An expert's take on 'Lie to Me' reveals some common truths

He's a real-life expert on nonverbal communication. And here he was, ready to dissect network TV's newest series about a fictional expert in deception detection, Fox TV's Lie to Me.

But first, Joe Navarro wanted to talk about something else: CSI: Miami.

More specifically, Navarro, a retired FBI agent and Tampa resident, has noticed its wonderfully wooden star, David Caruso, rarely turns his chest fully to face anyone he talks to. For Navarro, that's a sure sign his Horatio character feels a bit superior and apart from everyone, even the corpses. ("I'd love to see what he looks like when the cameras aren't rolling," Navarro quipped.)

That's what watching TV can be like for Navarro, who has leveraged his skills at decoding involuntary expressions of emotion into books on poker tells and career strategy. So he jumped at the chance to evaluate Lie to Me's first episode of the fall season.

"I'm often asked about this show, and I say the science behind it is very accurate but the (portrayal) of it is, well, another thing," said Navarro. "Because it has to be dramatic, they sometimes go overboard."

He broke down the show for us:

Observation No. 1: He's too transparent.

Star Tim Roth plays lead character Dr. Cal Lightman as a brusque, intensely intelligent guy with no qualms about letting others know he can read their emotions. But Navarro said most experts avoid that.

"I've had people literally say to me, 'I don't know how to sit in front of you, I don't know what to do,' " Navarro said. "The minute you begin to call out the behaviors on people, they'll mask them. So you've lost that channel of communication. This is something that a true professional never reveals."

Observation No. 2: Actors often display unconscious signs of the behavior they're portraying.

In tonight's episode, a woman who believes she had a psychic vision approaches Lightman at a book signing, her shoulders drifting up toward her ears slightly as she talks. It's a sign of doubt.

Navarro said researchers have shown that physically mimicking the unconscious movements of an emotion can evoke that feeling, even for actors. "You know, if you're feeling down, walk taller; (you can) change the mood by changing the behavior," he added. "A lot of the B movies we used to watch were just painful because of the poor acting, and I think this was part of it — they lack the nonverbal sort of emotionality."

Observation No. 3: Experts can't necessarily spot a lie, but they can spot stress.

One of Lightman's assistants, played by St. Petersburg native Monica Raymund, deduces a potential Supreme Court nominee is lying, in part, because he purses his lips (the show also flashes pictures of Clarence Thomas and John Roberts showing similar expressions).

But Navarro said such an expression often just indicates the person is experiencing something deeply unpleasant. It's a typical blind spot for interrogators — mistaking signs of stress for signs of deception.

Observation No. 4: Reading people works best when the subject is relaxed.

Roth's Lightman immediately insults the Supreme Court nominee by breezing into his first meeting and announcing his intern "will be the person who determines whether you're a lying son of a b----." Bad move.

"You come in here and insult me, and the rest of the day, I'm going to be thinking about it," said Navarro. "It's very dramatic but it's very bad form; what you really want is to get a person very relaxed so that emotional things then have a chance to surface on their own."

Navarro likes a lot about Roth's character. But Lightman sits directly across from people he questions — too confrontational — and indulges dramatic moves that might obscure the truth.

"You never know when somebody is lying," Navarro said. "Lying is, in fact, a tool for social survival. So to simplify being able to detect deception or hidden information — well, it's never that easy, because we're very complex individuals."