Nonverbal lie detection is popular amongst the practitioners and frequently mentioned in the media. We start this chapter describing why we think nonverbal lie detection is “natural” and is more popular than verbal lie detection. We then discuss the empirical evidence of nonverbal lie detection and compare it with the empirical evidence of verbal lie detection. To anticipate our argument, the empirical support is weaker for nonverbal lie detection than for verbal lie detection, and the empirical evidence for nonverbal lie detection is probably weaker than many practitioners expect it to be. We discuss several reasons for the disappointing results for nonverbal lie detection. Despite these disappointing results, we believe that there is a future for nonverbal lie detection. We conclude by discussing what this future may look like. The time the first author spent working on this article was funded by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (ESRC Award: ES/N009614/1).
