Tag Archive for Motions

Remaining Uncommitted

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

When people tell the truth they will usually show extra enthusiasm and commit to their story. Liars often start off the same way, but quickly trail off.

When people tell the truth they will usually show extra enthusiasm and commit to their story. Liars often start off the same way, but quickly trail off.

Liars have been noted to be uncommitted to lies. That is, because they have nothing vested in the lie, they remain less than exuberant in their convictions. In other words, the subconscious mind of liars doesn’t allow them to carry forward with enthusiasm. Instead of smashing a fist against a table and raising a voice saying “I didn’t do it!”, liars will instead make much duller motions and use less commitment to them. It is not as if they want to lie, it is the limbic mind that won’t allow them to.

Liars will motion without emphasis, or describe events by trailing off or use weak statements. They might limit arm and hand movement by clasping them together or locking them down on an armrest with such force they turn their knuckles white. The hands might be put out of sight in pockets or under a table where they can’t be read. Reduced movement can be seen throughout the body, not just in the hands. The entire body including the head, arms, feet, and torso can seem to lock in place. People that are telling the truth spend a lot of time and energy in efforts to make the facts known which comes across in their body language and gesturing. Truth tellers are happy to spend as much time as necessary to get everything right. They will often add more detail than required and go over it again and again if necessary. Not emphasizing is linked to the freeze response where the mind clams the body shut and reduces movement so as to draw less attention to it. What is important in lie detection is to compare cues from a baseline. That is, if someone suddenly drops emphasis then you know they’ve lost interest in the topic or are lying. In either case, it will have provided useful information to the body language reader.

In writing this passage, I had just reviewed a video (see bottom posted on the web of a baseball game in which a player leaped head-over-feet clear over the catcher as he came to homeplate to score a run. The catcher, stuck in a fear response, failed to tag the runner. Baseball has an interesting tradition where it is customary for the runner to body-check the catcher at homeplate as he tries to tag for an out. While the catcher braced and ducked with his elbow up to make the tag, the runner jumped over the catcher landing on home plate. The catcher stuck with his elbow up in defense could only convince his mind to bring his arm just close enough to miss the tag! Because his mind feared the body check, he wasn’t able to follow through with what he intended. While this is an interesting fear based response what follows is even more interesting since it helps us read liars. The catcher, realizing he failed to get the out, quickly turns to pursue the runner. One must ask why he would track the runner down if he made the tag? Obviously he hadn’t! But more important that this, is that we know that he knows that he didn’t make the tag! This means that any nonverbal language following the lack of tag, should he dispute it, is read as lying language. To state his case, the catcher chats with the umpire by raising his arms showing how he made the tag. What is revealing, however, is that the catcher only slightly raises his arms instead of doing it with emphasis. Instead of showing the gesture over and over again, the catcher just raises his arms once as if to make a casual rainbow motion with his arms. When his coach shows up with arms flaying and talking with enthusiasm, the catcher quietly exits! The catcher knows that he can’t make a case and so doesn’t put any effort into trying. The difference between the coach and the catcher, is that the catcher knows he’s lying, while the coach isn’t sure. Once more, the coach isn’t actually lying anyway, since he wasn’t there to feel the contact or lack thereof of the catchers mitt and the runner, he’s just acting out an inherent bias – he’s playing the role he was hired to do. Lack of commitment is an important cue to watch for when detecting lies so be careful to watch for it.

What To Mirror To Gain Favours

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

When people's bodies are out of sink, the differences of opinion are amplified.

When people’s bodies are out of sink, the differences of opinion are amplified.

Proper mirroring is far from the game we play as children. The goal of kid’s is to irritate their opponent with exact copying of gestures even expressions and word, whereas the goal of adults is to formulate agreement and rapport. In adults, necessarily, more subtle mirroring must follow. In the experiments listed above, the researchers set to mirror only those actions which occur subconsciously, those that happen out of normal awareness. Movements such as foot shaking, body scratching, face or hair touching or changes in posture are good ways to start the mirroring process. Your goal should always be to avoid getting caught consciously mirroring someone else since being detected will create negative feelings more so than if no mirroring was done at all. Motions such as leaning in, crossing legs and folding arms can also be used, but must be done with caution since these are much larger motions and can be more easily detected.

