{"id":1492,"date":"2014-09-25T10:46:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T10:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2021-07-26T09:58:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T09:58:20","slug":"im-fine-how-you-can-sense-when-someone-is-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/im-fine-how-you-can-sense-when-someone-is-lying\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I&#8217;m Fine&#8221; &#8211; How you can sense when someone is lying"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1441\" style=\"width: 286px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1441\" class=\"wp-image-1441 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper-276x300.jpg\" alt=\"whisper\" width=\"276\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper-276x300.jpg 276w, https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper.jpg 332w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 276px) 100vw, 276px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 276px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 276\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1441\" class=\"wp-image-1441 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper-276x300.jpg\" alt=\"whisper\" width=\"276\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper-276x300.jpg 276w, https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whisper.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 276px) 100vw, 276px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1441\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">image: iStock photo<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Have you ever spent time with someone who said they were fine, when they tell you that everyone was OK in their life, but after you left you had a nagging feeling that everything really was <em>not<\/em> fine?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve felt that on several occasions, usually with a friend or family member, and I\u2019m sure they have felt the same in my presence too when I\u2019ve tried to pretend that I was better than I really was.<\/p>\n<p>We should rely on our senses more often. Part of the intuition equation is how the brain \u2018reads\u2019 emotion from facial expressions. It\u2019s quite automatic, and relies on the mirror neuron system (MNS).<\/p>\n<p>When you\u2019re around someone who is happy, your brain copies, or mirrors, the movements of their smile muscles. Similarly, when you\u2019re with someone who is sad, your brain mirrors the movements of the muscles that convey sadness. But your brain doesn\u2019t stop there. It also replicates the movements of their smile or sadness muscles in you (why you smile around happy people, for instance) as well as the emotion that goes along with it (why you feel happy around happy people). It\u2019s called \u2018Emotional Contagion\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>When a friend says, \u201cI\u2019m fine\u201d and she or he is really not, your brain picks up the tiny movements of the muscles that convey stress and sadness, ultimately causing you little, momentary, flashes of stress or sadness. So when they keep on saying everything is great, it results in you just getting a feeling that something isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n<p>One of my favourite studies in this area was done in 1992. Researchers at the University of Hawaii asked volunteers to watch videotapes supposedly of Polish factory workers being interviewed at high school reunions. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elainehatfield.com\/84.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">View a PDF of the paper here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Ensuring that none of the volunteers could speak Polish, they dubbed the voice and played an audio of the supposed translation, spoken by an actress who simulated a computer-like voice to ensure that she wasn\u2019t conveying any emotional information; you know, like when you\u2019re happy and your voice goes up. Of course, it wasn\u2019t the real translation they played.<\/p>\n<p>The volunteers were shown four clips:<\/p>\n<p>a) The Happy-Happy clip. This is where the voiceover fake \u2018translation\u2019 had the worker describing a happy event and this was true; she was describing a happy event.<\/p>\n<p>b) The Happy-Sad clip. This is where the voiceover fake translation was describing a happy event, but the worker was actually describing a sad event.<\/p>\n<p>c) The Sad-Happy clip, where the voiceover was saying the worker was sad, but she was actually happy, describing a happy event.<\/p>\n<p>d) The Sad-Sad clip, where the voiceover was saying \u2018sad\u2019 and she was, indeed, describing a sad event.<\/p>\n<p>If there was no emotional contagion and we just took what people said at face value, we would just rate people\u2019s emotional state according to what they tell us. But I think you know what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n<p>The volunteers were asked to rate the emotional state of the factory worker in each clip on a simple scale. If there was no emotional contagion, the volunteers would give the same scores in videos (a) and (b), because the voiceover was of the worker describing a happy event. But, in actual fact, they rated her happiness much lower in clip (b), because the facial expressions betrayed how she was really feeling.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, through emotional contagion, their own emotional state also moved in the direction of sadness when they watched clip (b), according to measurements taken before and after. In other words, despite what the voiceover was saying, the people watching the clip actually \u2018caught\u2019 her real emotion.<\/p>\n<p>The same kind of thing was found looking at clips (c) and (d). The voiceovers described sad events, yet in (c) the worker was really describing a happy event. Indeed, the volunteers rated her happiness higher than they did for video clip (d), and their own emotional state was happier than it was after watching video clip (d).<\/p>\n<p>So, in other words, the study suggests\u00a0that if you watch someone say they\u2019re happy but really they\u2019re not. Their facial expressions will give away how they really feel. Even though they try to make their faces appear happy, muscles \u2018flash\u2019 with emotion faster than the conscious mind can usually override them.<\/p>\n<p>Usually, the flashes last no more than a few\u00a0one thousandths of a second. But that is more than enough for the rather sophisticated mirror neurons in your brain that literally work &#8216;faster than the eye can tell&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>So, I guess, my advice would be to trust your intuition more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reference:<\/strong> C. K. Hsee, E. Hatfield, and C. Chemtob, \u2018Assessment of the emotional states of others: conscious judgments versus emotional contagion\u2019, <em>Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology<\/em>, 1992, 11, 119-128<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever spent time with someone who said they were fine, when they tell you that everyone was OK in their life, but after you left you had a nagging feeling that everything really was not fine? I\u2019ve felt that on several occasions, usually with a friend or family member, and I\u2019m sure they&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[57,45,46,19,55,261,104],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;I&#039;m Fine&quot; - How you can sense when someone is lying - David R Hamilton PHD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Have you ever spent time with someone who said they were fine, when they tell you that everyone was OK in their life, but after you left you had a nagging\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/im-fine-how-you-can-sense-when-someone-is-lying\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;I&#039;m Fine&quot; 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