Lie to me

I tend to watch TV in the evenings in here while I’m connected to the baby and contraction monitors. I find it’s easier to keep still and get my hour-long sentence over with. Last night I stumbled upon the show “Lie to Me.” I’d never heard of it before, and it was mediocre at best, but the premise of the show caught my interest, and has got me thinking…

The basis of the series is that this guy, Dr. something-or-other, is an expert in detecting lies. He’s a regular human lie detector, although he doesn’t use blood pressure or heart rate to uncover people’s lies; instead he uses facial expression, and tone of voice, and body gestures to sniff the liars out.

And because, like seemingly all popular nighttime dramatic series, there is a murder victim and therefore a crime to be solved, he often has to first find the person who is lying. Last night he found liars at both a funeral and in a high school journalism class by watching everyone closely for some revealing expression or movement, often after he’d asked some leading question.

I found it to be quite revealing. People do act in certain ways when they are lying, and also when they’re feeling certain types of emotions. We know this inherently and react to others’ social clues all the time, albeit unconsciously.

But wouldn’t it be cool to be an expert? To always know when someone was feeding you a line of crap by the raise of an eyebrow or droop of their lip? Just think how much more fun buying a car, or hiring a plumber, or meeting your best friend’s new boyfriend, or shopping with a girlfriend would be. This skill would be especially handy while raising adolescents, I think, although who knows, maybe ignorance is bliss.....