Mimic signs of deception

A person is a very valuable source of information for the verifier, for it can lie, tell the truth, and do both at the same time. Usually the person carries two messages at once - what the liar wants to say and what he would like to hide. Some facial expressions support a lie, giving us incorrect information, while others give out the truth, because they look fake, and true feelings filter through all attempts to hide them. At some point, a person, being deceitful, may look quite convincing, but after a moment, hidden thoughts may appear on it. And it also happens that sincere and ostentatious emotions are transmitted by different parts of the face at the same time. I think most people cannot immediately see through a liar just because they cannot distinguish sincere facial expressions from false ones.
True feelings are reflected on our face because facial expressions can be involuntary, beyond our thoughts and intentions. But a person can lie, as we are able to control our facial expressions, not allowing people to see the truth and forcing them to accept lies. A person leads a double life, combining expressions that we deliberately accept with those that sometimes appear spontaneously, without our knowledge. Along with involuntary and intentional expressions, there are also some things that we have once memorized and now appear automatically, whether we like it or not, and sometimes even against this and, as a rule, without our awareness. An example of this are facial expressions that have become habit and become “ritual”; they often appear on our face, especially when, for example, we cannot express our anger towards a high-ranking person. However, now we will be interested only in intentional, controlled, fake expressions used by people when trying to mislead, and involuntary, spontaneous, emotional, which sometimes give the true feelings of a liar despite all his efforts to hide them.
Studies of people with various brain injuries convincingly show that various parts of the brain are responsible for arbitrary and involuntary facial expressions. Patients suffering from damage to certain areas, including the so-called pyramidal system [84] , cannot smile if asked about it, but smile in response to a joke or joy. The opposite picture is observed in patients who suffer from damage to another part of the brain that does not include the pyramidal system. They can smile confidently, however having fun and even having fun remain with a stony face. Patients with lesions of the pyramidal system, unable to arbitrarily change facial expressions, could not hide the deception, because they cannot prevent the appearance of true emotions on their face and depict insincere feelings. On the contrary, patients with brain damage that does not affect the pyramidal system, unable to express true feelings, could become excellent liars, since they do not need to worry about hiding their true emotions [85] .
The involuntary expression of emotions on the face is the result of evolution. Many human facial expressions are similar to those seen in primates. Some emotional expressions — at least, talking about happiness, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, grief, and possibly a number of other emotions — are universal, the same for all people, regardless of age, gender, racial or cultural differences [86 ] .
These expressions give us a wealth of information about a person's feelings, giving the slightest movement of his soul. A person can convey such nuances of emotional experiences that can only be expressed in words by a poet. It can tell us:

• what emotions a person experiences (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, grief, joy, satisfaction, excitement, surprise, contempt) - each of these emotions corresponds to its specific facial expression;
• the imposition of emotions - often a person experiences two emotions at once, and both are partially reflected on his face;
• about the strength of the emotions experienced - all emotions have different degrees of manifestation - from mild irritation to rage, from fear to horror, and so on.

However, as I have already said, a face is not just an involuntary emotional signal system. Already in the first years of life, children learn to control the expression of their faces, hiding their true feelings and depicting emotions that they do not have. Parents teach children this by their own example, and frank teachings like: “Don't look at me so angrily,” “Smile when the aunt gives you candy”, “What is it that you look so gloomy?”. Growing up, people become so accustomed to these rules of the face that such expressions become a habit that is difficult to eradicate. After some time, these rules begin to act automatically, and we no longer control and are not aware of their manifestations. But even if people are aware of these rules, it is not always possible to stop following them, in any case it is always difficult; for if a habit has become fixed and acts automatically, without requiring awareness, it is not easy to get rid of it. And the most difficult, in my opinion, to overcome exactly those habits that are based on the rules of the person.
The fact that such expressions are precisely the rules of the face, and that this language is not universal, is easiest to understand when traveling, since these rules are different in different cultures. I discovered that the Japanese are watching sentimental films with the same facial expression as the Americans, but only on the condition that no one sees them. If another person appears in the room, especially some boss, the Japanese start much more than the Americans to follow their own rules of the face, covering negative emotions with a polite smile [87] .
In addition to automatic, familiar facial expressions, people can have quite conscious ones, which they accept, suppressing the manifestation of their true emotions and imitating others that are not really experienced. Most people make great use of some kind of mimic deception. Almost everyone can remember the case when someone’s facial expression completely confused him, but almost everyone knows the opposite, when it is perfectly visible on the face of a person that he is lying. In each couple's life, there are moments when one reads on the other's face a feeling (usually fear or anger), which his partner not only does not realize, but also denies. Most people consider themselves to be able to notice the falsity in the face of another, but our research suggests that this is not true.
