Nonverbal communication in television media: A critical took at the "deciphering" of NFL player Aaron Hernandez during his trial for murder

For at least a decade, television media have promoted misconceptions about gestures and facial expressions: crime shows suggest that legal professionals can analyze nonverbal communications to distinguish truth from lies, while individuals identified, explicitly or not, as "body language experts" are employed on television shows to "decipher" the non-verbal expressions of public figures. What sort of information is conveyed by such "decipherings" and how, in practice, is it detrimental to the proper administration of justice? To answer this question, we carefully analyzed the "deciphering" of Aaron Hernandez that took place during his trial. The results of our analysis show how the prosecutor (a) implicitly translated Hernandez's nonverbal behaviors into speech, thereby forcing viewers to reshape their understanding of the case in light of what she suggested, and (b) indirectly promoted misconceptions about nonverbal communication that could have distorted the way judges and jurors assessed the evidence. The results are discussed in light of the scientific literature on nonverbal communication and detecting deception.