The very beginning of the episode shows that learning how to detect dangerous faces, especially in a crowd, is an extremely useful and beneficial tool to have. Although Lightman states that there is no such face as an “assassin’s face”, Dr. Matsumoto and his team have collected data from various law enforcement agencies around the world to determine that there are faces the are consistent with pre-meditated assault and a loss of impulse control. However, in addition to these 2 faces of deadly intent, there may be additional dangerous faces that are not known. Therefore, Dr. Matsumoto and his team are constantly conducting research in this area.

Loker, Torres and Reynolds go to the jail where the suspect in the shooting is being held. After reading him for a few moments, Torres concludes that he’s telling the truth when he says he didn’t try to kill the governor. This plot twist then leads to Lightman and Foster questioning the governor’s campaign manager whom they deem suspicious.

As the plot thickens, Torres sees a subtle sign of surprise in the suspected gunman after showing him the murder weapon. Although it was great that she caught this subtle expression, Torres shouldn’t have automatically assumed that he was surprised because he didn’t know the weapon. He could have been surprised for a number of different reasons. The most important point about seeing a micro or subtle expression is that you don’t jump to a conclusion right away, but ask more questions because there’s more to the story than being told.

Lightman and Torres begin to dig a little deeper, questioning the governor’s wife. The campaign manager turns up dead and Emily, Lightman’s daughter, seems to have some feelings for Loker. By the end of the episode, Lightman and his crew find out that the governor’s wife was behind all the murders and he apologizes to Loker for punching him.

Overall not a bad episode but be careful of interpreting any micro or subtle expressions as an automatic sign of deception.

The storyline itself was not horrible; we meet Ria Torres’ half-sister Ava and witness Foster’s more sensitive side after she is attacked by strangers in her own home. Cal’s interaction with his daughter seems to bring us a bit of nostalgia, as we all remember learning how to drive for the first time.

But overall the show seems as though its taking a more and more dramatic approach, with little science involved. Lie to Me now feels like other popular drama shows, such as CSI or Law and Order. Dramatic scenes with dead bodies showing up, illegal activity and unauthorized interrogations all in a day’s work for The Lightman Group.

Perhaps its hard to watch because we’re in the field. This is what we do every day here at Humintell and the reality of the situation is so far from what is portrayed in the show that its becoming more and more difficult to relate to. We can’t imagine kidnapping a delinquent from a local detention center or avoiding law enforcement’s help. Here at Humintell we do the complete opposite: we aid law enforcement, don’t perform our own interrogations or break the law.

Its true that the popularity of the show has exposed our whole world of nonverbal behavior and as a result, more people are becoming interested in the topic of microexpressions and detecting deception.

However, Lie to Me viewers should understand that the information portrayed in the show is strictly for drama’s sake and that very little of the information is rooted in actual science.

We can only hope that Lie to Me viewers don’t assume that everything they see on TV is real and that they do their research before thinking they can spot lies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The injury left Hardy paralyzed and unable to move any part of his body, including the muscles in his face. Dr. Lightman is brought in by Agent Reynolds (Mekhi Pheifer) to read Hardy’s expressions, challenging him by asking if he could read a man “who can barely move his eyes”.

In short, the answer was yes.

Dr. Lightman observed Hardy’s pupillary responses to examine whether he was responding positively or negatively to a certain question.

While pupillary responses alone cannot be a sign of deceit, according to a article entitled “Cues to Deception” by Bella DePaulo, et al. it “could be regarded as supportive of the hypothesized importance of generalized arousal”. DePaulo also states that “we believe that it (pupillary response) is theoretically and empirically more precise and defensible to interpret these cues as indicative of particular attentional or information-processing activities or of specific affective experiences (e.g., Cacioppo,Petty, & Tassinary, 1989; Ekman et al., 1983; Neiss, 1988; Sparks & Greene, 1992)”.

DePaulo’s journal article which was published in the Psychological Bulletin in 2003, also lays out some interesting facts about liars vs truth tellers. Do people behave differently when they are lying compared with when they are telling the truth? The abstract of the study that investigated 1,338 estimates of 158 cues to deception states that “Results show that in some ways, liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers, and they tell less compelling tales. They also make a more negative impression and are more tense. Their stories include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents. However, many behaviors showed no discernible links, or only weak links, to deceit”. A complete look at the article can be found here.