In the previous chapter, I described an experiment in which we found that the subjects were far from always able to determine when the students were lying and when they were telling the truth. The results of those who watched only the faces of the girls turned out to be even worse than random ones: they called more honest those of them who lied. The subjects took imitation at face value and ignored those facial features that betrayed true feelings. When a person lies, his most eloquent facial expressions, which you first of all pay attention to, just turns out to be fake, and the more subtle manifestations of insincerity and fleeting signs of hidden emotions remain, as a rule, unnoticed.
Most researchers did not try to determine the manifestations of lies on the face of a person, instead focusing on more easily measurable factors, such as illustrations or speech reservations. Those few who still tried to evaluate expressional expressions took into account only a smile, but even they considered it too simplistic. They concluded that by deceiving and telling the truth, people smile equally often. But they did not take into account the nature of a smile, and yet people do not always smile the same way. Our facial expression evaluation technique allowed us to identify more than 50 types of smiles. We noticed that when the students lied, they smiled differently than when they told the truth. I will tell you more about our observations at the end of this chapter.
It is thanks to this variety of different facial expressions that researchers who are interested in non-verbal communication and the psychology of lies, and not try to evaluate mimic expressions. Until recently, there was no single objective way to evaluate it. We decided to develop such a method, because we understood thanks to our experiment with students that the definition of mimic signs of deception requires a more careful approach. We have spent almost ten years on the development of the necessary equipment [88] .
There are thousands of different facial expressions, and they all differ from each other. Many of them have nothing to do with emotions and refer to so-called speech signs, which, like the illustrations, correspond to stress and punctuation (for example, facial expressions reflecting a question or exclamation mark). But there are also mimic emblems: a wink, astonished eyebrow twitching, a contemptuous squinting of the eyes, a horseshoe mouth, a skeptical grimace, a drooping jaw, etc. There are also mimic manipulations - biting and licking the lips, smacking, cheeks. In addition, there are simply emotional facial expressions, both sincere and feigned.
And not one expression corresponds to one emotion, but dozens, and sometimes even hundreds.
Each emotion has a specific and very specific series of expressions. This is not surprising, because not a single situation corresponds to each emotion, but a whole series. Let's look at expressions of anger. Anger varies by:

• its intensity (from mild irritation to rage);
• degree of controllability (from explosion to secret malice);
• the pace of development (from a sudden flash to a slow boil);
• rate of extinction (from sudden to prolonged);
• heat (from boiling to cold-blooded);
• degree of sincerity (from genuine to feigned - like parents scolding their disobedient but beloved child).

And if we add to this an impurity to the anger of other emotions: gloating, guilt, righteousness, contempt, then the components of this series will be even greater.
No one knows if there are different facial expressions for each type of anger. I suspect that there are, and even not one for each species. We already have evidence that there are more facial expressions for each emotion than the corresponding words. The face conveys such nuances and shades of emotions that cannot be expressed in speech. Our work on studying the whole set of mimic expressions and determining the number of expressions for each emotion — determining which are synonymous and which express different, but similar internal states — began only in 1978. Some of the results of this work that I describe are based on the systematic use of our facial expression evaluation technique, and some on many hours of observation. Moreover, all these results are only preliminary, since no one has yet tried to repeat our experiments to identify the differences between voluntary and involuntary mimicry.
Let's start with the most complex source of information leaks - microexpressions. These manifestations provide a complete picture of hidden emotions, but so fleeting that they usually do not have time to notice. Microexpressions appear no more than a quarter of a second. We discovered them during our first research into signs of deception, almost 20 years ago, when we were looking at a recording of a conversation with Mary, a patient at a psychiatric clinic (see Introduction), who was hiding her intention to commit suicide. In the film, made a few weeks after Mary’s admission to the clinic, she told the doctor that she no longer felt depressed and asked to let her go home for the weekend. She later admitted that she had lied and wanted to try again to commit suicide by getting rid of the care of staff. She also admitted that she still feels desperately unhappy.
