Despite her post as House Speaker, Pelosi is awfully bad at hiding her emptions. Take a look at the movement of her face and shoulders right after she says "democrats believe in a free market" in a floor speech right before voting for the proverbial "bailout bill".
The instant she says this, her head tilts back and turns counterclockwise. Her shoulders shift up and down in a 'retreating gesture'. Take a look at the below video at around 1:52 (or use this link).
It seems as though Pelosi is retreating from her very words as though she does not quite believe what she just said. The series Lie To Me (it's the second episode) demonstrated this so called "gestural retreat" showing Nixon's famous "I'm not a crook" speech after which he crosses his arms and steps backward (click this link). Unfortunately however I have not found anything regarding "gestural retreat" in the academic literature. If someone knows of a paper, I ask you please post a comment.
Ah... so another blog is born, whether some eyes will ever gaze upon it among the noise of endless cyberspace remains to be seen. Anyhow... Obama’s latest attempt at convincing us to accept his socialized healthcare system has yielded a plethora of slippage, I almost felt it was another episode of Lie To Me. For those uninitiated, Microexpressions are facial expressions that occur for around 1/5th of a second when someone is trying to mask their emotions. See the Wikipedia article or some episodes from the hit series Lie To Me for more details.
Now, take a look at this shot for instance which takes place right after the republican aisles murmur vast displeasure at Obama’s statement "There are also those that claim our efforts will ensure illegal immigrants. This too is false…" Pay close attention to Pelosi’s left lip corner (i.e. to your right) right as this video starts (video starts at 2:59, expression is at 3:00) to discover a wonderful combination of contempt and disgust expressions, presumably a response to the republicans’ expected grumbling.
To get a better understanding of what contempt and disgust expressions look like, take a look at this photograph from a paper entitled The CAD Triad Hypothesis.
Now compare it to Pelosi's microexpression... this is practically textbook material.
A few seconds later (around 3:06) Joe Wilson screams ‘You Lie’ after which Pelosi and Biden both turn rightwards (around 3:08-3:10) displaying what look like authentic surprise expressions.
Strangely, Obama does not display Microexpressions here, leading me to believe that he took muscle relaxants before the address. Fortunately however, Obama is not perfect at concealing his emotions making what are called Emblematic Slips. For those uninitiated, unlike facial expressions which are universal to all mankind, Emblems are culture specific. Some examples of commonly known emblems in the US are:
the shoulder shrug
meaning I don’t know
nodding up/down
meaning 'no'
nodding left/right
meaning 'yes'
middle finger
meaning F*** you
Note that emblems are usually done overtly and to a beat unlike emblematic slips. In the words of The Great Paul Ekman - the character on whom Lie To Me’s Cal Lightman is based:
"Typically emblems are made in what I call the ‘presentation position’, very noticeable because they are performed right in front of the person making it and very pronounced, with a beat. Emblematic slips are made outside of the presentation position, and usually they are only a fragment of the full emblem, performed without a beat."
That said, notice Obama’s left arm (i.e. the one one on your right) twitching at exactly 3:08, right before he repeats “It’s not true”.
I’m not sure what exactly that movement means but here are a couple of options:
It’s a shoulder shrug emblem slip - meaning I have no confidence in what I am saying
It’s a autonomic ‘fight’ response - i.e. Anger
It’s an elbow-jab emblem slip - e.g. when you elbow-jab your buddy after he says something that partially amuses / partially embarrasses you
Regardless of which possibility is true, the arm twitch may well indicate that Obama's own belief in his aforementioned statement (that his plan does not cover illegals) is tenuous at best.
