Your eyes are better at betraying a lie than a polygraph is of detecting when you tell a lie according to researchers at the University of Utah.

The psychologists explained that eye-tracking technology differs from a polygraph, a measurement of an emotional response to lying, as it maps out an individual's cognitive response that includes "pupil dilation, response time, reading and rereading time, and errors."

John C. Kircher, PhD, an educational psychology professor, concluded that their eye-tracking tests that included participants responding to a set of computerised true and false questions were "as good as or better than the polygraph, and we are still in the early stages of this innovative new method to determine if someone is trying to deceive you."

Cues to look for in eyes during a lie may include:

  • avoiding direct eye contact
  • excessive blinking
  • eyes shifting towards their upper left
Eye-tracking could soon lead to sophisticated new products and techniques as Credibility Assessment Technologies (CAT) has licensed the technology from Kircher et al at the University of Utah.

However there are many human deception detectors, like on the American television series "Lie to Me", the blogger and deception specialist Eyes for Lies writes she has "96.9 percent accuracy rate (to date) after identifying truth and deception in 31/32 people before the truth was known by watching media clips." She emphatically discourages identifying a liar solely on reading eyes.