| Dr. Cal Lightman | |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Calvin Timothy Lightman |
| Place of Birth | Rochester, New York |
| Profession | Psychologist, deception detection expert |
| Affiliation | The Lightman Group |
| Hair | Brown |
| Eyes | Blue |
| Height | 5'11 ft. |
| Weight | 170 lbs. |
| Special Skills | Deception detection |
Dr. Cal Lightman is the world's leading deception expert, a scientist who studies facial expressions, body language, voice and words to discover if someone is lying and why. Lightman can spot what are known as "microexpressions" - split-second, involuntary facial expressions that reveal what a person is really feeling.
Calvin Timothy Lightman was born and raised in Rochester, New York. After graduating from high school, Lightman went on to Syracuse University. He graduated from Syracuse with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army via the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps. While at Syracuse, Lightman decided to become an intelligence officer.
Upon graduating from the Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, he attended the U.S. Army Airborne School. Lightman was then assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division as the assistant battalion intelligence officer of the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was later assigned as a counterintelligence platoon leader to the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. Lightman eventually rose to the position of a company executive officer.
With numerous commendations, he left the Army after four years of service and enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in psychology at Georgetown University. A little while later, Lightman obtained a private investigator license and was eventually hired by a Washington, D.C.-based private investigation firm as a part-time investigator while he simultaneously underwent his studies at Georgetown. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology in just five years. Lightman's dissertation was on the use of psychoanalytical deception detection in both espionage and criminal investigations.
Soon after, he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia as an associate professor of psychology. After a year at UVA, Lightman was hired as an independent contractor by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate both captured spies and high-value detainees. He was later hired by the United States Department of Defense to provide consulting work in the field of deception detection. A couple of years later, Lightman left the Defense Department's deception detection program and founded the Lightman Group.
Located in Washington, D.C., the Lightman Group is a private firm that assists federal agencies, local police, corporations and private individuals with their most difficult cases through the use of applied psychology. A respected but controversial psychologist, Lightman is an expert at interpreting microexpressions through the facial action coding system and analyzing body language in order to tell when a person is lying. Though often confronted by people's skepticism, he uses any psychological technique he deems necessary to reach the truth, however elaborate or confronting.
Lightman can detect the truth by analyzing a person's face, body, voice and speech. When someone shrugs one shoulder, rotates their hand or raises their lower lip, he knows they're lying. By analyzing facial expressions, Lightman can read feelings - from hidden resentment to sexual attraction to jealousy. But as he well knows, his scientific ability is both a blessing and a curse, as he finds that family and friends will deceive each other as readily as criminals and strangers do.