How to Read People

Dogs read faces just like babies

2012-01-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

New research published in Current Biology reveals what many dog lovers already knew - Dogs can read faces just like babies. In particular, dogs rely on more than just verbal cues to communicate and anticipate our desires.

Jozsef Topal, a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study stated, "Dogs are receptive to human communication in a manner that was previously attributed only to humans.

29 canines were included in the study that looked at different aspects of communication. They were shown videos of a woman who first had verbal communication along with eye contact, then verbal communication without eye contact. The results showed that dogs followed the woman's gaze only when she looked directly at them and not when she just had verbal communication without eye contact.

What do you "read" in Newt Romney's Face?

2012-01-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

Take a look at these faces. What do you see? Is it Confidence? Concern? Annoyance? Arrogance? Contempt?

Reading Proactive and Passive from Demeanor and Language

2012-01-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

I've talked in earlier posts about reading people by the words they use. One of the ways we do this is by recognizing mental filters from language. Mental filters (also known as meta programs in NLP) are preferences or tendencies. I tend to be Passive, while my husband Mike generally operates at the Proactive side of this filter continuum.

How do you read or recognize this particular aspect of personality? Sentence structure provides us with some interesting clues. Proactive people typically use short, direct sentences with an active verb structure. I made. I ran. I wrote. Passive people tend to use passive verbs and longer, often convoluted sentences. Mike says, "I read minds." Pam says, "I have been helping people learn how to read and connect for more than two decades." See the difference?

Passive people also use passive words like thinking, deciding, planning, understanding. Notice the lack of action in those words. They are "thinking about it" words.

Proactives are also active, meaning they tend to move about a lot, while Passives are more likely to stay stationary. Proactives tend to lean forward, while Passives tend to lean back.

So now that you know how to recognize Proactives and Passives, what can you do with that knowledge? If you're selling or trying to convince a Passive to do something, what do you think they might need to do before they're ready to buy? Think about it! Understand it! How about the Proactive? They are ready to jump right in and get it done, so the last thing you want to do is overload them with details or steps that get in the way of them taking action.

What about Proactives and Passives in the workplace? Who would you want in a dangerous front-line situation where you had to react quickly? Who would you want in a job that required lots of research, planning and design?

In our classes we often use the Ready-Aim-Fire analogy to distinguish between the two. The Proactive version of this is - Fire! The Passive variant is Aim-Adjust the site, Aim, Re-adjust, Re-think the trajectory, Redesign the site.....

Tight-lipped Boehner speaks volumes

2010-11-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

This clip of House Minority (now Majority) Leader John Boehner was the cover photo for a Wall Street Journal video about yesterday's midterm elections. Mr. Boehner shows a "thumbs up" but it seems his tight-lipped mouth has something else to say. His gesture and his facial expression are incongruent. When this is the case, trust the face to tell you how the person really feels.

I'll talk more on what tight lips "say" in a subsequent post.

The Best of Body Reading

2010-08-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading Joe Navarro's book - What Every Body is Saying. I confess that when I first picked it up I wasn't expecting much, not because of the author, but because there are so many crappy books on body language out there. I was pleasantly surprised and I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of Joe's book.

Navarro's work is based on the reactions of the limbic brain and the freeze-fight-flight response. The way we sit or stand, what we do with our hands, our feet, our face, all signal where we are on the comfort-discomfort scale. Discomfort doesn't necessarily mean lying, but it does offer up some important clues.

Here are a couple of interesting points from the book:

People tend to distance themselves from those with whom they feel uncomfortable. They'll lean away, point their feet away or put something between themselves and the other person. They'll create artificial barriers with either their shoulders and arms or with inanimate objects in front of them.

Pacifying behaviors, such as rubbing of the forehead or touching the neck or cheek are automatic responses to the brain's "Please help me feel comfortable again" request. The brain asks and the hands respond.

When you cross one leg in front of the other while standing, you reduce your balance significantly. If there was a threat you wouldn't be able to respond quickly. For this reason the limbic brain allows us to perform this behavior only when we feel comfortable or confident.

Confident and higher status people claim as much physical territory as possible (with both their body and their things), while less confident people tend to shrink.

The human brain is programmed to sense the slightest hand and finger movement. In fact, our brains give a disproportionate amount of attention to the wrists, palms, fingers and hands. Hiding your hands creates a negative impression, makes people suspicious.

When individuals carry their thumbs high, it is a sign they think highly of themselves.

Research tells us liars tend to gesture less, touch less and move their arms and legs less than honest people (Vrij, 2003). This is consistent with limbic reactions. In the face of a threat (for example having a lie detected, we move less or freeze so as not to attract attention.

