L.O.G. 128 Body Language Myths and Realities

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert, Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details, and hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Good morning, Brian.

Good morning, Greg. I need you to sit very still. I'm reading your body language right now, and I'm going to tell everyone all about you just from doing that.

Well then, I know you're full of it this morning, so I certainly do.

I see we're just getting started; we're already on the same page. This is our first episode just specifically dedicated to talking about body language, but we've brought it up in a whole bunch of other episodes. That's our number one thing people want to learn, like, "Okay, how do you read body language?" And you're like, "Okay, stop, stop, take a step back." The problem is, you have a lot of these charlatans out there claiming all these things based on reading someone's body language. There's nothing worse than when they do it with politicians. You see them on the big cable news networks and stuff like that, and you're like, "Well, these people suck." They are making it up as they go along and putting in their own beliefs on it. It's almost like, "I don't know, it's like I study personality tests, so now I'm an expert in human behavior." No, you're not. But we'll get to all that.

Yeah, these are mostly parlor tricks. So when we talk about human behavior and reading it and predicting it in real-time, you know, to give an example, if we were to have a three-day course, let's say there's 30 hours of material in there, what, 30 minutes of that is specifically dedicated to body language—meaning, it's the last thing that we rely on or look at or discuss—because there's only so much you can tell from someone's body language because it's so heavily influenced by the context of the situation. Right? So I can't just say, "Oh, someone did this; it means that." It's not that simple. Right? It could mean a number of things. So there's a lot in here that we're going to jump into: one, specifically context, to terminology, how we describe it, and then just kind of what we really mean by body language, because there's a lot of great stuff out there that does talk about it and communication, especially when it comes to communication. I mean, they say like there's all these percentages thrown out, and they're just used to describe it; it's not a specific thing. But, you know, I've seen everything from 80% to 90% of all communication is non-verbal. That's a good way to describe it in terms of meaning, a lot of it is your body language that I'm seeing, the different biometric responses you're having in the situation, and then also heavily, like, the pitch, tone, and inflection of your voice. All of those things go into what really determines what you're meaning, which is, I just like those stats because it shows how little we actually pay attention to words, really.

Right. The words matter, but that's almost the smallest part of communication.

And so meaning, it's not just about what you're saying; it's how you're saying it. So I like those in terms of that because it's a great way to describe it and show people, "Hey, there's a lot more going on here." But by no means are any of those things specific numbers. Even the people that write that stuff will tell you that; they're like, "Well, no, this is just a guideline and how we articulate stuff." So I think that's maybe a good start to reading body language and determining what someone's doing by what they did with their hand three seconds ago and how they moved it across. Like, that stuff I can't stand because it's junk, and it gives people corrupt file folders. But most of it has to deal with context. So, where should we kind of start with this?

Well, first thing, the overall everything that you said was true. I'm not going to argue with anything, but I do want to bring up the parlor trick thing. Listen, the reason that those pundits can go on and talk about, you know, "This person did this, and this person did that," they're likely never to have Obama come back on CNN, do you know what I'm trying to say, and say, "You're full of it."

Right. Clinton's not going to come on.

Right. "No, I'm going to get together, you know, right here. I didn't mean that." Yeah, so you can pretty much get—I hate the term "pretty much"—but you can pretty much get away with anything when it comes to that. Now, literally and figuratively, when you're talking about body language transmitting messages non-verbally, that doesn't mean that you can correlate a movement or emotion—kinesiology, paralanguage, body language—to a specific thought in the moment, because your brain isn't transmitting one-to-one signals, you get what I'm trying to say. So I think an argument could be made, one, congruency. If, for example, I love sarcasm. I use it as a training tool. And so if you come in and go, "I love that song you're playing," if you just go by the words, you get what I'm trying to say, somebody goes, "Oh, I got a great compliment from Greg today at work." No, that's not what I meant at all. But the incongruency in your message that you're delivering via body language, that might be important. But I want to go back to what you're saying too, the reason that in Combat Hunter, kinesics was the last—the reason in SpecOps, body language is last is because we spend so little time on it now. Right? If everything else that you do is congruent and you're getting a likelihood indicator that says it's an ML (Most Likely) or an MD (Most Dangerous) course of action, then body language coupled with something like biometrics and the environment, you get what I'm trying to say, if those are all congruent, then it's a good argument that that's probably what's going on. Well, listen, that falls well below a legal standard, yes, I'm trying to say. But it's certainly in my situation, to prevent violence or predict mayhem, it'll work perfectly, you get what I'm trying to say. For example, Brian, I throw my shoulders up, I drop my head down, my brow knits, and I start making a fist. Well, dude, either I have a seizure, or I might be getting angry with what you're saying. I don't know with any sense of certainty until I measure those cues against other cues and then against the environment. That's the key.

