Discurso sobre Inaplicación

A clue to lying can come from the way emotions leak through expressions or gestures. The simplest facial expression is a smile,

and this is the one most researchers have zeroed in on. But the smile is disappointing because people smile as often when they lie as when they tell the truth.

There are, however, dozens of different kinds of smiles. Dr. Ekman has measured, catalogued, and studied the different types of smiles and has concluded that they are probably the most under- rated facial expressions, and that they are far more complicated than people realize.

People smile when they are pleased, happy, content, amused, enjoying life; but they also smile when they are miserable or sad. There are false smiles used like masks that send a subtext that the wearer isn't being entirely truthful.

Dr. Ekman lists eighteen smiles that are not deceptive. These are smiles that are really felt by the smiler. What distinguishes a felt smile from an artificial one is the fact that in the felt smile no other muscles in the lower part of the face are involved. In the upper face, the action that accompanies a felt smile is the tightening of the muscles that circle the eye. This smile lasts longer than a false smile and is more intense when the emotion that causes it is extreme.

We may not consciously be aware of these subtle changes, but they send out a subtext on an unconscious level. Literature is filled with references to false smiles: "He smiled with his lips but not his eyes," or "The smile never reached her eyes." Writers have used these expressions to the point of cliche to distin- guish a genuine smile from a false one. This lack of involve- ment of the muscles around the eye, Dr. Ekman stresses, "is a subtle cue, but a crucial one for distinguishing felt from false smiles."

Consider now a few smiles that are felt, but do not transmit Positive emotions. Sometimes we smile when we are afraid. In

the fear smile, the lips are stretched to form a rectangular shape Muscles that pull the lips horizontally in fear will sometimes lift the corners of the mouth in the mockery of a smile, what we call a grimace. In this smile, the eyebrows are raised and pulled together and the eyes are widened.

Another negative but felt smile is one that shows contempt. The corners of the lips are tightened, and usually one side is lifted slightly while the eyebrows are slightly raised. In the smile of someone who is miserable, the lower lip is pushed up by the chin muscle and the corners of the mouth are pulled down. The brows are lowered.

These are a few of the real or felt smiles we use. A false smile, on the other hand, is often used as a mask to hide what one is really feeling. In this smile, the person tends to press the lips together, tighten the corners, and push up the lower lip.

A false smile, according to Dr. Ekman, is often asymmetrical (although some normal smiles are lopsided, too). Only one side of the mouth is involved, and it isn't accompanied by any movement of the muscles around the eyes. Another crucial cue is timing. False smiles may end abruptly or decrease in steps, but in either case the timing is inappropriate.

To sum up the facts about false smiles:

• In pretending fear or sadness, there is no accompanying fore- head expression.

• In pretending happiness, the eye muscles are not in- volved.

• To discover pretense in any emotion, look for asymmetrical expressions, too abrupt an onset of the smile, and an inappro- priate length of time for the smile.

MICROEXPRESSIONS

Perhaps the most tantalizing way in which real subtexts are leaked out through facial expressions is those fleeting images that psycholo- gists call microexpressions. They are so fleeting, in fact, that in ordinary talk they are missed entirely. However, they do have a subliminal impact. I remember an incident that occurred while shooting a movie for a drug company. We had set up a camera behind a one-way mirror to film in the doctor's office. The drug in question was a tranquilizer, and we did a series of shots, over a period of a month, while the doctor interviewed patients before and after taking the tranquilizer.

The patients, of course, were told of the filmed interviews, and most of them readily gave us permission to use them. In one interview, a young man, after a week on the drug, told the doctor that he was doing very well, very well indeed.

"I don't believe him for a minute," the cameraman whispered to me, and he was right. Two days later the young man was back in the doctor's office, sobbing hysterically.

"I never suspected it," the doctor told us miserably. "He seemed so cheerful, so convinced his troubles were behind him. You guys saw the interview. What did you think?"

We assured him that we, too, were convinced by his patient, but I remembered the cameraman's disbelief. What had he seen in the patient's manner or heard in his voice?

When alone, I replayed the film of the interview. Watching the young man instead of the doctor, I, too, felt uneasy. But why? On a hunch, I ran the film in slow motion, and then I caught it. Three times, in the course of the interview, while the patient assured the doctor that he was all right, his face dissolved

into a heartbreaking expression of sadness—an expression so ing, so brief, that at normal speed it went unnoticed.

This microexpression gave the lie to all his words. The camera- man at the time of the interview had noticed it subliminally without understanding what he saw. The doctor, concentrating on the pa- tient's chart, had missed it completely.

When I told a friend, a psychoanalyst, about this, she nodded. "Yes, it impressed you subliminally, but with practice and training you can learn to see those expressions. I've learned because in my practice they are giveaways. In fact, it's one good reason, I believe, for facing a patient during a psychoanalytic session."

Dr. Ekman suggests that one way of training the eye to observe microexpressions and read their subtexts is to have someone flash a photograph of a facial expression as fast as he or she can in front of your eyes. Try to guess what emotion was shown in the picture, then study the picture to confirm your guess. Then try another picture. To become proficient, repeat the exercise with at least a hundred pictures.

Not only sadness leaks through in these microexpressions, but also glee or triumph or cunning—any one of a dozen emotions can be revealed. Matched against the statements being made, they are an intriguing way to catch a lie.

One interesting point about these microexpressions that "leak out" when we are talking is that many of them are not easy to control or fake. They involve certain muscle movements that very few people can make intentionally. But they do make them uncon- sciously.

As an example, Dr. Ekman says only 10 percent of the people he tested could deliberately pull the corners of their lips down without moving their chin muscles. Yet those he tested, when they felt sadness, sorrow, or grief, did do it!