In high-stress
situations, do people tip off lies through facial expressions?
Researchers had people trained in facial analysis examine the movement
of the muscles of 52 people pleading to the public for the safe return
of loved ones. Exactly half of these people later turned out to be
responsible themselves for the disappearances. (click below to read more)
Looking
at video frame by frame, the analysts (blind to the experiment's aim and
the speaker's guilt) homed in on the moment in which relatives made a
direct appeal to the "perpetrator." Genuine pleaders flexed muscles
linked to grief and shock, near the inner eyebrow and difficult to
control consciously, more than the bogus pleaders did. Likewise, false
pleaders showed sadness by activating a broad forehead muscle, a gesture
that smacks of trying too hard. That alone allowed analysts to guess
the guilt or innocence of the person with 69% accuracy.
When intense stress taxes a liar, the authors said, it becomes more likely that true emotions will unwittingly "leak" out.
"Darwin the Detective: Observable Facial Muscle
Contractions Reveal Emotional High-Stakes Lies," Leanne ten Brinke,
Stephen Porter and Alysha Baker, Evolution and Human Behavior
(forthcoming)
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