'Lie to Me' knows what you're thinking

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By Emley Kerry

The Fox drama, Lie to Me, follows deception expert Dr. Cal Lightman and his team of employees at The Lightman Group, a private company contracted by government agencies, businesses, and individuals to discover the truth in highly sensitive situations. A change in voice inflection, a slight shrug of a shoulder, the twitch of an eye or the pursing of lips: those are the variables in Lightman's formulas that help him determine if someone is lying.

But how real are the emotion-reading techniques utilized on the show?

Microexpressions were first discovered by psychologist Paul Eckman-the man who inspired Lightman's character-when he realized that by slowing down film, he could detect emotions that were happening as quickly as 1/125 of a second, far faster than on the macro level. These slight, fleeting expressions can reveal a person's true inner feelings even if, and often especially because, the individual is trying to hide the emotion.

The seven basic microexpressions-happiness, contempt, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust-are considered universal and expressed exactly the same regardless of race, gender, culture, ethnicity, or religion.

Tim Roth as Cal Lightman is a cheeky little bastard-a term I feel perhaps more inclined to use because Roth and his character have a delightful English accent that makes everything sound authoritative, ironic, and blasé at the same time-who gives the show its credibility and enjoyment.

Roth is backed up by strong female counterparts such as Kelli Williams as the Lighman's resilient, level-headed business partner Dr. Gillian Foster; Monica Raymund as Rita Torres, a victim of childhood abuse whose experiences have made her a natural at reading facial expressions; and Haley McFarland as Cal Lightman's precocious teenage daughter, Emily.

As the audience, we're reading the same signals as Lightman, however we are reading the over-the-top signals of actors (if a character in the show is disgusted, he raises his nose very obviously as if smelling something foul, and Lightman jumps on the "clue" as if he's seen something that nobody else could have seen) so applying the science would be very difficult via television absent a very talented actor.

Lie to Me is most fascinating when it uses real-life examples of the microexpressions mentioned in the program. Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" was a classic example of distancing language; then-candidate Barack Obama's nose scratch using his middle finger when speaking of Sen. John McCain's service to the country during the presidential debates revealed his hidden contempt for the senior senator.

Continue the real-life application on Fox's highly entertaining Lie to Me website, where viewers are given the chance to judge the authenticity of emotions exhibited in recent media clips. Was Obama happy to win the Nobel Peace Prize? Was Taylor Swift really surprised by Kanye's onstage stunt or was it scripted? Was Michael Vick's apology sincere? That's for you to decide.

As fascinating as the premise of the program is, the show's biggest glitch is its predictability. In every episode, the guilty party is a minor character the interviewers made an offhand comment about in the first ten minutes of the show.

The pilot episode initiated the pattern: "Didn't the school principal seem a little nervous?" Thirty-five minutes later, it's revealed that the principal, the least likely suspect (who wasn't even a suspect at all) is responsible for the death of the teacher. A few episodes later: "The only person acting nervous was the head firefighter," and at the end of the show we realize that he was the one who let his fellow firefighter die. If only the show's plot was as nuanced as the microexpressions it deals with.

Season 2 of Lie to Me began September 28. The program comes on Fox Mondays at 8:00 pm and is definitely worth tuning into, if for no other reason you can learn a few emotion-reading techniques and apply them to people in your own life. So, are you going to watch the show? Don't lie to me, I just felt the page quiver.

Originally Published: Issue 821 - October 28, 2009

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