The Eyes Don't Have It: New Research into Lying and Eye Movements

Widely held beliefs about Neuro-Linguistic Programming and lying are unfounded

Proponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) have long claimed that it is possible to tell whether a person is lying from their eye movements.  Research published today in the journal PLoS ONE reveals that this claim is unfounded, with the authors calling on the public and organisations to abandon this approach to lie detection.

For decades many NLP practitioners have claimed that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be lying, whilst a glance up to their left is indicative of telling the truth.

Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Dr Caroline Watt (University of Edinburgh, UK) tested this idea by filming volunteers as they either lied or told the truth, and then carefully coded their eye movements.  In a second study another group of participants was asked to watch the films and attempt to detect the lies on the basis of the volunteers' eye movements.

"The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills,” noted Wiseman. 

A final study involved moving out of the laboratory and was conducted in collaboration with Dr Leanne ten Brinke and Professor Stephen Porter from the University of British Columbia, Canada.  The team analysed films of liars and truth tellers from high profile press conferences in which people were appealing for missing relatives or claimed to have been the victim of a crime. 

"Our previous research with these films suggests that there are significant differences in the behaviour of liars and truth tellers," noted Dr Leanne ten Brinke. "However, the alleged tell-tale pattern of eye movements failed to emerge."

"A large percentage of the public believes that certain eye movements are a sign of lying, and this idea is even taught in organisational training courses.  Our research provides no support for the idea and so suggests that it is time to abandon this approach to detecting deceit" remarked Watt.

The research paper “The Eyes Don’t Have It: Lie Detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming” can be read here when published after the embargo date: http://bit.ly/MhVIwj

Professor Richard Wiseman is available for interview and can be contacted on:

 +44 (0) 7790 905219 or email: r.wiseman@herts.ac.uk

Dr Caroline Watt is available for interview and can be contacted on:

+44 (0) 7790 943128 or email caroline.watt@ed.ac.uk

For more information, please contact Julie Cooper, University of Hertfordshire Press Office on 01707 284095, Email: j.cooper5@herts.ac.uk

Notes to Editor

About the University of Hertfordshire

The University is the UK’s leading business-facing university and an exemplar in the sector.  It is innovative and enterprising and challenges individuals and organisations to excel.  The University of Hertfordshire is one of the region’s largest employers with over 2,300 staff and a turnover of almost £231 million.

With a student community of over 27,700 including more than 2,900 international students from over eighty-five different countries, the University has a global network of over 170,000 alumni.  

The University of Hertfordshire was awarded ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2010’ by the Times Higher Education (THE) and ranks in the top 4% of all universities in the world according to the recent THE, World University Rankings. For more information, please visit www.herts.ac.uk Did you know….?10% of all known planets were discovered by University of Hertfordshire astronomers - We are pioneeringFind out more at  go.herts.ac.uk/didyouknow

About the University of Edinburgh

Established in 1583, the University of Edinburgh is one of the UK's leading research-intensive universities and regularly ranks among the top 50 universities in the world.

The School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences was established in August 2002. Its teaching and research is consistently ranked among the world’s best.

About PLoS ONE

PLoS ONE is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access online publication published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS),

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