Tip Thursday - Body Language

A unique gesture that seems to have little evolutionary reasoning or explanation is the tongue jut. This is a completely unconscious gesture where you stick out your tongue slightly, clasping it lightly between the teeth.  this is usually a cue that the person has either been caught making a mistake (or faux pas) or they think that they have gotten away with something. It therefore can be a playful gesture, or a clue that the other party feels that they have pulled something over on you. The situation should tell you which is the case!

What is Your 'Resting Face' Saying About You?

Our faces are rarely without expression, showing others whether we are:  happy, sad, angry, excited, disgusted, fearful, interested, bored, passionate, skeptical... our faces say it all.  In fact, we have 44 different muscles in our faces, which are capable of over 10,000 different expressions.

It is the part of our body that most people look to in order to gauge our reaction to events. If they are trying to 'read' our thoughts, it is typically by trying to determine what our facial expressions are telling them.  Is is any wonder then that when we are trying to be less transparent with our thoughts, we will seek to control our facial expressions most.  We become much less animated and seek to reduce our facial affect to make us less 'readable'.

However, it is important to note that people are 'reading' us all of the time.  Human beings are hard-wired into picking up on the non-verbal messaging cues of others, often taking in information at an unconscious and gut level. If we are looking to manage or control the take-away messages others have of us, we must become more consciously aware of what our non-verbal cues are saying.

Most times, when we are attempting to mask a certain message (such as nervousness) we will flatten our outward affect.  In essence, we force our face to adopt a 'neutral' expression.  Our 'neutral' is always our 'resting face'.  This is the expression that our face assumes when we are, in essence, at rest, when we are not thinking anything in particular, are not feeling anything in particular.  Our 'resting face' is our non-face. It is the expression we adopt when we are actually not expressing anything.  As our personal neutral, it will typically be our go-to expression when we are attempting to mask or hide a certain signal or cue.

However, each person's neutral is actually far from it.  Others will always 'see' something in your expression.  It is therefore important that you spend some time coming to understand what your personal resting face is saying about you. If it is not saying what you want or need it to say then you need to learn to adopt a new neutral expression.

When at rest, our face shifts into our comfort expression. This is the look that our face will project to the world when it is essentially - at rest.  When it is not formally expressing anything.  However, our resting face always communicates something.

If you find that others are always asking you if you are tire, rest assured that your resting face tends to assume a tired expression - not neutral.

If you find that others frequently ask you what you're mad about, your resting expression likely tends to look angry - not neutral.

If people think that you are typically happy, it is likely that your resting expression always projects a slight smile, which is not neutral.

In order to ascertain what messages your resting face may be inadvertently sending about you...

• look at pictures of you taken during unguarded moments and determine what expression you tend to have on your face - more often than not
• consider what comments you typically get from others (like the three examples above) and think of the elements you hear most frequently
• spend time in front of a mirror putting your face into it's comfort place, the expression that feels like your neutral, and assess how you think you look

The consistent messages your receive from the three points above will provide you with clear insights into what your resting face has to say about you.  Now consider... is it saying what you want others to hear?  Is it conveying messages that work in support of your personal brand, or that detract from it?  

If your resting face is not saying what you want and need it to consider what message you want it to be delivering instead.  In essence, create your new neutral.  Once you have gained clarity around what that fallback messaging would be, spend some time in front of a mirror identifying what that branded message would 'look' like, learning to identify then what that expression 'feels' like.  What muscles are engaged?  How much?  How far?

You can't replicate the expression consistently if you have not developed your own personal means of measuring it.  Understanding what it takes to create the expression allows you to duplicate and adopt it.  The more consistently you do this, the more it will become a comfortable part of your expression repertoire, and the more likely that it will become habit.  

We all have something to say about ourselves, even when we think we are not saying anything.  What does your face say about you when it is at rest?  If it's not a message that is serving you, then change it to one that does.  It seems that even your lack of expression is a habit that you can modify to ensure that, even at rest, your face is telling others the story of you that you want told.

Tips for Detecting Liars

We are surrounded by lies all day.  Most are relatively harmless little white lies, what I would refer to as

social lies.

• I love what you've done with your hair
• No, you don't look fat in those jeans
• Mom, these pancakes are delicious

These are the small little lies that we tell others to make them feel comfortable and, let's face it, to keep the peace.  And, lest you're feeling guilty about the frequency of these lies, research shows that social liars are more popular than those who feel compelled to tell the truth - even when we know that they are lying to us about those jeans!

However, malicious lies are different.  These are the lies that are told to mislead or deceive someone else, for personal gain.  This could be the sales clerk who doesn't let you know about the limitations of a product so they make their sales quota.  This could be a company that doesn't reveal all of the known harmful effects of a product, or perhaps a co-worker that deliberately misleads the boss about your contributions so that they have a better shot at a promotion.  

Although we would prefer to believe that others wouldn't lie to us, deception is a fact of life.  It is intrinsic in nature.  Predators camouflage themselves to be able to sneak up on prey or to hide successfully from a predator, birds fake injuries to lead predators away from their babies... and so on.  We learn to lie at an early age.  It has been determined that children as young as 6 months old with 'fake cry' to get attention, or pretend to laugh because of the response of adults around them.  By the time we are adults, lying is a skill we have perfected through practice from infancy.  

How are we then expected to be able to detect lies in others?

