The eyes have this habit of positioning themselves according to the thoughts that are in your head, and other people can often understand what you are thinking about just by watching your eyes.
Being able to read other people’s eyes is a very useful skill. It will let you know if someone is lying, how interested someone is with what you are saying, and the type of thought that a person is having. Understanding eye movements can even be quite profitable, especially when playing poker or selling things. Professional poker players are especially keen at reading other’s eyes and many wear sunglasses so as not to reveal anything about their own cards.
Like most behavior your eyes follow predictable patterns, so here is the rundown.
Eye contact. Consistent eye contact is a sign that the person is interested in the conversation. Prolonged eye contact can mean that the person is trying to intimidate and/or may not trust you. Brief eye contact indicates that the person is anxious and/or not interested in the conversation. While a total lack of eye contact shows great disinterest in the conversation.
Eyes looking straight up. Rolling the eyes upward is a gesture that often indicates contempt, sarcasm, boredom, or annoyance. If someone is rolling their eyes at you it is not a good sign. Sometimes people look straight upward when they are referring to a god, but in most cases it is meant to be condescending. If their eyes roll back into their head and stay there… heh… make sure they aren’t having a seizure.
Eyes to the Upper Right. Someone who you see looking up-right (up-left from a 1st person point of view) is visualizing a remembered image. Ask someone to tell you the color of their car or describe what someone looks like and they should look up-right.
Eyes to the Upper Left. When you see someones eyes move quickly up-left (1st person top-right) they are constructing images in their head. A person looking up-left is using their imagination to put a picture together in their mind. Ask a person to imagine a large blue house filled with marbles and they should look up and to the left.
Eyes to the Right. When someone moves their eyes to the right (1st person left) they are recalling sounds from their memory. Ask someone to remember the melody to a song or to remember the sound of their alarm clock and they will look to their right.
Eyes Left. People construct sounds when they look to the left (1st person right). When someone imagines new sounds like an unheard voice, or puts together a new melody they look to the left. Ask someone to imagine the sound of a car horn underwater and they should look to the left.
Eyes Down and Right. A person looking down-right has internal dialog going on in their head. They may talking to themselves, reciting a conversation, or thinking about what they are going to say. Ask someone how their last conversation went and you will see them looking down-right.
Eyes Down and Left. If a person looks down-left they are thinking about how something makes them feel. If they are visibly happy then they may be thinking about the happiness that they feel. Ask a person how they feel on their birthday and they should look down-left before they describe it to you.
Eyes Straight Downward. A person looking straight downward is showing that they are submissive and uncomfortable. People will often look downward when they are shy and do not wish to have a conversation. Moving the eyes straight downward is often a sign of shame or embarrassment. In some Asian cultures it is customary to look downward and not make eye contact when talking to someone.
Some People Are Switched Between Left and Right.
The majority of people follow these basic patterns just as most people are right-handed. However there are people who are “lefties” and with these people the left and right are reversed. So these people will look up-left when recalling visual information and down-right when thinking about emotions.
How To Tell If Someone Is Lying.
There is a lot of false information out there about how to read people’s eyes to tell if they are lying. So I’m going to make it easy for you.
Talk to the person, and watch how their eyes move. This will resolve the left-right reversal issue and give you a pretty good baseline for how they will behave in the future.
Simple questions are also good. “What color is your car?” is great because their eyes should almost always move up-right and it can also be easily verified. Now that we have a baseline we can tell when they are lying.
The surest sign that someone is lying is when the behavior of their eyes changes from when they are telling the truth.
For instance your friend may look right when telling you about what he remembered in class and constantly look up-right when telling you about his last vacation. However, when he tells you about the hot girl that he met the other day his eyes move up-left. You can conclude that he’s lying about the girl.
There are also a lot of people that have trained themselves to maintain eye contact while they are lying. They have learned to do this because a lot of people actually believe these liars when they maintain this eye contact. (How could I lie to you while looking you in the eyes?)
