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Youtube video of body language and deception

Gisela, a sixth grader at Mesa Grande Elementary School, decided for her science project to see whether she could tell if a person was lying based on their facial expressions. Here is the result: Part 1,Part 2 (Youtube videos).

As part of the experiment she asked people questions and observed their expressions to see if they were lying. The six questions she asked were:
Please describe the American flag.
Please describe an elephant.
Please describe a giraffe.
Please describe what you are wearing right now.
Please describe what type of weather we are having right now.
Please describe what your hands look like.

As part of the experiment Gisela and her brother Victor are filmed lying and telling the truth.

How to detect lies through body language



Here is a homework assignment for my Deception Detection class: read a novel by Aaron Elkins then use your class workbook and notes to figure out whether his forensic anthropologist protagonist could have figured out the clues he did from the evidence presented.

Real smiles vs. fake smiles

I am giving a deception detection workshop tonight. One of the techniques I will discuss is how to tell a real smile from a fake smile. Different parts of the brain are responsible for real and fake smiles. The unconscious part of the brain is responsible for a real smile, while the conscious part of the brain creates a fake smile.As well as making the mouth muscles move, the muscles that raise the cheeks in a smile also contract, making the eyes crease up. There are few key features which distinguish a real smile from a fake one. In a genuine smile the fold in the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and eyelid moves downwards and the corners of the eyebrows dip slightly. Real smiles are all about the eyes. I did research on smiling as the national spokes person for The Natural Dentist. I will be blogging about this more tomorrow in the meantime here’s a great link from the BBC which provides a test to determine if you can determine a genuine smile from a fake one through recognizing micro expressions: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles

Being an Attractive Female Helps Your Speaking

In studies of female speakers, unattractiveness in the speaker caused a more negative reception of her views. Even when the unattractive speaker gave the more well reasoned, well constructed speech, the participants were more persuaded by the attractive female's poorly reasoned and ill-constructed speech.

College Program

This week I spoke at a convention in Phoenix, Arizona for the career counselors of the Top MBA programs in the country. The audience of more than 400 professionals was wonderful! As I was preparing I was concerned that I would be preaching to the choir about body language as MBA career counselors are constantly coaching their MBA students on the topic. But thankfully the program was a huge hit and they came up afterward and shared their surprise about so much that they'd learned: how important the handshake is and the importance of gender differences in body language and much more. You can learn more about my college programs on the College Programs portion of my website.