Undecided

There’s a few problems with this video, some of which are located in the comments of the Youtube recording. But these are superficial in nature. Pamela claims that certain facial expressions cannot be voluntarily replicated, and that you can’t find certain people, etc. Put that aside for a moment…

The “science of liespotting” is interesting and widely used: police, espionage, politics, news reporters, etc.

On a personal level, I find the whole process fascinating. A lot of the tells for lying are natural behaviors for me… (stoicism, excessive staring, formal speech, to name a few.) When I saw this, it was on TV (Science HD) and it was after watching another TED talk about how synesthesia works (how one section of the brain can be overly connected to another, causing the senses to synthesize unexpected results. e.g., people who connect colors to numbers or sounds). Likewise, if you have a disconnect in the brain, you can’t make certain metaphorical connections like other people.

I’ve studied people’s behaviors over the years in an effort to display more natural behavior. I don’t suffer from Asperger’s, or any form of autism disorder, but I often feel like I do… I don’t always understand “normal reactions.” At least, not without substantial thinking about it post-event. I’ve built up a wealth of interpretations over the years, a working crib-sheet if you will, if X then Y. I’ve practiced behavior to make myself fit in socially, when I might otherwise not.

The first and most important lesson I had to teach myself was to smile, and how to smile naturally and believably. Which brings me back to the video above: Pamela claims that it’s impossible to consciously contract the muscles that cause crows feet (i.e., smile lines), but I’ve learned how. I had to in order to fit in socially. (My original smile was really more of lifting of the muscles between the corners of my mouth and my ears, but no other muscles. I believe my original reason for not developing a “natural smile” was because I was teased as a young boy for having irregularly shaped teeth, and because my mother was too poor to afford braces and the dental work needed to make my smile “more normal.”)