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You can lie, but your facial expressions tell all.
By Christine Schoenwald — Written on Apr 14, 2020
Who doesn't love George Clooney? He's attractive, smart, talented, has a literal twinkle in his eye, and seems humble in a way that only the most successful people can be.
What does he have, besides all his obvious attributes that inspire so much admiration? Answer: charm and good manners.
That sounds old school, but maybe because those qualities are in such short supply, they're the reasons we all love George Clooney.
But maybe we love him too much; maybe, because it's hard to find fault with someone who gives so much back to the world and does it so graciously, we hope that everything isn't as perfect as it seems in George Clooney's world.
We just want to see him experience the world the way we do — with a parking ticket, or having the delivery guy forget the sesame noodles.
We're not hoping that George falls off his pedestal, just that the pedestal gets a tiny chip taken out of it.
In an article in Science of Relationships, researchers analyzed George Clooney's micro-expressions in an Entertainment Tonight clip.
According to Paul Ekman, micro-expressions are very brief facial expressions that flash across a person's face for a mere fraction of a second.
They occur when a person either deliberately or unconsciously conceals a feeling. Seven emotions have universal signals: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise, and happiness.
If you saw the television show Lie to Me (of which Ekman was a producer), you saw fictional examples of the practice of detecting micro-expressions and body language to get the truth of what a person was or wasn't saying.
A poker tell (a change in a player's physical demeanor or betting pattern) is not unlike a micro-expression, as it's being totally unaware you give off information without meaning to.
For instance, your significant other saved up to buy you a vacuum cleaner and you knew they thought they were giving you an amazing gift.
You don't want to be a dick and reject the gift, so you might end up thanking them.
But there would be little micro-expressions, telling your significant other the way you really felt such as a tiny, downward turning of the lips, or a narrowing of your eyes when you gazed upon the vacuum cleaner.
What can we detect from George Clooney's interview in regards to his marriage?
Watch for stress responses.
If you were to have doubts about your relationship, you'd show sadness micro-expressions, such as the inner corners of your eyebrows drawing in and up, corners of the lips drawing down, and your jaw coming up with your lower lip pointing out.
In the same article, researcher Dr. Sadie Leder-Elder pointed out that in the interview, George looks sad, with the corners of his lips pulling down, and having a lowered brow, drooping upper eyelids, and giving a false smile.
When George jokes about how he and Amal have given their relationship a good run, he rubs his nose.
At other points during the interview, he subconsciously micro-shrugs his shoulders while answering questions.
And most revealing of all, he clearly lowers his voice when explaining why he fell in love with his wife.
Ekman says that these are signs of being untruthful.
There might be trouble in Clooney's marriage, or we may just secretly want George to be back on the market.
It's so much easier to fantasize about someone when they're human, not someone whose every aspect of life is perfect.