How to Read Body Language

Transcript So in a bar there’s a lot of things you can look for. And when you walk into a bar in a social situation, people that are at bars, they know it’s, they know that other people have the intention that they’re going to walk up to you. So it’s like in the street, …

Transcript So I hate recommendations on posture. And the reason why I hate, like some of the recommendations on posture cause it’s so much more than just; okay, upright. I mean those things are universal. There is a lot of recommendations you can make for postures. So, I’ll show you a couple of differences in …

Transcript Mirroring. Mirroring, also known as isopraxis or the chameleon affect, essentially, is when we’re in tune with somebody or we’re on the same wavelength with someone, we tend to mirror their body language. Right? So, if you see a couple on a date and they really like each other, they’re body language will be …

Transcript My name is Blake Eastman. I’m the founder and owner of the Non Verbal Group which is a body language consulting company in, based in New York City. So the Non Verbal Group has two goals, the first is research and the second education. So we do a lot of research revolving around videos. …

Transcript One of the most common things that you’ll see in people when they’re anxious is they bounce their legs up and down, right? So some people are just habitual bouncer. It’s something that they commonly do. But as people tend to get more comfortable with each other, they’ll slowly stop. So one of the …

Transcript Alright, so flirting is essentially incongruent, that’s what it is, right? So, people, I’ve struggled with that for a long time, like I know how to flirt, and I know how to teach people to flirt, but how do you explain flirting? Flirting’s incongruent. So flirting is insulting somebody, but at the same time …

Transcript So I make the argument that you can’t learn body language or you can’t learn how to be an effective communicator from a book. And let me give you an example, so like, lets say um, there is a lot of good studies out there that’ll say you know a head tilt is a …

Transcript Alright, so your bosses body language is something that disrupts a lot of people. You need to understand. You need to take a baseline of your boss’s body language. Too many people watch their bosses body language and think that is a reflection of their performance. When in reality it is just how their …

Transcript There’s a big difference between male and female body language. Essentially, the difference is how we fall line into specific gender roles, right? So, men are supposed to act a certain way. Their body language is supposed to, you know, demonstrate certain things. And woman’s body language is supposed to demonstrate certain things. So …

Transcript One of the cool things about lying is, one of the cool facts essentially is that extroverts lie more than introverts even when you account for the fact that extroverts talk way more than introverts, and this is the cool thing. While extroverts lie more than introverts we most of the time accuse introverts …

Transcript So confidence is an extremely important thing. We like confident people. We trust more confident people. One of the things in my life is like whenever I see confidence, I’m drawn to it. So one the big issues, this sounds weird, but one of my big problems is shaving. So I can’t shave because …

Transcript Alright, so contempt is an interesting facial expression. It’s registered on the face with an asymmetrical smile. Contempt is when you take the moral high ground, or when you think you’re better than the other person. A lot of research by John Gottman has indicated that, you know, contempt is the number one nonverbal …

Transcript One of the things you can do to observe your own behavior is flip open your MacBook or flip open your computer, put tape over the red little dot that shows that you’re recording it and record yourself. I want you to do things. I want you to watch a really funny movie or …

Transcript So, one of the most important concepts in analyzing human behavior is that of the baseline. So, everybody essentially has a normal or extended behavior on how they act. So certain people will sit in their chairs a certain way or certain people will, you know, have a conversation a certain way. And this …

Transcript Determining whether or not somebody’s nervous or anxious is pretty easy, because people have a hard time hiding it. So let me explain. There’s essentially usually two responses to anxiety non-verbally. So there’s either, you know, you’re going to get into a whole flight and fight response. So basically what it is is either …

Transcript When it comes to feet and hands, it’s a good idea to take the cognitive over low perspective. So, what you tend to see is a lot of freezing behaviors when people lie with the freezing hands, with hands and feet. And, the reason why is because while we’re lying, you know, it’s cognitively …

Transcript So essentially, one nonverbal sign (one smile, one play of the hair, one sarcastic eye roll) essentially means nothing. In the grand scheme of human interaction we throw out tons of nonverbals every single day. So one of the most important things you need to do is not just look for one nonverbal behavior. …

Transcript The hands are essential very useful in communication and so we use our hand for tons of ways. First we use our hands for barriers. So one of the things you tend to see is people use their hand to form a barrier between you and I so for example if you are talking …

Transcript People constantly ask me in terms of friends, “Is this person attracted to me?” I’ll watch her a little and it will be like, “Yes.” “Is this person attracted to me?” “No.” “How do you know, are you sure?” People get so offended, “How do you know they’re not attracted to you?” Because they …

Transcript It’s not really speech. It’s, like, speech and content. So, like, as somebody talks to you, like, you know, it’s gonna be, all right, so it’s very difficult for the average person to, kind of, figure out slight deviations in people’s speech patterns. You’re not going to be able to do it. It’s that …

Transcript So one of the most useful ways whether or not someone’s attracted to you is something called orientation. So right now my two friends over here aren’t necessarily oriented towards each other. Their seating arrangement is designed in a fashion where they aren’t oriented towards each other because they’re both facing outward. But what’s …

Transcript Essentially, lie detection is a two-part process. So what we’re doing is looking for non-verbals that are associated or correlated with the line. We’re looking for clusters of non-verbals as indicators of whether or not somebody may be lying or telling the truth. So it’s sort of like, you know, points we need to …