Easier to fake a smile than originally thought

2010-06-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

For years psychologists believed that a real smile was signaled by upturned lips and crinkly eyes. This genuine smile is named after the French physician Duchenne, who passed electrical currents through live subjects and took photos of their weirdly contorted faces.

It was believed that fewer than 20% could fake a smile that would trick others because we don't have voluntary control over the muscles around our eyes which signal the Duchenne smile.

But now it seems that exactly the opposite is true. Writing in a recent issue of the journal Emotion, Krumhuber and Manstead found that 83% of the people in their study produce fake smiles that others mistook for the real thing in photographs.

The researchers also explored how people perceived genuine and fake smiles when they saw videos rather than just static pictures. Then it emerged that fake smiles were easier to spot, but the supposedly crucial crinkling around the eyes didn't help much. Instead, telling a real from fake smile relied more on dynamic processes such as how long people hold it, the symmetry of the expression and whether conflicting emotions are communicated by other facial areas.

So the Duchenne smile has taken a bit of bashing in this research, which suggests that most people can fake crinkly eyes. Not only that but the crinkly eyes aren't as crucial for us in judging the sincerity of a smile as other factors. Rather than just the crinkly eyes, it's the whole movement of the face which tells a tale either of deception or of genuine, felt emotion.

Stay tuned for more on facial symmetry.....

How to read people by the words they use

2010-04-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

You can learn a lot about a person by simply listening to the words they use.

For purposes of this discussion, let's use the four personality types: Driver, Analytical, Amiable and Expressive. Based simply on the words I'm using in this post, what type do you think I am? OK, I'll give you some more information, because I want you to be able to figure this out on your own. You may need to think through it a couple of times, but I know you'll make sense of it. The mere fact that you're at this site and reading this post means you're curious and you want to learn more.

Figure it out yet? OK, I'll give you a way to compare. Let's imagine that you are interviewing my husband and co-author Michael and me on the same topic. Let's use our book Face Values as an example. You ask this question:

How did you choose this topic to write about?

Pam: After studying NLP and researching different Myers-Briggs and other personality profiling programs, we realized that although each of these programs had merit, there were serious flaws in the logic and serious usability issues. All of them required people to take a test in order for you to know what the other person's personality type is and that simply doesn't make sense if you're one-on-one with someone trying to figure them out.

Michael: I wanted to be more effective communicating with people. I wanted to figure them out. I wanted to understand. I wanted to connect. The psychology excites me. It's hard to fun with people you don't understand.

See the differences in response? Not only in the words used but also in the sentence structure. Mine is long and convoluted, Michael's is short and sweet. Michael is "I" focused, I am "thing" focused (programs, processes, etc.).

Now let's look at the words. Here is a summary of the words and phrases I used:

figure out
think through
make sense
study
know
logic
curious

Now let's look at Michael's words

I (I want to.... I am.....)
understand
communicate
connect
excite
fun

Now can you identify which type each of us is? One of us is Analytical, the other is Expressive.

If you've enjoyed this post consider reading a copy of our book Face Values: How to read people and connect with them in less than 3 minutes.

How real recollection differs from a fabrication

2009-03-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England uses a method called Criteria-Based Content Analysis to help police identify whether the retelling of an incident is truthful. The method is based on research indicating that a story of a real recollection differs from a fabrication in specific ways.

According to Vrij, actual experiences have the following properties:

They are coherent and consistent but generally not in chronological order.
They contain a lot of detail and include unusual and superfluous elements.
They depict personal interactions and reiterate speech and conversation.
They describe feelings and thoughts - the narrator's and in many cases those the storyteller ascribes to the perpetrator.
They contain spontaneous corrections, the admission of memory gaps and doubts about the believability of the story.

How to Recognize a Narcissist

2009-03-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

There were and continue to be no shortage of verbal assaults on the good character of Barack Obama. Most are so absurd as to not even merit rebuttal. One that did catch my attention recently, however, was an email that claimed Mr. Obama was the poster boy for narcissism. I couldn't let this one pass, primarily because nothing is further from the truth. In fact, Obama displays far fewer narcissist tendencies than most of his political counterparts. Let's take a look at some of the clues that help us recognize a narcissist and you can judge for yourself.

Big, loud and braggadocios. The narcissist displays an air of superiority and haughtiness in both posture and speech. His body language and verbal language are typically loud, big and braggadocios. His speech is peppered with "I", "my", "myself", and "mine". No matter how he describes himself (which he does quite a lot) it is always in the extreme - richer, smarter, more creative more successful and so on. If he has struggled in life, it will always be a bigger and more profound struggle than anyone else.