Echoing which is like mirroring where similar body postures are replicated, but of which happen sometime later, is a technique that makes the rapport building process more subtle. In echoing, postures and gestures are not concurrent with what is going on with others, but instead happen after some time has elapsed. To be effective, echoing happens within thirty seconds to a minute of separation, but can even happen with several minutes of separation, where only subtle rapport is felt.

Where body positions are fluent, yet echoed, and bodies seem to jive as if in an elaborate dance and where conversation flows smoothly we find “total synchrony.” We say that these people are on the same “wavelength.”

Some ways we mirror with our bodies:

[A] Shifting weight from one foot to the other foot or keeping the weight on the same foot.
[B] Leaning on a bar top or up against a wall or other structure.
[C] Crossing the legs in the same direction or opposite direction when facing each other.
[D] Keeping the legs uncrossed.
[E] Gesturing with the hands similarly.
[F] Drinking in unison or holding drinks with the same hand.
[G] Placing both hands, or just one hand, on the hips.
[H] Leaning in, or leaning out.

Baselining

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Does he always sit on his hands or is he hiding something?

Does he always sit on his hands or is he hiding something?

Baselining is probably one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of reading body language. It refers to the “normal” motions that populate the repertoire of each and every person on the planet. Normal here is the operative word. We can’t even begin to read someone until we first have their baseline pegged. For example, to read someone that is normally flighty and constantly moving, as agitated is wrong since they are merely acting out their particular “idiosyncratic nonverbal behaviour.” That is, the body language that is particular to specific people and that makes up their repertoire, or basket of cues considered normal for them. This person might be flighty or high strung by nature but they certainly can’t be constantly agitated by nature as our nervous systems can’t tolerate perpetual stress. A person high strung by nature who seemingly freezes instantly is telling us based on their baseline that something is up. Baselining tells us that a condition in their environment has changed and it has affected them. It now becomes our job to detect the cause for the change.

Baselining involves learning about how a person usually sits, how they use their hands to gesture, where they place their hands while at rest and relaxed or when nervous, how they place their feet when standing, their overall posture, how they prefer to cross their legs such as whether they cross them equally left over right as right over left, and so on. The list to baselining is utterly endless as are the myriad of cues that can be emitted from the human body, fraught with or, absent of, meaning.

By establishing a baseline it will be possible to catch sudden changes in body language. This is the ultimate purpose to establishing a person’s baseline. Without catching the changes, body language loses its ability to indicate exactly what is going on. For example, a younger brother that is acting exuberant and ecstatic who is jumping around with joy and happiness, who, at a moments notice, finds himself in the presence of an older brother only to suddenly cease his joyful movements, turtles his head into his shoulders, and becomes quiet, says a lot about what kind of relationship they have been having lately. Body language is directly linked to emotions, and so when it changes, we know that something has cause the change, and more often than not, it will be precisely the event that preceded it.

These changes aren’t just limited to events either, they can also be tied to words spoken, or even topics. A married couple might be carrying on amicably, but when there is mention of an ex-girlfriend, even casually, the wife might begin to display dominant and closed body language such as crossing arms, wagging fingers, or scolding eyes. She is indicating that this women or topic is a particular sore spot between them and the sudden change in mood, from good to bad, tells us that it is the topic that is the issue. Criminal investigators will frequently steer suspects off-topic (and seemingly off the record) by talking about favourite pass-times or hobbies by example. This serves the investigator by producing relaxed body language. Once a baseline is established interrogators begin to introduce facts surrounding the investigation to measure their effects. They might begin with items not even connected to the trial and then suddenly introduce a murder weapon, for example, to see if nervous body language appears. During criminal investigations the murder weapon can be kept a secret from the public especially early on, so only the real criminal would exhibit a visceral response to viewing it. While these sorts of interrogations won’t directly lead to a conviction, it does provide clues for further exploration. Like all body language, clues tell us if we are on the right track or if we’ve eliminated leads, at least for the time being.

Those who don’t know about baselining will find it difficult to read other people who lack similar affect to themselves since their only reference of normal is what they do or what the average person they associate with do (which more often then not is very similar to themselves anyway since we tend to hang out with those of like mind). People that don’t baseline won’t see people for their individual characteristics, idiosyncrasies, culture and habits. As we work through life we should have our family, friends, coworkers, bosses, instructors, or anyone else we interact with regularly pegged for their baseline. This will not only make reading them easier, it will also give us “archetypes” that can be cross referenced as comparisons. This in turn, gives us a better chance at evaluating others, even strangers, on the spot, and in real time.