Read between the lies

Washington, Apr 25 (UNI) Sick of being lied to? You can simply look at the face of a person and tell if you are being deceived.

Research shows that face of the deceiver displays the true emotion, but not in the stereotypical ways we thought.

So its not the shifty eyes or sweaty brow or an elongated nose (Pinocchio style) one should look for, but other elements of a liar's face which will give them away, ''cracking'' briefly and allowing displays of true emotion to leak on to the face.

''The face and its musculature are so complex, so much more complex than anywhere else in our external bodies,'' Leanne ten Brinke, a graduate student in experimental psychology, who collaborated on the research at Dr Stephen Porter's Forensic Psychology Lab at Dalhousie University, said.

''There are some muscles in the face you can't control, and those muscles won't be activated in the absence of genuine emotion-- you just can't do it,'' he added.

Dr Porter said, ''If someone is telling a really important lie in which the consequences are dire, say life imprisonment, the lie will be revealed anyway. Because unlike body language, you can't monitor or completely control what's going on your face.'' In the experiments conducted for the research, it was found that not even a single participant was able to falsify emotions perfectly. Odd or out-of-place expressions, such as smirking or rapid blinking in a supposedly sad face, were more likely to show up when the participant was attempting to be deceptive, the Science Daily reported.

''There are all kinds of potential applications for this research, from our daily lives to settings like police interrogations, security checks in airports and courtrooms,'' said Dr Porter.

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