Ekman believes that everyone can be trained to this level of success (and has created the relevant training materials himself) but that his “wizards” achieve it naturally; perhaps because they’ve had a lot of practice.
If I remember it right it isn’t only supposed to be about the amount of practice. It’s important that you practice in an enviroment where you want to spot lies but expect people to tell the truth.
The practice in law enforcement where the agent assumes that the person they are interrogating is guilty isn’t enough. In contrast the people in the secret service that guards important people get better practice. For any single person in the crowd they assume by default that the person is innocent but still check them to see if they might be guilty.
As a result there are more “wizards” in the secret service than in law enforcement.
If I remember it right it isn’t only supposed to be about the amount of practice. It’s important that you practice in an enviroment where you want to spot lies but expect people to tell the truth.
The practice in law enforcement where the agent assumes that the person they are interrogating is guilty isn’t enough. In contrast the people in the secret service that guards important people get better practice. For any single person in the crowd they assume by default that the person is innocent but still check them to see if they might be guilty. As a result there are more “wizards” in the secret service than in law enforcement.