Tag Archive for Cues

Congruence

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Honest hands - palms up, but what happens next?

Honest hands – palms up, but what happens next?

Hands return to pockets indicate dishonesty and is incongruent with the intended meaning.

Hands return to pockets indicate dishonesty and is incongruent with the intended meaning.

The word congruence, as it relates to body language, refers to the degree to which body language cues in a person matches one another in terms of their meaning. If, for example, one is speaking honestly with the palms up (an honest gesture) we can say that the body language and verbal language are congruent. That is, honest words match up with honest body language. A child with their hands in their pockets (dishonest gesture) speaking about how they didn’t steal a cookie is incongruent since their body language does not match their verbal language.

We regularly place more importance on what words are used rather than how others gestures in their delivery, but this is a mistake. When we don’t have congruency and the verbal language doesn’t match the nonverbal gestures we should always place more importance on the nonverbal channel. Credence should almost always be given to nonverbal language over spoken words since the research tells us that it is often more accurate. When people plan lies they often rehearse the sentences and in what sequence they will deliver them, but they often ignore or disregard gestures that will accompany them. While we monitor our spoken words, our unconsciousness can leak unwanted information through our bodies. However, even if people were consciously aware that their body language gave them away, they would not know what to do since most people are completely unaware of the meaning their body conveys.

Politicians can leak information through congruency and this can give them away, although most politicians today are quite learned in body language. We should be suspicious of politicians, however, when they have their arms tightly folded against their chest while saying that they are open to change or to a door-to-door salesman that swears his life on a product but wipes downward with his hand as if to clear the lie. Another example is the cheating husband who tries to pass off a late meeting and then pulls at his neck tie, collar or scratch his neck indicating stress.

Sometimes however, knowledge about body language just comes off as less expressiveness. The body language thus tends to be much more controlled and subdued because it’s much easier to eliminate body language altogether then it is to add honest body language. However, even reduced expressiveness helps us read people because a relaxed and natural politician is more likely to be telling the truth. Therefore, even reserved body language can be a ‘tell’ to those who are in tune. Congruency therefore, is very important because it is a clear comparison between two communication channels, the verbal and nonverbal. When words are mismatched against the body language, we can be sure something dishonest is at play and these hints should instigate us, at minimum, to pay closer attention.

The Rule Of Four

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Are there enough cues to justify a conclusion in this case?

Are there enough cues to justify a conclusion in this case?

The rule of four, and it’s an important one, says that you can’t attach meaning to a single gesture and accurately judge a person. The rule of four calls on us to read cues alongside other cues commonly referred to as “cue clusters” before drawing conclusions. The more cues that appear in association with other cues, the more accurate one can be about the underlying meaning. It isn’t impossible to see cue clusters in the six’s and sevens or higher. However, most agree that four independent signals is enough to positively identify true meaning.

Sitting with arms tightly pressed against the chest can mean that a person is uncomfortable, but it can also mean that a person is cold! Scratching the nose or face can mean that a person is lying or it could actually have an obvious purpose; to alleviate an itch! However, touching the nose, wiping the mouth in a down-stroke, avoiding eye contact and fidgeting tells us that something dishonest is probably going on. Another example of a cue cluster is as follows: crossing the legs by bringing one foot over the opposite leg (the figure-four leg cross), fingers interlinked together (steepling), leaning back in the chair, and tilting the head back and looking down through the nose at others. This cluster shows arrogance and superiority. However, just the figure four, which is a mild crotch display on its own, means very little. The figure-four-leg-cross only tells us that the crotch has been put on display, but does not necessarily attach meaning to the gesture and indicate arrogance. To some, this posture might not even mean that, it just may be a comfortable way for them to sit.

In all cases, gestures are just gestures and nothing more. It is our targets, the creators, who, knowingly or accidentally, attach meaning or emotions to gestures; it is the senders who are in charge of the delivery phase, and we, as readers, who are in charge of the deciphering phase of the transaction. In other words, it is the sender who is responsible for the message and the meaning entirely, the reader is a passive entity that should never project meaning, especially from that which is not present. That’s not to say that a reader would try to create emotions inaccurately, as this would be counterproductive, but rather that it would be a mistake to bring a gestures to the consciousness of a target and then try to persuade them that their intentions are different from that which is actually true. In many cases, however, you may find that targets won’t be aware of their true emotions anyway and will generally be uncomfortable to be made aware of their subconscious gestures, so reads are best kept to one’s self. Just like you wouldn’t show your cards in poker game, you shouldn’t actively show off your body language skills. Reads, and the skills in this book, are much more powerful if kept a secret.

