Quotes from Paul Ekman

By calling something a secret, we state our right not to reveal, to maintain privacy.

Webster's Dictionary is correct that the polygraph is sometimes called the lie detector, but that is misleading. The polygraph doesn't detect lies per se. It would be a lot simpler if there were some direct sign unique to lying that is never a sign of anything else.

The husband who is having his fourteenth affair won't worry much about getting caught. He is practiced in deceit. He knows what to anticipate and how to cover it.

In some instances, you may care so much about the person who has hurt you, or be so unable to be angry with him (or with anyone), that you rationalize his hurtful acts by finding some basis in your own actions for his hurtful behavior; you then feel guilty rather than angry. Put in other terms, you become angry with yourself rather than with the one who hurt you.

No important relationship survives if trust is totally lost.

Emotions change how we see the world and how we interpret the actions of others. We do not seek to challenge why we are feeling a particular emotion; instead, we seek to confirm it.

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.

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.

A broken promise is not a lie.

People also smile when they are miserable.

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.

Remember that the polygraph test is not a lie detector. It only detects emotional arousal.

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.

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.

MOST LIES succeed because no one goes through the work to figure out how to catch them.

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.

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.

People do misinterpret events, especially the meaning of other people's actions and the motives that lead people to act one way or another.

Not everyone is able to lie or is willing to do so.

Suspicious people should be terrible lie catchers, prone to disbelieving-the-truth

can you tell when a politician is lying? When he moves his lips!

Lying is such a central characteristic of life that better understanding of it is relevant to almost all human affairs.

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.

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.