Many people think that it is possible to detect if someone is lying by the movements of their eyes. However, an article published in the magazinePLoS ONEreveals that this belief is unfounded.
One of the theories of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) argues thatwhen a person lies his gaze is directed upwards and to the right.On the contrary, when the truth is being told, the eyes look to the left. Now, an international group of researchers has carried out various experiments to test these theories.
In the first trial, the eye movements of people who were both lying and telling the truth were recorded and analyzed, andno differences were foundbetween them. In the second experiment, half of the participants were informed about eye movement theories, while the rest were unaware of them. Afterwards, they were shown the recordings of the first experiment so that they could tell who was lying and who was not. The results revealed that both groups were able to detect the lies with the same probability of success, around 50 percent.
In the last experiment, eye movements were analyzed in severalpress conferences, since the theory of NLP predicts that it is in these cases where the effect most clearly occurs. The number of times the speakers looked up and to the right and up to the left were counted in all cases, finding no differences between the people who lied and those who told the truth.
Based on these results, scientists warn of the risk involved in making important decisions based exclusively on the movement of the eyes.