Not all body movement has hidden meaning either. Sometimes our bodies are quiet and do no talking at all. It is normal for novice readers of body language to immediately begin to see body language cues creep into consciousness, but it’s a mistake to assume that all gestures suddenly have hidden meaning and get carried away with reckless diagnosis.

Let’s take another cue cluster: arms crossed tightly over the chest, legs crossed, head down and shoulders pulled inward. Our conclusion here is that our target is uncomfortable and is closing off the outside world. As signals are removed from this cluster we can be less certain of their emotional origins. Legs crossed with head down can mean just about anything, but even if we add in shoulders pulled inward, it does not provide solid evidence of anything underlying. What we really need here is the fourth, the arms pulled in tight against the body, to really give us enough information to justify a conclusion. The other cues by themselves are closed body postures, but they can be due to other factors. Leg crossing can sometimes even demonstrate interest, as is the case when they are crossed toward a girlfriend or boyfriend (rather then away) for example. The rule-of-four says that we need a “preponderance of evidence”, a term borrowed from the civil judiciary system. We have preponderance of evidence, not when we have achieved absolute unquestionable or irrefutable data, but instead, happens when we have superior weight in our favour and in this case, four independent cues is plenty of weight.

This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, or that we shouldn’t read people who only exhibit one or two cues. Reason being that the damage that might occur from an inaccurate read is likely very small so long as we keep it internalized. We can still make educated guesses or employ “working hypothesis” that can change with additional information as it is collected. One or two cues is sometimes all we get. Older people, who naturally have more controlled and subtle affect, and people learned at controlling their body language, such as public figures, only emit very subtle, fleeting or few nonverbal cues. In this subset of very controlled and practiced people, we often only see cues that are accidentally leaked, which in and of themselves are important, perhaps even more so then complete cue clusters in regular people. The caution here is to avoid premature conclusions on weak data especially when the stakes are high and that sometimes a gesture isn’t anything more than a gesture.

The Five Cardinal Rules Of Body Language

by  • March 5, 2013 • 3 Comments

Is she cold, or angry?

Is she cold, or angry?

Single gestures by themselves can not reveal the true meaning of the situation. There are many more factors that play into reading people then just identifying single cues. When people move, they are fluid and changing, so too are their moods and context. One must use the full picture to discover the story. The ‘rule of four’, congruency, context, baselining, and intuition are the five cardinal rules that any body language master must abide by and we cover them next.

Introduction – Chapter 2

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Mastery of anything begins by first learning the basics, and body language is no different. A solid structure can not be built without first forming and pouring a solid foundation. This chapter is aimed at accomplishing just that, as we tackle the basic, but very important rules of body language. It might seem as though reading body language is as easy and simple as just reading cues and postures, but it isn’t. At times it can be downright confusing, although the aim here is to simplify the language by breaking it apart then reassembling it, but not until the cues are first put through a strong filter. One of the filters we use is based on the five cardinal rules of body language which says that we need to use the rule of four. This rule tells us that we need at least four related cues to form a conclusion. We also need the cues to ‘jive’ called congruence, they must be taken in context, fit along some baseline of behaviour and finally must not be filter through a bias, meaning that they must be true rather than created fictitiously for an ulterior purpose. We will examine the five cardinal rules in detail in the pages to follow.

Just like regular spoken language or written language, silent speech or nonverbal communication also has what is called flow. Body language has rhythm, syntax and all the other nuances associated with general communication and ignoring this flow is akin to throwing away valuable information. We will also see that body language is much more reliable than spoken words because people generally pay little attention to it, and because of this, people will monitor it less readily allowing it to appear naturally and untainted. We will see that when body language and spoken language contradict one another, we should rely more heavily on what is happening non-verbally.

We will also cover the differences in body language reading ability between men and women, how age can influences reading, which may or may not be surprising and how leaders or alpha members of our society call the shots even when it comes to body language. We will touch a bit on good posture, how best to use touching, and how body language relieves pent up energy and displaces it. Finally we will touch briefly on the meaning of fashion and how it plays into nonverbal communication.

Why We Should Picture People Naked!

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How does this posture appear fully nude?

How does this posture appear fully nude?

