Popular Press Analysis
Riley McFadden
Department of Communication & Theatre Arts, Old Dominion University
COMM 314: Nonverbal Communication
Professor Sara Morgan
November 11, 2025
Honor Pledge: Riley McFadden
The use of nonverbal communication is the best way to send a message without speaking a word. When someone is not telling the truth or hiding something, their nonverbal cues tend to reveal what is really going on. Most people do not have full control over their nonverbal cues. This makes behaviors like fidgeting, changing posture or stance, and even avoiding eye contact indicate a person could be lying. My paper will analyze a popular press article on the body language of lying and compare it to peer-reviewed research to find out how accurate the claims in the article really are.
Summary of Popular Press Article
In the article, for Science Focus, Scharping (2025) speaks about how body language can show if a person is lying. He explains that doing things such as fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, making weird gestures, and making tiny facial expressions can point to a person being dishonest (Scharping, 2025). He also says that the way a person speaks, their tone or timing, could indicate that they aren’t telling the truth (Scharping, 2025). For instance, if the way a person is speaking doesn’t appear to match their gestures, they could be lying (Scharping, 2025). He also brings up the topic of microexpressions, a super quick facial expression that can show real emotion, he explains that you must pay close attention to them to make sense of whether a person is telling the truth. The main point of the article is Scharping explaining that if you watch a person carefully, you will be able to tell if they are lying, though he does not back this up with scientific evidence (Scharping, 2025).
Scholarly Research Analysis
Denault (2020) makes the argument that many people, including professional figures such as police officers or judges, carry a false assumption of what a liar looks like. Many people think that the obvious signs a person is lying include avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, or changes in posture. Research shows that these types of behavior are not accurate indicators of dishonesty. Denault (2020) says that these assumptions can lead to major misconceptions in the field of criminal justice because innocent people can appear nervous due to stress and fear, not dishonesty. The article really highlights how humans are very poor at detecting the cues that someone is lying; most people perform no better than chance at doing so. Even highly trained individuals can only improve slightly. This is not due to some sort of secret nonverbal cue, but rather because detecting a liar relies heavily on questioning strategies and inconsistencies in verbal expression (Denault, 2020).
Real-Time Interpretation of Nonverbal Deception Cues
King et al. (2020) used a real experiment to research how people make real-time judgments purely based on the way people speak. This study found that the observers heavily rely on facial expressions that change each moment, pauses, and confidence intervals. Using these cues can help detect a liar, but they are not a reliable source of information in determining if someone truly is lying. The observers often mistook normal behaviors for something suspicious. King et al. (2020) also found through this experiment that individuals form impressions of other people very quickly. Within seconds, people will label another as honest or questionable, and they stick with this first impression even when the cues indicate a different result. This shows how cognitive biases have a major influence on deception.
Research Findings
Both of the scholarly articles I researched indicated that deception cannot be found through nonverbal cues alone. Body language does show many emotions, such as nervousness, stress, or fear. Using the nonverbal cues alone makes detecting a liar very unreliable. (Denault, 2020; King et al., 2020) say that people look for patterns that do not exist, which leads them to make a wrong decision about a person’s honesty. My research also shows that behaviors like fidgeting or avoiding eye contact are not always universal signs that an individual is lying.
Comparison of the Popular Press Article Against Scholarly Research
When the scholarly research is compared to the popular press article, the differences are very clear. Scharping (2025) makes detecting lies seem like it is simple and suggests that anyone can learn to detect a liar by learning the key gestures or cues in their behavior. Comparing this to the research done in the scholarly journal, this is not entirely true. Denault (2020) points out that the common idea that nonverbal cues can easily point out a liar is just a myth and is very unreliable in practice. For example, in the article, Scharping (2025) suggests that a person who is avoiding eye contact is an indication of lying, but Denault (2020) argues that this is not scientifically valid and can lead to unfair judgments. The popular press article did not once mention that the cues are controversial, and it also does not warn that the signs a person gives when they are lying are not backed up by any evidence.
Another large issue Science Focus article is that it is leaving out the complex real-time deception processing. King et al. (2020) said that detecting a lie is extremely difficult, even for a well-trained individual. Finding out if a person is dishonest requires much more than a few nonverbal cues. Scharping’s article tries to make people believe that anyone can detect lies with just quick visual cues. The article is trying to frame deception in a way that seems entirely predictable, while the scholarly research shows multiple times through evidence that human behavior can be very wide and cannot be confined to key universal signs.
The popular press article takes an extremely complicated topic and oversimplifies it. Although the article may appear interesting and very easy to follow, it lacks evidence and research to back up its claims.
Reflection
Once I researched this topic, it made me realize how much we let social media shape our view of what lying looks like. Many people are told that liars often fidget with their hands or look away when they speak, and these beliefs are repeated online constantly. The Science Focus Article makes this feel true, though they don’t provide any evidence. It’s easy to believe that what they are saying is real information. Through the research that I have done, it is very clear that the nonverbal cues the article talks about are not very reliable. As a person who is on social media every single day, it makes me wonder how many people fall for oversimplified explanations of human behavior. Many people on the internet believe that they can analyze a person in only a few moments through nonverbal cues; however, this is just not the case. Nonverbal communication does not work this way.
The assignment also forced me to think about the amount of misinformation that is spread through popular press articles. Even though the writer may not mean any harm, spreading information that is not backed up by scientific evidence often makes people believe things that are simply not true. In real life, thinking this information is true could lead to misunderstandings or even serious consequences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the popular press article provides an engaging and interesting idea of detecting lies, but the ideas shared do not fully align with real research that was done in scholarly journals. I learned through this assignment that it is essential to critically analyze the things that we read online.
References
Denault, V. (2020). Misconceptions about nonverbal cues to deception: A covert threat to the justice system? Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 573460. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.573460/full
King, A., Loy, M., Rohde, H., & Corley, M. (2020). Interpreting nonverbal cues to deception in real time. PLoS ONE, 15(12), e0242680. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7062244/
Scharping, N. (2025, April 6). How to crack the subtle body language of liars. Science Focus. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-to-crack-the-subtle-body-language-of-liars
Parenthetical citations:
(Denault, 2020)
(King, et al., 2020)
(Scharping, 2025)