ABSTRACT
The period of the last 15 years or so witnessed an explosion of interest in the nonverbal aspects of communication. Much of the fascination with this topic has to do with the assumption that nonverbal behavior is, at least in part, involuntary and unintended. Built on this assumption is the notion that nonverbal behaviors may leak information that people try to hide, as well as indicate whether a given message is truthful or deceptive. Freud (1905, 1959) expresed this idea best in a well-known quote: “if his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore” (p. 94). The means by which people betray their emotions and thoughts is the topic of this chapter. First, however, it is necessary to examine the question of whether nonverbal behavior does in fact disclose hidden information and deception.
