Many institutions are conducting research into how a person’s looks show their level of trustworthiness. Some of the research being done is based on how a person’s specific actions and facial expressions give insight into whether or not they are being deceptive, such as in the Ted Talk “How to Spot a Liar.” Other research being conducted is to show how some people’s faces are naturally trustworthy or not, such as in the blog post “You Can Tell a lot from Looking at Someone’s Face.” Both science communications talk about trustworthiness, but the Ted Talk video discusses how to spot a liar while the blog post discusses predispositions to judgment.

“How to Spot a Liar” is a Ted Talk given by Pamela Meyer. Her talk targets the every day person who comes into contact with someone being deceitful, which according to her talk is everyone that you meet. She claims that a person is lied to anywhere between 10 and 200 times a day, and that you should be able to protect yourself from those attempting to deceive me. The point of Meyer’s talk is to equip people with the tools necessary for “liespotting”, such as body language that contradicts your words, defensiveness, or too much detail. Meyer is successful in her talk because she accurately describes deceitful behavior, gives video examples, and is clear with the purpose of her discussion. I found the video to be extremely informative and would most definitely watch it again.

You Can Tell a lot from Looking at Someone’s Face” is a blog post by Rita Handrich. Like the Ted Talk, this post targets the every day person. Handrich starts out the post by contradicting the common thought that eyes are what we base our trust on with showing photo examples of untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. According to her post, feminine and happy faces are more trustworthy than masculine and unhappy faces. She goes on to discuss how many people, such as politicians, men in the military, and businessmen, go farther in life because their faces seem to be more trustworthy. Handrich also examines how jurors judge how trustworthy a person’s face is when reaching their decision. I feel that the blog post was not as convincing as the Ted Talk because it did not give a lot of evidence or examples to support the claims made. If there were more examples of trustworthy faces or people, the post would be more convincing. I would most likely not read this post again, though I did find it initially interesting.

Both “How to Spot a Liar” and “You Can Tell a lot from Looking at Someone’s Face” gave interesting insights into how be perceive people that we come into contact with. “How to Spot a Liar” gave more information on detecting lies while “You Can Tell a lot from Looking at Someone’s Face” gave information on why we would think someone is a liar based on first impressions. Though both posts were on similar topics, they had different goals and methods of getting their point across. I think that “How to Spot a Liar” was a more successful form of science communication.