Although we are not ever going to be able to detect 100% of all the lies coming our way, there are a few tips you can use to improve your ability to spot a liar.  Bear in mind that you will want to see a 'cluster' of these behaviours in order to raise your 'lie detection antennae' and question more closely what someone is saying... 

• Nose Touching.  When you lie, chemicals are released that cause the tissue inside the nose to swell, causing the nerve endings in the nose to tingle.  People will often reach up to rub the nose to relieve the itch.  This is often referred to as the Pinocchio effect!
• Eye Contact.  Despite the popular belief that liars generally have difficulty maintaining eye contact, the opposite is actually closer to the truth.  Habitual liars actually tend to engage in greater eye contact and will tend to lock eyes with you.
• Mouth Cover.  There may be an unconscious attempt to 'hide' the words that someone is saying, by raising the hand to the mouth, serving almost as a clock or barrier.  (cough, shh, rubbing the upper lip)
• Blink Rate.  Surprisingly, people who are telling a lie will often involuntarily blink more than they do when they are telling the truth.  Clinton's blink rate increased significantly when he declared to the world "I did not have sex with that woman".
• Signs of Discomfort.  Lying may be uncomfortable for us, leading us to 'leak' it through various physiological signs such as:  jiggling feet, fidgeting, drumming fingers, rubbing the neck, rolling eyes.  It's important to note though that these are also simply cues of nervousness.  If you put someone on the hot-seat, guilty or not, they will display these cues to some extant regardless.
• Stalling Clusters.  A group of behaviours that, although they seem purposeful on the surface, are designed to buy the person some time to think through their response (taking off glasses to clean them before responding for example)
• Parrot Statements.  When someone continues to repeat back your question, they are typically stalling for more time to compose their response.  Note that this behaviour alone does not mean someone is lying, sometimes we use it simply to have a little more time to process our true response.
• Distancing Statements.  Even liars don't like to think of themselves as liars, so they often engage in behaviours to avoid having to. In this case they will avoid using 'I' references or first names, to distance themselves from the situation in question.    

Use any of the above behaviours to help you to question someone's truthfulness.  There is no one behaviour that is a definitive sign of deception on its own, you want to look for clusters and groupings of behaviours and consider them in light of the situation.  Generally speaking, use them to highlight for you potential lies, and follow up with more detailed exploration to determine the truth.  

(if learning to become more proficient in detecting liars is of interest, check out Janine Driver's book, which is an interesting and invaluable resource)

The Eyes Have It

Although our eyes may not truly be windows into our soul, there is a significant amount that our eyes do tell and communicate to others.  The following list, all based in research, offers you a few insights into just how much our eyes give away!

1. Thinking Hard.  The harder that your brain has to work (think) the more your pupils dilate.  The harder the task, the bigger the pupils get.
2. Thinking Too Hard.  There is an overload point however.  When you hit about 125% of your mind's capacity your pupils constrict (get smaller), indicating your overload.  Likely this is where we describe someone's eyes as glazing over!
3. Showing Interest.  Your pupils will dilate whenever you are interested in something.  Likely they will dilate at first when confronted by just about anything that is new - what's important is to see if they remain dilated... that shows ongoing interest.
4. Sign of attraction.  Sexual interest also involves the eyes.  Both men and women's pupils expand when they are sexually interested.  And... an interesting side note... men tend to show interest in naked photos of women (using pupil dilation as the measure - and no... not a big surprise here!) but women do not show the same degree of interest in naked pictures of men.  This difference is hard-wired into our brains and is directly related to our past where the selection of a mate (by a female) was unconsciously based on propogation of the species, ability to feed and protect...  all decisions that needed to be determined and assessed 'live' and not through photos.     
5. Sign of disgust.  And... the converse holds true.  When you are disgusted with something your pupils will constrict in size.  When shown pictures of injured children, people's pupils will dilate at first because of the shock and then constrict to try to avoid or limit seeing the images.
6. Maternal Instincts.  Women's pupils tend to dilate when looking at babies.  Live, in pictures... doesn't matter.  This demonstrates their interest and also serves to help the infants bond with them.  Men's pupils do not tend to dilate as much.  This is more of a genetic predisposition based on times when the males were the hunters and were gone for long periods of time.  Women were the caretakers and home with the children.  Therefore it was more important for the infants to bond with the female since she would primarily be responsible for their care.  
7. Building Trust.  We tend to trust people that spend more time looking at us than looking away from us.  To build trust with others therefore, we need to be able to maintain a certain level of eye contact. As an internal self-defensive move, research has also shown that we unconsciously spend more time working to remember the face of someone that we distrust than those we trusted.  Being memorable may therefore not always be a positive 'thing'!

And... just a note of caution to add to the mix.  Someone's medication can alter their pupil size, as can the lighting of the room.  Too bright a room and the pupils constrict.  Too dark a room and the pupils contract which is, by the way, why romantic dinners are typically held in poorly lit rooms or by candlelight.  The poor lighting makes the pupils open wide, making the other party look more interested/attracted.  This can, though, lead to the wrong signals being sent!  It is better to baseline for the environment you are in and watch for 'changes' from that state, based on the interactions.

Having said that though, it is typically very difficult to consciously detect changes in people's pupil sizes, although we are able to unconsciously pick up on those changes.  Just another element that tends to let our 'gut' know what's going on long before we are able to consciously identify it.

(Check out our  Beyond Words:  Your Body Language at Work program for a more in depth study and understanding of what your body language is saying to others and how to read theirs!  www.titantraining.ca)