People often think about one thing and say another. Despite everything, they are also doing quite different things from what they thought and spoke. An emotional state may absolutely not correspond to thoughts, speech, or deeds. These are complex creatures - these people.
Dr. Cal Lightman has been working with such hard material throughout the entire series, “Lie to Me”. He analyzes crime while working with his team The Lightman Group. This is a group of people studying the basic nuances of reading faces, analyzing body language. They help the protagonist in solving crimes.
What formed the basis of the series
The basis of the American series Lie To Me, or “Lie to Me,” was based on material from the book of Paul Ekman, who was engaged in psychological practice throughout his life. He studied the microexpressions of people in different professions, beliefs, beliefs, lifestyles. Working in a psychiatric hospital in San Francisco, a young psychologist interviewed patients, filming this on tape. After that, he repeatedly looked through many kilometers of footage, highlighting the gestures that patients showed, reinforcing their emotions. His confidence that, using all the material he had accumulated, he could say a hundred percent, whether a person was lying or telling the truth, practically nullified the incident that had occurred in a psychiatric hospital.
The film has an archived video with a real recording of patient Ekman. Her microexpressions were discovered by a psychiatrist quite by accident when viewing material using a one-second freeze frame, and became the basis of the science of recognition of lies. That is, in a split second on a person's face in the form of emotion, the truth flickers, immediately covered by a lie. In the series, Cal Lightman appeared as a person recognizing lies and truth in people, reading micro expressions on their faces and paying attention to gestures. This was endowed by Paul Ekman and the name came up with Lightman, which in translation from English sounds like a bright person.
Cal Lightman - the protagonist of the series
A case in a psychiatric hospital is in the outline of the series. According to the plot of Cal Lightman, the death of his mother led to the study of the theory of lies. She committed suicide. He looks through the recording of her conversation with a psychologist and, slowing down the film, sees on her face the very microexpression of flour that was discovered by Paul Ekman, the author of the book that became the basis of the series.
Many who have watched this series wonder, is it really possible to read people like a book like Cal Lightman? The plot of the film suggests this idea, where it is clear that there is no difficulty in defining a lie. The liar himself shows signs that you just need to see, in which Cal Lightman is simply a master.
He believes that everyone lies. Minutes of communication with a person give him material to draw such a conclusion. He believes that he reveals the reliability of facts by analyzing human behavior. In principle, if one is guided only by evaluating a person’s behavior by his gestures, the correct conclusions cannot be drawn. A person has indicative reflexes that arise either involuntarily, as before an exam, or in fact, his nose has been combed out, and this does not mean that now a person will lie.
Lie Recognition Technique
Those who carefully watched all the Theory of Lies episodes and tried to analyze how lies are recognized, most likely came to the conclusion that the heroes of the series Ria Torres and Cal Lightman do not recognize lies, they are interested in human emotions. Lightman asks a question and on the person’s face sees the answer, even if he is silent. The filmmakers endowed this couple with high emotional intelligence, which implies the ability to understand both their own feelings and understand the mood of people. In the film, they cope with their task by analyzing facial expressions, understanding what a person is feeling at the moment: they recognize a lie, save the innocent from prison, criminals go to jail.
The whole method by which Cal Lightman could “figure out” the interlocutor was to study the five information channels coming from the interlocutor. These include the face, non-verbal signals produced by the body, voice, speech style and communication itself. After analyzing this, they conclude whether a person is lying or not. Even assuming that a person might somehow try to trick the interviewer through training, he will not succeed. Lying is a complicated thing. It needs to be tracked.
Methods other than psychodiagnostics ...
Not everything in the series is built on the extraction of facts and confessions only on visual psychodiagnostics. The methods that Lightman and his assistants sometimes apply do not apply to the method of the theory of lies. These are threats, psychological pressure and hacks that help to find the truth in another way. We can say that there is an interweaving of ways to extract the information necessary for the investigation.
What makes you lie
The series shows Lightman's personal life. Mother committed suicide, divorced wife, there is a relationship, but they are not developing. It is very difficult to be happy when you feel a lie at every step. Moreover, a lie, always justified. Some believe that telling the truth is simply pointless. Everyone wears masks that are difficult to get rid of. Therefore, people's relations are built on deception. A smile primarily disguises a person; it hides negative emotions: anger, fear. Smiling, it is easier to deceive the interlocutor.
Quotes from the series
“No one can only tell the truth - this is subjective; we evaluate all points of view of personal experience - that’s the truth, ”says Cal Lightman. Quotes and aphorisms of the protagonist, after the release of the series on television screens, sometimes replete with the communication of people. Very accurately and succinctly, Lightman in the series gives answers, sharpens, puts forward theories. Well, for example, quotes from Cal Lightman: "This is the nature of man - if there is a button, you must press" or "Lack of emotions is as important as their presence."
All people are emotional by nature, and, as the protagonist of the film says, everyone lies. It all depends on the color of the glasses on the nose of the truth seeker.