Many articles have been written about this topic, ‘The NLP Lie Detection Technique’, and many a times it has been explained in various NLP Blogs and Forums, that Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is more than techniques (which can fix issues instantly). It is an attitude and a framework for excellence – to excel in life, to make changes in one’s life, and in the life of others around people.
There are many myths about NLP, that it can be used as a Lie Detection test (NLP Lie Detection Technique), or it can be used to seduce women, etc. This is primarily the reason that some people have a tendency to look at NLP as some mysterious set of techniques that can be used to manipulate people. In fact, the programs are marketed as ‘Learn how to manipulate people using NLP’ or ‘NLP Sales – Learn NLP Selling skills to manipulate people’ or ‘Get Winning Edge – How to manipulate people and succeed’. Disgusting!
NLP Eye Accessing cues or NLP Eye Movement Patterns is being introduced in many NLP Workshops as an ‘Instant NLP Lie Detection’ technique. NLP Eye Movement has its applications in the identification of the Representational System of a person, which can be useful in calibration, Rapport Building, and understanding the experience of a person using the Modalities. But, to categorize this as an ‘NLP Lie Detection Technique’ is sad and is a big Myth, which is not an NLP Belief to have.
The myth is based on the belief that, if you ask someone to think about something that they have to remember visually, they should:
Look up to their left, as if they are remembering the event
And if they look up to their right, then they are making up an image, and are lying
This sounds interesting and works in some cases, but in certain cases depending on what the circumstances are a person will not demonstrate this pattern consistently, even though at some point the same person would have demonstrated it as per the classic nomenclature of ‘NLP Eye Accessing cues’, and the Eye Movements, based on questions related to Visual Remember, Visual Created, Auditory Remembered, Auditory Created, etc.

This is also in sync with NLP Pre-supposition that, ‘Each person is unique, and map is not the territory’.

A lot of people like to over simplify or over exaggerate NLP and its applications, and reduce it to a series of techniques such as the NLP Seduction Technique or the NLP Lie Detector Technique or that NLP can be used to cure diseases e.g. bone fracture will get healed in half the normal time or cure some other diseases by using NLP and Self Hypnosis. Some people like to box NLP into these for their own Business gains or whatever outcome they have for themselves. NLP can survive this sort of distinction and maintain its grace as a great framework of excellence, enhancing communication, relating with other people with grace and engaging with them.

It’s sad to see NLP being classified as a technique, as a way of overpowering people, as a way of manipulating people, as a way of fooling people into buying things, as a tool to gain control over people of the opposite sex, as a way of boosting one’s own ego at the expense of other people, etc. It is sad for NLP, and it is disgusting for the people who are promoting NLP and using it in this manner.