No, and I think a great place to start is always the context, right? What is the context of the situation? Because you just brought that up, like getting an angry face or something like that, or, you know, like the foot tapping because I'm pointing—I'm talking to you, but I'm pointing away with one of my feet and my foot's tapping. Yeah, that means I could be walking away, and I don't want to be here anymore talking to you. But, like, I just may really have to go to the bathroom. In fact, I might be very interested in what you're saying; I just gotta pee really, really bad. Or I'm very nervous about what's going on. Right? There's all these different things. So one thing is always we start with: what is the context for which you're viewing this observation? Because, you know, we could be influencing that context, and now we're jumping to an unreasonable conclusion. So always, and like you said, the environment plays into that. The temperature, relative humidity, my comfort level plays into that, everything I've been doing, whether I've slept much the night before or not, whether I just got done exercising—these are all things that add into that context for some observation I'm making on someone. The, you know, the scratching the nose when you're asking me questions, Greg. Yeah, okay, it could be me getting nervous because my hypothalamus is sending me warnings through heat which bothered the cilia, like fibers in my nose, which make it agitated and make my nose itch, which is why Pinocchio's nose grew every time he lied. But it could be I got a really bad sinus infection, or, you know what, I like to do a lot of cocaine, and maybe I just hit a bump in the bathroom before I came to talk to you. There's all these other factors that go into play. I can't jam that square peg in a round hole. So the context is always important to establish. And what we teach when it comes to human behavior, in order to get to that body language, like you said, is last. Right? It's rapidly establishing context. Right? So what's informing the baseline, right? What's going on in this situation? And then I would say the next step after that context is what you brought up, the term, and you brought up congruence. Okay, so you just—you said a great line, I've actually never heard you say that before, where your brain is not transmitting on a one-to-one ratio of signal. Right? So meaning, it's not, it's not having a specific thought and then having a specific demonstrative forehead for that thought. Right? Right? That's not really how it works. Right? So, what do you mean by that? Define that a little bit more, and then congruence. Right? So...

Yep. So what do you mean by congruence? So your brain chunks information; it pixelates it. The visual field, being the largest sense-making tool, throws it back to the optic nerve. The fovea centralis plays the film, and your brain extracts normalcy from the film. When it comes to an anomaly, when it comes to something that it's not familiar with, that it doesn't have a file folder on, it assigns the amygdala and other parts of the limbic system, the cortices, to say, "Hey, what's this in my environment? And can it kill me? Eat me? Can I screw it? Eat it?" You get what I'm trying to say. And, you know, "Do I have to fight it? Do I have to run away from it?"

Yeah, very survival-based.

10 to 50,000 signals from the amygdala alone are going out for the one signal that you're reading. And the reason is, it's predictive analysis. So your brain is geared towards survival, predictive analysis anyway. So when you are talking, you're taking in the context, the relevance, the words, the tone, the pitch, the environmental impact of what you're saying around the person that you're talking to. All of these things are being processed and micro-processed. And what happens is, your brain is going, "Yeah, good, good, good, everything's going fine, everything's..." until it gets a speed bump, the speed bump being an anomaly, and going, "Huh, right there, the person, you know, jogged their face and crossed their arms and looked to the left." Now, your brain doesn't do what humans do. Humans say, "Aha! There is a signal! And we have to have what word just went by!" And so we start replanning our thing. "Okay, well, when I said 'handgun,' I got this reflex." Now, inside the person's brain that you're talking to in the interview room, they've got one survival masking that's going on; they're trying to cover any foibles or embarrassing things that they've done since birth because you're interviewing them, and you're in a position of power over them, so they're trying to conceal everything. I—you know, "I, I, I, my lederhosen in second grade at the job fair." You get what I'm saying? Those are things that we don't want to share with others, so those are covered up. So what's happening? Why were we at a job fair in second grade when we were in school?

I was a German family, Brian!

Yeah, you take things seriously. That's why I had to wear it, later on, and carry my little horn. But the idea is that when we think of a photograph, we think that a photograph takes a one-to-one. It doesn't. There's a very, very specific camera that has to do that where you can make a comparison of something. So what you're getting at best is sort of a kind of feeling—and I hate talking like that, but that's what it is—a wispy, you know, sand painting of what's really going on. And your brain doesn't really assign anything; it gives a until you come to the point and you say "bikini" or you say "hamburger," you get what I'm trying to say, or "increase in funds." So we have to be very careful that if we're going to create an interview, then we have to create the conditions for the interview, and then say, "This is what we likely know after the interview." And the easiest way to do stuff like that is with questions, and that's what humans do.

