It’s said that crime happens when there’s opportunity, rationalization, and pressure. So I was super interested when I saw this interview with a Florida high schooler and her mom accused of rigging the homecoming queen election so she would win.
Even just reading the headline I was floored that people would mastermind something like this. I thought for a minute about the rationalization. What kind of pressures must have been present to think this was worth the effort? How important is being the queen? And what happened to old fashioned integrity? After I watched the interview I saw that integrity isn’t part of the equation in this family. What deception do you see?
Homecomig queen.mp4 from Traci Brown on Vimeo.
Here’s what I saw:
At 1:18 the mom says ‘we don’t know’ . This is one of the tell tales of deception. Really? She doesn’t know? Or at least have an idea?
At 1:53 the daughter smiles when she says I rigged the election’ this isn’t deception but I do think this shows she’s pretty happy about it. And the mom smiles too!
AT 2:16 the daughter smiles as she says ‘no’ I believe this is Duper’s Delight. She’s having fun with this and thinking that she’s getting away with it. And if you listen closely she says no twice. Truthful people say the minimum they need to say to get their point across. So the 2nd no can be a sign of deception in this case.
At 2:34 the mom answers the question ‘How do you explain that number’ and she says ‘I don’t’. Which says she’s refusing to explain it. And she shrugs her shoulders in uncertainty. She didn’t say ‘I can’t’ explain it. These are 2 very different ways to answer the question with very different meanings.
At 2:47 the when asked about alibis the daughter says she has a lot of them. I think you can only have 1 alibi for any one moment in time. But then we see that crooked tilt to her lips. That says contempt which is defined as moral superiority. SO she thinks she’s on higher ground than everyone else involved in the case.
At 2:50 she laughs as she says that she can’t give the alibi. This is again duper’s delight. She’s having lots of fun with this.
At 3:09 she says ‘it’s horrible’ as she laughs but then we see her get into some real emotion. Homecoming queens are taught to smile thru the pain and I think this is an example of that breaking down here.
At 3:35 The daughter laughs as the says we have evidence so again that’s her having fun holding back info. Then the mom says we ‘did not do what they say we did’. She has a switch of formality here, taking out the contraction. It’s designed to be more convincing. And then she shrugs her shoulders when she says ‘I didn’t do’. Which signals uncertainty.
My analysis: Pants on Fire. The lies are in just about every sentence. I can’t wait to hear how this one turns out in the courts.