‘Telling lies’ or a story about my new life

Hello everyone! I finally made it to the blog and here I am again to report on what’s new in my pleasure reading marathon. I’ve been writing this blog post for three days and the amount of new information has only been increasing…It’s the 18th day of my new life, as now I like to call this challenge. Now, let’s get down to business:)

So far, I’ve been reading mostly about “Facial Clues to Deceit”, but before that, let me introduce some interesting terms that Paul Ekman provides us with:

Illustrators — are type of body movement that can provide deception clues. They can be confused with emblems (you may remember them from my previous post about the book), but illustrators are actually showing speech as it is spoken, which means the gestures that we use during our speech or the intonations and emphasis to which we resort to in order to emphasize certain information. But most of all, I liked this explanation :

“Illustrators are used to help to explain ideas that are difficult to put into words.”

Manipulators — the reason to explain them, says Paul Edman, “is to warn the lie catcher about the risk of interpreting them as signs of deceit.” So as I understood, manipulators do not always show deceit. They include such movements in which one part of the body grooms, messages, rubs, holds, scratches and etc. So for example, when you’re nervous you have a certain habit of rearranging your hair, twisting a ring or slightly biting your lips. As manipulators are on the edge of consciousness, most people cannot stop doing them for a very long time.

Mostly in the chapter’s section concerning Body and Autonomic Nervous System Clues I’ve learned how well can strong emotions influence outside look, when trying to conceal them. Paul Ekman explains the influence of ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) on the body and what changes it produces with emotional erouse, for example, the way the person breathes or the frequency of swallowing. During his research two problems arose: the first was the question of obtaining pure samples of emotion (as there are many emotion blends) and the second problem was the method of sampling emotions in a laboratory. As some people were asked to come there and move certain muscles (showing emotions) they couldn’t do it because of the feeling of embarrassment.

As a result the group of scholars managed to solve this problem with the help of actors, who were able both to show required samples of emotions and did it on tape without any hint of embarrassment.

The next chapter is so intriguing and mind-blowing as there are many photos of people showing different facial expressions but what’s more, is that the author explains in detail how particular muscles move in order to show emotions. I find it really interesting! It was hard for me sometimes to even stop reading as it got more and more exciting with every page. In general in this chapter called “Facial Clues to Deceit” Paul Ekman analyses how the face can show us clues to deceit. As he states:

“The face often contains two messages — what the liar wants to show and what the liar wants to conceal.”

From the chapter I’ve learned not only that pure and true felt expressions of emotions occur before the speaker says something and they are hard to conceal. For example, a so-called “felt smile” can be so obvious, but a “contempt smile” that shares some characteristics of the felt one can easily be misinterpreted. There are various types of smiles that the author shows us with the help of the photos and explains their meaning and similarities with each other. The emotions that a person tries to conceal can be read via eyes expressions, lips movement and facial muscles.

Moreover, the author touches upon the topic of eye expressions. He uses this interesting quote:

“Before the revolution we used to say: ‘The eyes are the mirror of the soul.’ The eyes can lie — and how. You can express with your eyes a devoted attention which, in reality you are not feeling. You can express serenity or surprise.”

The author sometimes explains how to notice certain clues and especially makes this information important for lie catchers, as I guess such as Profiliers. It has become absolutely overwhelming for me to understand more about emotions and how we express them. That’s why I relish every page of this precious book. Now, writing this post I see how it’s hard to express all the vast amount of knowledge that I get. I think it might take me hours to list important points that I underlined in the book, but I decided to put here only some of the most interesting things. In case you feel intrigued by my post, you’re welcome to ask me something or discuss any issue covering the topic of the book.

And finally, for those who would like to experiment in their life trying to catch a liar or notice a deception, I’m eager to share these words with you:

A lie catcher should never rely upon one clue to deceit; there must be many. The facial clues should be confirmed by clues from voice, words, or body.

To almost the end of the chapter, apart from many terminology and psychological information that I’ve learned there are 2 facts that I want to share with you: it turned out that every emotion has a family of expressions and what is really surprising — there are 18 different kinds of smiles. (Paul Ekman provides living examples of some of them using photos in his book. It’s really useful!)

Now, I wish to share some new vocabulary items with you:

• timorous (person) — nervous and without much confidence
• feign — to pretend to have a particular feeling, problem, etc.
• hallmark — a typical characteristic or feature of a person or thing
• fidget — to make continuous, small movements, especially if they do not have a particular purpose and you make them without meaning to, for example because you are nervous or bored
• squirming — to move from side to side in an awkward way, sometimes because of nervousness, embarrassment, or pain
• acute — If a bad situation is acute, it causes severe problems or damage
• scrutinize — to examine something very carefully in order to discover information
• countenance — the appearance or expression of someone’s face
• squelched — to quickly end something that is causing you problems (“Much more common were squelched expressions. As an expression emerges the person seems to become aware of what is beginning to show and interrupts the expression, sometimes also cover- ing it with another expression.”)
• deploy — to use something or someone, especially in an effective way
• latitude — freedom to behave, act, or think in the way you want to

Thank you for your attention!