Only interested in self. The narcissist likes to talk about himself and only about himself. He's not interested in others or what they have to say, unless he perceives them as helpful to him getting what he wants. He is impatient, easily bored, and has strong attention deficits – unless and until he is the topic of discussion. He can become disdainful, even angry, if he feels that others are intruding on his time and space.

Expects special treatment. The narcissist expects and often demands special treatment. To be served first, to pay less or get more, to talk directly to authority figures (and not to their assistants or secretaries), to be granted special payment terms, to enjoy custom tailored arrangements.

Is very class and rank conscious. The narcissist sees himself at the top of the food chain and also sees a very defined pecking order. He tends to react with rage and indignation when denied his wishes and if treated equally with others whom he deems inferior. Ever witness someone in a restaurant or shop vehemently dress down the waiter or sales clerk in front of everyone? That's your narcissist.

Jekyll and Hyde - Idealizes or Humiliates. The narcissist is not without compliments for those he sets his sites on. He can flatter, admire, woo, even idealize. But, like most things with the narcissist the extremes are always in play. His admiration is over the top, exaggerated, overdone, and therefore it's sincerity questionable. He can turn it on and off very quickly. Just watch the change when the target leaves the room. Or when the target rejects him. He can move from adoring to hostile in a moments notice. And the hostile jabs will be equally exaggerated and over the top.

All hat and no cattle. Ever been around someone who claims to be in the know on virtually every topic discussed? The person who's mastered every trade, climbed every mountain, and is friends with every powerful person? That's the narcissist. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field. He would have you believe he can do and already has mastered everything there is to master. But it's all show and no substance. One of the most effective methods of exposing a narcissist is by trying to delve deeper. With just a little bit of digging you can quickly expose the narcissist.

Impersonal. The Narcissist avoids emotions and emotional issues, preferring to intellectualize, rationalize and detach. Narcissists often refer to themselves in third person.

Lack of empathy. Think about someone you know who is naturally empathetic, able to connect with different kinds of people in a profound and meaningful way. Now imagine the opposite kind of person. That's a narcissist. A narcissist is unable (or certainly unwilling) to get out of themselves and into the lives and emotions of other people.

Note symmetry of facial expression for clues to deception

2009-03-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

According to Paul Ekman.....
Two distinct neuropathways govern voluntary and spontaneous facial expressions. One major difference is that spontaneous expressions tend to always be more symmetrical - with both sides of the face being more equally effected. When a facetious expression is made voluntarily, this symmetry is always less obvious. Thus, a crooked expression where the sides of the face are mismatched, is a reliable indication that the expression is not genuine but is being voluntarily created. Ekman is referring to relative facial symmetry. Some people naturally have more asymmetrical expressions than others, but when the expression appears more mismatched than usual, that's when you should become suspicious.

Detecting Deception via Body Language and Verbal Clues

2009-02-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

We share in this post a number of things to look for to determine if someone is lying. Bear in mind that it's not a matter of checking things off a list. Deception detection is about recognizing variances from what is normal for the person. Lying is stressful for most people, except perhaps for master manipulators and psychotics, so the number one thing to look for are signs of stress. Stress can show up in posture, movements, facial expressions and in speech. For example, stressed posture is stiff and limited. A stressed facial expression includes tight lips and a tight jaw. Stressed speech is high pitched and overactive.

The second big area for detecting deception is incongruence. Incongruence is when you say one thing with your words but your body is saying something different. For example, you nod your head (as if to say yes) while actually saying the word no.

Deception Detectors - Physical Clues

Physical movements are likely to be limited and stiff, with few arm and hand movements.
Hand, arm and leg movements tend to be inward toward their own body rather than outward towards the other person
Liars tend to touch their hand to their face or throat. They may cover their mouth, rub the bottom of their nose or rest their hands around their throat.
Liars tend to be physically closed and small and take up less space than when they're telling the truth.
A person who is lying to you will avoid making eye contact. (Be careful with this one as many people are aware of this clue and have learned to make eye contact even when lying).
Liars tend to take a defensive stance both verbally and physically. Physically they may turn their head or body away.
A liar might unconsciously place objects (book, coffee cup, etc.) between themselves and you.

Deception Detectors - Congruence

Speech is incongruent with body language or facial expression. For example frowning or shaking your head no when saying "I love you."
When someone is faking an emotion, their expressions are typically limited to mouth movements. For example, when someone smiles naturally their whole face is involved, especially the eyes. With a fake smile, only the mouth is smiling.
Timing delay between expression and sentiment. For example, when receiving a gift the person says I love it! then smiles after making the statement, rather than at the same time the statement is made.
When a person is asked a question that requires a yes or no answer, if they are telling the truth, they'll nod their head (and only thier head) quickly. If they are lying or unsure about the answer the nod will start in their shoulders and will be significantly slower.

