Are micro expressions real?

Question

On this show “lie to me”, the whole premise is that people show micro expressions that show how a person really feels (as opposed to controlled expressions). Is there any truth to that, or is it made up? How much control do we have over our expressions?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I reccomend you to read Paul ekam books on the subject, If I don’t recall wrong Lie to me is based on his researches on Micro expressions.

And yes we actually have involuntary expression that manifest our emotions, but you need to train yourself to spot them in others and that’s actually an hard thing to do cause their duration is very short

I don’t have a scientific explanation and I can’t explain more to you, cause I don’t have a deep knowledge of the subject

Answer 2

Poker players have been doing this for years to try to get an idea of how good the hands of the other people are. Thus we have the “poker face,” hiding all indications of emotion, and the “tell,” the failure of someone to hide the emotion.

So take what poker players have been doing for a long time and turn it into a science. Classify all the tells by testing the expression responses of a large group of people. This is what scientist Paul Ekman did, and the basis for the show. In the show, Lightman is Eckman.

Answer 3

Generally speaking, you are not consciously thinking about blinking, the tension of your jaw, how you point your toes, etc; it is a lot of information to actively keep track of, especially during an interaction. Personally, I would imagine that there are some general universal expressions (like the non-micro expression of a smile), and other more individual or cultural ones (like avoiding eye-contact). However, I do not believe we have found a way to reliably measure these cues with the naked eye.

Now, I haven’t read Ekman’s works (and had difficulty finding them), but I would be somewhat skeptical of his findings. His works were written during a time when the sciences had less oversight (yes, even in the 2000s) and there seems to have been difficulty in replicating them.

So in a nutshell, reading micro-expressions unaided could *possibly* be a thing, but there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to support it as of now.