Mary repeatedly shrugged her shoulders a little (emblematic reservation) and very little resorted to illustrations. Using slow-motion repetition of the film, we also found microexpression - deep sadness, quickly covered by a smile. A microexpression covers the entire face, but very briefly, taking up only a tiny fraction of the usual duration, and is difficult to see. Figure 2 shows an expression of sadness. [90]

Figure 2

This expression is easy to recognize because it is “photographed.” But if it flashes in one twenty-fifth of a second and changes to another, as it happens in life, you can easily skip it. Shortly after we discovered these micro-expressions, other researchers declared their discoveries in this area, identifying them as the result of the suppression of unconscious emotions [89] .
However, the fact that Mary's feelings were not unconscious is obvious: she was painfully aware of the sadness that manifested itself in her micromovement.
We showed to different people excerpts of a recording of a conversation with Mary containing these microexpressions, and asked them to determine what she felt. Untrained observers, losing sight of these micro-expressions, were mistaken and believed that she was fine. Only when we scrolled the film at slow speed did they notice these sad expressions of it. Experienced psychologists, however, were able to catch these microexpressions even when viewed at normal speed.
One hour is enough for most people to learn to notice these fleeting expressions. We set up the diascope so that you can expose the slide for a very short time. At first, when we showed the face only one fiftieth of a second, observers declared that they could not see and could not see anything, but very quickly learned this.
It suddenly became so easy that they even thought that we had increased the shutter speed. Now, having looked at several hundred faces, everyone could recognize the emotion, even despite the short duration of the exposure. Everyone can learn this without a projector. To do this, it is enough to cast a fleeting glance at the image and try to guess which emotion is imprinted on the picture, then carefully look at it and check the correctness of its assessment. After that, move to another picture and thus revise their hundreds [91] .
However, the situation with microexpressions is not so simple also because, despite the fullness of their information about hidden emotions, they are quite rare. In the experiment with the students, we found only a few micro-expressions. Much more often there were blurred expressions; a person has time to realize the appearance of this expression on his face and tries to remove it, sometimes covering it with another expression. A smile is the most common way to cover up such manifestations. Sometimes the expression is blurred so quickly that it is difficult to determine exactly which emotion was hidden. But even if it is impossible to accurately determine the emotion, the very fact of blurring is a clear sign that a person is hiding something. A blurred expression lasts longer than a microexpression, but, unlike the latter, is not complete and complete. Although the microexpression is more constricted in time, we have a fleeting, but complete picture of the emotion. The blurred expression does not represent a complete picture of emotion, but it lasts longer and the fact of interruption itself is more noticeable.
In analyzing both micro- and blurred expressions, two problems arise that make it difficult to interpret most of the signs of deception. Let us recall the Brokaw trap described in the previous chapter, which consists in the verification of the individual characteristics of a person by the verifier. Not every person who hides his emotions shows micro- or blurred expressions, and therefore their absence is not yet evidence of honesty. The ability to keep face with different people is developed to varying degrees; for some, whom I call innate liars, it works out perfectly. The second problem, which I called Othello's mistake, is caused by the inability to understand that even honest people start worrying too much when they feel they are suspected of lying. This error can be avoided by remembering that the presence of micro- and blurred expressions in itself does not mean deception. Virtually any emotions that slip in such expressions can be sincere experiences of an honest person that he simply would not like to show. An innocent person may fear distrust of himself, feel guilty, resent the unjust accusation, rejoice at the thought that he will be able to prove his decency, or be surprised at the accusation. If he tries to hide these feelings, then micro-or blurred expressions may appear on his face. Problems related to the interpretation of micro- and blurred expressions will be discussed in the next chapter.
Not all facial muscles are equally easy to control. The movements of some are more sure signs of emotion than others. This loyalty means that these muscles "cannot lie," that is, they are beyond the control of a person.Therefore, it is not easy for a liar to hide those feelings that affect these muscles - their movements are difficult to interrupt or suppress. To find out which facial muscles are the most difficult to control, we asked people to set different facial muscles in motion, and also to depict different emotions [92] .
Almost no one managed to control some muscles of their own free will. For example, only 10% of our subjects could arbitrarily lower the corners of their mouths down without moving their chins. However, these hard-to-control muscles moved by themselves when people actually experienced the emotions that caused them to move. For example, for those who could not lower the corners of the mouth on request, this happened by itself in a state of sadness, sadness or grief. We even found out that you can learn to control these uncontrolled mice, but it takes a lot of time. The movements of these muscles are true signs because a person cannot control them on command and use them to imitate certain feelings. I reasoned like this: if a person cannot force these muscles to depict untrue feelings,then it must be difficult for him to “stop” or lubricate their movements in expressing genuine emotions. If you cannot imitate facial expressions with their help, then it is difficult for you to hide the movements of those parts of the face that they control.[93] . But there are other ways to hide your true feelings without being able to suppress them. You can cover them with a smile, although this does not eliminate the signs of emotion in the movements of the forehead and eyelids. You can strain other muscles that cause the reverse movement, so that as a result, the facial expression does not change. For example, a contented smile can be put out if you squeeze your lips and lift your chin. However, the movement of the opposing muscles in itself can give a deception, so the simultaneous movement of those and other muscles gives the face an unnatural, tense expression. The best way to hide your feelings is to completely eliminate the movement of the muscles of the face. But it is difficult to do, especially when emotion affects those muscles that give true signs of emotion.
