Universal Emotions

Today, anyone can recognize the emotions of the people around them. Easily recognizable emotions are happy, surprised, angry, or sad. At one point in time, emotions were thought to be different in varying cultures. Paul Ekman, a graduate of the University of Chicago and New York University discovered that facial expression of emotions was universal throughout all cultures. This was an important finding because this proved that emotions were not determined by culture. Ekman went on to study a tribe of people from Papua New Guinea. He studied their facial expressions and made cross-cultural connections to facial expressions of emotions in other cultures. From this, he was able to make the connection that facially expressed emotion is universal throughout all cultures.

Next, Ekman began to study "micro-expressions." Micro-expressions are very brief, involuntary facial expressions of emotion that occur during moments of emotion felt. For instance, if i saw something funny on TV, my eyes might show very slight signs of happiness or the eyebrows might move very briefly in accordance to a happy expression. Ekman started a study with another psychologist called the "Wizards Project." This project evaluated the abilities of over 20,000 people and their abilities to read micro expressions. Microexpressions can be used to detect lies in the individual being surveyed and questioned. The 20,000 people that were evaluated and tested of their abilities to detect lies included attorneys, psychologists, law enforcement officers, secret service officials, and so on. Only 50 of the 20,000 people tested had the unique ability to detect lies. These people have the ability to hone in on emotional, expressional, and behavioral inconsistencies. These inconsistencies last no more than a split second. This is a rare ability to have. These people will also use tone of voice and other keys to the deception of the truth from the individual being watched. Below is a good video I found that shows what exactly these micro expression readers look for when trying to detect lies. They look for wrinkles, movement of the mouth, eyebrows, eye direction, anything that cues a lie.
Paul Ekman has also written a system to detect lies using facial expressions. It is allied FACS or Facial Action Coding System. This takes into effect the different movements of facial muscles, the eyes, body movement, and any other factors in order to detect if a person is lying or not.