So let me tell you a little bit about the study.
We had participants from the community come to our laboratory and they all participated in what is known as a mock theft experiment where they’re gonna steal something. Half of them were assigned to tell the truth about what they were gonna do or what they did, and half of them were assigned to lie about what they were gonna do or about what they did.
The experiment then proceeded and at the very beginning of the experiment the participants all were interviewed about their intentions about what they were about to do. So we were studying truths or lies about their intentions about a future act.
After that initial interview they went along and then did the theft or not. And we analyzed the microexpressions that occurred during that very brief initial interview. In fact, the average time for those interviews was something like 90 seconds or something around there.
And we analyzed all the microexpressions that were occurring at various durations. So we analyzed expressions that occurred at 0.2 seconds or less, 0.3 seconds or less, 0.4 seconds or less, 0.5 seconds or less and then those expressions that occurred between 0.5 and 6 seconds.
Then we identified which expressions were the threshold duration that could differentiate truth tellers and liars and what we found was that the microexpressions that were occurring at 0.4 seconds or less or 0.5 seconds or less, could differentiate truth tellers and liars.
Again, this was phenomenal because this is the first evidence ever in the scientific literature to demonstrate that microexpressions at these speeds could differentiate truth tellers from liars.