These muscles are mostly concentrated on the forehead. Figure 3A shows true signs of sadness, grief, frustration, and, probably, guilt (the same expression is presented in Figure 2, but in Figure 3A it is easier to focus on the forehead, since the rest of the face is darkened). Please note that the inner corners of the eyebrows are raised. It usually also triangles the upper eyelids and causes wrinkles in the center of the forehead. No more than 15% of our subjects could intentionally cause such a facial expression. This means that this expression, as a rule, is not fake and will appear if a person really experiences frustration or sadness (possibly with a touch of guilt), despite all attempts to hide these feelings. This and other figures show the emotions expressed as strongly as possible in order to present a clear picture of facial expressions,not being able to show it in motion. If a person experiences only a slight sadness, the wrinkles on his forehead will be the same as in Figure 3A, but less noticeable. If you already know the general nature of an expression or other emotion, you will be able to recognize its weak manifestations in real conditions, when you see the face in motion, and not static.

Figure 3B shows signs of fear, anxiety, fear, or horror. Pay attention to the eyebrows, which are raised and shifted. It is very difficult to accomplish deliberately; less than 10% of our subjects succeeded. In Figure 3B, it can be seen as a characteristic sign of fear. However, it is not easy to control. But the position of the eyebrows is likely to be the same.
Figure 3B shows the position of the eyebrows and eyelids characteristic of anger, and Figure 3G shows for surprise. With other emotions, such characteristic movements of the eyebrows and eyelids are absent. Moreover, the movements of the eyelids and eyebrows in Figure 3B and Figure 3G are not true signs (anyone can imitate them), so they are often depicted on the face, wanting to show fake emotions, or they are removed to hide the true ones. We present them here so that you can get a complete picture of the movements of the eyelids and eyebrows and see more clearly their difference from the expression of the true signs of emotions shown in Figure 3A and Figure 3B.
In general, raising or lowering the eyebrows (Figure 3B and Figure 3G) is the most frequent expression expression. Eyebrow movements are often used during a conversation, wanting to emphasize or reinforce speech intonation. Eyebrow raising usually acts as a question or exclamation mark or symbolizes distrust and skepticism. Darwin called the muscle, bringing the eyebrows together and lowering them down, "the muscle of difficulty." He was right in believing that her movement was accompanied by all sorts of difficulties, ranging from lifting weights to completing complex arithmetic operations. In addition, it is also characteristic of concentration or confusion.
True signs of emotion also give the muscles of the mouth. Squeezing the lips is a convincing sign of anger; the mucous membrane becomes less noticeable, but at the same time a person does not necessarily bite or squeeze lips. Such a movement is reproduced by most people with difficulty, and I noticed that it usually happens to those who are just beginning to get angry, sometimes even before they realize it themselves. Figure 4 shows what it looks like. However, this barely perceptible lip movement is easy to hide with a closed smile.

Othello's mistake or misunderstanding of the fact that even an honest person, when he is suspected of lying, begins to show the same reactions as a real deceiver, can make it difficult for us to interpret the true signs of emotions. An innocent suspect may show certain signs of fear (Figure 3B), fearing a false accusation and fearing that, seeing signs of fear, he will be suspected of lying, he will try to hide his fear - and this expression will remain only in the movement of eyebrows that are difficult to control. In this case, a real liar, who was afraid of exposure, will look the same. In Chapter 5, Basic Errors and Precautions, we will explain how the verifier can resolve this situation. Brokaw's trap - that is, the lack of understanding of individual differences, due to which a real liar may not show signs of deception, whereas an honest person may well display them - is also important to take into account when interpreting true mimic signs of emotions. Some people (especially psychopaths or congenital liars) have an amazing ability to hold back their true feelings. With respect to these people, one cannot trust even the right signs of emotion. Many charismatic leaders possess such extraordinary abilities. It is said that Pope John Paul II very eloquently demonstrated them during his visit to Poland in 1983 [94] .