Transcript Okay. So once again I want to make the point that there’s not one non-verbal indication or not one verbal indication of whether or not someone is lying. There’s only non-verbals indications that are correlated with lying. So one of the things you’re going to want to do is I’m telling you all of …

Transcript The lips are interesting. One of the most useful things about the lips is anxiety tends to be manifested in the lips a lot, so people tend to slightly bite their lips. And it’s like, there’s a difference, so there’s like a, there’s like an interest over sexual lip bite, like. Like women do …

Transcript So in terms of voice, what you gonna want to look for is essentially the emotional perspective. And the reason why, is because when somebody when somebody lies, right? Um, you tend to see fluctuations in pitch. So there are a lot of equipment out there like telephones, and like video sampling, um audio …

Transcript In terms of the emotions that are displayed on the face, surprise is probably, it’s the quickest. It happens in less than a second, so one of the things people tend to do is delay surprise and when they’re delaying surprised, it’s often feigned or not real. So one of the things you want …

Transcript Touching’s a really easy way to determine if someone’s attracted to you or not. Now, a lot of books will say if someone touches you they like you. Not the case. Some people just touch a lot. All right. So you’ve got to be careful. Some women just are touchers. They like to touch. …

Transcript Out of all the different non-verbal behaviors, I think that spotting attraction is without a doubt the easiest. We are very emotional creatures and when we’re attracted to somebody, it’s very, very difficult to hide. People think they’re hiding it, but things always slip. One of the ways they slip are essentially the eyes. …

Transcript Alright, so in terms of the research on like opinion formation and you know, how we attribute certain behaviors to people, we tend to make or form opinions of people very, very, very quickly. And one of the problems with body language is you may be communicating something that you don’t think you are. …

Transcript One of the big problems is that people are interested but they are not really conveying it nonverbally. So there’s a couple things you can do. First we’ll start with the head, so essentially what you want to do is squinting is often a good indication that you are interested in somebody. So it’s …

Transcript So essentially the face is like the epicenter of communication so when you’re sitting down having a conversation with somebody you’re not looking at their arms or leg most of the time. Most of the time you’re paying direct attention to the face and for the most part there’s a lot of different signs …

Transcript Fear’s an interesting emotion. It can be both physical or psychological. So, we can be fearful of an event, or we can also be fearful of something in front of us. And fear tends to blend with a lot of different emotions, but it’s displayed in the face in three ways. The first is …

Transcript So recently micro expressions have exploded in popularity. Mainly due to the show “Lie To Me” which is grounded in Paul Ekman’s research. Let me explain what they are. Now most facial expressions last more than a second. So you’re not exhibiting micro expressions all the time. But sometimes you’re exhibiting what’s called micro …

Transcript There’s a number of ways you can read the eyes. Blink rate is really important to me. I think blink rate, in terms of baseline behaviors, blink rates are a really effective way to measure certain people’s behavior. So, I mean, people can blink for a wide range of reasons. People can blink because …

Transcript So the eyes are a very useful ways to sometimes to determine truthfulness, and there’s a lot of things so the first thing, let’s talk about eye contact. There’s not one shred of academic research that shows breaking eye contact is an indication of lying. However, everybody believes that. Everybody believes that If you …

Transcript Essentially there’s three ways that paying attention to non verbal behavior or paying attention to one’s body language could help your life. Alright? So I make the argument the first one’s information, okay? And I make the argument that the general population is essentially blind. They’re so focused on the content of the conversation, …

Transcript So of all the different things you can do with non-verbal communication, the hardest thing is determining whether or not someone’s lying or not. It’s not an easy thing. It’s a very, very, very difficult thing. See, this is why it’s difficult. In the grand scheme of human interaction, there is not one specific …

Transcript So one of the things I want to address is the misconception that if you cover your mouth you are lying. There’s not really any academic research that suggests that’s true. We can cover our mouth for a wide range of reasons. I could be embarrassed, breath can be bad, cold sores. Tons of …

Transcript We like people who are interested in us. So one of the most useful ways to build rapport and gain friends and all that stuff, is to show interest non-verbally, right? So, to look like you’re interested. But this is the problem, is when we think that somebody is trying to get something out …

Transcript So attraction, attraction’s interesting. If we were to venn diagram attraction so if we were to put all the different nonverbals of attraction, all the different nonverbals of interest, and all the nonverbals of anxiety, you are going to tend to see some sort of overlap. So attraction and anxiety in terms of nonverbals …

Transcript So before you kind of try to determine whether or not someone’s lying or not, you need to understand the theoretical perspectives the kind of underline lie detection. And the first one is emotion. So essentially what we do is we experience three kinds of emotions when we lie, and the first one is …

Transcript Body language, somewhere down the road, was like some Pop Culture kind of statement, you know? Somebody, I think there was a book, like in the 70s called, “Body Language” and the name sticked. Non-verbal communication is a lot more than just body language. Non-verbal communication deals with everything except for, like, the content …

Transcript Sadness is probably one of the hardest facial expressions to identify in terms of micros and the reason why is because there is not that much movement in the face right. So, because there’s an extreme loss in muscle tone when your, when your sad it, it, it’s not so pronounced like a smile. …

Transcript So disgust is when you’re really, you know, you have an aversion to something, right? So it’s like you know, you put something in your mouth and it tastes so disgusting you have to get it out of your mouth, right? And it’s registered on the face in a couple of ways. The first …