Surprisingly, given how most people think they can ‘read’ the faces of people they know well, this is often the worst place to look for tell-tale signs of what’s going on beneath the words being used. Generally people are quite good at controlling their facial expressions and you have to be quick to catch flickers of their real state which might occasionally come through, such as a momentary look of anger or fear before a smile, or other tiny ‘micro-expressions’ which can often only be reliably spotted with the aid of video playback or extensive training. Equally, a person might be saying that he feels very strongly about something, but if his face does not have etched upon it the expression of the relevant feeling with the same depth as he purports to feel it, he may be speaking insincerely. It is very difficult to consciously produce all the genuine signs of emotion on the face. For example, a person pretending to be angry will find it hard to voluntarily narrow his lips, a sign of real anger.
The commonly asserted view that a smile is not real unless the eyes are involved is true, but there is more to the story. Paul Ekman, a major pioneer in the area of facial cues, has conducted many experiments which show how conflicting emotions such as anger or disgust may creep momentarily into a fake smile. Two muscles are involved in the production of a real ‘enjoyment’ smile, or smiles with ‘Duchenne’s marker’ (named after the scientist, who in 1862 first drew attention to the difference between real and fake smiles): the zygomatic major (which pulls up the lip corners towards the cheekbone) and the orbicularis oculi (which raises the cheek and crinkles the skin around the eye socket). Please write those down in your notebooks and use them to show off at parties. Ekman and his colleagues’ research called for smiles not to be treated as a single entity, but to be broken down into different types. Ekman and Friesen were the first to differentiate in this way in 1969; before that it was not believed that the face could betray concealed emotions. Further research has found that the Duchenne marker is only one of several distinguishing features of a real enjoyment smile. For example, the zygomatic major action (the lip movement) is generally shorter in the case of real smiles than with faked smiles (i.e., between 0.5 and 4 seconds). So believe a quick smile over a long one. Also, Ekman has reliably shown that Duchenne smiles correlate directly to the signs of enjoyment as measured by EEG: in other words, the smile makes you feel good and feeling good makes you smile.
Since Ekman developed the exhaustive Facial Action Coding System to measure and label combinations of facial movements, his research has shown how much we give away without realizing it. However, without the aid of extensive training or specialist equipment, these ‘leakages’ are generally too quick to spot. Also, as he suggests himself, we may often prefer to be taken in by a fake smile or a similar expression of concealment rather than deal with the consequences of detecting a lie, so many signs that should be detected in real time are undoubtedly ignored.
Ekman’s work really shows that our faces will always betray what we genuinely feel. This is because there is a direct link between our emotions and our physiology: each affects the other. No such direct links
exist between our emotions and our words, which is why we can produce the words of a lie with relative ease but must struggle to stop our physiology from giving us away. Our emotions activate muscles in the face, which means that we must try to suppress those fleeting micro-expressions if we are to hide our true feelings. Commonly, those emotions will arise unexpectedly and then be controlled. For example, a suspect during an interview might suddenly become fearful when he realizes that the police know more than he imagined. At that moment, a fearful expression is very likely to appear on his face. He will of course try to suppress his fear, and Ekman’s research shows that we can indeed suppress these expressions within one twenty-fifth of a second after they appear. If the interviewer blinks, he will miss it. But a freeze-frame of the first moment when the suspect realized he was in trouble will often show the frightened face which reveals the suspect’s guilt.
Through various experiments aimed to detect lies about people’s political beliefs and whether or not they stole money, Ekman has shown that an observer trained in the FACS can detect up to 80 per cent of truths and lies. This is a very successful result, when compared to the results of most professionals in the field of spotting deceit, which, as we will see, are very low.
HANDS
Hand movements are fascinating to watch, particularly when the speaker is talking about a subject in an animated way. Often the hands will give valuable clues as to how the person perceives his relationship to the subject he is talking about, and how he weighs up different options; they may even leak a vital clue as to what’s really on his mind. For example, consider the gesture of pointing at oneself while talking. This might be a full-finger point, or a gesture with the palm of the hand towards the chest. The former is more common when the speaker is annoyed or particularly animated. Obviously this gesture is a signal that the speaker is referring to himself. However, it may occur in such a way that betrays the fact that the speaker sees himself in a role he does not consciously mean to communicate. For example, imagine he is talking about a problem at work or in a relationship, and as he says ‘I don’t know what the source of the problem is’, he gestures at himself. This might suggest that he unconsciously feels he is the source of the issue, in which case he may well be.