My final thought in this opening chapter should keep your imagination in full gear because I am about to recommend that you do something naughty to become more proficient at reading body language. I’m instructing you to picture your body language subjects as if they were totally nude! Body language cues came about over our evolutionary history, so it naturally follows that they developed without clothing or coverings. Imagine, for example, a full body steeple where the arms are placed behind the head and the body leans back with the legs spread wide open – a crotch display! It is the way a proud (or arrogant) man sits to put his full package on display. True, it is slightly less offensive with clothing on, but it still carries the exact same meaning since its true intentions were delivered as if the clothing were absent. Picturing people naked helps us to think about not just the message, but also the route behind the message. Men who hold their legs spread wide open are perceived as arrogant but women who hold the exact same posture will be thought of as sexually open or “easy.” While each party might not specifically intend to deliver this message, it matters little to how others subconsciously perceive them.

What is her body saying with it's "openness."

What is her body saying with it’s “openness.”

Arrogance and sexual openness are not the only gestures that are made more salient by picturing people naked but they are the most dramatic. We can also picture meek gestures in the same way. Women that place their hands over their laps are doing so for just the opposite reason as do women who spread their legs, they do so to hide or protect their genitals for view or from access. The same intention is obvious when women fold their arms over their chest. They are trying to hide and protect their breasts since someone or something has made them withdraw and has made them insecure. Naturally, their arms fold, one over the other, and they hide from view something important to them. There will be times though, when protection isn’t the reason, arm crossing due to being cold is one of them. We will discuss the importance of context in this regard in more detail later. There are other times still, when women put themselves on full display. Women do so by walking with their hips forward and chest back. This is called the parade and her intension is to have men and subordinate women take notice. If you have trouble visualizing this, put it in the context of the local nightclub. Suddenly you see that it follows naturally, and next time at a bar, you might actually notice it in an authentic context.

While we are on the subject of nudity, think about how and where we hold our possessions. A handbag can be held to our sides, but equally, it can be placed on our laps or held to our chest. Handbags therefore, can have a protective shielding purpose, as do other objects in our environment and some women will even admit this as fact by tell you that they feel naked without one! Desks can be used as barricades to block ourselves from view and chairs with backs can be used in full on assault by turning them backwards and straddling them, putting the “boys” or “girls”, on full display. Then from the security of our seated position we can toss verbal arrows and spears. People who sit in this way are obviously aware of being fully clothed and most certainly wouldn’t sit this way while naked, but that’s not the point. The point is that people continue to sit this way despite holding the evolutionary hardwiring telling them that the way they are sitting is offensive. Someone that is defensive, on the other hand, will use desks, walls, doors, or other barriers to protect and hide themselves rather than flaunt. You can think of shields such as handbags or jackets like towels, objects that we use fresh out of the shower to block our private areas from view and appropriately conceal our modesty. An excellent example of a real life “towel” and one that is very commonly used during presentations is the podium. Most would say that it is a great place to store our notes and an area to place the microphone, and nothing more, but in reality it’s a place of refuge that public speakers us to escape full view of the crowd. Only the most confident speakers who are accustomed to being exposed in front of large audiences will move about a stage for everyone to see.

So in summary, do as any amateur public speaker is recommended to do, when in doubt, and to make the points expressed in this book more salient, picture your targets naked!

Faking Body Language And Microexpressions

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Is body language a “learnable skill” and can it therefore be faked? The answer is yes and no. The vast majority of the more prevalent body language can be learned. For example, keeping your hands out of your pockets or using the hands expressively to remain honest and open, or keeping the hands away from the face to come off as more confident as easily learned through conscious thought and repetition. However, a new area of study reveals that there is a whole new set of cues that are much more difficult to control, if not impossible.

A furrowed forehead can happen in a split second and reveal negative emotions.

A furrowed forehead can happen in a split second and reveal negative emotions.

These are called microexpressions or microsignals. These signals can be used to decipher liars from truth tellers. Microexpressions appear as furrows, smirks, frowns, smiles and wrinkles and can offer an accurate, though fleeting, window into emotions. These microexpressions are controlled by muscles such as the fontalis, corregator and risorius and they are provoked by underlying emotions that are nearly impossible to control consciously. One of these emotions is the fake smile to show appeasement in lieu of genuine joy or happiness. The fake smile is obvious, as will see later, because the lips are pulled across the mouth, but the muscles controlling the eyes, play no part.

