Lie to Me Preview 7/26 “Bullet Bump”
Did we just see Lightman punch Loker in the stomach? This should be interesting…
Detecting True Lies: Police Officers’ Ability to Detect Suspects’ Lies
We recently came across this interesting article “Detecting True Lies: Police Officers’ Ability to Detect Suspects’ Lies” which was written by Samantha Mann, Aldert Vrij and Ray Bull of the University of Portsmouth Psychology Department.
Vrij, a professor of applied social psychology, has written over 350 articles and book chapters mainly on the topics of nonverbal and verbal cues to deception and lie detection.
The article, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2004 investigated ninety-nine police officers and their ability to detect lies.
The study was unique in that it tested officers’ ability detect lies in a realistic setting during real police interviews with suspects, rather than in a laboratory where participants are brought in and instructed to lie.
Unlike other previous studies, Mann and her team found that the police officer’s “accuracy rates were higher than typically found in deception research and reached levels similar to those obtained by specialized lie detectors in previous research”.
In addition, their accuracy rates were “positively correlated with perceived experience in interviewing suspects and with mentioning cues to detecting deceit that relate to a suspect’s story”. In addition, as with many other studies, accuracy rates were negatively correlated with nonverbal cues such as gaze aversion and fidgeting.
Lie to Me Season 2 Episode 16 “Delinquent”
This week’s episode of Lie to Me was back to its usual ways with very little science and information as to how exactly Cal Lightman and his team can spot a liar.
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.
Lie to Me Preview 7/19 “Delinquent”
Tonight’s episode of Lie to Me seems to involve an intricate storyline involving Ria Torres and her sister, whom Ria calls a “delinquent”. Seems interesting enough…tune in tonight to watch microexpressions expert Dr. Cal Lightman and his team sniff out some more lies.
Lie to Me Season 2 Episode 15 “Teachers and Pupils”
In this week’s episode of Lie to Me, Dr. Cal Lightman and his team investigate the shooting of Officer Nick Hardy, who was gunned down after investigating a domestic disturbance call in an apartment building.
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.
Lie to Me: Viewers Impact
Many of us watch the hit show Lie to Me on Fox every Monday evening. Thanks to the gaining popularity of the show, more and more people have developed an interest in the topic of microexpressions and the world of nonverbal behavior.
Recently researchers at Michigan State University led by professor of communication, Timothy Levine, are putting Lie to Me viewer’s deception skills to the test in a new study entitled “The impact of Lie to Me on viewers’ actual ability to detect deception”.
The study which was published in the Journal of Communication Research, finds watching Lie to Me “increases suspicion of others but that is reduces one’s ability to detect deception”, according to an article written by Tom Jacobs of Miller-McCune.
Levine and his colleagues experiment involved 108 undergraduates at the university. Thirty-three of these individuals watched an episode of Lie to Me, another thirty-five watched a different crime drama called Numb3rs while the last third of the group did not watch either program. The group that did not watch either show served as the control group.
After they watched various episodes (or none at all), the participants saw a series of 12 taped interviews where half were telling the truth and the other half lied consistently. The participants were instructed to state whether they believed the person in the interview was being honest or deceptive.
Interestingly, according to the article written by Jacobs, the control group was the most accurate, correctly identifying the person as honest or dishonest 65.2 percent of the time. The Numb3rs group came in second, at 61.7 percent, while the Lie to Me group came in last at 59.5 percent.
The results of this show illustrated that Lie to Me viewers were “no better at distinguishing truths from lies but were more likely than control participants to misidentify honest interviewees as deceptive. Watching Lie to Me decreases truth bias thereby increasing suspicion of others while at the same time reducing deception detection ability” according to the study’s abstract.
It seems a larger sample size may be necessary in the future and we would be interested in reading the complete study. However, the show suggests what we have been suggesting all along: that viewers of Lie to Me shouldn’t accept all information that is presented on the show as accurate or think they know more about lie detection without getting formal training.
Lie to Me Preview 7/12 “Teacher and Pupils”
Preview tonight’s episode of Lie to Me, airing at 8/7central on FOX.
At the end of the preview an interesting question is posed to Dr. Lightman as to whether he could read someone that could barely move their eyes. This is a valid inquiry, as injury or impairment of any facial muscles could limit the amount of movement a person could have when expressing emotions.
Similarly, when individuals get botox injections, certain facial muscles are paralyzed therefore impeding the ability to express certain emotions. An interesting article was written recently which suggests that botox not only “may harm the expression of an emotion, but also its comprehension”.
Face Cover: What does it mean?
We often see athletes and individuals in high stress, emotional situations do what Dr. Matsumoto calls a “face cover”.
But why exactly do people cover their face in emotional and stressful times?
Some individuals believe that the face cover is only a part of social communication, but Dr. Matsumoto believes that it is not. He believes that individuals often cover their face to conceal their emotions and that it is an immediate reaction that most people cannot control.
Dr. Matsumoto also suggests that covering one’s face could also have some evolutionary basis, rooted in not letting enemies see your emotions because it could potentially be a danger to your well-being. Nonetheless, this gesture is immediate and unconscious.
Keep your eye out for this behavior and you’ll surprisingly see it fairly frequently (you may even catch yourself doing it!)
Dr. Matsumoto discussed emotions in sports at the Happiness Conference in Sydney, Australia:
2010 World Cup: Raw Emotions
With the 2010 FIFA World cup taking place at this very moment, the world’s greatest soccer athletes are showcasing not only their amazing athletic ability, but also their raw, uncut emotions.
Dr. Matsumoto’s study of athletes in the 2004 Olympic Games suggested that ” expressions occur in relation to emotionally evocative contexts in people of all cultures, that these expressions correspond to the facial expressions of emotion, that expressions provide information that can reliably differentiate the antecedent situations that produced them, and that expressions that occur without inhibition are different than those that occur in social and interactive settings”.
Since emotions are immediate, automatic and involuntary reactions to events that are important to us, athletes in high stakes situations are usually unable to control their facial expressions of emotion. With only 8 nations left in the tournament, we’ve seen many teams experience the true thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Take a look at the photo gallery of the FIFA World Cup to see some shots of athletes making great faces.
© Orlando Florin Rosu | Dreamstime.com
Lie to Me, Season 2- Episode 14 “React to Contract”
In another complex and dramatic episode of Lie to Me, microexpressions expert Cal Lightman takes on Jeff Turley, an Iraqi war veteran who seems to be suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Turley seems to be having difficulty recounting events that took place while he was in combat and seeks Lightman’s help to remember.
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.
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