Gladwell is suggesting that when people follow a social script—when their behaviors align with a society’s commonly held views about what emotion that behavior is supposed to signify—we have no problem judging them accurately. The problem arises when we encounter a person whose emotional responses fall outside of society’s prescribed, narrow ideas about how people ought to act in a given situation. The person who blushes and avoids eye contact as they tell the truth comes off as a guilty because they are mismatched: they act the way their culture believes a guilty person, not an innocent person, acts.