The Leakage Hypothesis

It seems that people believe that the emotions they attribute to liars will be evident in their behaviour – a notion we can call the leakage hypothesis. In the psychological literature, this idea can be traced to Freud (1905, cited in Bond & DePaulo, 2006, p.

215), who wrote, ‘No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore’.