Pinocchio: who knows about that nose?
So is the Pinocchio effect actually a thing? Michael Fallow finds that new research suggests not so much.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a roomful of Southlanders at the Ascot Park hotel have something in common and, perhaps regrettably, it relates to lying.
They have all been informed on the subject by the same man, Australian body language expert Allan Pease.
Since the 1970s, Pease has been decoding the unspoken truths that our bodies reveal, including when they are in conflict with what we’re saying.
In 1991, Wikipedia informs us, Pease was invited to the Kremlin to conduct a seminar for up-and-coming politicians, among whom was the then-39-year-old former KGB officer Putin.
In 2005, I’m informing you, the jocular Aussie spoke to an Invercargill audience on much the same theme, including some of the bodily dynamics that result from fibbing good and hard.
Can’t speak for the Southlanders present, but Putin’s reputation on that score is not, at present, all that good.
The headline The Southland Times took from the Invercargill event was Pease’s assurance that the Pinocchio effect was real. When you lie, your nose does actually grow, he said.
For a long time, it had been clear that there was a tendency for people to stroke their nose if they were being less than upfront with what they were saying. It was part of the dramatic increase in handto-face contact when people were either being untruthful or holding something back.
‘‘We now know,’’ Pease said, ‘‘from heat-detecting cameras that when we’re telling a bunch of lies, there’s an associated increase in blood pressure, which makes all the soft tissue inside the nose swell.’’
Probably not visible externally, but the hotter, tingling nostrils often invited a rub.
So the Pinocchio comparison sort of held up since swelling, even internal, represents growth, even though it doesn’t mean the nose was getting longer.
This is an insight that we’ve referred to a few times in print.
So it’s faintly mortifying to discover that there are reports suggesting that the thermal activity at work in a fibber isn’t tidily uniform and that by some accounts the tip of the nose actually cools and shrinks, albeit again imperceptibly to the naked eye. The forehead gets hotter, reflecting the fact that one has to think in order to lie, whereas at the same time we feel anxious, which lowers the temperature of the nose.
So which account is correct? Well, I’ll tell you.
I don’t know.
The dynamics of the thermal research, and biology that apparently relates to the insula, a region of the brain involved in consciousness as well as the detection and regulation of body temperature, confound me.
But one of my preferred conversational yarns clearly needs a bit of sceptical scrutiny. Dang. I’m in there rooting for to be right.
Pease, incidentally, had a nice line to conclude his account. He said all the soft tissue in all our extremities tends to swell when we don’t tell the truth.
So when the citizens of the United States had a particular question to ask Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky ‘‘they should have pulled his pants down and then asked the question’’.
In any case, I do still cleave to a further particular piece of Pease advice, regarding Botox.
He had a word of caution for anyone considering the injections to rid themselves of forehead crinkles or crow’s feet.
You could tell a sincere smile from a fake one, he said, not by the mouth’s action, but whether it reached the eyes. Insincere people would just hoist up their mouths, whereas a natural smile also pulled the eyes back and produced characteristic wrinkles in the corners.
We see those wrinkles and we conclude this is a nice, smiley person.
Their absence in an older person invites the suspicion they are unfriendly. Critical. Judgmental.
Moreover, Botox paralyses a really important body signal – the eyebrow flash.
Raising the eyebrows when you meet someone is a truly ancient greeting.
It signifies, Pease said, a message that I recognise you, but
I’m not threatening you.
We might scarcely notice it when it happens – but we’re much more likely to notice if it doesn’t happen.
Make eye contact with someone, and if you don’t raise your brow slightly (say because it’s frozen by Botox) then without knowing why they’ll quite possibly be wondering what’s eating you.