You're Lying!

Preface

I’m sure that someone at some point has said to you, “I see what you’re saying,” and that told you that this person understood what you just said. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him or her to have said, “I understand what you’re saying”? After all, we hear people speak, but we can’t see their speech (unless they are speaking in sign language, of course). So how, then, can we see what people say? We can’t. But we can see how people say things—their body language, their facial expressions, the things they do while they speak—and that makes us feel that we can actually see what they say, beyond just their spoken words. For example, I can observe how people lie through words, body gestures, facial expressions, and certain physiological ...