Deception Detectors - Verbal Tap Dancing

Liars sometimes avoid "lying" by not making direct statements. They imply answers instead of denying something directly.
Liars often pause before answering.
Liars answer a question with another question attempting to take the conversation in a different direction.
A liar will use your words to answer a question. When asked, “Did you eat the last cookie?” The liar answers, “No, I did not eat the last cookie.”
A statement with a contraction is more likely to be truthful: “ I didn't do it” instead of “I did not do it”
A liar may leave out pronouns and speak in a monotonous tone. When a truthful statement is made the pronoun is emphasized as much or more than the rest of the words in a statement.
Words may be garbled and spoken softly, and syntax and grammar may be off. In other words, his sentences will likely be muddled rather than emphasized.

Deception Detectors - Other Signs of Stress

Voice is higher pitched than normal.
Face and hands becomes a bit paler as blood is withheld from extremities.
Nostrils may open wider ('flare').
Breathing deeper and maybe audible.
Lips become thinner and tighter.
Shoulders pulled up and elbows pulled in to sides more. Body takes up less space.
Forehead tightens up a little in area between eye brows.
Eye contact breaks away from you and eyes may squint or close.
Heart rate increases.
Hand palms turned down or closed, and not revealed to you.

Deception Detection - Eye Movements

Generally, if people are thinking of visual information to answer a question, their eyes will move up: this is how they retrieve mental pictures. Most right handed people will look up and right when remembering and up and left when creating or imaging. We do this unconsciously, but we also tend to do it reliably. Now, it doesn't mean that if I look up and left to the "create the visual spot" that I'm making something up. It simply means I'm searching for a mental picture.

The key in reading eye movements is the same as reading other clues. You look for what's different. Notice when they don't look up in the same way, or when they look up but perhaps to the other side, or when they maintain eye contact with you when they would normally do otherwise.

This last is an interesting point. Most people imagine that we maintain eye contact when we tell the truth and break it when we lie. Not so. The majority of people will maintain eye contact when lying, because they don't need to retrieve information from their minds and, therefore, don't need to move their eyes. At another level, they are eager to appear sincere, and so consciously decide to keep looking at you.

Do pauses in speech mean the person is lying?

2009-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Quite a few of our clients and friends have asked what we thought about the new tv show Lie to Me. I must confess I hadn't watched it till this week. I love the fact that Fox thinks this is a worthy subject, but I find the implementation of the concepts to be a bit cheesy. But you didn't come here to hear my television show reviews. :-)

One thing I do want to address, however, that Lie to Me reminded me of, is the notion that pauses in speech suggest someone is lying. The show's leap from pause to deception is a dangerous one. It's simply not that simple.

In our book Face Values, we discuss the speech style, pitch, tone and energy of the Thinker or Analytical personality type, which is often filled with starts and stops and silent pauses inbetween. What's happening in this case is the Thinker is doing what he or she does best.....thinking, and although there is a lot going on in their heads, it hasn't yet made it's way into their speech. Do these pauses mean that all Thinkers are lying or busy making things up? Of course not.

Research by Benus and colleagues at Columbia University (in conjunction with SRI) documented here http://www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/papers/2006/benus_al_06.pdf tells us that pauses - both filled and silent, occur more frequently in truthful statements than they do in deceptive speech.

The paper also provides a good summary of existing research on pauses and provides an interesting tidbit that can help us distinguish between pauses as part of a regular speech style and pauses as clues to deception.

There is evidence for increase in pitch as an indicator of deception. "Higher pitch is assumed to indicate increased tension on the part of deceivers. Hence, we hypothesize that filled pauses with higher pitch and intensity may occur in deceptive speech."

When reading people, especially if trying to identify deception, requires that you form a base line for this person. How do they normally sound? Let's say my normal delivery is slow and laborious. The energy level is low, tone is monotone and there are lots of silent pauses. That's my base line. Now, what can you learn if all the sudden the pace reves up and the pauses dissapear. You might surmise that I am more comfortable with what I'm saying - I don't have to think about it. I might also be exicited about what I'm saying. You've hit on something I'm passionate about. Now, how might you distinquish that kind of response from a lie? The short answer is tension.

Tension can be "read" in a variety of ways - in the mouth, in the eyes, in the voice. This subject qualifies for it's own blog post, so I'll close for now and address this topic in a subsequent post.

