Lie to Me: Reality vs. Hollywood

The Truth Behind Lie to Me

Science of Lie to Me

As featured on the Lie to Me website (www.lietome.com) June 6, 2017 The beginning It was the very successful producer Brian Grazer’s idea, not mine. Googling him, I learned that Brian had produced A Beautiful Mind, and many other blockbusters. One of his assistants called, asking for a meeting to discuss creating a TV series based on my research. Would …

“Nonverbal Messages: Cracking the Code”

Dr. Ekman's scientific autobiography now available

Excerpt taken from Introduction (pp. ix – xiv) November 1, 2016 “What motivated me to spend fifty years investigating facial expressions, gestures, emotion and lies? Why these topics, which had been abandoned as fruitless by the academic establishment?… In much of my life I have been a bit oppositional, some would say rebellious, so I am not surprised that I …

Trusting Can Be Dangerous

Evaluating truthfulness

December 8, 2015 Misjudging a Peron I have spent a lot of time in the last thirty years advising police, both regional and national, on how to evaluate truthfulness. You can see some of the training tools we used here. Police make mistakes, not just with black people, although implicit or explicit racism causes a higher rate of mistaken judgments …

Ineffectively Testing the Effectiveness of TSA

The SPOT program

November 11, 2015 Trouble with ineffective testing TSA personnel in the SPOT (Screening Passengers with Observational Techniques) program have come under repeated, unjustified criticism. Their failure to catch people pretending to be bad guys is totally irrelevant to whether they can, or will, be able to catch the real bad guys. To test that, we have to get back to …

5 Signs of Lying That Aren’t as Foolproof as You’d Think

Think you can spot a liar? Think again.

November 2, 2015 As seen on Yahoo Health by Temma Ehrenfeld Too bad every liar isn’t Pinocchio, with a tell-all nose. But do our faces give lying away in more subtle ways? The answer is often yes — though the science of exactly how is surprisingly complex. For many people, lying is stressful — so you might think that that …

Dr. Paul Ekman on Torture

Choosing humane interrogation techniques

August 17, 2015 As seen in the Huffington Post I was approached soon after 9/11 by a senior psychologist, who held office in APA, to participate in the government’s newly developing interrogation program. I declined, although I had already developed techniques for establishing better emotional connections with interviewees, through my work on nonverbal behavior, facial expressions and gestures. And I …

Catching Liars

What you need to know

August 2014 Science Fiction From a distance of twenty feet, without your knowledge or consent, the surveillance cameras, microphones and physiological sensors apply computer algorithms to process your gait, facial expression, gestures, voice, posture, heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature — determining within seconds if you are lying or telling the truth. This is “Diogenes,” a machine capable of …

#AskEkman: How do I become a facial expression expert?

Learn from the expert

July 2014 The most popular questions we receive at the Paul Ekman Group are questions relating to which courses and universities are best equipped to promote a career in becoming an expert in facial expressions and emotion. The answer to this question depends on what level of education you are seeking, and what topic interests you. To help you on …

Spotting Poker Bluffs

Can you tell when someone is bluffing?

May 2014 The game has changed now that TV broadcasts people playing poker In the old days not a word was spoken, and that tradition continues today in some venues. But lies had to be spotted; bluffs called. I learned about this from winners of the International Poker Tournament held each year in Las Vegas. It costs $15,000 to enter …

Welcome to our new Website!

Improved products and new ways to connect

April 2014 Paul Ekman Group Website I’m Paul Ekman. Welcome to the first post of my blog on our new website!  This past year has been exciting as we’ve improved our training products and created new ways for you to connect with us. Our training tools have been expanded and refined, and our most popular modules (Micro Expressions and Subtle Expressions) …