Just a few years ago, the dockers' strike in Gdansk instilled in us the hope that the communist leaders of Poland would make concessions, and in that country certain political freedom would be achieved. Many feared that the leader of the Solidarity trade union Lech Walesa would go too far, and the USSR would send its troops into Poland, as it had already been in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. For several months, Soviet troops spent on the border with Poland "military exercises." In the end, the liberal leadership resigned, and his place, with the support of Moscow, was taken by the Polish military. General Jaruzelski suspended the activities of trade unions, limited the authority of Lech Walesa, and imposed martial law. And the visit to Poland of the Pope, a Pole by birth, after one and a half years of the military regime, could have serious consequences. What will the Pope do - support Walesa and thereby encourage the strike and provoke a new uprising? Or bless the actions of General Jaruzelski? Journalist William Safir commented on the meeting between the Pope and the general: “... The priest and the political puppet exchanged smiles and handshakes. Dad knew how to achieve the desired effect with his appearance in front of the camera, and always carefully thought out the facial expression during such events. The meaning of the sign submitted to them was obvious: the church and the state came to a secret agreement, and this scene of the highest blessing given to them by the protege of Moscow Jaruzelski was played on Polish television for days on end [95] .
Not every politician is able to so skillfully manage facial expressions. The former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, wrote about his youthful attempts to learn to control facial muscles: “... Politics was my hobby. Those years in Italy rules Mussolini. I saw his photos and read about how he knew how to change his facial expression in front of the public, taking that hard, then aggressive look, so that people, looking at him, read the power and strength in every feature of his face. It fascinated me. I stood at home in front of the mirror and tried to imitate the imperiousness of his face, but my results were disappointing. My facial muscles only got tired, and it was painful - that's all ” [96] .
Although Sadat never learned to control his facial expressions, the success of his conspiracy with Syria and the surprise attack on Israel in 1973 suggests that he nevertheless mastered the art of deception well. There is no contradiction in this - deception does not require compulsory possession of facial expressions, plasticity and voice. This is important only in a personal meeting, when the deceiver and the victim converge face to face, as when Hitler met with Chamberlain. It is said that Sadat never tried to hide his true feelings during personal encounters with opponents. Ezer Weizman, an Israeli defense minister who negotiated with Sadat after the 1973 war, wrote about the Egyptian leader: “He was not a man keeping his feelings to himself, the latter instantly reflected both in his face and in his voice and gestures " [97] .
There is another, less common case, when individual differences prevent us from correctly reading the correct mimic signs of emotions. It is associated with signs of speech, which I mentioned a little higher. Some of these signs of speech are like illustrations that emphasize certain words. Most people either raise or lower their eyebrows (as shown in Figure 3B and Figure 3G). Very few accentuate their speech with the help of eyebrows, which work mainly with feelings of sadness or fear (Figure 3A and Figure 3B). For those who do it all the time, such signs are not true; An example of such a person can serve as an actor and director Woody Allen. He constantly uses in his speech facial expressions characteristic of sadness. If most people, by emphasizing the word, raise or lower their eyebrows, Woody Allen instead tightens the inner edges of the eyebrows upwards. In part, this is what gives his face such a thoughtful or sentimental look. Those who, like Woody Allen, constantly accompany their speech with a mimic of sadness, can easily imitate this emotion. They can not only make a sad face, but if necessary, hide their sadness. They can control the muscles of the face, which are subject to the few. And if a suspect often uses a facial expression in a conversation, the verifier can be sure that the signs based on them cannot be considered true.
The third problem that stands in the way of deciphering true mimic and other signs of deception is the acting technique, which makes it possible to imitate any feelings through mimicry. The actor's technique (also known as the Stanislavsky system) teaches an actor to memorize his own emotional experiences in order to subsequently be credible to reproduce them on stage. At the end of the previous chapter, I mentioned that we use this technique to study the autonomic nervous system. When an actor uses this technique, the expression on his face is not an imitation, but the result of re-living an emotion, that is, as our research suggests, a revival of emotion and on a physiological level. If our subjects could not make facial expressions, as in Figure 3A and Figure 3B, I asked them to use the Stanislavsky technique, explaining to them how you can feel, for example, sadness or fear. And at the same time, they often had in fact that facial expression, which at first they could not imitate. A liar can also use Stanislavsky's technique, and then there will be no indication that his emotions are false, because in a sense they will be genuine. The true signs of a falsehood appear on the liar’s face only when he imitates false feelings; Stanislavsky's system allows us to blur the line between true and false emotions. Moreover, a liar who has convinced himself of the sincerity of his emotions begins to believe in them. Such a liar is no longer recognizable. You can expose only the one who lies and at the same time knows that he is lying.
