Friday, November 13, 2009

Psy Blog: What the lips say about how we feel and think - even deception

What the lips say about how we feel and think - even deception
What our lips reveal about us - even when lying!

When it comes to feelings and emotions, the lips can be invaluable; they can even help us to detect deception. Ever notice when people are stressed, their lips disappear or get smaller.j


Lips convey a lot of information that is often ignored or not even observed. Rich with nerves and highly vascular, the lips react in real time to the world around us. So when people receive bad news or witness a horrific event their lips begin to disappear, becoming very thin as vaso constriction takes place. Under extreme stress they disappear completely or are compressed together.


In a forensic setting you quickly realize that not all words we hear have the same weight.  If you killed someone with an ice pick, you will not react to the question, "Did you kill her with a machete?" as you would if you were asked, "Did you kill her with an ice pick?" In polygraphy, this is called the "hidden key."  By asking specific questions you can elicit very precise information as to what bothers an individual or, in some cases, that they have specific guilty knowledge.


What the lips say about how we feel and think - even deception
What our lips reveal about us - even when lying!

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