one of the most common aspects of everyday life. Nonverbal communication is essential in detecting lies. Research has shown that deception is associated with a variety of non-verbal cues. They include more gaze aversion, less smiling and more movements among others.
The most common movements associated with lying are self-touches, shifting positions, movements of the trunk, arm, legs and foot movements. However, there is no a common indicator of deceptive behavior thus the knowledge of nonverbal is important as it equips one with the information on how different ages, cultures and gender employ nonverbal cues when lying.
There are certain parts of one’s body that help in the detection of lies. The most expressive parts of the body are regarded as being high in ‘information-sending capacity’ since they are easy to control and less likely to allow deception ‘leakage’. Consequently, the face is termed as one of the parts that are low in deception ‘leakage’. In conscious communication parts like the hands and legs are rarely used in conscious communication and are less controllable (Teng 4). Owing to this, they emit more deception ‘leakage’ than the face.
One has to understand the relationship between body movement, as a form of nonverbal communication, and deception or rather lying. Recent studies have shown that actual deception entails a decrease in body movements.
The deception behavior of highly motivated liars is associated with a decrease of foot, hand and leg movements. This is because most liars, in the course of time, have learnt the different nonverbal cues that lie-detectors associate with the phenomenon such as shaking hands and legs. To counter the belief, in the course of time most liars have tried to evade such nervous behavior.
Most deceivers are tense therefore they try by all means to control their body movements in order to avoid giving nonverbal cues to deception. This also helps them to look credible. This takes the lie detector to the next level of unveiling the truth in the lie. According to Teng, the liar’s attempts to restrict their movements during deception in their attempt to create a more credible impression serve as a perfect cue to deception (6). The controlled behavior makes liars more rigid, suspicious and inhibited.
To become an effective lie-detector, it is important to know that men and women engage in different forms of nonverbal behavior. For instance, men engage more in foot/leg movement when telling a truth than their female counterparts. Furthermore, facial expression/cues differ significantly.
Males who are telling the truth are less likely to employ facial adaptors as is the case with male liars. On the other hand, women are more likely to employ facial cues when telling the truth than men. Therefore, it is fundamental to know the sex as well as the level of communication dominance of a liar to enable one to effectively identify deception cues.
In conclusion, a better understanding of the nonverbal communication in lie detection is very crucial. One also needs to be gender-sensitive when detecting deceptive behavior.
Since certain nonverbal behavior patterns are associated with women e.g. the absence of leg-movements during truth-telling, the anxiety that comes with lying may force women to betray deception through the use of such movements when lying. On the other hand, men are more likely to suppress these movements in moments of anxiety in an attempt to control the outwardly-perceived-signs believed to go hand-in-hand with deceptive behavior.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite”
Every person is in a strategic position of being aware of the things that are not ‘captured’ within their conscious mind. Different individuals experience different issues in their everyday life. As a result, one draws an understanding of nature or rather the world that is different from the others.
This is manifested on how one reacts to his/her immediate environment as well as in the broad aspect of nature. Everyone has his/her own consciousness that they are not aware of and in the same way, there is a lot in others’ consciousness that he/she is not aware of regardless of their closeness. It is therefore important to increase our consciousness of the things that we are not aware of in our environment an aspect that helps us to have a broader understanding of the same environment.
This can be done by being open to the things that have been ‘captured’ in others’ conscious mind-the things that they are aware of and can attest to when asked to support their understanding. Due to the fact that there are different kinds of people who interact with different types of environments, everyone has a different understanding/consciousness of the world.
They end up creating different and endless fields of perception. For one to know more about certain things/aspects of nature, they do not have to necessarily interact more with things in question. All they need to do is interact with other people and ask for their knowledge or rather awareness about the subject. By so doing, they end up getting new versions or views of the others which are simply endless.
Generally, the quote proposes that unless one considers others people’s views or understanding of a particular object or phenomenon to be subjective, then they are things that they will never get to know about. Apparently, the knowledge that they get from enquiring from others is endless since everyone has their own view and he/she cannot exploit all the possible explanations to the issue/object in question-“everything would appear as it is, infinite.”
Blake’s statement is possible. The development of perception as well as impression results from our interaction with others people in different environmental settings. Additionally, we can only form impressions from our conscious mind. That which we do not know about a person, place or even a natural phenomenon is not important in the formation of an impression since we rely on the things that we are consciously aware of in any given circumstance.
Blake’s proposition is a good idea since it can change not only the way we perceive people but also how we treat them. To handle any given situation effectively, one needs to get other people’s understanding, conscious awareness, of the situation at hand. In addition, cleansing the windows of perception i.e. gaining the ability to be open-minded in getting other people’s perception is also educative.
It enables one to have more knowledge enabling him/her to make informed decisions. Blake’s proposition is also important in the field of learning but this has to be taken with precaution. It requires an expert to weave people’s understanding into comprehensive information and they cannot possibly exploit all the information they acquire since it is endless.
Works Cited
Teng, James. “Detecting Deception through Nonverbal cues: Gender Differences.” Equal Opportunities International 17.2 (1998): 1-9. Print.