Until now, I have been talking about three ways of information leakage: microexpressions, blurred expressions and the so-called true signs of emotions resulting from the work of difficult to manage facial muscles. Most people believe that there is also a fourth source - the eyes. The eyes are even called the mirror of the soul, believing that our deepest feelings are visible in them. However, anthropologist Margaret Mead cites the words of a Soviet professor who disagreed with this opinion: “Before the revolution, we also said that the eyes are a window to the soul, but eyes can lie, and how! They can express such undivided loyalty, which in fact is not even in sight. You can express equanimity, and surprise ... " [98] . To resolve the dispute about the veracity of the eyes can only be individually considered all five possible ways of transmitting information with their help. And the deception is issued only three of them.
The first method is the external changes that occur due to the work of the muscles located around the eyes. These muscles change the shape of the eyelids, affect the size of the visible part of the protein and iris, as well as the overall impression of the eyes. Some of these changes can be seen in Figures 3A-3G, but, as we have said, these muscles do not give true signs of deception. These movements can be suppressed or simulated relatively easily, and as a result you will not see anything except a few micro or blurred expressions. The second source of information that eyes give us is the direction of sight. When a person looks away, it indicates the presence of certain feelings: going down means sadness, to the side - disgust, down and to the side - guilt or shame. However, even a deceiver who feels guilty will try not to look away, because he knows that people may notice this and suspect deception. The Soviet professor, quoted by Margaret Mead, noted how easy it is to control the direction of sight. And it is amazing that deceivers who have learned not to look aside, still still mislead people. “Patricia Gardner said yesterday at the trial that in Giovanni Vilotto, the man who had already changed a hundred wives, she was attracted by the“ honest look ”directed directly to the eyes (from the investigation of the case of polygamy).” [99]
The third, fourth and fifth sources of information are more encouraging regarding the signs of deception. Blinking eyes can be intentional, but it is also an involuntary reaction, which becomes more frequent with emotional arousal. Moreover, in this case, the pupils dilate, and this reaction, unlike the previous one, is not amenable to conscious control. Pupil dilation is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which is also responsible for salivation, breathing and sweating, as discussed in Chapter 3, “Detecting hype by words, voice and plastic,” as well as some mimic movements, which will be described below.
Although frequent blinking and dilated pupils indicate emotional arousal, we cannot say what kind of emotion is manifested in this - there may be enthusiasm, anger or fear behind it. Therefore, blinking and dilating pupils become evidence for the verifier only if the fact of heightened emotionality says that we are dealing with a liar, and not with an honest person who is afraid of unfair accusation. The fifth and final source of information is tears; they are also the result of the action of the higher nervous system (ANS). However, tears testify far from all emotions, but only about some of them. They are associated, as a rule, with grief, sadness, relief, and sometimes - with happiness and with unrestrained laughter. They can give out sadness or grief when all other signs of these emotions are suppressed (although, in my opinion, eyebrows are enough for this), because if a person has tears, it becomes quite easy to recognize the hidden feeling; for tears of joy are impossible without laughter or smile. ANS causes other external changes in the face: blush, pallor, perspiration. They, as well as all other facial and bodily changes produced by the ANS, are quite difficult to hide. While it is not exactly established, sweat is like blinking and dilating pupils, a sign of general emotional arousal, or is it characteristic of only one or two specific emotions. Even less is known about blush and pallor.
Blush is considered a sign of embarrassment, as well as feelings of shame and, possibly, guilt. It is said that it is more common in women than in men, although the reasons for this are unknown. A blush may indicate either that the liar is confused and ashamed of his behavior, or that he is trying to hide the fact of his embarrassment. The face also becomes red with anger, and no one can tell how this blush differs from the paint of shame. There are suggestions that both reactions are caused by the expansion of the peripheral blood vessels of the skin of the face, but the purple color of anger may differ from embarrassment in its degree, location and duration. I assume that the face turns red only during uncontrollable rage or when a person is still holding back his anger, but is already on the verge of an explosion. If this is so, then there should be other signs of anger on the face and voice, and therefore it is possible to determine this condition even without taking into account the reddening of the skin. With controlled anger, a person may turn pale, as if from fear. A person may turn pale even when all other signs of fear or anger are suppressed. It is amazing that practically no studies have been conducted analyzing the connection of tears, blush and pallor with the manifestation or containment of various emotions.