Yes. So you're around with your nose, and I look at you and I go, "Hey, dude, allergies? You know, cottonwood?" And when I do an interview, what I do is I suggest things and see how the person goes. So when I say just the word, you know, "cottonwoods," and I acted, you know, like Gilbert Godfrey, "cottonwoods," then I let you have it. And if you're a liar, you'll go, "Yeah, that's the cottonwoods that are bothering me because the sign..." Do you get what I'm trying to say? You're going to feed me an incongruent... Well, right. Yeah, yeah.

And if they hand me an attention...

Before getting into the deception stuff with it, you know, I mean, you brought up something, you know, since your brain is not on that one-to-one ratio of things, we'll often attribute value to something where it may be absolutely valueless.

Well, it may be, but we don't know, right?

Because there's always a catalyst for me to change something. Right? So if I'm sitting in a chair, and my legs are crossed, and I'm leaning back, and then I put my hands up on the table, and my feet are in that like starting gun position, and I'm at the edge of my seat, and I go, "You see that, that massive chain from one to the next?" So that's a change in my body language; that's a change in my demeanor. So there's a reason for that; there's a catalyst. But we don't know what that is necessarily.

No, no, and don't attribute it to deception, Brian, before...

No, no, I want to make sure that our listeners know we're not talking about that. I would stop the interview immediately when I saw those and go, "And you know..." Yeah, yeah, right. I know, I'm just using this example before we get into like an interview or anything. I'm just saying that that example of those extreme changes, like there's always a catalyst, there's a reason for that. But maybe it's because, man, I just got super excited and interested in something, or I'm looking at my phone, and I got upset at something I read, or again, I got to go to the bathroom. Right? So...

Right now with a coffee, and I'd really like a coffee right about now.

Right, exactly. And so, so that's what I mean. So what the idea is, you know, what we say you're looking for is congruence. Right? Do the words coming out of my mouth match what's going on with my body? Right? So meaning, am I pointing one way and looking at the other and talking? Like, there has to be congruence. So when you're talking about now in a conversation or interview, where it doesn't matter what it is, normal, I know I'm having good conversation with someone if we're both facing each other, Greg, let's say we're standing, we're both standing, and we're both oriented toward each other, from my head, shoulders, hips, all the way down to my feet, and they're pointed directly at you, and you're pointing directly at me, what that means is we're transmitting and receiving on the same frequency. Right? Right? Even if we're not—maybe we're upset about something—we're both engaged 100% in that conversation. Right? So what I'm looking for is that congruence. Is everything lined up? Right? Because then I know, "Okay, the words coming out are matching up with the actions. We're having a conversation." Now when there's that change, all of a sudden I turn a little bit, or I face that other direction. Okay, now if I see you do that, Greg, we're having a conversation. I know maybe I'm starting to lose you, or you're gaining interest somewhere else, you're starting to attend to other things in your environment. So it's important now. Again, I don't know why. Maybe I said something that pissed you off, but maybe you're trying to include someone else. Maybe you have some other thoughts. So I have what I have to do is be careful about what I attribute that value to, meaning I can't just say, "Oh, he did that because I said so. I must have said something that he didn't like, and now he's trying to get away," when in fact, your head, you're going, "Damn, Brian brought up a really good point. I want to bring in that other guy over there on the left who had a question about that earlier." You see how that works? Like, I just want to kind of point that out as what we, we don't always know what that catalyst for that change in behavior is.

No, there's usually something. Right? There's a reason. Let me touch on a few words that the audience needs to know. One, I'm going to say training changes behavior only based on the fact that if you're trained in paralanguage and body language, you're going to do great, and this is going to sound like old hat to you. The second part of it is that when you're talking about having a conversation—my interview—that's the same thing. The oldest form of communication is paralanguage; it's how we got things done. It's how a mom with a newborn baby still communicates, and the newborn baby that hasn't achieved language is sending all kind of messages. So this is as old as we are. The part of it when I talk about an interview, even if I meet somebody on the street, Brian, you've been with me long enough, it's an interview. What can I do?

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, for me, what do you know?

That's exactly what it is. So don't, don't allow me to mix up words and right from the point because everything in life is an interview.

