That wavelength-sensing waitress embodies the principle that getting in synch yields an interpersonal benefit. The more two people unconsciously synchronize their movements and mannerisms during their interaction, the more positively they will feel about their encounter-and about each other.
The subtle power of this dance was revealed in a clever set of ex experiments with students at New York University who volunteered for what they thought was an evaluation of a new psychological test. One at a time they sat with another student-actually a confederate of the researchers-and judged a series of photos for the supposed test. The confederate was instructed to either smile or not, to shake his foot or rub his face while they went through the pictures.
Whatever the confederate did, the volunteers tended to mimic. Face-rubbing elicited face-rubbing, a smile primed a smile in return. But careful questioning later revealed that the volunteers had no idea they had been smiling or shaking their foot in imitation; nor had they noticed the choreographed mannerisms.
Words alone may betray a lie. But more often than not the clue that someone may be misleading us will be a discrepancy between their words and their facial expression, as when someone assures us they "feel great" yet a quaver in their voice reveals angst.
"There is no surefire lie detector," Ekman told me. "But you can detect hot spots"-points where a person's emotions don't fit the words. These signs of extra mental effort call out for examination: the reasons for the glitch can range from simple nervousness to bald-faced lying.
The facial muscles are controlled by the low road, the choice to lie by the high road; in an emotional lie, the face belies what's said. The high road conceals, the low road reveals. Low-road circuits offer multiple lanes in the silent bridge that connects us, brain to brain. These circuits help us navigate the shoals of our relationships, detecting who to trust or avoid-or spreading good feeling infectiously.
Giovanni Vigliotto was remarkably successful as a Don Juan; his charm brought him romantic conquests one after another. Well, not exactly one after another: actually, he was married to several women at the same time.
No one knows with certainty how many times Vigliotto wed. But he may have married one hundred women over the course of his ro mantic career-and it did seem to be a career. Vigliotto made a living by marrying wealthy women.
That career crash-landed when Patricia Gardner, one of his would-be conquests, took him to court for bigamy.
Just what made so many women swoon for Vigliotto was hinted at during his trial. Gardner admitted that one of the things that attracted her to the charming bigamist was what she called "that honest trait": he looked her directly in the eyes, smiling, even as he lied through his teeth.
Forthrightness is the brain's default response: our neural wiring transmits our every minor mood onto the muscles of our face, making our feelings instantly visible. The display of emotion is automatic and unconscious, and so its suppression demands conscious effort. Being devious about what we feel-trying to hide our fear or anger-demands active effort and rarely succeeds perfectlty
As a maxim in social science holds, "A thing is real if it is real in its consequences." When the brain reacts to imagined scenarios the same way it reacts to real ones, the imaginary has biological consequences. The low road takes us along for the emotional ride.