For instance, your friend always looks up-right while telling you about facts and he now looks up-right while telling you about his job. So you ask him how much money he makes and he tells you this outrageous amount while looking you right in the eyes. You can conclude he is telling a lie.
There are some more tricks to reading peoples eyes and I’m going to save it for a later post… until then good luck spotting liars.
Stumble it!
39 responses so far ↓
1 The Hidden Truth Within Your Pupils | Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis, and Reading People // Nov 14, 2007 at 8:29 am
[...] ← Your Eyes Don’t Lie - Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements [...]
2 Nel // Nov 15, 2007 at 2:27 am
the way you have seems to be backward.
With picture illustrating the eye movement.
I was informed that if the person looks toward their right it means they’re telling the truth but if they look towards their left it’s a lie
3 Yeah // Nov 25, 2007 at 9:29 am
It’s kind of annoying that you don’t say if it’s OUR left or theirs.
It is easier to imagine it from their perspective, for me. So this is all bass ackwards.
4 Gary // Nov 25, 2007 at 11:58 am
Well then you were told wrong. What is said here is very credible. When they look up right (or up left in the persons case) they are activating their left brain, which is a factual side. When looking left to us (or right to them) they activate the right brain, which is the creative side. However, this is not entirely reliable because the right brain is wired to the left side of your body, and vice versa.
This means that youre eyes could also look to the left to activate the right brain and vice versa, so you do infact have to confirm the persons behaviour before you can conclude any truths or lies.
Great post, Very informative.
5 Karnautrahl // Nov 25, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Look for internal consistency rather than using an external source. People are self consistent.
Some folks reverse all these, others have nervous tics, quirks etc that screw this up entirely.
Many simply are way off this pattern.
What you do is this: First learn to slow down time. Easier done than said actually.
All you do is learn to pay total attention. To practice, look in one spot, then notice everything in that spot…and around it. Expand your attention until you can see every detail within your field of vision.
Practice holding total attention to specific areas at a time. Notice every wrinkle, every line, every shade.
Find yourself able to tune into this state of vision everytime you look at someone that you are listening to.
The same applies to what you are hearing.
This is rough and brief, and it boils down to total sensory awareness to the person in front of you.
Learn to pick out their patterns of motion, eye movements, voice tones and other details in one glance.
That way you can learn to see when something jars, doesn’t fit or seems inconsistent.
Clever questioning in a casual indirect way can then be used to guage differences in their response.
These are still only clues, trails you can follow to make a judgement.
It’s still not 100%. You just get better at it with practice, improving the odds of being right.
6 Kt // Nov 25, 2007 at 2:46 pm
always be wary of these guides. They over-simplify people in general
7 Shiva H Vishnu // Nov 25, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Great, Now the next time I see Bush speaking I can tell when he is lying. … oh wait, that would be always.
8 john // Nov 25, 2007 at 4:56 pm
The photos aren’t correct. You should show them from the perspective of the person observing. For example, your photo of somebody “looking to the right” is from MY right, but should be from THEIR right.
9 emily // Nov 25, 2007 at 7:54 pm
obviously if the picture shows the man’s eyes looking leftward, it’s his right…
10 smack // Nov 25, 2007 at 10:01 pm
The pictures are backwards, or your theory is mistated. I can attest anecdotaly to eyes down left (from the subject’s perspective) to being about feeling, and down-right to being about internal dialogue.
11 Julian // Nov 25, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Nel
Whoever told you that was lying.
