Article summary of From flawed self-assessment to blatant whoppers: the utility of voluntary behaviour in detecting deception by Ekman & Sullivan - Chapter

What kind of lies are there?

There are different types of lies and deception. Sometimes, people don’t have wrong intentions, but they lie to themselves. For example, they deny that they have a symptom of a certain disease while in fact they do. Self-deception and positive illusion are among the least intentional type. People who view themselves in a more positive light do not have the intention to deceive another person, they just really believe these things. Then, there are white lies. These are lies told with the intention to mislead people. Further along the continuum, lay the lies and deceptions of people with certain disorders. These lies are partly conscious and partly unconscious. At the far end of the continuum are the big, deliberate lies. This study is focused on nonverbal deceit. It looks at cues of deceit and the differences in the ability to detect deceit.

The authors define a lie as a deliberate intention to mislead another person. The lies used in the study are ‘real life lies’, like lies about cultural beliefs and lies about crimes. Charles Darwin used to think that emotional expressions could hardly be misleading. According to Darwin, it is hard to conceal true emotions, because emotions are expressed on your face by certain muscles and people can’t really control these muscles. You may try to control them, but involuntary muscles might portray your true feelings. Research shows that when people lie, leakage occurs. This means that part of an emotion occurs rapidly which shows how the person really feels, even if he or she is trying to conceal it. The authors of this article have found some differences between expressed emotions and truly felt emotions. These differences are morphology, timing, symmetry, and cohesion. These will be discussed.

Morphology

Biological based emotions have certain facial expressions that involve certain muscles when a person experiences this emotion. If a person is faking an emotion or inhibiting an emotion, the muscles will not move in the same way. There is a certain coding system people can use to see if somebody really smiles of happiness or is faking a smile. All the muscles are examined and when people produce a fake smile, their muscle movements show actions associated with fear, sadness or disgust. Also, when people smile of joy, they show ‘orbicularis oculi’, so laughing eyes. This means that the eyes are orbited, the brows are pulled down and the cheeks are pulled up. This is called the smile of joy. Because of Duchenne’s discovery of this, these smiles are now called Duchenne smiles. There is a lot of support for the statement that Duchenne smiles are truly smiles of joy. Researchers have found that ten-month-old infants showed Duchenne smiles when their mother approached them, but showed other smiles when a stranger approached them. Research also shows that Duchenne smiles can be recognized in daily life situations.

Timing

In the 1960s, researchers discovered micro facial expressions when they examined videos of psychiatric patients who lied during a clinical interview. These expressions were very brief and often unnoticeable to the untrained observer. Also, the onset of fake emotions is usually abrupt, lasts too long and ends abruptly.

Symmetry

Researchers in the late 1970s reported that emotions were more intensely expressed on the left side of the face than on the right side. This was true for all basic emotions except happiness. So, false smiles are more like to be asymmetric. One study asked children to imitate facial movements and they showed asymmetrical facial actions, while their spontaneous smiles during the experiment were symmetrical.

Cohesion

The face is not the only thing that can show signs of deceit. The voice can also indicate that somebody is lying. Research showed that when people lie, their voice pitch increased. Hesitations and speech errors also may convey deceit. Another aspect that can indicate a lie is gesture. Changes in the frequency or the tempo of gestures may indicate deception. So, if people show gestures that aren’t usual for them, this may be an indication of that they are lying.

What can be concluded?

The researchers of this study point to different cues you can use to detect lies. They have discovered this conducting laboratory experiments. In the real world, however, some people might be very good in lying. Also, using other facial muscles does not always mean that somebody is lying. It is also possible that people experience more than one single emotion and they don’t really know what they are feeling or that they feel embarrassed to show their true feelings. Therefore, the authors suggest to conduct more research in this topic.