Once again this book is a bit of a slog because the author's writing is pedantic and doesn't say a lot. I'm sure he means well and I'm glad he takes the time to think through the implications of his findings (and opinions), but I have a hard time reading what I've already easily inferred from the text, and many of the ideas are repeated.
Unlike Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, this book is more philosophy than psychology. When Ekman wrote this, there wasn't a lot of scientific support for facial expressions, tone of voice, or a lie detector to detect deception. This means his main point is, 'there isn't a sure way to detect deception from any of these methods', and writing a whole book about how each method isn't foolproof can be a bit wearing. In addition, the few positive results he gets are contained in the advice in Spy the Lie: Three Former CIA Officers Reveal Their Secrets to Uncloaking Deception. My advice: read that book instead.
The last two or three chapters are actually updates to the book, and they do add valuable information (and increase my rating from 2 to 3). The updates are significant enough that the book probably needs to be rewritten, and it could be made much shorter by a good editor while they're at it.
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Paul Ekman is without a doubt one of the top experts in the world on facial expressions in humans. His research is careful, painstaking, and intelligently done. He has honestly subtitled this book 'Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace,Politics, and Marriage.' It is not his fault that the book has been. PDF THERE IS A BODY of conventional wisdom that claims that you can tell who is lying and who is not. Lies, Liars, and Lie Detection. Article (PDF Available). Paul Ekman is a highly. Paul Ekman: Telling lies. Download with Google Download with Facebook or download with email. Paul Ekman: Telling lies.
Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
by 2,425 ratings, 3.89 average rating, 124 reviews
Telling Lies Quotes Showing 1-30 of 53
“No important relationship survives if trust is totally lost.”
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Telling Lies Paul Ekman Pdf
“Smiles are probably the most underrated facial expressions, much more complicated than most people realize. There are dozens of smiles, each differing in appearance and in the message expressed.”
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“the unhappy person is expected to conceal negative feelings, putting on a polite smile to accompany the “Just fine, thank you, and how are you?” reply to the “How are you today?” The true feelings will probably go undetected, not because the smile is such a good mask but because in polite exchanges people rarely care how the other person actually feels.”
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“MOST LIES succeed because no one goes through the work to figure out how to catch them.”
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“This distinction between believing-a-lie and disbelieving-the-truth is important because it forces attention to the twin dangers for the lie catcher. There is no way to avoid completely both mistakes; the choice only is between which one to risk more. The lie catcher must evaluate when it is preferable to risk being misled, and when it would be better to risk making a false accusation.”
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“Believing-a-lie mistakes occur because certain people just don’t make mistakes when they lie. These are not just psychopaths but also natural liars, people who are using the Stanislavski technique, and those who by other means succeed in coming to believe their own lies. The lie catcher must remember that the absence of a sign of deceit is not evidence of truth.”
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“Remember that the polygraph test is not a lie detector. It only detects emotional arousal.”
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“The failure to remember is not a lie, although liars will often try to excuse their lies, once discovered, by claiming a memory failure. It is not uncommon to forget actions that one regrets, but if the forgetting truly has occurred, we should not consider that a lie. for there was no choice involved. Often it will not be possible to determine whether a memory failure has occurred or whether its invocation is itself a lie.”
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“People do misinterpret events, especially the meaning of other people’s actions and the motives that lead people to act one way or another.”
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“It is easy to conceal an emotion no longer felt, much harder to conceal an emotion felt at the moment, especially if the feeling is strong. Terror is harder to conceal than worry, just as rage is harder to conceal than annoyance. The stronger the emotion, the more likely it is that some sign of it will leak despite the liar's best attempt to conceal it.”
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“Not everyone is able to lie or is willing to do so.”
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“Suspicious people should be terrible lie catchers, prone to disbelieving-the-truth”
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“can you tell when a politician is lying? When he moves his lips!”
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Telling Lies Paul Ekman Pdf Files
“Consider having as a friend, co-worker, or lover a person who in terms of emotional control and disguise was like a three-month-old infant, yet in all other respects—intelligence, skills, and so on—was fully able as any adult. It is a painful prospect.”
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“In modern industrial societies the situation is nearly the reverse. The opportunities for lying are plentiful; privacy is easy to achieve, there are many closed doors. When caught, the social consequences need not be disastrous, for one can change jobs, change spouses, change villages. A damaged reputation need not follow you. By this reasoning we live now in circumstances that encourage rather than discourage lying; evidence and activity are more easily concealed, and the need to rely upon demeanor to make our judgments is greater. And we have not been prepared by our evolutionary history to be very sensitive to the behavioral clues relevant to lying.”
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Telling Lies Paul Ekman Free Pdf
“3. When the behavior changes occur in relation to a specific topic or question, that tells the lie catcher this could be a hot area to explore.”
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“Lying is such a central characteristic of life that better understanding of it is relevant to almost all human affairs.”
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“No discussion of facial signs of deceit would be complete without considering one of the most frequent of all the facial expressions—smiles. They are unique among the facial expressions. It takes but one muscle to show enjoyment, while most of the other emotions require the action of three to five muscles.”
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“It is hard not to reciprocate a smile; people do so even if the smile they reciprocate is one shown in a photograph. People enjoy looking at most smiles, a fact well known to advertisers.”
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“Misinterpreting is not the only route by which someone may believe his or her false account is true.”
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“Public opinion polls time and again show that honesty is among the top five characteristics people want in a leader, friend, or lover.”
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“Most often lies fail because some sign of an emotion being concealed leaks. The stronger the emotions involved in the lie, and the greater the number of different emotions, the more likely it is that the lie will be betrayed by some form of behavioral leakage.”
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“when they were, in fact, lying. They were taken in by the false expressions and ignored the expressions that leaked the true feelings. When people lie, their most evident, easy-to-see expressions, which people pay most attention to, are often the false ones. The subtle signs”
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“People feel less guilty about lying to those they think are wrongdoers. A philanderer whose marital partner is cold and unwilling in bed might not feel guilty in lying about an affair.”
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“Sometimes one is better off misled. The host may be better off thinking the guest enjoyed himself; the wife happier believing that she can tell a joke well. The liar’s false message may not only be more palatable, it may also be more useful than the truth. The carpenter’s false claim “I’m fine” to his boss’s “How are you today?” may provide information more relevant than would his true reply, “I am still feel terrible from the fight I had at home last night.” His lie truthfully tells his intention to perform his job despite personal upset. There is, of course, a cost for being misled even in these benevolent instances.”
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“The behavioral clues in face, body, voice, and manner of speaking are not signs of lying per se. They may be signs of emotions that don’t fit with what is being said. Or they may be signs that the suspect is thinking about what he is saying before he says it. They are flags marking areas which need to be explored.”
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“People who often falsely accuse, who repeatedly disbelieve the truthful, establish a relationship that makes fear signs ambiguous, likely whether their suspect is truthful or lying.”
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“There has never been a Supreme Court ruling on the admissibility of polygraph evidence in federal court.”
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