12 Roxane // Nov 26, 2007 at 1:11 am
I also volunteer to help! Your text may even confuse the lay reader, some parts of the text should be revised or re-written, in fact the pictures are more correct than the explanations next to them. Weird! What seems incorrect, at least as far as I know, is that if someone is remembering some past experiences their eyes will move to their left, they are “recalling”, so there is no lie there; but if they are “inventing” an excuse, for example, they’ll quickly look to their right, they need to create new ideas at the moment of speaking, so it’s easy to know they’re not telling the truth! I am a language teacher, translator and simultaneous interpreter, for over 20 years, so I have had enough chances to confirm all that in my jobs! I strongly recommend text review. Best regards, Roxane
13 TRACEY // Nov 26, 2007 at 3:09 am
great site thank you
14 links for 2007-11-26 at noahcarter.com // Nov 26, 2007 at 4:20 am
[...] Your Eyes Don’t Lie - Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements | Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis… (tags: lifehacks toread eye) [...]
15 The Eyes Have It : KnowHR Blog // Nov 26, 2007 at 6:20 am
[...] people? Look ‘em in the eye. You can tell a lot about how someone’s thinking by tracking their eye movement. Bookmark this article:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
16 links for 2007-11-27 — Dewang Mistry’s Blog // Nov 27, 2007 at 12:36 am
[...] Your Eyes Don’t Lie - Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements | Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis… (tags: psychology lifehacks howto communication social) [...]
17 Urls Sinistras » Blog Archive » del.icio.us entre 19/11/2007 e 26/11/2007 // Nov 27, 2007 at 3:28 am
[...] Your Eyes Don’t Lie - Reading Thoughts By Eye MovementsThe eyes have this habit of positioning themselves according to the thoughts that are in your head, and other people can often understand what you are thinking about just by watching your eyes. [...]
18 Neuroscience/psychology grad // Nov 27, 2007 at 3:55 am
As a neuroscience grad student I can confidently say this is a complete myth. There is no valid or reliable research to back up this theory. The myth started with a magician, not a scientist or researcher, and unfortunately caught on with the general public. As mentioned in previous posts, consistency is key when trying to spot a lie, not something as simple as which direction someone points his/her eyes.
19 Personal Development for the Book Smart // Nov 27, 2007 at 7:40 am
Body language is the hardest thing to fake. Even if you are able to fake one aspect, other contradicting gestures/movements will give you away. Great Post!
Personal Development for the Book Smart
http://RichGrad.com
20 Dave // Nov 27, 2007 at 2:31 pm
For those of you who complain about the perspective of the direction, it does tell on this first few and than no longer does because most people catch on. Even if it did not tell which perspective, you can see in the picture.
21 Mike // Nov 30, 2007 at 4:08 am
If anyone is interested in learning more about this topic, I would suggest learning NLP. (Neuro Linguistic Programming).
It’s NOT a programming language!
22 Anna J // Nov 30, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Great post! No matter whether the photos are confusing or not, the post is very informative for a careful reader. Thanks!
And the prev comment is funny
23 Tim // Dec 1, 2007 at 4:17 pm
You’re LYING!
24 Crystal // Dec 1, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Sorry but I think this is bogus to some degrees because our eyes are always on the move (we don’t really fixate on one object even if we think we are). And where can your eyes move to?
Either up, down, or left, right!
That’s a 50% chance of guessing the correct direction!
Plus “Some People Are Switched Between Left and Right.”
Now we are just up to 100%!
25 auntiekryste // Dec 3, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I always look inside (closed eyes) when lying, telling the truth or farting.
I look into my shorts when describing my macho-osity.
26 Abraham Washington // Dec 4, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I sincerely believe that this is the most useful information EVER provided via the internets.
27 Robert // Dec 4, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Simple way to prevent being read by this. force yourself in several directions before you answer a question, and try to keep it the same pattern. These ideas were developed by noticing that many people have the same eye movement patterns. However, I know people who stare at you when they are bored and look away when interested.
.. simple way to disprove this theory is that I can look straight forward and think about the same thing as if I look in ANY random direction and think.
28 OGRastamon // Dec 5, 2007 at 4:09 am
Reminds me of the guy at work that always seems be looking over my left shoulder whenever he’s feeding me a line of bullshit.
