Clark Freshman and Paul Ekman

Inspiration and scientific adviser to Fox’s hit show, Lie to Me, Paul Ekman trusts Clark Freshman to train lawyers and negotiators in Ekman’s science of emotion recognition, emotional skills, and lie detection.  In fact, Paul Ekman contracted with Clark Freshman and Freshman Training in 2005 to be the exclusive providers in North America of Ekman’s training in emotional skills, lie detection, and microexpressions for lawyers (via Continuing Legal Education) and other negotiators.

Since there initial work together in 2005, Freshman developed conducted new research and developed new materials specifically for lawyers and other negotiators.  In his early speculation on lies, Ekman assumed that people couldn’t spot lies in negotiation because no one feels bad about lying during negotiations.  Together with Mike Wheeler at Harvard Business School, however, Freshman discovered that this part of Ekman’s theory simply isn’t true.  Lies in negotiation show up through many of the same clues that reveal lies in other contexts, including the microexpressions of emotion in the face that Ekman helped popularize through TV’s hit series Lie to Me.

Here, a conversation about how Ekman and Freshman have worked together and what they plan in the future.

What are you and Paul Ekman working on now?

Paul Ekman is first and foremost a scientist.  Most of what you see, and much of what I teach, works with the popular, relatively easy to learn version of microexpressions.  But he spent ten years mapping every facial movement and developing the Facial Action Coding System (FACS).  He’s always working on finding new ways to spot emotions via microexpressions and other tools, ways to teach emotional skills, and lie detection.

In October, 2010, I interviewed Paul Ekman live – and with feeds in different cities – for a symposium I’m organizing on meditation, emotional skills, and lie detection for lawyers and negotiators.  It was offered through Hastings College of Law, where I am a professor, and offered Continuing Legal Education.

Paul has also just finished work on several new tools to teach how to recognize emotions.  One is for recognizing emotions and microexpressions from the side – profile mett – and the other is a longer version designed to get people up to greater accuracy at spotting microexpressions.  They are great supplements to the microexpression training tool.

What about classes?

Paul just got back from teaching New York City Police, Anti-Terrorism, about working with emotions and interviewing.  He’s developed a new series of powerpoints and examples.  The session there took a full four days!  There’s a lot more to know than what you see on Lie to Me. Facial expressions do offer very precise insights into emotion.  And they do help with detecting deception.  But Ekman’s work on facial expressions reveals other hidden messages, such as insights into when people are thinking harder.

I’m working with Paul on how we divide up his material and teach it to lawyers and negotiators in manageable units.

So you’re translating his material for lawyers and negotiators?

Yes, that’s partly true.  Take Paul’s idea of duping delight. It’s key to detecting deception and catching lies.  Duping delight occurs when some liars have a little suppressed smile that reveals their lie.  He has some video examples from lies by a famous spy.  I then work with my research team to harvest other examples.  Recently, Harvard Professor Michael Wheeler and I ran a series of simulated negotiations with students and employees at Harvard.  I found one example of how someone lying about his other offers in a real estate negotiation showed duping delight.  In other examples, I found how negotiators had microexpressions of other emotions that Paul Ekman has studied: contempt, anger, and so on.

But what goes on beyond translating?

Paul’s work gives us the basic science of recognizing emotion.  He also gives us the basic science of how to use emotion and other clues to get past lies into the underlying truth.

I then put that in my own frameworks of negotiation and lawyering.

How do you connect Paul Ekman’s work with negotiation?

That’s the perfect wedding of science and science.  I’ve been studying how emotion affects negotiation for many years.  So there are certain very clear scientific lessons that fit with Paul’s work.

What are some of those lessons?

First, very tiny changes in emotion – the exact kind that Paul Ekman’s science of microexpressions reveal – make a difference in negotiation.  A lot of the old research looked at how tiny attempts to manipulate emotion made a real difference.  Stanford Business School students who saw a funny video by Steve Jobs didn’t act like they were on MDMA or some party drug.  But they had a tiny blip in positive emotion after only five minutes – and then they did better than students who had just seen a neutral video by someone at a large company.

And for lawyers?

Lawyering is a crazy game of guessing what works.  The accepted ritual for trial lawyers, for example, is arguing to a judge or jury – but never knowing what works until you hear the verdict.  With Paul Ekman’s science of emotion detection through microexpressions, you get to know which arguments are working, which are alienating someone, and which are provoking some thought.  So our Continuing Legal Education classes cover all of that.

Also, for trial lawyers, we have very specific tools for teaching how to recognize hidden biases.  Paul Ekman ran an entire series of studies that looked at when people lied about their views on hot-button issues like capital punishment.  People may come for the credits in Continuing Legal Education, but they leave with real skills.

How did you and Paul Ekman meet?

That’s a little embarrassing.  I’d been working with another psychology professor, Adele Hayes, now director of clinical training at University of Delaware.  We had done our own research on naturally-occurring moods and negotiation.  Without trying to put anyone in a particular mood, we tested people’s emotions just before a negotiation.  We found that tiny differences meant real differences in how well they did in negotiation.

Then one day I was reading the New York Times and read about Paul’s work.  I sent him a short email and asked if we could meet when I was in the Bay Area for a meditation retreat.  Oh, that was scary!

Why was it scary to meet Paul Ekman?

I was living in Miami and for got what San Francisco was like.  I was running late to our meeting.  And then, when I got there,  I realized I was all sweaty and breathing a bit faster.  Paul said something close to this: “I can’t remember why we’re meeting.  So, while I eat, tell me what you want.”

I was talking very fast – I usually do – and felt even more sweaty.  Then, I stopped and said, “You know, I’m glad this is with you. If it were anyone else, they might mistake my sweating and fast-talking for something else.  But you know that’s wrong: there could be many reasons.  And, really, I was running late, and then, as I walked in, you said something to someone that reminded me of a word my father used I Yiddish, and he was very abusive.” He smiled about my father and said we’d talk about that someday.   But that’s another story.

Did you start off proposing a business arrangement?

Not at all!  I had all sorts of research ideas, but Paul said he was out of the research business.  But he was doing a train the trainers session for his then new book, Emotions Revealed.  I asked if I could come.  As I recall, he said, “Read both of my books completely and master them.   I’ll give you a quiz, and if you fail, you’re out.”

A few weeks later, I saw him, and I asked about the quiz.  He acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about!

What else do you and Paul work on?

Paul Ekman is now quite the celebrity.  And that always involves legal issues.  So I also offer him legal and negotiation advice in a variety of areas.