tell the truth to the face

Imitating other people's body movements and facial expressions helps us in social relationships. Does the imitation also help to detect a lie, and how does this affect the police investigators?

Dr. Miriam Dishon-Berkowitz Galileo Magazine

Extensive research literature deals with trying to find ways to help distinguish between truth and lies. Previous studies have often emphasized that in order to improve the accuracy in distinguishing between the other person's truth and lies, one must try to detect in the speaker's body language and manner of speech clues that he is lying. Signs that indicate a lie are, for example, speaking in a high pitched voice or from reducing the movements of the arms and legs.

Acquiring the skill of distinguishing between truth and lies is not easy and requires a lot of practice. However, now, in an article published in the journal Psychological Science, Eric Van Dijk (Van Dijk), Mariel Stel (Stel) and Einav Olivier (Olivier) examine an alternative way to be more precise in distinguishing between the truth and the lie. It is about testing our automatic tendency to imitate the movements of others, Even unwittingly, during a social interaction.

The middle: imitation of fake emotions

It is known that people imitate other people's body postures, body movements, accent, choice of words, facial expressions and speech rate. This imitation aids social interaction. For example, it increases mutual affection between people, and "smoothes out" complicated social interactions. Previous studies also revealed that imitation also helps to understand the feelings of others. People who imitate (consciously and unconsciously) others feel feelings similar to those of Ben Shicham, and therefore also manage to understand him better.

However, it is important to remember that the research on the benefits of imitation in understanding the emotions of others was carried out in situations where the speakers spoke the truth, the emotions they displayed were real, their facial expressions were the same as the emotion they felt, so that the children of Shicham imitated facial expressions expressing real emotion. In the current study, Van-Dijk, Stell and Olivier examine the question of whether imitation really helps in understanding the other's feelings and the ability to distinguish between the truth and the lie when the other is lying.

Usually when people lie they experience increased levels of fear and guilt, whether the lie is related to feelings or facts. It is likely that liars will want to mask their feelings of fear and guilt by trying to suppress facial expressions that express guilt and fear and they will try to put on fake facial expressions.

What will happen when the liar's interlocutor imitates his facial expressions? Will the very imitation help to identify the fraud, or will it harm the ability to correctly assess the true feelings of the liar? On the one hand, mimicking fake emotions may help identify the liar's true emotions. Facial expressions of fake emotions differ from those of real emotions in the types of facial muscles that are activated as well as in the intensity of their activation, pull and timing. For example, real smiles, which indicate real joy (called Duchamp smiles) are expressed both in the muscles that pull the lips upwards, and in the muscles around the eyes. These smiles are different from Non-Duchenne smiles where the muscles around the eyes are not activated. Mimicking these and other scam cues may help the mimic spot the scam.

On the other hand, the opposite may be true: imitation of fake emotions will actually reduce the ability to recognize facial expressions of unreal emotions. It is possible that the hidden clues in the facial expressions that indicate deception are so hidden that the interlocutor of the liar will not pick them up and thus will not imitate them. So a fake smile, one that doesn't activate the muscles around the eyes and that doesn't indicate real joy, won't be imitated differently from a real smile, which will make it difficult for the impersonator to distinguish between genuine and genuine emotions in the interlocutor.

Moreover, it is possible that when people imitate fake emotions - not only will they not notice that they are fake, but due to the imitation they will even feel the same emotions that the liars are trying to fake. If they try to tap as a result of the feelings they themselves feel on those of Ben Shicham, then imitation will not be a good strategy for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, to say the least.

Details of the study

92 participants participated in the current study. The participants were randomly divided into pairs and told that the purpose of the study was to examine interaction between people. Before the experiment began, one of the spouses was assigned to the role of observer without their knowledge, and the other was assigned to the role of speaker. Before the start of the interaction, upon coming to the lab, each speaker was asked if they would like to donate money to a charity organization, and was told that they could donate to a charity fund that was placed there. The behavior of each participant was recorded.

Half of the speakers were then asked to lie during the paired interaction in response to whether they had (or had not) just donated to charity. Half of them were asked to tell the truth. In both cases, the participants were asked to think about reasons for their decision. In the process, the group of observers also received instructions for behavior during the interaction with the speakers. One third of the viewers were asked to imitate the movements of the speaker and one third of the viewers were asked not to imitate the movements of the speaker. These two groups were asked to pay attention to the movements of the eyes, eyebrows, lips, head and hands of the speaker and imitate or not imitate them, respectively. Finally, one third of the viewers did not receive any instructions regarding imitation (the control group).

During the interaction, the speaker and the viewer were together in the room, and their behavior was filmed. The speaker lied or spoke the truth according to the instructions he received. The viewer could ask questions and follow the imitation instructions he received. Then the speaker and the observer were brought into different rooms where they filled out questionnaires. The viewers were asked to indicate whether they thought the speaker was telling the truth. After that, they assessed the extent to which they thought Ben Shicham felt various emotions, among them fear or guilt. The speakers filled out a questionnaire in which they reported their feelings.

Why not impersonate crime suspects

The analysis of the results of the study shows that the observers were more accurate in distinguishing between truth tellers and liars, when they received instructions not to imitate the speaker's movements compared to the situation where they received instructions to imitate his movements, or when they did not receive any instructions. It is interesting to note that in the condition where the observers did not receive any instructions in advance, they imitated the speaker's movements spontaneously.

It also turns out that the viewers evaluated the speakers' feelings more precisely when they did not imitate their movements or when they did not receive any instructions regarding the imitation.

The results show that when people receive explicit instructions not to imitate the movements of others, their ability to detect lies increases. Hence, imitating others, which occurs automatically and spontaneously during social interactions, inhibits lie detection, which could perhaps explain the fact that most people do not detect lies easily.

Finally, the research has applied implications. In many police departments around the world, investigators are instructed to imitate the movements of the victims in order to encourage the media. And indeed this method succeeds in creating communication with victims and dubbing them. In some of the places, the investigators are also instructed to imitate the suspects of the crime, this is to increase the trust of the interrogated in the investigator and thus increase the confession rates. However, there is no research evidence that imitation does increase trust in the investigator among suspects and thus increases confession rates. The results of the current study indicate the opposite: the researchers will be more accurate in their assessments if they do not use these imitation techniques.

Moreover, previous studies have indicated that researchers spontaneously imitate their subjects and thus unwittingly they themselves are being studied. This spontaneous imitation of a suspect may increase the investigator's degree of trust in the suspect, which may affect the entire course of the investigation. Hence the recommendation for researchers and interviewers who are interested in reliable information about the researched is not to imitate them.

Dr. Miriam Dishon-Berkowitz is a psychologist and organizational and marketing consultant.

From: Galileo Magazine