We looked at how you can identify signs of hidden emotions in your face. Now let's move on to the signs that indicate falsification of emotions. One case - the fact that the true signs of emotion can deceive us, if a person has the talent of Woody Allen or uses the Stanislavsky technique - we have already considered. But there are three more types of signs by which one can judge the falsity of facial expressions: asymmetry, duration and untimely facial expressions.
With asymmetrical expression, the same emotion appears on some half of the face more strongly than on the other. It should not be confused with a one-sided expression in which only one half of the face moves. Such one-sided expressions, as a rule, are not caused by emotions (with the exception of contempt, followed by a lip puff or a mouth corner tension). They are commonly used in emblems, such as winks or skeptical eyebrow raising. Asymmetric expressions are not as noticeable as one-sided ones, but they are much more common and much more interesting.
Scientists studying the work of the brain, found that because the right hemisphere is responsible for the emotional sphere, one side of the face may be more "emotional." And since the right hemisphere controls most of the muscles on the left side of the face, and the left one - the right one, scientists have suggested that emotions should be more pronounced on the left side. Trying to find contradictions in their experiments, I accidentally discovered how a facial asymmetry can be a sign of deception. If one side of the face bends more than the other, this is a sure sign of fake emotion.
This discovery I owe to the fact that a group of scientists who have declared a stronger manifestation of emotions on the left side of the face, used photos borrowed from me. Therefore, I began to check their results more closely than I would have done otherwise, and I was able to find out much of what they did not notice, on the basis of information that only I knew, since I myself photographed these people.
Harold Zakaim and his colleagues cut the photos in half and made up the faces of the two only left or right half, making mirror copies of the parts of the face and joining them together. All those to whom they showed these photographs recognized that persons consisting of the left half are more emotional than those consisting of the right [100] .
But, as I noticed, there was one exception - people with a happy expression were rated the same. Zakim did not draw any conclusions from this. As the pictures of the faces I made myself, I knew that the pictures of the happy faces were the only ones that captured true emotions. In other cases, I asked the photographed to intentionally move certain muscles of the face. Photos of the same happy faces I did without warning, at the moment when people really had fun.
Comparing these findings with studies of brain damage and observations of facial expressions, which I have already mentioned in this chapter, I came to a completely different interpretation of experiments on facial asymmetry. Studies have shown that various neural circuits are involved in voluntary and involuntary facial expressions, some of which can be broken and others not, depending on which part of the brain is damaged. Since voluntary and involuntary movements are independent of each other, if some of them are asymmetric, others do not necessarily have to be asymmetric. The last step of my reasoning was based on the well-known fact that the cerebral hemispheres govern only intentional mimic movements, while involuntary controls are controlled by lower and primitive parts of the brain. Therefore, the differences between the right and left hemispheres should affect only intentional facial movements.
In accordance with my reasoning, Zakaym discovered just the opposite of what he wanted to prove. The facts do not mean that the emotionality of one capital is stronger than the other, but that asymmetry takes place only if the facial expression is intentional, fake or custom-made.If the facial expression is involuntary, naturally - as it was in the photo of happy faces, - the asymmetry is almost absent and indicates that the facial expression is not fake [101] . We tested my assumptions in a number of experiments, comparing arbitrary and natural facial expressions.
A heated scientific debate ensued around this issue, and a partial agreement was recently reached, although it concerns only positive emotions. Now, most researchers agree with our findings that in the case of fake emotions, the muscles that cause a smile on one side of the face shrink more. When we asked people to smile intentionally or to make fun, asymmetry was observed; and exactly the same asymmetric smile occurred while watching our experimental film. Usually, the expression of emotion appears somewhat stronger on the left side of the face, if the person is right-handed. In natural smiles, we observed asymmetry much less frequently and did not notice any signs of their stronger expression on the left side of the face [102] .
We also found asymmetry in movements associated with negative emotions, when their manifestations were intentional and not spontaneous. Sometimes the expression was stronger on the left side of the face, sometimes on the right side, and in some cases there was no asymmetry. In addition to a smile, lowering the eyebrows, often expressing anger, with the intentional depiction of this emotion also appears on the left side of the face. A nose that is wrinkled from disgust, pursing the lips and stretching the lips to the side, indicating fear, usually, in the case of a deliberate image, is more noticeable on the right side of the face. These data have only recently been published, so it is not known whether they will convince Zakaym supporters, who proposed a different hypothesis to explain facial expression asymmetry [103] .
