Using Micro-expression Analysis in Jury Selection: A New Beginning

Back in June, I posted a couple of items about David Matsumoto's (from Humintell) training session on micro-expression analysis and lie detection. I had the good fortune to attend a couple of David's sessions at the American Society of Trial Consultants conference in Atlanta.

According to the "post-test," during which we were challenged to identify facial expressions that were exposed for only a fraction of a second, I am a bit of a emotion-detection savant. While I got 85% of the expressions correct, the problem was that I didn't really have any confidence in what I was doing. But the data don't lie -- I was getting it.

I am certainly not ready to chuck everything I know about voir dire and jury behavior in favor of micro-expression analysis (and David would never suggest that anyone do so), but I do recognize the potential value of this technique for identifying emotional "hotspots" among prospective jurors. So, last week, I put my "m.e.-dar" to the test.

We were conducting voir dire in a statutory rape case. The defendant was 19 at the time of the alleged sexual incident and the complaining witness was 15. Not exactly a middle-aged priest diddling an eight year-old altar boy after services. We were definitely looking for jurors who would have some ambivalence about applying the statutory rape law to a case involving a couple of teenagers (allegedly) having consensual sex.

In one of the individual voir dire questions, the judge asked each prospective juror whether s/he would have any difficulty being fair in a case of this type, "which involves the rape of a child under the age of 16 -- in this case a girl who was 15 at the time." Each time this question was asked, I was careful to stare intently at the face of the prospective juror. In a couple of instances, I detected contempt (which is the only one-sided expression), suggesting to me that the juror didn't think too highly of the law being applied in this case. A few jurors looked away from the judge briefly and smiled, perhaps betraying their own sexual escapades at a similar age. Such reactions suggested that the juror might be sympathetic to our case, in that s/he might not be trying too hard to find a reason to convict the defendant.

By contrast, a some prospective jurors crinkled their noses in disgust when the judge described the charge. Perhaps in confirmation of this reaction, several of them indicated that they had close friends or family members who had been the victims of sexual abuse. While I did not recommend that my client strike any prospective juror solely on the basis of such a facial reaction, it did cause me to review their questionnaire responses and suggest that my client request follow-up questions.

As with all such "experiments," we are faced with a problem of the counter-factual. Would I have evaluated jurors differently without paying attention to micro-expressions? Would my judgments have been less astute? Would the jury verdict have been any different? There is, of course, no way to know because this trial will take place only once. In addition, in Massachusetts, attorneys and parties are not permitted to interview jurors after a verdict has been rendered. So, we will never know whether my assessments of individual jurors were generally correct. I am fairly confident, however, that I didn't harm our case by looking for micro-expressions. And I think it might well have helped.

I know that there have been many studies testing the efficacy of micro-expression analysis. To the best of my knowledge, however, there has never been a study testing its value in jury selection. Perhaps Humitell would consider running such a study in the near future. I would certainly be willing to be a guinea pig!

The Connection between Emotional Hotspots and Lying

As promised, I write today about the second workshop conducted by David Matsumoto at the American Society of Trial Consulting Conference. While the Thursday afternoon session on reading facial expressions (and "microexpressions") lasted three hours (please see previous post), the session on lie detection was only one hour long. So, he had a lot to cover in a short span of time. To his credit, David is an excellent public speaker. He's funny, articulate, clear and responsive to questions.

Most of the session was devoted to understanding, identifying and recognizing emotional "hotspots." A hotspot occurs when subconscious, emotional cognition runs contrary to conscious, logical cognition. Such occurrences put a lot of pressure on one's brain, making it difficult to focus and control. Imperfect control results in emotional "leakage." A person who is trained to detect microexpressions can catch such leakage as it happens.

For example, a candidate can say something nice about his opponent, but he crinkles his nose for just a split second. The expression of disgust has leaked out. The beauty pageant runner-up allows a one-sided look of contempt to cross her face for a millisecond before she successfully plasters a big, fake smile back on her face.

There are gestural cues to look for, as well. For instance, David showed the video of Alex Rodriguez answering a question from Katy Couric about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He answers "no" very definitively -- while nodding his head up and down at the same time.