Given that Lie to Me is a drama and that many facts are either exaggerated or misrepresented, we feel the need to debunk information that may be falsely portrayed in the show. We hope that most viewers do not take what they may “learn” from one or several episodes and immediately start to apply it to real life situations. As with any other subject, its important and crucial to get factual information from credible sources before jumping to any conclusions.

Lightman and his crew bring Turley back to their office and hook him up to a FMRI machine that measures that change in blood flow related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans. They discover that Jeff reads neutral faces as hostile, a sign of PTSD and that he seems ashamed of the events which led to him being given a silver star.

This episode seemed full of high tech gadgets rather than illustrating what Cal and his team do best, which is read people and detect deceit. In one instance, Foster and Lightman decide to hook Turley up to a virtual reality machine which will re-traumatize him in a controlled way and bring him back to the event he doesn’t want to talk about. After re-enacting the traumatic event, the Lightman Group realizes that there is more to the story that’s being told about what happened in Iraq.

Torres and Foster decide to go visit a man who served with Jeff Turley in Iraq, Captain Renshaw. Although Torres seemed to think that he wasn’t hiding anything, Foster disagrees, stating that the pride in his voice means he’s hiding something. The scientific evidence for this isn’t strong at all- there is no proof that there is such a thing as “pride” that can be detected in one’s voice. Also, just because someone seems to be full of pride, it can’t be directly associated with deceit.

Through many twists and turns, in the end we find out that Turley’s erratic behavior is a result of a cover up initiated by Captain Renshaw, who had accidentally shot another soldier as a result of “friendly fire”.

It was nice to see the interaction between Cal and his daughter Emily in the very last moment of the episode. Particularly poignant was the moment when Cal was describing his father, who had been a  soldier.

This moment was quite appropriate given this upcoming July 4th weekend- thank you to all the soldiers, past and present, who dedicate their lives for our country.

At the very beginning of the episode there is a great moment where Zoe says “I’d like to speak with my ex-husband in private, if that’s all right”.  Lightman’s expression of a very over-exaggerated social smile is priceless.

Lightman also does a great half smile with disgust expression at around 3:42 that lasts about 3 or 4 seconds. Hope people caught that. If not, you can see both moments here:

There is also a moment at the beginning of the show were Cal speaks about Clara: “I mean really, she is pushing those tears out really. I mean, she’s faking it”. Its important to note that macroexpressions last the longest on the face (1/2-4 seconds) and are also the easiest expressions to fake:

A dramatic, witty and humorous, but totally unrealistic court scene ensues, with Lightman eventually getting kicked off the stand by the judge. While outside the courtroom Lightman creates a diversion so that he can get into a room alone with Clara. Beal walks in just as Lightman is questioning the suspect and throws Lightman in jail, but releases him after her tells her that her client is in fact, innocent.

Back at the Lightman office, Gillian is working with the son of the murdered man and seems to suspect some suspicious behavior. Lightman proceeds to hook Clara up to a device and notices that she feels contempt toward the son, Damien and also anger towards her friend, Tonya. The crew brings Damien back to the office while Lightman makes out with Clara purposely to get his reaction. Damien shows what looks to be a brief sign of sadness (inner brows drawn up and together slightly, although this isn’t explained in the show):

An intense altercation between the Clara and Damien occurs, with anger flaring up between the two. The actors did a great job of working off each other’s emotions, which often happens in real life as well. When people are angry, they are more vigilant to other people’s anger and feed off of it. Therefore, tensions usually escalate to the point where people can’t remember what they were first arguing about.

The story takes another turn in court when Victor’s (the deceased) close friend testifies that Clara had been stealing $90,000.00 out of Victor’s bank account every month. Lightman confronts Clara’s friend, Tonya, and finds out that Tonya had been blackmailing her. There is a curious expression from Tonya at the end, along with a picture of another girl and Paris Hilton, but not sure exactly what those are trying to depict. The closest thing could be shame, although there is no scientific proof that there is a universal expression of shame.

