Myth BUSTED: Eye Movement (NLP) and Lying
Many people are taught today and continue to believe that if someone as they are talking gazes upwards and to the left (your left)–then they are lying. The theory is called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP believes when we gaze up and to the left, we are imaging. We only recall memories looking up to the right.
I don’t believe this for a minute.
I asked my readers to help me look for examples of people who shifted their eye gaze up and to the left, and are honest to help put an end to this myth.
The FBI has even put out a publication in their bulletin denouncing it as credible in June 2011. See here.
“Twenty-three out of 24 peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals reporting experiments on eye behavior as an indicator of lying have rejected this hypothesis.”
Watch Mike Bloomberg talk in this video below. In the first 15 seconds, watch his eyes gaze up and to the left.
He says, “I don’t have anything in common with people who sit there and say oh my god, it was terrible. It’s water under the bridge or the dam, so get on with it.”
You can tell he is not lying. He has no reason to.
People move their eyes all over in conversations –up, down, right, left and sideways–and the only thing you can glean from it is that a person is simply thinking. That’s it. We think when we tell the truth and we think when we lie. So it tells us nothing else.
Here is another one for you. Watch Fred Armisen answer a question about liking Molly Shannon. He looks up to the right and then to the left as he answers the question!
This is in French, but this Paris hostage has nothing to gain by lying and reading the sub-titles you can see she isn’t saying anything worthy of lying, but she clearly looks up and to the left.
In this video below, there are a lot of eye gazes when you watch in both directions. But there is also an up an to the left at time marker 11:01 by the woman in pink, Kara Swisher, and clearly she is not lying. She says, “There has been a big war on talents and payments.”
Please feel free post more examples in the comment section below that you find to stop this myth once and for all. Once people see it with their own eyes, they will likely believe it is untrue.
Many thanks to the people who are helping me squelch the myths! A big shout out to M.A.!
By “to the left” it seems you mean to the left for us the viewers. I thought the deception myth means the person looks to HIS or HER left when lying. To me it has always seemed that a lot of people look to THEIR left when using an internal framework etc, and a lot of looking to the right as well when recalling a situation with lots of visceral stuff to recall, but that’s just a personal impression anyways…… don’t want to spread any misinformation on a myth busting post!!!
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040259
So in the myth, the person that is in question of telling the truth looks up and to their right. Had no idea.
The real myth is that any credible person in the field of NLP has ever claimed this to be the case.
I can tell you many, many credible professionals who are dedicated to serving our country have been taught this over and over again, and still believe it today. That’s what is so disheartening. This belief is very prevalent nationwide. I have seen it from coast to coast.
I believe you. (See what I did there?) And I’ve been studying and practicing NLP since 1997. I’ve trained with one of the founders of the discipline and with many of his students. I’ve read countless books on the topic, tapes, mp3s, videos, conversations, and so on. Not one single incident of “eyes up and right equals lying.” It’s simply not true. And someone like you, who understands the structure of deception better than most anyone, knows why.
The NLP idea is that people’s eyes move in response to their thinking, and that once we have observed an individual’s eye movements for a little bit, we can generalize as to how they are thinking when they move their eyes in a certain way. It’s idiosyncratic, so we have to get a baseline with everyone, but the place we start is that eyes go up and (their) right when creating a mental image, up and (their) left when remembering. It’s not true with everyone, but it is true with enough people that it’s a useful place to begin.
Telling a lie is far more complex a behavior than simply imagining an event and rattling off what you’re imagining while it’s going on. (That’s what schizophrenics do when they’re hallucinating, and they don’t even look up and right. Their eyes are everywhere, following the “action.”) No… most lies are lies of omission, which involve REMEMBERING an event and simply leaving out the parts that would make it the whole truth. So even if NLP DID teach that the eye movements are universal, “eyes up and right” STILL wouldn’t equal “lie.”
I hope you stomp this old myth out of existence.
If you like, I’ll get a quick statement from John Lavalle, the president of the Society of NLP, which is co-founder Richard Bandler’s organization.
An appropriate new year resolution to bust the myths then.
I guess people want to find an ‘silver bullet’ indicator for deception and this myth was one such hope.
So true. Several yrs ago, when I was still working, a few of us were transferred from Patrol to the Detective Division. We were sent to a popular, well-known Interview/Interrogation Training course. They (incorrectly) taught us exactly what you described about deceptive vs truthful eye movements! (Don’t know if my old PD still uses them. If so, it’s a waste of time/money. I’ve learned SO much more from your blogs.)
NLP IS the theory. You probably mean the field of psychology. It stems from the 70s/80s so no surprise there. Science and technology evolved.
No, I actually said what I meant to say.
okay..
To me, there is a difference that I sense when people suddenly look away to avoid eye contact with you. There are usually other visible body movements and stammering that go along with lying. I can really pick up on nervousness. When people start fidgeting and saying things like, ‘you know, uh’ while suddenly looking away, that speaks of lying to me..
It could just be reactions of embarrassment, (social) anxiety, bad memory etc..
The claim WAS a person’s eye movements indicated they were constructing rather than recalling a memory in their mind.
From there it is a small step to consider this a tool for detecting lies – however the research showed it to be unreliable – which means you may as well flip a coin instead of using this tool.
I would like to point out that NLP is now considered a pseudoscience.
The ‘NLP’ claim of eye movements being connected to modality of thoughts was discredited in the 1980’s.
Nevertheless the research article (thanks for the link clownfish) does state that “…the originators of NLP didn’t view ‘constructed’ thoughts as lies”.
I’m so glad you wrote about this! I’ve always felt like my eyes have a “handedness” – up and to my right just feels natural in my eye muscles, while I have to force my eyes to look up and to my left. One of my friends was noticing this when we were talking about the direction someone looks when they lie versus when they access information or memory. I look up and right and then tick my eyes back and forth like I’m reading words on a page when I’m trying to get a “3D” vision of something, whether it’s biochemistry, a memory of my childhood, the way I want to redo some home project or the directions to a particular room in a building. I just don’t ever do up & (my) left because my muscles don’t naturally go that way.
Thank you for this. I always wondered. I wonder if investigators need to be re trained on this.