Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faced off in a highly-anticipated vice presidential debate on Tuesday, and the two candidates tried and failed to hide their nerves, according to a leading microexpressions expert.
“Tim Walz, you can specifically see [nervousness] in him tenting his inner eyebrows with worry, lifting up the inner eyebrows, showing that he is nervous,” explains expert Annie Särnblad, who did an analysis of the CBS-televised event exclusively for The Daily Beast.
On the other hand, “JD Vance shows his nerves by repetitively swallowing,” says Särnblad. “JD Vance repeats this swallowing almost every time he gets called out for having a different stance from Donald Trump.”
Särnblad explains microexpressions are universal to all human beings, “regardless of geography, culture, language, gender, ethnicity and socialization.” Microexpressions are also “specific to particular emotions,” which makes them nearly impossible to hide, says Särnblad.
“Even people who are born blind make the same microexpressions,” adds Särnblad—which makes it difficult for even the most trained politicians to hide them.
At several moments during the debate, Vance showed contempt in a microexpression when he was called out for having views different from his running mate, former President Donald Trump.
“When Tim Walz says, “This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it,’ JD Vance shows contempt,” says Särnblad, explaining that there are two main pieces of contempt in a microexpression.
“One is the unilateral, almost a smile, but it’s really the corner of the lips tucked into one cheek. And its a lift of the nasal labial furrow in disgust,” explains Särnblad. “So he shows that expression as he tucks his chin.”
During his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump was less successful in hiding his macro and microexpressions.
Annie Särnblad is the author of three books: Diary of a Human Lie Detector: Facial Expressions in Love, Lust, and Lies; The Facial Expressions Glossary: Business Version; and the recently released Annie and the Secret Language of Faces.
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