Blink_ The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell [83]
Ekman showed another clip, this one from a press conference given by Harold “Kim” Philby in 1955. Philby had not yet been revealed as a Soviet spy, but two of his colleagues, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, had just defected to the Soviet Union. Philby is wearing a dark suit and a white shirt. His hair is straight and parted on the left. His face has the hauteur of privilege.
“Mr. Philby,” a reporter asks, “Mr. Macmillan, the foreign secretary, said there was no evidence that you were the so-called third man who allegedly tipped off Burgess and Maclean. Are you satisfied with that clearance that he gave you?”
Philby answers confidently, in the plummy tones of the English upper class. “Yes, I am.”
“Well, if there was a third man, were you in fact the third man?”
“No,” Philby says, just as forcefully. “I was not.”
Ekman rewound the tape and replayed it in slow motion. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Twice, after being asked serious questions about whether he’s committed treason, he’s going to smirk. He looks like the cat who ate the canary.” The expression came and went in no more than a few milliseconds. But at quarter speed it was painted on his face: the lips pressed together in a look of pure smugness. “He’s enjoying himself, isn’t he?” Ekman went on. “I call this ‘duping delight,’ the thrill you get from fooling other people.” Ekman started up the VCR again. “There’s another thing he does,” he said. On the screen, Philby is answering another question: “In the second place, the Burgess-Maclean affair has raised issues of great” — he pauses — “delicacy.” Ekman went back to the pause and froze the tape. “Here it is,” he said. “A very subtle microexpression of distress or unhappiness. It’s only in the eyebrows — in fact, just in one eyebrow.” Sure enough, Philby’s right inner eyebrow was raised in an unmistakable A.U. one. “It’s very brief,” Ekman said. “He’s not doing it voluntarily. And it totally contradicts all his confidence and assertiveness. It comes when he’s talking about Burgess and Maclean, whom he had tipped off. It’s a hot spot that suggests, ‘You shouldn’t trust what you hear.’ ”
What Ekman is describing, in a very real sense, is the physiological basis of how we thin-slice other people. We can all mind-read effortlessly and automatically because the clues we need to make sense of someone or some social situation are right there on the faces of those in front of us. We may not be able to read faces as brilliantly as someone like Paul Ekman or Silvan Tomkins can, or pick up moments as subtle as Kato Kaelin’s transformation into a snarling dog. But there is enough accessible information on a face to make everyday mind reading possible. When someone tells us “I love you,” we look immediately and directly at him or her because by looking at the face, we can know — or, at least, we can know a great deal more — about whether the sentiment is genuine. Do we see tenderness and pleasure? Or do we catch a fleeting microexpres-sion of distress and unhappiness flickering across his or her face? A baby looks into your eyes when you cup your hands over hers because she knows she can find an explanation in your face. Are you contracting action units six and twelve (the orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis in combination