Ekman Sees Through Lying Eyes

The first few minutes of the new FOX series, “Lie to Me,” shows a stubbly Tim Roth peering into the face of a suspected church bomber. As an expert in deception detection, Roth’s character, Dr. Cal Lightman, closely examines the suspect’s bobbing Adam’s apple, twitching moustache, and fidgeting fingers. When the suspect’s attorney impatiently states that he has instructed his client not to say anything, Lightman nonchalantly waves his hand, saying, “I don’t have a lot of faith in words myself; the average person tells three lies per ten minutes of conversation.” Behind the one-way mirror, an FBI agent gruffs, “We don’t have time for this scientist to talk to the guy.”

Within a minute of this skeptical remark, Dr. Lightman determines where the suspect planted a bomb based solely on a microexpression that flits across the man’s face.

A microexpression is a very brief show of genuine emotion on a person’s face. Notions such as the revealing quality of the microexpression and, more broadly, that humans have the capacity to act as virtual polygraph tests are rooted in the works of Paul Ekman—namely, his book “Telling Lies.” The book is a melange of Ekman’s own work in the field, and do-it-yourself tips to help the reader become a lie-catcher. It begins with a cursory examination of behavioral, facial, and bodily clues about deceit. For instance, when facial or bodily expressions do not match up with a person’s words, it’s highly likely that said person is lying. Ekman also explains the idea behind “leakage,” a physiognomic cousin of the microexpression, rendered aptly in the examples of a graduate student subliminally flipping off her professor during a particularly harsh performance evaluation. The author then moves to an evaluation of polygraphs as instruments of interrogation, and finally assesses more public cases of lie detection in history, like the Watergate Scandal.

Unlike Roth’s character in the television series, however, Ekman comes across as less confident in his methods, or at least very cautious about putting them to use. Being responsible is one thing, but as a result of this cautiousness, Ekman often sounds vague, ambiguous, and worst of all, obvious. In distinguishing between “believing-a-lie mistake” and a “disbelieving-the-truth mistake,” he writes, “There is no general rule about which kind of mistake can be most easily avoided. Sometimes the chances of each are about the same, and sometimes one type of mistake is more likely than the other. Again, it depends upon the lie, the liar, and the lie catcher.” For those who are inspired by Roth’s charismatic and self-assured performance on “Lie to Me,” “Telling Lies” may, by comparison, seem less impressive and definitive.

The fact that Ekman’s theories are often supported by fictional examples also weakens the book’s quality as a guide to catching liars in real life. In the first chapter, Ekman uses an incident between characters Jerry and Ruth in the John Updike ’54 novel, “Marry Me,” to illustrate the importance of concealing strong emotion while lying. Ekman muses on several hypothetical scenarios based on this incident in the book, but the fact that he completely manipulates the outcomes to support his points detracts from his methods. Ekman’s case is stronger when he leans on real historical and political examples, like the exchange between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain in 1938, where the latter’s willingness to believe dictator’s promises resulted in Chamberlain’s infamous promise to his countrymen of “peace for our time.”

Ekman is most compelling when he looks to his own research and experiments, and to ongoing work in the field. But this makes up only a small portion of the book. The chapter on polygraphs, their use by federal agencies and their place in the American legal system is particularly comprehensive, but the underlying conclusion that polygraphs are generally more reliable in the detection of lies than behavioral clues undermines the whole first half of the book and fails to make substantial ties with this foregoing section outside of that comparison.

While Ekman’s core ideas are interesting and provide a larger picture of the role lies, lie detection, and truth all play in society, “Telling Lies” begins as a sort of “Lie Detection for Dummies” list, but ends disjointedly as an academic survey of why it is impossible to compile a list of definitive techniques for detecting deception. Nevertheless, it’s novel to see a book being credited as the basis for a television series, especially one that has such potential pop-intellectual appeal, and one that strives to bring light to significant examples of cultural and historical deception.

—Reviewer Jenny J. Lee can be reached at jhlee@fas.harvard.edu.