So right, and it's any conversation is, yeah, because you're giving up information, you're getting information. Absolutely, yeah.

So, so the oldest, most primitive form of communication is body language, and the furthest from your brain is the purest signal. So what you're doing with your hands is hugely important; what you're doing with your feet is hugely important. Because why is that? Your brain has to reach a long way for those sensors, and those sensors have to be much more... Imagine getting foot surgery, you know how many sense receptors you get on your feet and on the bottom of your hands? Those are like a cat's whiskers. Why? Because they're farther away from your body, and the message is going to take longer neurally. So it's important for them to be able to pick up certain cues in the environment. So just like you talked about the hypothalamus heating up to warn us by heat—heat's a great warning; it's almost instant. It's like getting butterflies when the amygdala decides to drop down cortisol into your stomach to warn you, "Hey, you don't like going out for public speaking? Don't do that." You get what I'm trying to say? So those type of things in our environment are triggers to tell us that what we're about to do is different in some manner. So meeting a new person now might be fun, but 35,000 years ago, it might have been they were sent to kill you, or poison you, or gather information for you, and your brain doesn't know the gosh damn difference. Your brain is like the dog that's waiting for you to come home, right? It doesn't know if it doesn't know how long.

Yeah, right.

You get what I'm trying to say? So that's why I mean there's no one-to-one. So, and then as your brain is going through the rolodex, going through the file folder for similarities, we decide that we like a person in nanoseconds, Brian, immediately. Okay? And that's olfactory, the smell, the look of the person, the way the person's standing, the words that they choose to use or not choose to use. And then we muck it up as humans by going, "Oh, they just crossed their arms; they're closing us off." What boob came up with that? Yeah. Okay, when you cross your arms, that's a comfort signal. That means that the person's comfort in themselves, or they're cold. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So Shelley crosses her arms just to give relief to the elbow because arthritis has set in, and it still hurts her. So instead of misattributing, read it in its totality, and every time that you get to a groove in the record, stop and ask a question. We would be such a much better society. Again, I see you digging in your nose, cocaine. And you know me, I'll say one word: "Why?" Yeah, because that one word creates a file folder in the person, and they go, "No, it's not cocaine. Pass me a tissue; I have a summer cold." Now I know what to attribute that to. And I also can measure what I'm hearing against the reality of the other thing that people say. Have you ever met a consummate liar, Brian? A person no matter what they say, they're one-up yet, and they just can't stop? Okay, so what value do you give anything coming out of their mouth?

Right, right. "A million-dollar lottery ticket's down at the liquor store."

"Hey, kiss my ass." Right. But a person that you're meeting for the first time, you start arranging it. "Hey, I think I like the cut of this person's jib."

The funny thing for people who can't see right now is because we kept talking about it so much, my nose started actually itching.

Listen, you can do that, can't you? Can you talk yourself into being pissed? Yeah, you can talk yourself into being angry. You can get yourself stirred up like that. You can. And those are rehearsals to your psychological stance. Brian and I did a series of courses about bank robberies and teaching the people that worked at banks specifically how to predict them and how to mitigate them, or at least lessen the consequences. And Brian, you'll remember that short series of photos that we use that shows the bank robber ramping up, getting ready to go. Okay, well, while we do that, and communication is a game of inches and nanoseconds, really. So when you see a person do that, remember that most persons are so flipping egotistical that they're not listening to what you're saying in the moment; they're waiting for you to stop so they can say their piece. So now you see the person react by sidestepping and looking away for a second. What they're doing is rehearsing what they're about to say, just waiting for you to go, "Yada, yada, well, Billy said..." you shoot. I'm saying, "So that would be a complete failure in body language, right, during an interview, and you would go up and you would testify to it. 'Yeah, Your Honor, at that time I knew I was pissing off the suspect.'" Shut up. You know what I mean, how does that start?

No, and and how we articulate it's important. Right? So we keep it in general because you have to, like you said, okay, your feet are the farthest thing from your brain. Right? So that prefrontal cortex, all the way up in the front part of your brain, that's what people refer to as your lying brain. Right? That's the one where you can make up all the stories and fantasy that you want. And then, you know, you go farther back into your survival limbic system, that's, that's they call it like your honest brain because it doesn't lie, it only knows survival, and it's trying to keep you alive. But like we always say, your feet are the farthest thing, so they're one of the most honest parts of your body. Right?

Yes.