With specialized computer software, researchers have been able to detect these signals. Computers were employed because the signals flash across the face in fractions of seconds making it hard for humans to pick the signals up consciously. Slowing down video on high speed video cameras and playing it back repeatedly to observers can also be used to detect the expressions. So part of the story is that microexpressions are difficult to detect and control but the rest of the story tells us that if they exist (and they do), that we must at some level have evolved the ability to read and detect them. Therefore, we must be cautious about assuming that just because they happen so fast, that they can’t be picked up and conversely that we can easily fake our way through the nonverbal channel. It just might be that the subconscious intuition is hard at work giving us that sixth sense feeling that can’t trust someone despite not quite being able to put to words. The reason, it seems, is a combination of microexpressions and our intuition.

Some researchers will tell us that the face is the easiest part of our bodies to control, but this isn’t entirely true and is a poor excuse for the full story. If our faces were so easily controlled, why have botox treatments to freeze up our faces with low level toxins in order to erase wrinkles? Why not just stop using the muscles altogether and therefore avoid suffering from facial wrinkles during the aging process? The simple answer is that it’s not the simple. While our faces are in fact under a large part under our control, we can’t always be focused on it, lest we not be able to focus on anything else. Not the least of which is controlling our speech. Can you imagine what it would be like to construct sentences free-form while trying to remain expressive but at the same time avoid contracting “inappropriate” facial muscles (whatever they might be)? When we talk or see, or do, our faces naturally respond to what is going on around us because they are closely tied to our mind and our emotions. It is a cause and effect relationship, or even an arms race, and it precisely because the face provides such a vast amount of information, that we are so tuned into reading it.

Other ways to spot a fake is with regards to incongruent body language. That is, language that is inconsistent with either, the words being spoken, and the nonverbal language that accompanies it. Women are particularly adept at reading the whole picture since they are naturally more perceptive, can usually pick up on the subtleties in others more quickly then men and have been shown by research to be able to perform multiples tasks at once. To women, something just won’t seem right, their sense will “tingle.” We call this the “female intuition”, but thankfully, with practice men can develop their skills just as readily and that is what this book is all about.

What Is Cold Reading?

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Cold reading is a technique fortune tellers use to convince their audience that they know much more then they really do and that they know it from scratch, no prewritten cue cards here. Rather they read their cues on the fly such as clothing or fashion, gender, age, race or ethnicity, hairstyle and posture to draw information about a person, although they never tell the audience as much. The cold readers find themselves to be psychics, mediums and fortune tellers of the profession.

I’m always struck by those who think that some form of extrasensory perception is happening simply because readers don’t rely on spoken words to discover ‘truths’ about a person. In this case ‘truths’ is a bit of a stretch and not totally accurate, ‘leads’ is probably a better word. I suppose, the magic happens because the audience really is not aware of all the information available to the reader from simple observation. With a few additional cues derived from religion, place of origin and education, of which the reader can simply ask, or even the manner in which they speak, a lot can be learned about a person and quickly. As the cold reader moves forward with generalization and high probabilities guesses, he or she (usually a she, as women are more perceptive and so make better psychics), they navigate through a formulaic serious of potent topics before reaching conclusions. They pick up on cues emitted from their subjects to verify correct pathways and can reinforce certain chance connections and guesses.

Other basic procedures used by readers include techniques such as “shotgunning” allegedly used by mediums such as Sylvia Browne and John Edward where the reader quickly offers a huge quantity of general information to an entire audience hoping something will stick. General information used in reading is called the “rainbow ruse”, where a phrase is advanced that covers a large array of possibilities. The rainbow ruse might include statements that are not quantifiable or so general that it can apply to nearly everyone. The ruse can include statements such as “You are most often cooperative and pleasant, but when someone does you wrong, you are easy to anger and hold a grudge.” Does that not describe everyone you know?

How Hard Is It To Read People?

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Itchy nose or does this mean something else?

Itchy nose or does this mean something else?

Reading people is fairly simple and common sense once the language is learned, but initially there are a lot of cues to recall so at times it can be confusing. At first it might be difficult just remembering the cues, let alone pull them to consciousness when applicable, but with time this second language will seem to flow naturally and in real time. Body language is fluid and happening all the time around us so we can’t hit pause or rewind in real life to review individual cues. Thankfully, though, we don’t have to. Even beginners can get the gist of things just by picking up a few cues here and there, however the full meaning won’t come until the reader can piece together all the cues.

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When you begin to notice things you hadn’t before, it will be obvious that I have accomplished my goal.