their case the minds of alcoholic or violent parents. Ekman
actually runs seminars for law-enforcement agencies in which
he teaches people how to improve their mind-reading skills.
With even half an hour of practice, he says, people can become
adept at picking up micro-expressions. “I have a training tape,
and people love it,” Ekman says. “They start it, and they can’t
see any of these expressions. Thirty-five minutes later, they can
see them all. What that says is that this is an accessible skill.”
In one of David Klinger’s interviews, he talks to a veteran
police officer who had been in violent situations many times in
his career and who had on many occasions been forced to read
the minds of others in moments of stress. The officer’s account
is a beautiful example of how a high-stress moment — in the
right hands — can be utterly transformed: It was dusk. He was
chasing a group of three teenaged gang members. One jumped
the fence, the second ran in front of the car, and the third stood
stock-still before him, frozen in the light, no more than ten feet
away. “As I was getting out of the passenger side,” the officer
remembers, the kid:
started digging in his waistband with his right hand. Then I