How to Lie to Me: Get in their faces

by Frank | Mar 22, 2012 | Deception, Writing

You looking at me? I'm looking at you!

Viewers of Lie to Me will have noticed how Cal Lightman is always getting right up people’s noses, I mean literally. Part of Tim Roth’s excellent characterization is that Lightman always looks directly at them, even the baddest scariest guys in life-threatening situations. And, after reading more on Paul Ekman’s work, there’s a damn good reason for this. Most of us don’t look at people’s faces when they’re talking, we think we do but really we don’t.

When I trained with Dr Ekman’s micro-expressions tool (article here) I improved my emotion recognition in just a couple of hours, however when it came to applying it I found it almost impossible, apart from with children. Why is this? Well with children, culturally, we are allowed to look them directly in the the face, the same with performers or politicians, anyone who has given us permission or who doesn’t have the social training most of us have.

For example we are trained from an early age that ‘boys don’t cry’, so, unconsciously, we don’t look at them when they are sad. Even if intellectually we know it’s not true. Each family may have their own rules for ‘Don’t stare’. Or we may learn not to look at Dad, or Mum, when they’re angry – it might not be beneficial for our health.

Think about it, better yet, try this: watch yourself when you’re talking to someone, you rarely look at them until you  hear a change of intonation which is the auditory cue for a response. It’s subtle but it’s always there. I’ve been watching myself and realize that I do this all the time. In fact it’s almost impossible to stop yourself doing it. I mean how old are you? Subtract maybe 2-3 years and that’s how long you’ve been doing it without even being aware of it.

I now have to re-train myself to get over this if I want to be able to apply my new knowledge in a meaningful way. I’ve only just started doing this today, and it’s hard work, but boy do you suddenly see what’s going on with other people. It’s tough not to look away though. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes and give you some techniques to work with that’ll make it easier for you to see what people are really feeling and thinking in the next couple of articles.

If you have an idea for training or a lie you want to test please get in touch in the comments below.

Read part one: Real World Micro-Expressions Training  Or go to part three: Exercises to Get in Their Face.

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