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Reading People Is Not as Easy as on TV
Can you even trust your best friend?
Dr Cal Lightman is the world’s leading deception expert.
He studies facial expressions and involuntary body language to expose the truth behind our lies. He finds the truth where the police have failed, and he makes an honest fortune exploiting his skills.
Dr Lightman teaches a course in body language and how to pick up on our micro-expressions — the fleeting facial clues that give away our inner thoughts, expressions that go on and off the face in a fraction of a second, blink and you will miss them.
It is a nice premise, but reading people is not as easy as the popular TV series ‘Lie to Me’ would have you believe.
Dr Cal Lightman is fictional. A character played by the actor Tim Roth.
I spent thirty years in the police interviewing people and can assure you a momentary glimpse of a cynical expression is not evidence — they’d have laughed me out of court.
We are not quick enough to catch every micro-expression.
Even when we examine a face in slow motion, we are not all that accurate in interpreting the true thoughts behind a look.
It isn’t always a bad idea to follow our intuition. Our subconscious mind can pick up…
