said. On the screen, Philby is answering another question: “In
the second place, the Burgess-Maclean affair has raised issues of
great” — he pauses — “delicacy.” Ekman went back to the
pause and froze the tape. “Here it is,” he said. “A very subtle
microexpression of distress or unhappiness. It’s only in the
eyebrows — in fact, just in one eyebrow.” Sure enough,
Philby’s right inner eyebrow was raised in an unmistakable A.U.
one. “It’s very brief,” Ekman said. “He’s not doing it
voluntarily. And it totally contradicts all his confidence and
assertiveness. It comes when he’s talking about Burgess and
Maclean, whom he had tipped off. It’s a hot spot that suggests,
‘You shouldn’t trust what you hear.’ ”
What Ekman is describing, in a very real sense, is the
physiological basis of how we thin-slice other people. We can
all mind-read effortlessly and automatically because the clues
we need to make sense of someone or some social situation are
right there on the faces of those in front of us. We may not be
able to read faces as brilliantly as someone like Paul Ekman or
Silvan Tomkins can, or pick up moments as subtle as Kato
Kaelin’s transformation into a snarling dog. But there is enough
accessible information on a face to make everyday mind
reading possible. When someone tells us “I love you,” we look