[I wrote this essay with David Kebudi.]
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. ~ Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
In every human form [our imagination] sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a soul which is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion. ~ Henri Bergson (1912, p. 28).
On Thursday, October 11, 2018, First Lady Melania Trump was asked by ABC reporter Tom Llamas if she loved her husband. “Yes – we are fine. Yes,” she replied. The hyphen between the ‘yes’ and the ‘we’ is significant because it allows viewers and listeners to decide for themselves if the proper punctuation mark is a period or a comma. The choice matters. If Mrs. Trump spoke in a way that makes a period the only conceivable choice, then we know that she answered the question in a straightforward and affirmative manner. Whether she was lying or not is a different matter. If, however, her speech compels us to conclude that a comma is the correct choice, then Mrs. Trump was ‘paltering.’ In this case, the ‘yes’ affirms the sentence that follows it, not the question that precedes it. Paltering is a subtle form of deception, where a truthful statement is offered as a response to a question aiming at a different issue (Rogers et al., 2017). Perhaps it is the case that Mrs. Trump truly does not love her husband in the way that romantics or moralists conceive of it, while her marriage is sufficiently stable and free from daily strife that she can truthfully claim that "we are fine."
Before considering additional clues to uncover the "true truth," it is worth noting that Mr. Llamas may not have been entirely fair. Asking a First Lady – or anyone, for that matter – if they love their spouse, and asking in front of a world of viewers, is rather indelicate. This question breaches several informal norms of privacy and conversational logic. Privacy is to be respected. Why would one put anyone on the spot, leaving them only a choice between deception, evasion, or aggression in the unhappy event that this intimate personal realm, which is being queried, is indeed a place of unhappiness. Conversational logic favors questions that produce informative answers (Grice, 1975). Rhetorical questions are questions only in name, not in substance or spirit.
The most benign interpretation of all this is that Mrs. Trump loves her husband and that she saw no reason to call the reporter to task. But this is only one interpretation. In the era of recorded life, we can dig deeper, and we did. Clicking on the link below, you may view the critical scene both at regular speed and 4 times slower. Then watch it again.
Click here to watch scene from the interview.
You may have noticed Mrs. Trump’s slight hesitation before her first "yes." This is not a mere pause, but a subtle, yet revealing, display of a mind in conflict. Mrs. Trump lowers her eyelids, averts her gaze to her right, and performs a faint but perceptible rotation of her head. Her lips give a hint of a pout. Again, the most benign interpretation is that Mrs. Trump is rightfully put off by the question. She may resent being forced to answer a question that should not be posed ad coram publico. But it is also possible that she is trying, within a fraction of a second, to solve the conflict between two other responses. In this scenario, one response breaking into consciousness is the truthful reply ‘No, of course not!’ with the other response being the attempt to suppress the first impulse and replace it with a socially acceptable one. Again, we stress that this interpretation is conjectural. It is consistent with the data; it is not proven to be the correct interpretation. One may argue that for all but the most seasoned liars or sociopaths, the true response will come to mind first, and needs to be replaced if such replacement is in the person’s best interest. The processes of suppression and replacement are difficult and time-consuming (Gilbert, 1991). They require focus, and one way to gain it is by breaking eye contact. It is particularly challenging to suppress a whole suite of nonverbal expressions that spring up as part of the original, truthful response. Thus, the subtle head rotation may be the residue of a head-shake that was initiated to underscore the first response.
Mrs. Trump made the best of a difficult situation. Perhaps she lied, perhaps she paltered, but she kept command of her body language as well as anyone could be expected to in a world that does not shy away from bullying. As the First Lady herself noted, she is “the most bullied person on [sic] the world" (see here). Not only her gaze, but also her words spell ambiguity. Bullied by whom? A divided nation will find divided answers.
Bergson, H. (1912). Laughter. New York: Macmillan.
Gilbert, D. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107-119.
Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds), Syntax and semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.
Rogers, T., Zeckhauser, R., Gino, F., Norton, M. I., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2017). Artful paltering: The risks and rewards of using truthful statements to mislead others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112, 456-473.