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Telling fact
People who frequently use the word "I" in conversation tend to be concerned with themselves. Source: The Book of Tells by Peter Collett |
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 Speed. Telling a lie requires a lot of mental work because, in addition to constructing a credible line, the liar needs to keep the truth separated from the lie. This places demands on the capacities of the liar, which in turn can slow him down. That's why people pause before producing a lie, and why lies tend to be delivered at a slower pace than the truth - unless, of course, the lie has been carefully rehearsed, in which case there should be no different in speed. Pauses. Liars also produce more pauses between their words and sentences and some of these pauses are filled with speech disfluencies like 'um' and 'er'. The cognitive work involved in producing a spontaneous lie also gives rise to more speech errors, slips of the tongue and false starts, where the person starts a sentence and then abandons it for another sentence. Pitch. The pitch of someone's voice is often a very good indicator of their emotional state, because when people get upset the pitch of their voice starts to rise. Emotions are closely connected to vocal pitch and the changes that occur when people become emotional are very difficult to mask or conceal. Although increases in pitch are fairly consistent, they are sometimes quite small, and it is usually necessary to have heard someone speaking in other situations before one can decide whether the pitch of their voice has risen. Dr Peter Collett is a social psychologist and former Oxford Don. He has been resident psychologist on Big Brother and has co-authored two books including Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution with Desmond Morris, and is the author of Foreign Bodies: A Guide to European Mannerisms. Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
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