Tag Archive for Phenomenon

So Which People Are Good At Detecting Lies?

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

At this point in the chapter it might seem out of place to admit that some individuals can actually detect lies better than chance, but this is true, and has been backed up empirically through research. Studies have shown that while the rest of the world is limited to fifty percent, or the same accuracy as that which would occur by chance, the CIA (central intelligence agency) scores seventy-three percent, sheriffs sixty-seven percent, psychologist sixty-eight percent whereas the secret service scores sixty-four percent.

So why do the experts have an advantage over the layman? Well, part of the explanation lies in experience. The group of psychologist was chosen due to their special interest in lying and lie detection, not to mention their willingness to participate in a two day seminar covering various topics related to lying and lie detection. Each group including the psychologists, the CIA, and the secret service all have an interest in lie detection coupled with the training to back it up. Experts are drawing on information from many facets about a person, including their paraverbal and nonverbal language as well as other cues as we have covered which is unlike regular lay-people who have little if any experience in analyzing people, let alone the ability to repeatedly test their skills. Because lie detection and reading people is a huge part of their occupations, they get a lot of practice and feedback.

Personality characteristics might also play into the ability to detect lies. For example, empathy, sensitivity to social cues, and conscientiousness can all help in reading people more accurate because it allows a person to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Experts are also more aware of the truth bias, which we covered earlier, and so can properly adjust for this phenomenon. It is important to conclude on these matters that the accuracy, while impressive in relation to ordinary people, is still far from perfect. While the experts are far from perfect, they do give us some hope that lie detection is more than a chance operation. No doubt, by reading this chapter alone, you will be able to make huge strides in reading others, perhaps not pegging every liar dead on the spot, but the cues in this chapter will help you at least identified those who are worthy of a second look.

Above: Paul Ekman talks about microexpressions.

Why Our Pets Look Like Our Kids And Couples Like Each Other

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Why is it that married men and women look similar to each other? Do we subconsciously choose partners that look like us, or is something else at play? You probably at least suspect by now that some element of body language is involved, and you’d be right. A 1987 study by Zajonc and colleagues from the University of Michigan set out to discover if couples really to look alike and why this is so. They had subjects compare photographs of married couples when they were first married to photographs after twenty-five years of marriage. The results showed that there was an obvious similarity within couples, that is, they looked alike, and it was also found that couples that had greater facial similarity tended to report greater happiness.

When couples live together they begin to look alike, and this trend happens over time, as the researchers discovered, since new couples had less facial similarity than did older couples. This was explained due to the tendency to mirror one another and empathize with our partners emotions. This causes facial musculature to become increasingly more toned in similar areas as our partners. It is these expressions that create wrinkles in specific patterns around the eyes, mouth and forehead, which in turn carve our faces into ones that mirror our spouse. With time, the even the root facial expressions become the norm for each and happen with or without the spouse being present. This phenomenon isn’t isolated to our spouses, it can be found in our children, or anyone else that spend a great of time with us. It has been said that our personality is the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Perhaps this also extends to our facial expressions! Mirroring is a very profound force in our lives and we should note and correct our bad habits in our expressions. When greeting your spouse, or children do you smile gleefully or is your face expressionless or worse, does it scowl?

The appearance of our pets is an entirely different matter since animals have very restricted ability to move their faces and the emotions they experience don’t come across to us in the same way that it does with people. So why is it that our pets look like us, but more so like our children? The answer lies in neoteny, for one, and secondly due to selection preference. Pets through extensive breeding tend to have more neotenized features. For example, their eyes are often droopy, their tails and ears lay flat instead of standing erect and they have soft fuzzy fur. Dogs through eons of artificial selection pressure have retained only a select few traits of their wolf ancestors especially in its adult form. Humans much prefer dogs that appear “cute”, play fetch, leap and bound, and wrestle to dogs that attack and kill prey. It should be noted though, that some masters do relate to this type of animal and adopt similar pets. Neoteny explains why dogs look like children, and our interests, purpose, or intention for the dog selects the breed while our own physical appearance influences which dog breed we eventually choose. In other words, we choose dogs in our own unique image and likeness because we relate to them. This is why we find aggressive tattooed owners with pitbulls, dainty pink-loving celebrities with toy dogs or “tea cups” and why tall skinny people choose bigger lengthy dogs like greyhounds.

Head Tilted Interest

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Head tilt shows interest.

Head tilt shows interest.

The head tilted at forty-five degrees from the center line of the body indicates interest and intrigue. It says “I am receptive, comfortable, and friendly.” The head tilt is one of the very significant and prominent postures that everyone should be aware of, especially educators of any kind. A professor for example, can gauge his efficacy as an instructor by the degree to which his audience tilts their head. Head tilting is also very difficult to fake because our minds will resist the posture when we dislike what we are hearing or the people around us, making it a very honest and reliable gesture.

Head on, means passive listening for example, head slightly tilted shows moderate interest and head at its maximum forty-five degrees shows full immersion. A teacher might see variations across his audience, and also across the subject matter. Head tilting is not an all or nothing phenomenon. This makes it easy to measure the success of a presentation nonverbally and tweak it as necessary.

Dogs also tilt their head, usually by engaging them in human conversations, so the root of this mechanism could simply be the state of being confusion. The head tilt is also a submissive gesture as it exposes the neck making it vulnerable to attack. One of the more prominent courtship displays is the exposed neck, and when done by women, is particularly alluring. This is examined in a later chapter.

The Shrinking Man

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

People who achieve higher status are seen as taller - even if they aren't.

People who achieve higher status are seen as taller – even if they aren’t.

