Thursday, April 9, 2009

Where "Yes" means "No"


The following ensued from a comment on the Fox site:


Dr. Ekman has his ideas and again had his disagreements with Dr. Tomkins and Dr. Nathanson. This is how science progresses, discussion. I happen to strongly agree with the latter two. Dr. Ekman is getting paid by Fox to do his thing. He does his "Blog" based on his lifelong research and I would expect nothing other.


However, I wish to be somewhat of a foil and point out some "food for thought" for those interested.


We feel that for certain "emotion" is not the whole story. As we see the way we act is also very important. A look, a twist of the hand, a twitch, tells us something. In poker, we call these "tells."


In "Affect Psychology" we call them "Scripts." But "Script" has a very ample definition. But for this short discussion, I will limit it to the kind of actions we see in the program. We say that we "feel" and then we "do" and that these are very personal behaviors that we have learned from a very early age.


My main point today is that there is no IN BORN set of "tells" for lying. Basic to Ekman's research there seems to be a set of movements that are very suggestive of lying taken in context. I hope in the program they will always emphasize the complexity of this. The danger of the program is that it will inadvertently teach a bunch of people to be incompetent "lie detectors." This is by no means easy stuff.


An example.


At the end of the show or at least Ekman's blog there is the example of Dr. L. getting beat out for a parking place. He "detects" lying by the fact the guy first shakes his head "yes" and then "no." But we know that in Bulgaria the "script" is to shake your head "no" to mean "yes" according to our custom and "yes" to mean "no." So, again, none of this is innate. It is learned and who is to say that everyone learns to lie the same way, well, we don't. Research can only be suggestive of a

cultural average.


See www. 

straightdope.com/columns/read/619/why-do-we-nod-our-heads-for-yes-and-shake-them-for-no


On this theme.


References




No comments:

Post a Comment