Evaluation and Deceit Signalspeople heard about the planes flying into the Twin Towers on
11 September 2001.
As we've already discussed, children often use hand-to-face
gestures openly when they lie. If a child tells a lie, he will often
cover his mouth with one or both hands in an attempt to stop
the deceitful words from coming out. If he doesn't want to
listen to a reprimanding parent, he simply covers his ears with
his hands to block out the noise. When he sees something he
doesn't want to look at, he covers his eyes with his hands or
arms. As he becomes older, these hand-to-face gestures
become quicker and less obvious, but they still occur when he
is lying, covering up or witnessing deceit.
These gestures are also associated with doubt, uncertainty or
exaggeration. Desmond Morris conducted research in which
nurses were instructed to lie to their patients about their health
in a role-play situation. The nurses who lied showed a greater
frequency of hand-to-face gestures than those who told the
truth to the patients. Men and women also both increase their
number of gulps of saliva when lying, but this is usually notice-
able only with men, as they have an enlarged Adam's apple.7 did not have sexual relations with that woman,'
said the politician as he gulped and rubbed his nose.As mentioned at the beginning of this book, we'll be analysing
gestures in isolation and discussing them individually but this
is not how they usually occur. They are part of a larger gesture
cluster and should be studied in the same way as words in a
sentence, that is, how each word is relevant to other words and
the overall context in which they are used. When someone uses
a hand-to-face gesture, it doesn't always mean that he or she is
lying. It does indicate, however, that the person could be
holding back information and further observation of other
gesture clusters can confirm or deny your suspicions. It's
important that you avoid interpreting a single hand-to-face
gesture in isolation.