Romanticizing Lie Detection

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Romanticizing Lie Detection

Written by Richard Tan

Tuesday, 29 June 2010 00:00

Imagine you are in a conversation with someone you have romantic inclinations towards.

You: Oh man, that movie was great! And I had a great time with you tonight.
Prospect: Yeah, I had a great time too!
You: Hey, do you wanna have dinner thursday night? I know this rad jap restaurant.
Prospect: Man I'd love that, but I need to help babysit my niece. Rain-check? *head tilts down, hands touching ears*

You would like to believe her, truly. But because you're an A-list lie detector, who studies body language and microexpressions, and BAM! you could tell right off the bat she's lying, and she'll probably never want to see you again, and that she couldn't wait to get home and tell all her friends about what a dork you were.

Would you like to have this ability? To be able to tell when a person was lying?

I'm currently watching this new-ish series called Lie to Me. It tells of a group of specialists who solve cases and get to the truth using applied psychology, interpreting body language and using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to study microexpressions.

Microexpression Me

Microexpressions are brief, involuntary facial expressions shown on the face in response to a sentence or situation. Microexpressions are hard to detect, and even harder to fake. They can occur within 1/25 of a second. The seven universal emotions usually seen are: Disgust, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Surprise and Contempt.

The best thing is, these emotions are universal. No matter where you were born, what kind of family background you were raised in, rich or poor, you WILL use the same facial muscles and create the same faces according to the emotion you feel. (except of course, if you had a botox)

Click on READ MORE for the full article.

So how do I tell if someone is lying?

Now, I'll give you a basic lie detection lesson, FOC!

EYES

Its suggested that when a person looks to their right (when facing them, they look to your left) prior to answering your question, they are constructing an image or scenario. Meaning its not a reality.

Conversely, when a person looks to their left, they are remembering a certain point, ie, telling the truth.

This picture below details where one person (right-handed, flip for lefties), usually looks when remembering facts or constructing new visuals/audio.

Visual Remembered
What is the colour of the shirt you wore yesterday?
Which of your friends has the shortest hair?

Visual Constructed
What would your room look like if it were painted yellow with big purple circles?
Can you imagine the top half of a tiger on the bottom half of an elephant?

Auditory Remembered
What does your best friend’s voice sound like?
Which is louder, your door bell or your telephone?

Auditory Constructed
What will your voice sound like in 10 years?
What would it sound like if you played your two favourite pieces of music at the same time?

Auditory Digital
What is something you continually tell yourself?
What are your thoughts about this article?

Kinesthetic
What does it feel like to walk barefoot on a cool sandy beach?
What does it feel like when you rub your fingers on sandpaper?

SPEECH

A liar tends to repeat your question in the answer. They are more likely to say "No, I did not eat that last cookie" rather than "I didn't do it."

Case in point: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

GESTURES

If a person is usually very expressive with her hands and gestures a lot suddenly keeps her hands by her side while speaking, she could be lying, and her lack of gestures an unconscious effort to not give herself away unnecessarily.

Of course, this is also dependent on the topic at hand. A very sombre conversation would not yield as many gestures as would a chirpy conversation on a zoo trip, for instance. So establishing baselines are extremely important.

Touching or scratching of nose and ear, covering of mouth and throat are also some indicators of deception. Ostensibly in a bid to mask their deception. OR they haven't showered in a while.

Back to Regular Programming

While I think the series Lie to Me is interesting and brings out a lot of questions on our everyday relationships, it tends to romanticize lie detection as much as CSI romanticized the speed and accuracy with which criminal cases could be solved with forensic evidence.

At the end of the day, everyone lies, whether not to hurt someone's feelings or to help oneself get ahead in life. The lead Tim Roth gets so engrossed with this ability to tell the fibs from the truth that it threatens to harm his personal life more than it does good.

So I guess, once again, that the lesson we learn is that too much of anything is never a good thing.

So, how do you like this article? And don't lie to me.

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