psychology
june 2015
BY bill chang
Psychology ≠ Mind Reading
16
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently been criticized by several articles for its use of the Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program as a way to identify terrorists.
The SPOT program is based on the idea of microexpressions. Mainly studied today by Dr. Paul Ekman and his team, micro expressions are involuntary facial expressions that supposedly expresses a person’s true emotion.
Critics are skeptical of this concept applied in preventing terrorism because of the lack of scientific proofs behind it. According to Charles Honts, a lie detection expert at Boise State University t's never been proven in any experiment that someone can glance through faces in a crowded place like an airport and tell if someone is being deceptive or lying.
First off, even though a person at the airport could look anxious and even flashes a few angry faces, one cannot determine the source of it. Is the person anxious because an airplane is about to blow up or did that person just have an argument with his or her spouse? This follows the common saying: don’t judge a book by its cover. While leading lie experts around the world may claim that they have tips and tricks for spotting liars, they don’t tell you the true intention behind a person’s lie.