Alternatively, the speaker may point to other people without realizing it, and in doing so give away his true feelings about some aspect of his relationship with another person or people. This might even relate to people who are not present. For example, I once attended a meeting in which one chap, David, was sat with another chap, Simon, to his right. I did not know David, but it was important to me that he got along with Simon and me, as there was a business relationship I hoped would flourish there. Simon, however, was being rather abrasive, and I was concerned that he might be irritating David. A few days later I met David and we spoke about the meeting. I noted at one point he said something like ‘I’m sure there will be one or two obstacles to overcome’, and as he did so he gestured with his right hand, pointing softly towards where Simon had been sitting in relation to him at the previous meeting. He did this entirely unconsciously, and it seemed to be a signal that Simon was that obstacle. While it wasn’t conclusive on its own, it meant that I could then mention Simon later on and watch for reliable, subtle abreactions to his name. When he did respond reliably with tension to Simon’s name, it meant I could then deal with the concern. This was a situation where it wouldn’t have been appropriate for David to talk to me about Simon and the fact that he found him annoying, yet his feelings could certainly have jeopardized a good working relationship.
The ‘weighing’ gesture can sometimes give a clue as to which way a person’s mind is working. For example, the speaker may talk about how he isn’t sure whether to carry out option A or option B, and in expressing his indecision may mime ‘weighing up’ the options as if his hands were a pair of scales. Generally it’s clear which hand refers to which option as he’ll introduce the hands one at a time as he
verbalizes the choices. This is demonstrating ‘On the one hand . . . and on the other’ quite nicely for you. If you see this, you should pay attention to whether or not he treats one side as ‘weightier’ than the other. Or you may well find that the speaker’s next gesture shows you that he has already settled his decision. For example, he continues with ‘I don’t know which one I’ll go with’ and in saying so clearly drops one hand down, or shifts to one side, demonstrating that the weightier choice on that side is the preferred one to him. Such a movement would suggest that he has already made up his mind, although he may not consciously realize it yet.
Hands also have a habit of showing you how the person represents subject matter to himself spatially. For example, despite his words, he may show you non-verbally that the problem he is dealing with is so ‘in his face’ that it stops him from seeing a solution (he waves his hands in front of his face as he refers to a bad situation). Or at the other extreme he may show that he is rather detached from an issue by placing it at arms’ length, even though his words may purport to demonstrate emotional involvement. Absent- minded gestures can be enormously revealing.
Sometimes these ‘illustrating movements’ that contradict a person’s story can be quite specific. I remember talking to a friend about how he had found a suicide note and a wallet containing money on the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. He was reporting to me the extraordinary events of the previous night: a suicide had taken place earlier and he had been the first to look for and discover the poor chap who had jumped. He was quite animated, a state that lent itself to quite a lot of gesturing. As he spoke, for example, about rummaging through the undergrowth, he mimed exactly that with his hands. He described picking up the wallet that had been left on the bridge to check the identity of the deceased, and his hands made soft gestures that clearly constituted an absent-minded mime of going through the cards and cash in the wallet. However, I noticed that as he told me that he then ‘got rid of it’ (suggesting verbally that he either threw it off the bridge or left it on the bridge), he actually mimed putting the wallet in his inside coat pocket. It was a ‘soft’ and incomplete half-mime, but it quite clearly told a different story to his words. Of course I picked him up on it later, and he admitted to pocketing the wallet. But he had been utterly unaware that he had made any gesture at all.
If a hand comes to the mouth or nose while the speaker answers a significant question, this may indeed be a sign of deception, as is well known. It is as if the speaker is trying to block the words from coming out. As we will see, though, it is dangerous to read into any gesture that occurs in isolation.
Another clear signal, which is very common and often denotes stress, rising frustration or a desire to leave, is the drumming of the fingers on the leg or the arm of a chair. If you see a conversational partner start this sort of behaviour, it usually suggests that he does not want to continue the conversation. At this point he certainly won’t be paying attention to what you have to say to him. Try changing tack, or realize that the conversation has come to an end. This would not necessarily denote a lie, but it would certainly signal discomfort if read alongside other signals.
However, this is not to say that liars typically fidget. This, like the idea that they break eye-contact, does not seem to stand up in tests. While these illustrating movements mentioned above might indeed give away something of importance, you should also look out for a general decrease in these gestures as well as in the number of subtle hand and finger movements. This is likely to be a type of controlling process, where the liar is trying to control any odd movements which he feels might give him away.