Many educated people are likely to recognize the concept of thoughtcrime from George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Perhaps less widely remembered is the concept of facecrime, the sin of showing an inappropriate emotion in public. I imagine the concept will become a larger part of the popular parlance if the new Fox drama Lie to Me takes off.
Lie to Me is loosely based on the research of Dr. Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has spent most of his career studying facial expressions. Some of Dr. Ekman's most famous work (and the show Lie to Me) is focused on our inability to totally conceal emotions. Microexpressions, brief facial or bodily expressions lasting mere milliseconds, often show our true emotional state. For example, if you and your girlfriend have a fight before friends come over, the two of you might put on a happy show as your friends arrive. If you're pretty good at it, they probably won't realize it's a sham. However, some small number of people, called Wizards by the researchers and Naturals in the show, naturally see these microexpressions. Instead of seeing two happy people, they might (probably unconsciously) notice that you made an extremely brief expression of anger when talking about your girlfriend. Or that she very slightly and briefly turned away from you as you and your friends entered the room. These cues let those that are natural emotion readers tell if someone is lying at a much higher rate than the average person, among other things.
The research is certainly interesting, and on a cool, practical topic of everyday interest. It also makes the far-fetched possibility of something like a facecrime that much more realistic. Dr. Ekman and his colleagues have worked with law enforcement to develop training so that law enforcement officers can perform their duties at a higher level. Of course, much like the results of a polygraph (lie detector) test, misinterpretations are possible. If you are interviewing an adult suspect that is accused of murdering their parents, they may try to hide fear while overtly showing sadness when asked questions about the murder. The suspect could be hiding the fear that the may be caught, but they also could be trying to hide that, even though they are an adult, they are afraid of going through life without parental guidance.
An area where the research may have more useful applications is in security. Perhaps the most interesting idea is harnessing the ability to scan for microexpressions into computer vision, enabling airports and other sensitive locations to automatically detect potential threats. The current system is incredibly ineffective. The possibility of marking people who look suspicious, especially those that may be trained well enough to avoid blatantly suspicious behavior, for further attention could provide a huge increase in security without a huge increase in personnel. Even those potential terrorists that are well trained are, as far as we know, unable to consciously control their microexpressions.
There would be false positives. But that, while regrettable, is probably worthwhile as long as nobody is arrested, charged, or generally mistreated based solely on the microexpressions they generate, and as long as the microexpressions are not treated as a form of evidence. If we avoid making facecrime a reality, further insight into the who might be a potential terrorist, murderer, or just a plain old liar is likely to protect the innocent, both from the bad guys and from unnecessary attention from the authorities. Of course, we must always be vigilant to prevent exactly that scenario: people's desire to be tough on crime can often lead to being tough on the truth as well.
If you are interested in reading a good (long) introductory article to some of Dr. Ekman's work, I highly recommend the one that first introduced me to it a few years ago.
The Naked Face by Malcolm Gladwell
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