At first, I thought that all this could hardly help people unmask lies. Asymmetry manifests itself so inconspicuously that it is almost impossible to determine it without the help of accurate measurements. But I was wrong.When we asked people to determine whether a facial expression is symmetrical or not, the percentage of correct answers was significantly higher than the random, even without slow-motion and repeated views [104] .
However, our subjects were easy in the sense that we warned them about what they should pay attention to. We are not sure that people will be just as observant when they have to follow their movements and voice simultaneously, and also respond to the person with whom they are talking. But to figure it out with the help of experiments is very difficult.
If a person has a lot of asymmetrical facial expressions during a conversation, then, most likely, his emotions are insincere, although this does not at all mean that asymmetry is always proof of insincerity. Some expressions, although very few, are asymmetric in their own right. Similarly, the lack of asymmetry does not yet prove the authenticity of emotions; Perhaps you simply did not notice it, and besides, not every intentional, insincere expression is asymmetric, this is true only for most of them. The verifier should never rely on only one sign of deception, there must be several of them. Facial expressions should be accompanied by appropriate intonation, words or gestures. Even if we consider only the face, we should not judge by individual manifestations, if they are not repeated or, even better,not supported by other expressions. We have already spoken about three sources of hidden emotions: mimic movements, eyes and manifestations of the activity of the ANS. Asymmetry is one of the three signs of another kind and is related not to those feelings that they try to hide, but to those that they try to portray without testing them. The second of these three signs is duration (timing).
Duration is the total length of mimic expression in time, from the moment of its appearance (time of appearance) to its complete disappearance (time of disappearance). All three indicators may indicate a lie. Expressions lasting more than ten seconds are undoubtedly, and about five seconds are most likely false. Most sincere expressions are replaced much faster. With the exception of the highest passions, such as ecstasy, violent rage, or deep depression, genuine feelings are mostly short-lived, and their manifestation lasts no more than a few seconds. Reception, even in extreme states, external manifestations of feelings are seldom held longer and are carried out more like a series of consecutive short-term expressions. A long-held facial expression is most likely an emblem or a mockery.
Regarding the time of appearance and the time of disappearance of emotion (the exception leaves the emotion of surprise) we have no ready-made interpretation recipes. As for surprise, then, if it is genuine, its beginning, duration and disappearance take no more than a second. If it lasts longer, it is mocking (a person depicts it), an emblem of surprise (a person depicts someone who was surprised) or just a fake (a person only pretends to be surprised). Surprise is always fleeting and lasts only until the person is not aware of what happened. Although most people know how to imitate astonishment, not many people get it believable. The following excerpt from a news release shows how valuable genuine surprise can be: “Wayne Milton, unfairly accused of armed robbery,was released from custody after the prosecutor noticed his reaction to the conviction. With further investigation, it was possible to find new acts that proved Milton’s innocence. Tom Smith (the prosecutor) said: I was sure that something was wrong here when I saw how surprised Wayne was when the jury accused him of misappropriating $ 200 to the gas company. ”[105] .
As for all other emotional expressions, it is usually enough for them to split a second, and only sometimes some of them can last up to several seconds. Their appearance and disappearance can be both abrupt and gradual - it depends on the surrounding conditions. Suppose a subordinate portrays laughter, for the fourth time listening to the boring anecdote of his annoying boss, devoid of not only memory, but also a sense of humor. How quickly a smile will appear on the face of an unhappy employee depends on how quickly the chef approaches the interchange - it will grow gradually or appear suddenly. How long this smile will fade depends on the nature of the joke, on whether it is decent to savor and discuss it. Everyone can squeeze a smile out of themselves, depicting fun,However, it is likely that the liar will most likely not be able to link her appearance and disappearance to the subtleties of the context.
The lateness of facial expression in relation to speech, intonation and body movements is the third sign of insincerity of emotions. Suppose a person portrays anger and says: "I am fed up with your behavior." If an angry expression comes after words, then most likely the anger is fake, since the true expression would appear either at the very beginning of the phrase, or even a little earlier. An even smaller gap is allowed between facial expressions and body movements.
For example, when the word "full" a man bangs his fist on the table. If an angry expression appears on his face after the blow, then he is most likely lying. Facial expressions that are not synchronized with body movements, as a rule, are signs of deception.

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Часть 1 Mimic signs of deception