Do pauses in speech mean the person is lying?

Quite a few of our clients and friends have asked what we thought about the new tv show Lie to Me. I must confess I hadn't watched it till this week. I love the fact that Fox thinks this is a worthy subject, but I find the implementation of the concepts to be a bit cheesy. But you didn't come here to hear my television show reviews. :-)

One thing I do want to address, however, that Lie to Me reminded me of, is the notion that pauses in speech suggest someone is lying. The show's leap from pause to deception is a dangerous one. It's simply not that simple.

In our book Face Values, we discuss the speech style, pitch, tone and energy of the Thinker or Analytical personality type, which is often filled with starts and stops and silent pauses inbetween. What's happening in this case is the Thinker is doing what he or she does best.....thinking, and although there is a lot going on in their heads, it hasn't yet made it's way into their speech. Do these pauses mean that all Thinkers are lying or busy making things up? Of course not.

Research by Benus and colleagues at Columbia University (in conjunction with SRI) documented here http://www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/papers/2006/benus_al_06.pdf tells us that pauses - both filled and silent, occur more frequently in truthful statements than they do in deceptive speech.

The paper also provides a good summary of existing research on pauses and provides an interesting tidbit that can help us distinguish between pauses as part of a regular speech style and pauses as clues to deception.

There is evidence for increase in pitch as an indicator of deception. "Higher pitch is assumed to indicate increased tension on the part of deceivers. Hence, we hypothesize that filled pauses with higher pitch and intensity may occur in deceptive speech."

When reading people, especially if trying to identify deception, requires that you form a base line for this person. How do they normally sound? Let's say my normal delivery is slow and laborious. The energy level is low, tone is monotone and there are lots of silent pauses. That's my base line. Now, what can you learn if all the sudden the pace reves up and the pauses dissapear. You might surmise that I am more comfortable with what I'm saying - I don't have to think about it. I might also be exicited about what I'm saying. You've hit on something I'm passionate about. Now, how might you distinquish that kind of response from a lie? The short answer is tension.

Tension can be "read" in a variety of ways - in the mouth, in the eyes, in the voice. This subject qualifies for it's own blog post, so I'll close for now and address this topic in a subsequent post.