NLP eye access lie detection debunked

plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040259

They arent the first to debunk this most specious element of NLP.

The model of eye accessing cues, as presented by NLP has never stood up under experimental conditions, ever. And why would it? Its a preposterous notion in the first place.

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=2268&issue_id=122010

Good post!

I remember years ago speaking with a hypnotist trained in NLP who works in the area I live. We were talking about eye access cues and body language etc. To demonstrate his training he asked me a few questions about my girlfriend that I had mentioned earlier in the conversation. By the end of his questions he concluded that I made her up and in fact I don't like women. I'd only been with my girlfriend for 5 years at that time lol. *face palm*

I seldom look at eye accessing cues with clients, there are too many extraneous factors.

One of the biggest and most useful to share is that I noticed people would simply find a clear space to put their images whilst thinking and talking and it didnt matter AT ALL whether they were made up images or actual real memories.

People will usually look away from you (simply because its culturally considered rude to stare at someone whilst defocussing and doing a transderivational search) and find a nice blank space with no movement going on to distract them.

Rarely will people gaze into a noisy tv set or into busy traffic when asked to retreive information from memory.

Ask someone to spell however and notice how often they will visualise the words on the clear spaces at the top of walls or if struggling even on the ceiling. Try it.

In principle "E.A.C." is ok I guess; yes, we should be focussed on the client and taking what cues we can, but they really turned this whole thing into complicated drivel. And people repeat it and repeat it. I'm pretty sure eye accessing cues had been thoroughly debunked before I finished my psychology degree back in 99. Why Wiseman would feel the need to re tread old academic ground is beyond me.

Oh except that his job is pop psychology media grandstanding and selling £7 impulse-buy books to armchair derren browns.

Eye accessing cues must rank high as the most useless element of NLP.

Followed closely by the so-called "visual" "auditory" or "kinaeasthetic" personality types.

Which is about as non scientific and supersition driven as the medieval personality model "the four humours" (sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholy and choleric).


Here is one of my favourite conversations with nit wits indoctrinated with this junk, that I have had many times over the years, it usually runs at some variation of the following:

"Im an auditory thinker, I only think in words and sounds only, never images or feelings"

"Do you know what colour your front door is and can you remember what the door handle feels like when you turn it?"

"Its red and of course I can."

"Thankyou. That will be all."


I remember a woman on an NLP course telling me she was auditory only and she refused to do the exercises in the training because "I dont like to be fake I only do things that are real."

I said "ok"

She was also training at my muay thai school at the time where she only sparred and never went on the pads because "I dont like to be fake and I only do things that are real."

Well I walked in one day to see her "sparring" with the coach and she was of course absolutely dog shit.

NLP has been know to fuel and become part of peoples delusional self perception.

Ahem.

I'll stop while Im ahead.