Javier Pérez, expert in non-verbal communication: “There is only one way to detect a lie, and it’s not by touching your nose”

Communication is everything when it comes to interpersonal relationships. But that goes beyond spoken language, because, as Javier Pérez Villacañas reminds us, “some gestures say more than words.” The young nonverbal communication analyst spoke with AS in an interview about a topic that is gradually gaining more public attention.

Although this reporter has no background in nonverbal communication, we welcomed our guest to the newsroom, where he arrived seemingly enthusiastic and eager to use language itself to clear up every possible question surrounding a field that continues to attract curiosity, especially on social media, where he does much of his work.

I’m thrilled, honestly. I’m really happy to be here. This is the first media interview I’ve been offered, and I’m excited that it might be the first of many, hopefully.

First and foremost, you can’t jump to the first conclusion that comes to mind. Cognitive biases come into play, and those are mental shortcuts our brains use to interpret information. There are countless biases. For example, if I’m a Real Madrid fan, which I am, and I want to make a video analyzing Arbeloa or Xabi Alonso, the opinion I already have of them could influence the conclusions I draw.

Take Arda Güler, for instance. He has the face of a nice kid. You probably wouldn’t look at him and think he seems like a bad person or anything like that. That’s a cognitive bias. We look at someone’s traits and automatically assign them qualities they may not actually have.

You have to approach it cautiously, fully understand the context of what you’re analyzing, gather all the information, and avoid interpreting things based on personal opinions. That’s when you lose your footing. That’s also when people start saying you’re biased or that you’re taking sides. In the end, you have to look at everything as if you had no emotional stake in what you’re analyzing.

“I analyzed a bonfire scene from Temptation Island, and it went viral”

Javier Pérez

When I first got started on social media, I had already spent a long time studying communication out of personal curiosity. In fact, before I got into nonverbal communication specifically, I started with communication in general. More than a nonverbal communication analyst, I think of myself as a communication scholar, because that’s really the foundation. Once you understand communication at its core, you can branch out into all the disciplines connected to it.

I watched a lot of videos from well-known creators on social media, like Pincho, Jordi Reche, and other people who focus on nonverbal communication analysis. And I thought, “I really like this.” I wasn’t growing at all. I wasn’t going viral or anything. I maybe had around 1,500 followers, and probably 200 of them were friends or people I knew.

But about a year ago, I think it was in March, when everything surrounding the war in Ukraine was dominating the conversation, there was Zelensky’s visit to the White House with Donald Trump, and they had a tense exchange. I made a two-minute video about it, I think it was my first one, and on TikTok it got close to 70,000 views. Then I made a second part, which got another 30,000.

After that, I used a clip from one of Anita’s bonfire scenes on Temptation Island. It was a really tense moment, I analyzed it, and suddenly it got 1.5 million views. From there, I started gaining more than 2,000 followers a day, and that’s how it’s continued up to now.

My girlfriend is the first one who suffers through it. At the beginning, when you’re learning, for example, what a microexpression of contempt looks like, maybe the lip moves or one corner of the mouth lifts because the cheek muscles activate, once you learn it, you can’t stop seeing it. That’s because of something called the RAS, the reticular activating system. Basically, when you notice something or someone points it out to you, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s the same with this.

Inevitably, you start noticing these things in your friends, your partner, your siblings. But when you’re having a serious conversation with someone who’s telling you about a problem or whatever they’re going through, you’re there to help your friend. And if you understand how they’re feeling in that moment, you can make the conversation much easier and more comforting for them.

If I see that someone is about to break down because the area around their chin is tensing up and the lower eyelids are starting to tighten, I think, “This person is probably about to cry.” So you let them vent. You understand how to guide the conversation more appropriately so the other person feels better.

It’s not so much whether it exists or not. It depends on the context. It’s not the same if I’m staring blankly into a corner with no expression as it is if I’m standing alone at the end of a street staring at you without expression. In that second case, you’d probably think, “What is this guy doing just standing there staring at me without blinking?” It’s not the same. Depending on the context, it can mean very different things.

You have to have an incredible level of control, although there are techniques that can help you calm yourself. For example, a lot of people who speak in public use certain strategies when they feel nervous. They may move around a lot, gesture excessively, or stick their hands in their pockets.

If you try to control it without any training, it will still show. It’s like training any other skill. The more you expose yourself to a stimulus, the better you’ll get at managing it over time. If you’ve never spoken in public, your voice will probably shake, you’ll rely on filler words, you’ll sweat, and you’ll use self-soothing gestures, which are the ones we use to calm ourselves and which are usually pretty obvious.

There are other ways to calm nerves too, like placing your hands on the table and planting both feet firmly on the floor instead of crossing one leg. That gives you a greater sense of stability and security, and then the filler words start to fade. They’re simple little hacks, but they work incredibly well.

“When it comes to detecting lies, you can’t fall for the usual movie clichés, like someone touching their nose”

Javier Pérez

How can we tell if someone is lying to us?

When it comes to lie detection, you can’t fall into the trap of thinking, “If they touched their nose, they’re lying,” or “If they looked up and to the left, they’re lying.” It’s very easy to believe that because it’s the kind of thing people see in movies.

A person might look away frequently. If I’m trying to tell you something and I keep dropping my gaze while I’m saying it, if I’m using more filler words, or if I’m relying more on adjectives and adverbs than on nouns and verbs, then the lexical load of what I’m saying changes a lot.

There is only one thing science has consistently supported when it comes to detecting lies: the temperature at the tip of the nose drops by about 1.1 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, something I heard from Juan Manuel García Pincho of Behavioral Sciences. He based that on a study from the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center at the University of Granada, which is why people may sometimes experience slight itching sensations in that area.