Deception Tip 37 – Mask The Face – How To Detect Deception

Hello and welcome to the deception tips podcast where you will learn amazing cues to detect deceit that will help you read people like never before. I’m your host Spencer Coffman, let’s get started.

Welcome to episode 37 of the deception tips podcast. Thank you for your continued listening to this broadcast. Remember that repetition is one of the main things in learning anything and with this series you will really be able to learn exactly what everybody is really saying. You’ll know when someone is lying to you so that you’ll be able to find the truth and never be hurt by lies again.

So, as always, with anything that you are learning, listen to it over and over again. That doesn’t mean you have to listen to this episode over and over again but mark the ones that you really enjoyed. Listen to them over, share them with your friends, have them listen to them, and then start discussing them.

In addition, if maybe for some reason you don’t have any friends because they’re all lying to you then get involved in some online discussion. You can jump on the Facebook page, deception tips, or a guide to deception. 

You can find any of my social media, I’d be more than happy to engage in some discussion with you if you have any questions or conversation or anything like that. Because this is such a great topic and I really believe that if more people knew how to read others and detect deception we would live in a much more honest and much better world.

Last time we spoke about a sign of deception in rubbing the eyes, where some people with unlikeable stimuli when they see things that they don’t like. The caveat with this is sometimes it could be not only something that they see but also something that they hear. The reaction is a hand-to-face gesture of blocking the eyes, so they could rub their eyes they may also blink a bunch.

We talked about that where like people may flutter their eyes or blink rapidly to shut out unlikeable stimuli. In addition, it could be in an extreme situation where they will shut their eyes and then maybe even turn away if they don’t like what they see or if they don’t like what they are hearing, so pay attention to that.

Today, we are going to talk about another sign of deception on the face. This is more of a general sign that explains where these leakage forms come from. So, in general, we have a body obviously, which means that when we lie or when someone lies or when we are looking for lies, we will be able to see different signs on someone’s face and on their body.

So, we’ve talked about a lot of different areas, we’ve also spoken about speech and we’ve also talked about breathing. So, we have speech patterns which are some things you can hear, we have breathing which is something you can see and hear then we have all of the physical signs of deception and body language that can happen on the face or on the body.

As could be reasoned, the body is larger than the face so therefore because there is more area on the body than the face, one would think that there are more signs of deception on the body than on the face. Now, this is true in some instances and not in others. The face has so many tiny muscles and micro-expressions that there are a lot of different signs of body language and nonverbal communication on the face.

However, there is a caveat here as well, most people try to mask or hide their facial expressions more than their bodily expressions. So, even though there could be the potential for more signs of deception on the face, there are actually more signs of deception on the body due to the fact that most people hide the expressions that come out on their faces.

That is exactly what we are going to talk about today in deception tip number 37. So, here it is deception tip number 37. People often try to mask their face more than their body when they tell lies, as a result, the body will have more leakage than the face. Here it is again, deception tip 37. People often try to mask their face more than their body when they tell lies, as a result, the body will have more leakage than the face.

The body is very expressive, and the face is even more expressive, obviously, as we’ve said, with all of the different muscles that go into it, all of the different micro-expressions that can occur there. When it comes to the face though, a lot of people because know that we’re supposed to maintain good eye contact, we have to look people in the eye, we need to watch their face, etc. most people when they speak with other people they’re focused on the face.

They’re watching each other’s eyes, their mouths, looking at their cheeks, looking around their chin, all around the field of vision. They may be looking over their shoulder, behind them, etc. so the face is always in the field of vision. 

Now, that means when someone lies, they are consciously and unconsciously going to guard their face a little bit more than the rest of their body because they know that that’s what everybody is watching.

This can work to your advantage because then that means if they are focused on guarding their face, that means they are going to let their guard down on their body which means that you can watch the body to find signs of body language that will leak deception. These will be nonverbal cues that happen all across the body that can leak that deception.

Remember that the conscious and the unconscious are always fighting one another, they are in a head-to-head battle for the truth. The conscious wants to get away with the lie and serve itself, fool other people and make it so that life is good. 

They don’t have to have any conflict and try to get away with the lies so that they can move on, whereas the unconscious is super truthful and always wants the truth to come out.

Therefore, whenever the conscience is telling a lie, the unconscious is going to do unconscious things to get the truth out which means leak body language and leak nonverbal communication. It’s going to be like those unconscious gestures. If you train yourself to pick up on those gestures, which you have been doing because now we are at 37.

This means, for the past 37 weeks you have been listening to the deception tips podcast, and you are learning more about detecting deception and how to find these little unconscious cues. We are going to talk a lot more about how people will mask the face more than the body and different signs and things like that coming up right after this.

Not only can you listen to these deception tips, but you can also watch a quick video explaining each one. Subscribe to the body language YouTube channel today.

