Case File 235 · Investigation Psychology

What Is Deflection in a Conversation?

By Murder Book Editorial TeamPublished by Gungrounds, the studio making Murder BookPublished 3 October 2026Updated 3 October 2026

Deflection is a way of steering a conversation away from a topic or away from yourself instead of engaging with what was actually asked. In practice it can mean changing the subject, answering a question with a question, turning to humour, or shifting attention onto someone else. People deflect for many reasons: to protect their self-image, to avoid an awkward subject, to buy time, or because a question feels unfair or intrusive. It is a common, everyday behaviour rather than a telltale sign of guilt. Deception researchers are clear that no single conversational move reliably shows that a person is lying, and honest people deflect all the time. Deflection is best treated as a prompt to ask a clearer question, not as an answer in itself.

Key takeaways

Deflection means redirecting a conversation away from a topic or away from oneself, often by changing the subject, countering with a question, joking, or shifting blame.
People deflect for many innocent reasons, including discomfort, privacy, stress, or feeling that a question is unfair, so it is not evidence of lying on its own.
Communication research describes how people manage conversations through "accounts", defensive responses, and selective emphasis, none of which require a lie.
Large reviews find that behavioural cues to deception are weak and that observers judge lies and truths correctly only about 54% of the time.
The useful response to deflection is a clearer, more specific follow-up question, not a verdict.

What does deflection look like in a conversation?

Deflection is usually about direction. A question points at one thing, and the reply points somewhere else. Some of the most common forms are:

Changing the subject. The reply moves to a different, often safer, topic.
Answering a question with a question. "Why are you even asking me that?" turns the focus back on the questioner.
Humour or sarcasm. A joke breaks the tension and lets the speaker sidestep the point.
Generalising. The reply stays abstract ("people always assume the worst") instead of addressing the specific thing asked.
Shifting blame or attention. The speaker highlights someone else's conduct instead of their own.

These moves are not unusual or sinister. They are part of how people manage face-to-face pressure. The sociologists Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman, in their 1968 paper "Accounts", described the explanations people offer when their behaviour is questioned, dividing them into excuses (admitting the act was wrong but denying full responsibility) and justifications (accepting responsibility but denying the act was wrong). Both are socially recognised ways of responding to a challenge without simply conceding it, and neither is a lie.

Why do people deflect?

The simplest answer is that questions can feel threatening even when a person has nothing to hide. Jack Gibb's much-cited 1961 article "Defensive Communication" argued that people respond defensively when they perceive a conversation as evaluative, controlling or superior in tone, and more openly when the climate feels descriptive and supportive. On this view, a defensive, deflecting reply often says more about how the question was asked than about the honesty of the person answering.

Other everyday reasons include:

Privacy. The topic may simply be none of the questioner's business.
Emotional protection. The subject may be painful, embarrassing or linked to grief.
Uncertainty. The person may not actually know the answer and deflects rather than admit it.
Self-image. Deflection can be a way of protecting how one is seen, especially when a question implies fault.

Because the motives are so varied, the same deflection can look identical whether the person is innocent, guilty, or simply uncomfortable. That is exactly why it cannot be read as proof of anything on its own. For the related pattern of not answering at all, see why people avoid answering a question.

Is deflection the same as lying?

No. Deflection redirects; a lie asserts something false. You can deflect using entirely truthful statements, and you can lie without deflecting at all. A person who answers "Let's not get into that right now" has told the truth about their own preference while avoiding the topic.

This matters because research on everyday deception shows how much misleading is done without false statements. Steven McCornack's Information Manipulation Theory (1992) describes deception as the covert manipulation of the information in a message along four lines drawn from the philosopher Paul Grice: the amount of information given, its truthfulness, its relevance, and its clarity. Deflection sits mainly in the relevance and clarity dimensions — steering away from the point, or keeping things vague. A central implication of the theory is that people can mislead using messages made entirely of true statements, which is one reason deception is so hard to catch in real conversation. Deflection can therefore accompany deception, but it is not the same thing, and it is not evidence of it.

Does deflection show up in deception research?

Not as a reliable cue. The largest review of behavioural signs of lying, a 2003 meta-analysis by Bella DePaulo and colleagues, combined 1,338 estimates across 158 possible cues and found that most had weak or no consistent links to deception. A separate 2006 meta-analysis by Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo, covering more than 24,000 judges, found people correctly sort lies from truths about 54% of the time — barely above the 50% you would get by guessing.

A 2019 review in the Annual Review of Psychology by Aldert Vrij, Maria Hartwig and Pär Anders Granhag summarised the field bluntly: the behavioural cues to deception found so far are faint and unreliable, and people are mediocre at catching lies when they rely on behaviour. None of this singles out deflection as meaningful. A person who changes the subject may be hiding something, or may simply dislike the question.

Deflection in a conversation	What it does not tell you
Changing the subject	Whether the avoided topic involves wrongdoing
Answering with a question	Whether the person is hiding something or resents the question
Using humour	Whether the speaker is nervous, lying, or simply deflecting discomfort
Shifting blame	Whether the blame is misplaced or partly fair

How is deflection different from avoidance?

The two overlap but are not identical. Avoidance is about not going there — staying off a topic entirely. Deflection is about moving elsewhere — actively redirecting the conversation. Strategic topic avoidance has been studied as a deliberate way to keep a conversation away from sensitive subjects (Dailey and Palomares, 2004), and deflection is often the tool used to do it. The distinction is explored further in deflection vs avoidance. Deflection also shades into shifting blame when questioned and into justifying rather than denying, which are specific directions a deflection can take.

How should you respond to deflection?

The constructive response is a better question, not a conclusion. If a reply steers away from the point, a calm, specific follow-up ("I hear that — can we go back to what happened at six o'clock?") does more than treating the deflection as a confession. Investigators trained in information-gathering interviews focus on drawing out checkable detail rather than reading body language, precisely because behaviour is such a weak guide. The same holds in ordinary life: deflection tells you a topic is sensitive, not why.

Is deflection part of Murder Book?

Murder Book: The Art of Interrogation is an upcoming narrative interrogation game from Gungrounds, an independent studio in Zagreb, Croatia. Its whole focus is the conversation across the table: players examine unreliable stories, avoidance, narrative gaps and contradictions rather than chasing a single "tell". The press kit names Avoidance among the behaviours players weigh, and development screenshots show a casebook of entries such as Stonewalling and Non-Response.

The research on this page is why deflection works better as a question than a verdict in that kind of game. When a suspect changes the subject or answers with a question, it is a reason to look closer and to check what can be checked — not a sign that the case is solved. Cases are built for focused 5–10-minute sessions, and Murder Book is in development for PC (Steam) and mobile, with release currently planned for the end of Q2 2027. For a plainer look at the question behind all of this, see can you actually tell when someone is lying.