Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about

why liars may mimic your body language, an alternative response to fight or flight, and why lakes freeze

from the top down and not the bottom up.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

What does your body language look like when you lie?

Well, according to a new study, it probably changes depending on who you're lying to.

Liars, specifically lying men, imitate the body language of the person they're lying too.

And that could eventually mean we need a new type of lie detection test.

For this study, Dutch researchers recruited 15 male college students and gave each one five minutes to solve a wooden puzzle.

The experimenter left the room, but she accidentally left the puzzle solution with the participant, subtly encouraging him

to cheat on the puzzle.

When the experimenter came back in the room, she asked the student not to tell on her for screwing up the experiment.

Next, the team equipped the student and a different researcher with wireless accelerometers

to record their movements.

The researcher then interviewed the students about what had just happened,

and some students lied about how they had solved the puzzle,

while others told the truth. The team found that when a student was being honest their body language was their own, but when they

lied they started to sink up their movements with the person they were talking to. The more difficult

the lie, the more their movements synced with their interviewer.

So why would a lying person mimic the person they're lying too? Well, the researchers think that

liars' brains just get so tied up with keeping their stories straight that they mimic the listener's body movements.

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