Once again, you’re listening to the deception tips podcast, my name is Spencer Coffman. This is episode 37, where we are talking all about how liars will attempt to mask the face more than the body. 

Remember, I encourage you to listen to this over and over again so that you can really get the most out of it because it’s through repeated use and repeated repetition and overstimulation that you will really remember exactly what’s going on.

So, share it with your friends, talk about it with them, engage in some online discussion, etc. Now, when people lie, they like to mask their face more than their body because they know other people are going to be watching their face. Therefore, the body is going to have more signs of leakage. So, use this to your advantage and pay attention to not only their face but also their entire body.

This doesn’t mean that because they’re going to be masking their face, you should not even worry about the face and you should look at everything else. No, because there are a lot of little muscles in micro-expressions that occur on the face, which means there is a ton of potential for you to recognize deception on their face. Even though they are attempting to conceal their face more than their body, it means that they will still have leakage on their face.

They cannot help it, you cannot block all leakage, and the unconscious is constantly trying to show the truth. That means if there is a lie going on there will always be more than one sign. Some of them will be on the face, others will be on the body, no matter what someone does they cannot block out everything.

So, pay attention to the entire body including the face, and watch for all of these signs that we’ve gone over. We’ve gone over 37 as of today, we’ve got a lot more coming up, continue listening, and also check out the books and everything to get even more information.

Now, the body is bigger than the face in terms of area, and space. I don’t even need to prove this point just look at a human being you will see that the face is a circle. The body is huge. 

So, in comparison, there is more to work with on the body. You can watch their hands, arms, legs, neck, and all kinds of things. Where their feet are going, and you can see exactly what they’re saying by paying attention to all of these signs.

Therefore, when you are speaking with someone you need to put yourself in positions so that you can monitor their entire body. This means if you are talking to somebody at a table or a desk and you have them sitting and you’re sitting and you guys are each on one side of the desk, you can only see from let’s say their torso or chest up.

That means in proportion, you’re only seeing about a third of their body. Well, now you may only have a third of the chance to detect deception because a lot of the leakage could be happening on the legs. Now you say well the unconscious is truthful, so it’s going to put leakage all over the body. Yes, but the conscious is deceptive and it’s going to fight with the unconscious.

Now, this is going to be a little weird here, but the conscious and the unconscious, they’re really not two separate entities, they’re really the same. It’s the same mind but for ease of explanation, it’s two separate entities right now. The conscious and the unconscious they’re fighting, they want to compromise they want to get along.

So, the conscious allows the unconscious to have this leakage because it knows, hey, no one really knows how to read people and how to detect deception so I can let the unconscious have its way. Let out a few signs of deception, no big deal because no one’s going to see it, I’m still going to get away with the lie.

However, if there is someone sitting behind a table, the conscious is going to know that. The unconscious is going to still try to leak that deception. The conscious is going to say hey, leak all of the signs you want underneath the table, leak them all on the legs. So, that way they won’t be able to see it. Why? Because we’re sitting behind a table.

So, the conscious is going to feel really good about letting the unconscious leak all the behaviors it wants behind the closed doors, nothing will be leaked from the chest up. Of course, some things may still be leaked but the point is when the conscious knows that there is a spot on the body that cannot be detected that is where the leakage is going to happen.

Therefore, any time you are interrogating someone or speaking with someone in a serious situation where you need to get to the truth, put yourself in a position where you can monitor their entire body. If it needs to be an interrogation room and you need to be sitting down, then just put two chairs across from each other at some distance. Don’t put a table in between.

Why do they need a table to lean on or rest on? Unless you need to handcuff them to the table or something. Why is that table needed? It is not. Maybe handcuff him to the chair and bolt the chair to the floor. Whatever it takes to give yourself that advantage of seeing their entire body so that you can monitor all of the leakages that are going to happen, it is very important.

In addition, maybe it’s a more casual situation where you guys can stand and talk to one another. That would be perfect because now you add the entire shifting of weight, moving back and forth, walking around, all of those nervous behaviors that can come with standing. Remember, that there will always be more than one sign, so that means you can pay attention to all the different signs.

If you think you see one thing, let it ping up your antenna and start paying attention for more. Use those strategies we talked about to revisit those conversations. If you’re talking about last week when he did x y z on Thursday and you notice that there’s a little shifting of something, weight or a shoulder shrug, then say, “alright, tell me again about last Thursday, what happened when you did x y z?” See if you see another sign.

Don’t be afraid to steer the conversation back to certain spots where you think you’ve noticed deception. Remember, this is an art, you are not going to be calling people out on their signs of deception, “hey, you did a shoulder shrug right there, I know that that means you’re lying!” No, that doesn’t mean they’re lying, you need to look for clusters and patterns of behavior.