Height plays a big role in how we are perceived and even the level of income we might reach. It has been noted that taller men are significantly more likely to earn higher salaries, and be promoted, then shorter men of similar experience and qualifications. This is because we attribute more favourable qualities to taller people, just like we do for attractive women. We can call this the “halo effect” because taller and more attractive people are treated like angels, even though there is no reason to believe that they are more deserving than anyone else. Unfortunately, this phenomenon also occurs in reverse. Shorter and less attractive people are thought to be less intelligent and lazy. Many research studies looking at the treatment differences of thin people versus those who are obese have shown that bystanders are significantly more likely to come to the assistance of the more attractive people over those who are overweight. Overweight people in distress are often outright ignored.

While the facts surrounding the halo effect might not come as a surprise, the fact that those in positions of power also receive more favourable ratings might. For example, bosses, professors, judges, and others in positions of authority are perceived to be taller than they really are. Shorter bosses are given a few extra inches and bosses that are the same height as an employee will be said to be taller than them. These ratings have everything to do with their relative importance. Because they are leaders, we give them leadership qualities. Therefore, height perception is due, in part, to the positions held by the people around us. Even those with quieter personalities will be perceived as shorter than they really are, and those with more assertive and authoritative attitudes will be perceived as taller.

Height is used as a means of establishing superior-subordinate relationships. These can be real as it is with short and tall people or circumstantial as in happens by modifying ones environment or posture. The judge is at a high bench for a reason, he is trying to reign over his courtroom and establish his importance. The same goes for King’s or the Pope whom take balcony vantage points to address their followers. The pharmacist on the other hand is a compete mystery!

Introduction – Chapter 8

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Dominant and submissive gestures are polar opposites, both by definition, and in terms of the body language that is used to indicate it. For example, appearing larger by throwing an arm over the back of the chair and spreading the legs opened is dominant whereas appearing smaller by pulling the limbs inward or hunching the back is submissive. This phenomenon is a good rule of thumb so keep it in mind while reading this chapter and the people around you.

In this chapter we will cover an encyclopedia of signs and signals that display status. By the end you will see how dominance and submissiveness are a common theme in people. So much of what people do is as a direct consequence of an unevenly divided resource base and how we all fit into society’s hierarchy. Dominance and the body language that showcases it, is how we decide who has rights over whom without resorting to physical conflict. Naturally, this chapter also provides methods by which status can be artificially raised simply by employing suitable body language.

In this chapter we will cover, amongst many others, how our environment can be manipulated to gain the advantage such as the status achieved by the judge in his highchair, how relaxed body postures can show dominance, how the head talks even when our mouths are not moving, how the chair straddler is a coward, how women will appear easy if they spread their legs whereas men will appear more masculine, how tilting far back in the chair is dangerous and not just because you might fall, how having the hands on the hips means more than disapproval and how military men leave their bodies exposed to attack on purpose.

Who Smiles More, Men Or Women, And Why?

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Women smile more than men to appease them.

Women smile more than men to appease them.

The research on smiling shows us that women tend to smile the most and that they also tend to smile regardless of their emotional state. Men will and can get away without smiling the most as men who don’t smile are seen as dominant whereas women who don’t smile are seen as unhappy or angry. We might feel that this is simply a learned or cultural phenomenon but the fact is that smiling differentials between men and women happen very early in life. Little girls by the age of eight begin to smile much more whereas little boy lag further behind and they continue to lag behind into adulthood.

Women are obliged to smile to appease men according to researcher Dr. Nancy Henley at UCLA. She felt that women smiled simply to placate men and that since men normally occupy the dominant roles, women felt pressure to submit to their dominance. She felt smiling differences had nothing at all to do with women as nurturers and pacifiers. This might not be the whole story though. The research also shows us that while women that smile more are taken less authoritatively, women, regardless of their social status and position tend smile more than men. This is the case even when they hold similar job positions showing us that they smile more often even when they don’t have to Other research though confuses these findings and says that sometimes women of equal status to men, tend to use smiles similarly.

However, this certainly wasn’t the case for my wife, who, I had run a ‘smile boycott’ in light of the research done on smiles by Marianne La France. A ‘smile boycott’ is fairly simple, I explained to my wife, all she had to do was smile when she was happy and not smile when she wasn’t. You might try the same experiment for comparison. At first, she found it difficult to bring to consciousness the instances when she smiled because it happens subconsciously, but once she got the hang of it, she found that she smiled a lot.

In fact, at work, she smiled almost continuously, and so it was difficult at first for her to avoid smiling. She found that as she passed male colleagues in the hallways, she’d feel inclined to smile, even though they often failed to reciprocate. Men, she found, would merely nod their heads as they passed. When conversing with other female coworkers, they too tended to smile but if they didn’t, she reported back that she felt as if they were ‘rude.’ If she held a ‘non-smiling’ face for any prolonged period of time, she was questioned; “Are you okay?”, “Lighten up” or, “What’s bothering you?” She simply couldn’t get away with smile avoidance; the world wouldn’t let her. While this is far from scientific, it does illustrate well the trend we find in the scientific research. Women that don’t smile are reported negatively whereas women who smile more, tend to be viewed much more positively.

Further research shows us that smiling is in fact an option for the powerful regardless of their sex. Whereas less powerful people are required to smile more to appease those in higher positions, those higher up, need not placate those below. Interestingly too, is that women usually feel the need to please others, whereas men don’t, and they tend to correlate this need to please with smiling. Therefore this need to please might be at the root of all smiling. Armed with all this information, you can use the smile for your purpose, be it to placate, appease or neither.