29 morons... // Dec 5, 2007 at 11:52 am
this balony is based on a concept of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a pseudo-science from the 80’s.
The creators of Neuro-Linguistic Programming have in fact since stated that this whole theory is false, and have tried to downplay its importance within NLP and distance themselves from the concept because of its dubiousness (is that a word?)
anyway, its bullshit.
30 ani // Dec 8, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I think, pretty much, all the body language stuff is bunk. A lot of things come in to play, affecting the motions and movements of people. Whether they’re hungry or tired, having a headache or an itch, worried about something that has nothing to do with your interaction with them…many, many things come into play, and a few stock interpretations of a person’s body movements is going to be wrong a whole lot more than it’s going to be right.
31 Sudha // Dec 10, 2007 at 10:24 am
Very interesting! I tried it out on my secretary and it works!
32 Matthew | www.loving-awareness.org // Dec 11, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I agree that this all came from NLP and is nice, is more accurate than sheer randomness, but isn’t a science. It’s something to use to build you own perception.
When it comes down to it, knowing truth is something built into our brains. We simply don’t access our brains and intuition. We’re trained not to.
Loving Awareness - A Journey to Wholeness
33 Andrew // Dec 19, 2007 at 1:24 am
What are the references for this article, I would like to read them
34 Andrew // Dec 19, 2007 at 1:28 am
Also the eye movements for detecting lies in an unreliable indicator and shows weak effects in a meta analysis on how to detect lying. this is the reference. Your Wrong on a lot of things.
Title: Cues to Decption
Author: DePaulo, Lindsay, Malone, Muhlenbruck, Charlton, Cooper
Journal: Psychological Bulletin (2003)
35 Mind reading through simple visual cues | Do it Yourself // Jan 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm
[...] The site Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis, and Persuasion has an interesting spread: Your Eyes Don’t Lie — Reading Thoughts By Eye Movements. [...]
36 Your Eyes Don’t Lie // Feb 21, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] Link Tags: eyes, howto, lies, truth [...]
37 allan // Mar 22, 2008 at 4:11 pm
i remember a similar trick with the “reading what the other person is thinking” stuff, but with the movement of the head.
‘Cuz i noticed that you are thinking of something when looking in a specific direction. for example, when you look down and close your eyes, you are trying to recall something. When your head is pointed sideways then most likely you are daydreaming or stuff (imagination stuff..)
i tried to cheat this. I found out that leaning in a specific direction maximize the ability of the brain to think in that specific thinking pattern (logical, imagination, bleh i’m no psychologist, i’m just interested in the phenomenon). like just now, when thinking of a word to put in here, i almost always look down then look up-left with my head lying on my hand (ugh i hate it when i run out of words..)
this is different from other people’s point of view, though.
my point is, do you know what this thing is called? 0.o
38 Shreenivas // Apr 18, 2008 at 1:12 pm
interesting
39 Trvst Me... // Apr 20, 2008 at 1:11 pm
When you need to lie to someone- look straight at them and do not let your face waver for even a second. it takes practice but you might pull it off. Just be sure to make them comfortable with the “would I really lie to you?” - “why would I lie about that?!” or the classic: “Hey, you know that at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter whether you believe me or not; I know I am telling you the truth and if you still can’t trust me then I don’t think I can talk to you anymore. It just makes me really upset that you would have absolutely no faith in me as a person…”
Yeah, I have done this before. It usually works for me in the long run. Depending on if they are able to learn the truth or not, you might want to determine how important it is that they don’t find out. But really, we have people believing and dying for the idea that some bearded fool did a whole load a crazy shit including walking on water and raising the dead. We have other people that believe even weirder shit but… well, I am getting a little side-tracked. If you want to contact me for good tips on how to lie, then tell me your story in an e-mail and send it to: ah4v146_s99@yahoo.com
I hope to hear from you! Thank you for your time.
~A~
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