How to Spot a Fake Smile

2009-02-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

Check out this video test on the BBC website. You are presented with 20 short video clips of smiles. Your goal is to identify which of these are genuine and which are fake. Take the test first, and see if you can identify the clues that give away the fake smile or conversely show that a smile is genuine. I'll tell you the answer in a later post. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

Another Scam Artist - What Can We Learn?

2009-02-19T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Story of Economan Al Parish

The story of investment swindler Al Parish from Charleston South Carolina is an interesting one to say the least. He stole millions of dollars from investors and spent it on a very strange collection of gnomes, pens, watches, lamps, and other interesting items.

CNBC's American Greed t.v. program does a great show on Mr. Parish. I mention him here and include his picture to see if there's anything we can learn from his face. I'll leave the analysis of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on pens and gnomes to someone else.

See Charleston Net Article for More Details
http://www.charleston.net/news/special_reports/al_parish/

And CNBC's American Greed - http://www.cnbc.com/id/29039268

Clues From Andrew Kissel's Face

2009-01-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

I've just finished watching American Greed on CNBC. This episode was on brothers Rob and Andrew Kissel. Rob was an investment banker murdered by his wife Nancy in 2003. Andrew was a real estate mogul who bilked millions of dollars from investors, family members, banks, and other lending institutions. Andrew was also murdered three years after brother Robert's death.

Of the two faces, it is Andrew's that is most interesting. Andrew Kissel's face provides us with a fabulous example of the look of contempt and disdain we've been talking about in recent posts. Check it out.

Notice the raised eyebrow and how tightly he holds his lips. I found 8 to 10 different photos of Kissel (in addition to this one from from a story in the NY Daily News) and every single one showed the same expression. Even when he smiles, he cannot help but show us this look.

I was curious to see if brother Rob or other family members shared the look. We are often asked if facial features such as these are genetic. In the American Greed episode we get to see the Kissel sister who does not have any of the qualities we mention associated with Andrew. Brother Rob doesn't appear to have them either, at least they are not nearly as pronounced as Andrew's.

The Look of Contempt - From Ekman and Darwin

2009-01-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

Several researchers throughout the years have attempted to nail down the look of contempt, the most notable being Paul Ekman. Ekman's findings suggest there is in fact a universal look of contempt spanning all cultures. Ekman's look of contempt involves a tightening and slight raising of the lip corner, primarily on one side of the face. Ekman is one of the few researchers I've dealt with (actually the only one I can recall) that charges you for use of photos - $175 to be exact. Which explains why you don't have an Ekman photo here.

Although Ekman is credited with identifying the look of contempt in the face, it was actually Darwin who first recognized the facial expression for this emotion. Darwin was even more detailed in his description. He notes that the nose may be slightly turned up, which apparently follows from the turning up of the upper lip; or the movement may be abbreviated into a mere wrinkling of the nose. (from Izard and Haynes)

References

Ekman, Paul. Emotions Revealed, Second Edition: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Izard, C.E. & Haynes, O.M. (1988). On the Form and Universality of the Contempt Expression: A Challenge to Ekman and Friesen’s Claim of Discovery. Motivation and Emotion, 12.1, 1-16.

Can you spot a con? What Madoff's face is saying

2009-01-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

What can you tell from a person's face and body language that might help you recognize a shyster? Is it true that we all "leak" clues about ourselves? I believe that there is much to read from a person's face and body as well as from how they speak. And that's exactly what this blog is all about.

Each of us does in fact "leak" a great deal about who we really are. We leak this information in a variety of ways and in a variety of areas. Our facial lines, language constructs, body movements and home and office accoutrements all send out clues about us.

Let's start with Bernie, and in particular Bernie's face. Anything pop out at you when you first look at this face? How about the raised brow? Notice how his left brow goes up further than the right brow. We call this a judging brow.

You can identify the kind of person who makes this face with some regularity by the lines on their forehead. The lines on the side above the raised brow will be higher, deeper and more rounded than those on the other side.

So what kind of person has these sort of facial lines? The judging brow comes from a person who is usually a command and control personality (a Driver). They are good at judging and finding fault in others. They perceive themselves as "better than" and are extremely internal, meaning they get their sense of what is good or bad from within themselves and don't care about what anyone else thinks.

Starting to get the idea?

The second clue from Bernie is his mouth. His lips are clamped shut. It's as though he is hiding behind or prohibiting the truth from passing. His lips serve as a psychological gate keeper.

The combination of the lips and brow work together to create a look of smugness or contempt. It is a look we can learn to recognize. On the right here is another of my favorite examples of this brow and lip combination. Stay tuned for more examples.