Therefore, steer the conversation back so that you can elicit those patterns and clusters of behaviors. They aren’t going to know what you’re doing, they’re just going to think that you have more questions on it, that you’re talking because the human conversation is nonlinear. 

It is a mess, it is a chaos of back-and-forth, non-linear patterns, it’s not a narrative. Therefore, when you’re jumping back and forth asking all about things over and over again. It’s going to seem pretty casual. So, don’t be afraid to do that in order to find the truth.

Once again, I want to thank you for listening to the deception tips podcast. I hope that you’ll share it with your friends, subscribe to the feed, check out the deception tips videos, and the deception tips blog, and take a look at the books I have available as always tune in next week for a new deception tip.

Hey guys, my name is Spencer Coffman, thank you for watching the deception tips videos. They’re all about teaching you how to read people and detect deception so that you will be able to tell if someone is lying to you. Today we are going to talk about a cool sign of deception, just like all the times that we talk about them.

All these signs of deception can play in with one another and it can really build on one another. You can start seeing these patterns and these clusters of behavior that build on one another and they really work together to show you whether or not someone is telling the truth.

So, today, we move on to deception tip number 37. People often try to mask their face more than their body when they tell a lie. As a result, the body will have more leakage than the face. So, this is very important, people try to mask the face, the face would be from the neck up, that’s a very small portion of the entire body. Therefore, if they’re trying to mask their face more the body is going to have more signs of leakage simply because they’re trying to hide what’s on the face then the body is going to have more leakage.

Also, if you play it in a common-sense factor, the body is bigger than the face, so the body is going to have more signs of leakage, there’s much more to happen. I’ve got all these limbs, hands, arms, I’ve got my feet, legs, everything, all these other signs, all these other muscles, all over the rest of the body. So, there are going to be a lot more signs and because most people realize that when people talk to one another we watch the face, they’re going to try to hide the things on the face.

Now, another thing to notice is the word ‘mask’, when we’re talking about liars it’s so much easier to mask facial expressions than to stop them altogether. We’ve talked about this when we talked about contempt, how it’s the only asymmetrical facial expression. Sometimes it’ll be masked with a smile or oftentimes when people yawn if they try to fake a yawn or suppress a yawn that’s coming up, so if I were to yawn and then you’re going to yawn but you don’t want to yawn, sometimes they clench their jaw.

Jaw clenching could be a sign of anger. Well, if you’re suppressing a yawn and clenching your jaw then you’re not really angry. Maybe you’re mad that you’re yawning so that could be a sign of anger but it’s not because you’re angry at something else, you are suppressing that yawn. So, when people have all these facial expressions, my point with this is it’s much easier for you to suppress the yawn by masking it with something else like clenched jaw than to turn off the yawn a hundred percent because you can’t do it.

So, when someone shows contempt or disgust, it’s much easier for them to mask it with a smile or to turn a yawn into a smile or something else like that than it is for them to shut it off completely. Therefore, they are going to focus a lot on hiding things on the face more than the rest of the body because we know as human beings that we talk to one another and what are we taught from the time we’re little to the time we get older? Maintain good eye contact, look me in the eyes when I’m speaking to you, look at me when I’m talking to you.

It’s respectful to pay attention to what’s going on, we’re supposed to square up with one another and communicate with one another with good eye contact, proper posture, all that stuff, etc. So, if we’re taught to look at each other’s faces from the time we’re born to the time we die, then of course, if someone is lying, they know that people are going to be watching their face.

Therefore, they know that they need to hide those expressions on their face, they can’t turn them off so they’re going to cover them up with something else. Therefore, there are a lot of masking behaviors that are split-second precursors like the contempt then it turns into a smile. Suppressing a yawn that is a clenched jaw or things like that may happen tons of times on the face for a split second and then they’re gone because something else happens.

So, when it comes to the face, you have to watch out for those but unless you can see like one-fourth of a second facial expressions, micro-expressions, then your best bet is to look at the face but also look at the body. The face is going to be much more concealed than the body, people are going to be focused more on the face, as a result, the body is going to have a lot more leakage.

So, if you watch out for these other signs on the body then you see things that you wouldn’t see when you’re just watching the face. Therefore, pay attention to the entire body as well as the face and what people are saying and how their gestures interact with what they’re saying. If you watch all of that and you look for patterns and clusters of behavior that go together then you’re going to be much better off and much better able to detect deception when it’s happening.

If this is your first time watching these videos, I’d love to have you subscribe to the channel on YouTube, feel free to leave any comments or questions on there as well. Also, if you’d like more information, we’ve got books, podcasts, blog posts, all available on spencercoffman.com that are one hundred percent dedicated to teaching you exactly what everybody is really saying.

Until next time.