David was very careful to point out that a hotspot, with associated emotional leakage, is only a sign that there is some disconnect between the speaker's words and his emotions. Lying is only one possible explanation for such a disconnect. Leakage can also be the result of cognitive dissonance, ambivalence or extreme uncertainty.

So, for us consultants, the key is to identify hotspots. That suggests that lying might be taking place. Additional investigation and/or interrogation is necessary to tease out what is causing the emotional disconnect.

So, what should I do now with my cursory training and heightened awareness of emotional leakage and hotspots? Well, I'm not quite ready to market myself as an emotional cue expert, who can help lawyers identify lying jurors or witnesses with precision. That said, I will certainly look for microexpressions when reviewing footage from focus group sessions. I will keep an eye out for microexpressions from a witness I am helping to prepare. An obvious hotspot can help me identify a line of inquiry that might be tricky for the witness.

I am curious to see how useful this heightened sensitivity to facial expressions might be moving forward. Please feel free to contact me if you'd like to chat about my experience with this program.

On Monday, I'll file a new post with some additional observations, lessons and stories from the conference. Tomorrow, it's golf at East Lake! Fore!!!!!

Reading emotions of witnesses, jurors and lawyers

I am currently in Atlanta, attending the annual conference of the American Society of Trial Consultants. Yesterday afternoon, I attended a very interesting presentation by David Matsumoto, who works for the Ekman Group in San Francisco. In case you don't recognize the name, Paul Ekman is the expert on lie-detection on whose work is based the television series, "Lie to Me."

David was conducting a training session on recognizing emotional state from facial expressions. I must admit up front that I was a bit skeptical of these methods. I am now convinced that they are really onto something. It takes a while to get to the punch line, so please bare with me.

It turns out that there are seven basic emotions that can be accurately characterized by unique facial expressions.

Anger: brows down, glaring, lower jaw forward.
Disgust: wrinkled nose, raised upper lip
Surprise: raised eyebrows, open mouth, relaxed muscles
Fear: raised eyebrows, tense mouth, very open eyes (lots of white showing)
Contempt: only uses one side of the face, smirk
Sadness: Inner brows raised, corners of lips droop, lower eyelids droop
Happiness: corners of lips raised, eyebrows relaxed

David showed us a number of examples and trained us how to look for the signs of each emotion. He spent extra time on distinguishing fear from surprise, and sadness from disgust. We all got pretty good at identifying emotions properly from images.

David then discussed how cognition and emotion often battle for control of the face. A person is consciously attempting to convey one emotion, or stay neutral, while emotionally, they are pulled towards a different expression. Very often, the true emotional state "leaks out" through "microexpressions." These microexpressions can last for only a fraction of a second, so they can be difficult to catch and properly identify.

David showed some examples from press conferences and witness testimony. He could slow down the video and show us exactly when a lip curled, an eyebrow drooped or a nose wrinkled.

The next step was to get us accustomed to detecting changes in facial expression in, literally, a blink of an eye. I really thought I was missing it. I felt like I was guessing all the time. I decided to focus on just the bridge of the nose, or try a "soft focus" technique. His computer program would change the face and then return it to normal so fast that sometimes I missed it completely. "OK," I thought, "this is hopeless unless you have a high speed camera and enough time to analyze the footage. What the heck am I going to do with this?" But I did seem to be getting a bit better.

Finally, after a little more than one hour of training, he showed us a series of 28 faces. He would put up a face in a neutral state and then hit a button, which would change the face to an emotive expression for less than half a second. David told us that this is the top speed at which his team trains people (like police officers, military personnel, HR professionals). As each face appeared, then changed for only an instant, we had to write down which of the seven emotions we thought we were detecting. This was our test.

Certain emotions were pretty easy to detect. For instance, since contempt only involves half the face, it was fairly straightforward to notice that the expression only changed on one side. On a lot of them, I really felt like I was guessing. But, as it turned out, I wasn't. Astonishingly (especially to myself), I correctly identified 23 of 28 expressions (82% correct). This was at the high end of the distribution for the 100 or so people in the room. There were plenty of people hanging around 50%. Still, I was pretty impressed. This could really be done.

This morning, I attended a second session conducted by David Matsumoto, this one specifically focusing on lie detection. The key is to identify situations where there is a disconnect between verbal message and emotional "leakage." I'll post a blog entry describing that session tomorrow. Stay tuned!