Microexpressions: Lie Detection 101

When I picked up playing Texas Hold'em poker, I read a lot. I read books by the poker pros, I read tournament strategy, I read statistics and probability and I read about bluffs and tells. It was in the latter selection of reading that I began to really focus on body language and microexpressions. I read books on lying and lying theory. I read books on common body language reading and how to baseline people. But microexpressions really interested me in that they were a split-second "slip of the tongue" except in this case the tongue was your face and the slip was an involuntary muscle reaction of the mind. I could not believe what I was reading. Was there really a method of lie detection that worked on everybody and I just did not know about it? I had to research more.

Microexpressions came about pretty recently and have only been in research for the past thirty years. The man at the forefront of the work (and the basis for the protagonist of the show Lie to Me) is Paul Ekman. Are there others in the field who contributed/discovered a lot of information and breakthroughs for microexpressions? Sure, but Paul Ekman was the one to map every muscle movement of the human face and correlate it to a particular emotion, whether it may be shame, pride, contempt or amusement. Keep in mind when I say split second, we're taking about somewhere between "1/15 of a second to 1/25 of a second." No wonder I had not been seeing the signs before.

In one of Ekman's books on the subject, Ekman recalls a story of a psych-patient looking for a weekend pass away from the hospital. The patient was there because of severe bouts of depression and had previously attempted suicide, but on the review of her temporary release, she was smiles and laughter. It was her daughters birthday, the patient explained to the board in charge of approving her release, and she so very much wanted to be with her for this occasion. The interview was filmed, as they all were and the voices of the board could be heard asking the patient a number of questions. The patient smiled and politely answered them, explaining she had lied previously for weekend passes when she was denied, but on this occasion she was sincerely feeling better, happy for life. Just as the patient was approved for her weekend pass she came clean: do not approve her, she stated, because the only thing she wanted to do when she went home was kill herself.

When Ekman reviewed the tape of the interview, he watched the events over and over. The length was roughly twelve minutes long and at first, nothing came to his mind that the patient was employing deception. But as Ekman began to slow the tape down and now that he knew the conversation by heart, certain segments of the piece did not sit with him. When asked about her plans for the future, the patient hesitated and Ekman clearly saw a split-second reaction that hinted to the contrary of her supposed happiness. It was pain, and it was sadness. When asked about how the patient was coping with her present feelings, the patient shrugged. But it wasn't a full, double shoulder shrug that would be used normally. It was controlled, much like the expression that looked unsure on her face. The patient deceived the doctors because everything was obviously happening in real time. Only when Ekman's edited video was slowed to nearly one-twentieth fifth of a second of the normal speed did anything come to light. A microexpression.

Ekman has a program on the market which you can buy to train yourself to spot microexpressions. The program is currently used by various government agencies that are specifically in need of facial reading and microexpression detection. There are various training programs online for free that you can test your own skills at facial recognition and mircoexpression detection at Ekman's own site F.A.C.E. training and at M.E.T.T. training tool. For both cases only click the number/slide/test section once. If you have to repeat the facial expression, you've already failed that question.