People are bad at recognizing liars. Data culled from several psychological experiments demonstrates that even the most well trained individuals – government agents, police officers, and so on – can barely succeed at a 50 percent rate. Lying and deception, however, are fundamental narrative elements in several film genres – particularly the detective film and the female gothic, genres that peaked in popularity in 1940s Hollywood. Considering their real-life lack of proficiency, how do viewers successfully spot deception in such films? Drawing on findings from a handful of experiments, this article brings cognitive psychological concepts to bear on two 1940s films: Out of the Past (1947) and Secret Beyond the Door (1948). The article claims that filmmakers, particularly actors, exaggerate, simplify, and emphasize deception cues to selectively achieve narrative clarification or revelation. This process reveals not only how viewers recognize deception, but how actors stylize real-life behavior in service of narrative and aesthetic priorities.
Katherine Thomson-Jones
that is insulated from the processes by which we judge plot outcome. Later in the book, Smith has similar success applying his approach to a different paradox, the paradox of horror. In Chapter 7, Smith draws on Paul Ekman’s work on emotional blending
Johannes Riis
from emotion psychology, including Paul Ekman, Nico Frijda, Batja Mesquita, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, in order to acknowledge the importance of narrative context. By viewing emotions as defined by the object to which the character responds, we are in a
Ivan Mozzhukhin’s Acting Style
Beyond the Kuleshov Effect
Johannes Riis
and vocal expressiveness is mainly that of helplessness, as though he is about to cry. The reason that Scottie is best characterized as being in a state of fear—rather than sadness, the emotion indicated by Paul Ekman’s findings—is that the object
Rainer Reisenzein
) with Paul Ekman’s (1992) theory of basic emotions, Joseph LeDoux’s (1998) theory of a cognitive (“high”) and a noncognitive (“low”) pathway to emotions, and hypotheses about the importance of bodily feedback for the perception and experience of
Putting the Culture into Bioculturalism
A Naturalized Aesthetics and the Challenge of Modernism
Dominic Topp
maintained by current anthropologists. Certainly, some branches of anthropology now accept Paul Ekman’s findings on the universality of basic emotions and emotion expressions while recognizing that this still leaves “a great deal of room for cultural fine
Introduction
Concepts of Emotions in Indian Languages
Margrit Pernau
://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/en/texte/tears-in-preprint-the-diary-of-a-father-in-a-german-family-magazine-of-the-1870s , doi: 10.14280/08241.22 . 7 Paul Ekman, “Basic Emotions,” in Handbook of Cognition and Emotions , Tim Dalgleish and Michael J. Power, eds. (New York: Wiley, 1999), 45–60. 8 Asifa Majid, “The Role of Language in a Science of Emotion,” Emotion
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 24–37
Sensing evil
Counterterrorism, techno-science, and the cultural reproduction of security
Mark Maguire and Pete Fussey
psychologist Paul Ekman’s research on how deceit might be revealed in micro-facial expressions. But little attention was really given to this notion. Actual policing, the program participants understood, required experienced police: the key was to know that
Film, Art, and the Third Culture
A Response
Murray Smith
film, Reisenzein notes my reliance on an “extended version” of the basic emotions theory (BET) associated with psychologists such as Paul Ekman, Phoebe Ellsworth, Nico Frijda, Joseph LeDoux, and Klaus Scherer. Noting that the main constituents of this
Acoustic Startles in Horror Films
A Neurofilmological Approach
Valerio Sbravatti
something as novel and unexpected” ( Silvia 2009: 49 ). Paul Ekman and colleagues (1985: 1422–1424 ) show the differences between startle and surprise by pointing to the significant fact that knowing what will happen and when eliminates surprise but does