Lightman’s team figures out the Leo, Victor’s close friend must have killed Victor. If Clara gets convicted, Leo stands to gain millions of dollars. Lightman states that Leo “flashed regret” when Lightman told him he killed his friend, but its important to note that there is no scientific evidence backing up that statement.

While on the stand, we come to find out the Leo was hiding a deep secret of his friends- that he was dying from a brain disease and had asked his friend to kill him. Leo claims that Victor left a video explaining the situation, which Clara sees at the end of the episode back at Lightman’s office.

Overall this episode was clever, entertaining and one of our favorites. What did you think?

Back to present day, there is a bombing outside the Lightman Group office, killing a man from the Pentagon who was coming to visit Lightman, and injuring Eli Loker.  An accused terrorist, Jimmy Doyle becomes the number one suspect.

Throughout this episode we see many flashbacks of when Lightman and Foster first meet, when she began interviewing him at the Pentagon. We get a glimpse into their first encounters and see Lightman questioning Foster’s integrity throughout the show.

After finding out that Doyle did not have anything to do with the bombing outside the Lightman Group office, another bombing occurs when Lightman, Foster and Doyle visit a lawyer who allegedly helped frame two kids for the murder of Doyle’s wife and daughter in 2003. After the second bombing, the government (whom Cal suspects are responsible for the cover up of the 2003 murders) responds with a press conference where Lightman calls out Agent Prosser for lying. He invites Prosser back to his lab to interrogate him.

Back at the laboratory, Prosser breaks and admits to the cover-up. He tells Lightman where he could find the real killer. After some more tense moments, Doyle and Lightman confront the killer, Finch. Doyle comes close to killing his wife and daughter’s true killer, but in the end walks away.

In the final scene of this elaborate episode, we see Lightman and Foster back at the office. In a rather uncharacteristic emotional moment, we see Foster open up and tell Lightman that she was protecting him and his family all along.

These new episodes seem as if they are going further away from the science of microexpressions and nonverbal behavior and into the realm of a serious drama show.  Throughout the episode we receive very little reasoning as to how Lightman makes judgments on people’s credibility.

In this episode, we see only a brief, few seconds of where Agent Prosser’s face is compared to other photos of individuals such as Bill Clinton. The only problem with these is that we don’t get an explanation as to why these photos are shown or what they mean.  Hopefully in future episodes, we will get a better sense of the science and a better explanation of how Lightman is so effortlessly able to tell truths from lies. At times it seems almost too good to be true, but of course, it is drama.

To view the complete episode see below:

For those that may not be familiar with the story, Astorga is accused of shooting Deputy McGrane after being pulled over for a traffic stop on New Mexico Highway 337 4 years ago.

Jury deliberations for Astorga’s trial began yesterday and a verdict is anticipated to be reach within the next few days.

Dr. David Matsumoto spoke to Misa Maruyama of KOB news in Albuquerque on Sunday night to discuss what he saw in Astorga’s testimony.

The complete article can be found here

Burns, who works in the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency is developing “mal-intent”- software and technology that could potentially detect nonverbal cues from people who harbor malicious intent. The technology being developed “represents the future in screening: trying to find the bomber, not just the bomb” according to the article, written by Bob Drogin.

Larry Willis, who works in the Human Factors Division, is developing technology that can spot microexpressions, that “may or may not indicate hostile intent.”

Dr. Paul Ekman, the scientific consultant of Lie to Me and one of the leading researchers in the field, doubts that high tech-tools can do any better than behavior detection officers. He also dismisses Willis’ work and says that “The research already shows that not every person intending hard shows micro-expressions” and that the program is “A waste of time.”

However, other leading researchers in the field disagree.

Dr. Mark Frank, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo and deception expert, calls the work “worthwhile” and says that “If the science helps us make better guesses, I think that it is very productive and at least it’s the right approach.”

Dr. David Matsumoto agrees with Dr. Frank. Although he says a 100% foolproof system is never going to happen, he also says that its possible to “deploy something that better than what we have now” and that “both programs are well on their way to doing that.”

To view the complete article, click here

Are you excited?!

Click here to view the embedded video.