A Way of Nonverbal Communication That is Universal

One of my favorite American TV series is called Lie to Me. Based on Dr. Paul Ekman’s research, it shows us a brilliant way of helping us to distinguish lies from truth.

As we know, nonverbal cross-culture communication may always bring a lot of misunderstanding. But according to Dr Paul Ekman, the microexpressions of seven basic emotions are universal.

Microexpression is facial expression that normally lasts less than 1/15 seconds. By observing people’s microexpression and comparing it to the basic pattern, we can get people’s hidden true feeling.

The seven basic emotions are Sad, Anger, Surprise, Fear, Disgust, Contempt, and Happy. Apparently, happy and contempt are the most distinguishable emotions on the face. When we are happy, our both lip corners rise with the corners of the eye wrinkling while showing contempt, there is only one corner of the lip is raised. Other emotions like Anger, Fear, Surprise, Sad, and Disgust have its own unique features, but they are often confused with each other. For example, I often confuse surprise and fear, anger and sadness. Now, let me introduce the rest of the emotions to you. Feeling sad, our both eye brows would pull together and go up while upper eye lids drop. Besides there is emptiness in the eyes and lip corners are slightly pulled down. In terms of fear, our eye brows are raised and pulled together, with raised upper eyelids and tensed lower eyelids, and our lip slightly stretch horizontally at the same time. When we are surprised, our eyebrows are raised; eyes are widened while month is open. Feeling disgust, our nose will wrinkle while upper lip is raised. When it comes to anger, our eyebrows go down and together with eye glaring and lips narrowing.

On top of the seven basic expression, there are also some basic reactions that can give us some cues. For example, when we are truly surprised, the expression would never last more than one seconds or it is just faked. So even if someone’s micrioexpression match with the basic pattern, he/she may still be lying.

So, scientifically, Dr Paul Ekman emphasizes the point that human can not distinguish emotions 100% accurate most of the time. To make a judgment you need more than microexpression. So unless you get full marks in Dr Ekman’s test, my advice is never haste to make a judgment. What’s more the question we should ask is not simply whether people are lying, it is why they are lying.