And you'll see that in groups, right? You got a group standing, you know, near each other, you'll see, "Okay, that person likely is more comfortable with that person because they're standing closer, or their feet are pointing at them." So you can tell all that stuff because that's a very honest, it's autonomic, you're not thinking about it. Right? So I like big stuff like that because, you know, you can, you can use that, right? You use it as general rules or general concepts to understand, right? Because then what you also brought up without specific talk about is, I think you mentioned earlier, is clustering these cues. Right? I can't go off of one thing unless it's so blatantly obvious or so specific. Right? And this is where I see a lot of things go wrong where people will learn something—we refer to it as a parlor trick—but a lot of times some of that stuff started off actually where it will make sense or will work, but only in a very specific defined context. Right? Because you brought up like interviews, like there's different interview techniques for like law enforcement and stuff. I won't get in there because they sue, but some of them were designed for a very specific context and worked in that context. But then what happened, because it worked, people then took it and said, "Well, I'm going to apply that here," or, "Now I didn't know that I was only supposed to use it in that context." So now I start doing that, jamming that square peg in that round hole, and I start confirming my own biases, and then the next thing I know, someone gets locked up for 40 years, and they didn't do the crime. That's how that stuff happens. So...

So add that term, "observer expectancy," right? Because we expect to see it; therefore, we put our thumb on the scale autonomically or automatically, and you're exactly right. We say, "Hey, right there, he confessed." And the person, "Excuse me, please, that's not what that meant at all." Right. Now we're in a jury, and people are going, "Oh, maybe he did mean that." So, very quickly, your analogy of the feet is brilliant, and you talked about orientation. We should bring that up again later because orientation is a very important thing psychologically, as important as your stance. But I want you to imagine that you're a kid, and folks, when you're in the military, you spend a lot of time in a laundromat, and it's not fun time, no matter what you bring; it falls short of what you think it's going to do to pass the time, I guarantee it. And so you go in the laundromat, and it takes exactly 22 minutes for the washer, it takes exactly 18 minutes for the dryer, and you add those two numbers together, and it's over 30 minutes. And the first seven minutes you're so bored stiff, you want to think, "Can I, you know, slam something in something to get an arousal out of myself?" And now imagine that same situation, you as a kid. So the kid is sitting down there, and the kid brought their earphones, and they brought their real phone, and they brought everything else, and a couple of minutes in, they're so bored shitless that they want to leave. What are their feet going to do? They're going to be sitting in the chair, and they're swinging their legs. Now you're going to say, "Yeah, well, because of the chair and the leg and the distance and the coefficient of friction," I'm going to say that kid is kicking you; that kid is mentally thinking about, "Mom brought me to this shitty playground; I hate it." And so the kicking is a manifestation of the turmoil that's going on in your brain.

Reasonable to assume that in that environment, when it's a great, perfect example, because kids are the best because they're very demonstrative. Right? They haven't learned to control their emotions as much; they're very, very, very, very honest. Right? And it's great because it's like reading body language but in slow motion because you can see it a mile away. But that's a perfect example. They get angry, and what's the, "stomp my feet?" Right? That's that, your example that you just brought up right there, that's the same thing as someone stomping their feet as they walk out; they're trying to stomp on you and kick you, that's what they're thinking in their head. It's a very primal reaction. And so I, I think that's another good example. So the thing with a lot of this stuff is because, you know, you see these different experts talk about different ways to present yourself. I even had my cousin actually reached out a while back because he's coaching a football team, and it's college level, and like he would always say, "We got a problem with like guys on the sidelines, their body language don't look like they're..." I'm like, "You know what can they do, you know, how to understand the body, body language of, you know, to look more, you know, confident and do this." As like, "Well, what they're showing is, is they're demonstrating what's going on internally. This isn't some external thing. There's something where they lack. So rather than focusing on their body language, you have to build their confidence in some way." Right? It's, it's a different way to look at it, but it's very powerful because you see a lot of the, you brought up public speaking. It's like the number one fear in the world. People hate public speaking.

Absolutely.

Right? It's still, like, I mean, we still, I still get nervous going in front of a crowd, and I do that for a living. It's still that, you know, because I'm, I got a lot of stuff in mind; I'm going to make sure I hit everything, you know. It's still, that's still there. But one of the things they talk about, like these power poses, you know, you stand in the mirror, you know, you put your hand up by yourself, and then, and you know, you take the big, big breaths and stuff like that. And it's, it's, and you know, have these mantras to say. And it actually, it, it's a temporary sort of solution to that, meaning because it's how powerful the, how the electrochemical neurotransmitters in your brain work. It's a, it's a loop. Right? So, so one, it can tell you you're confident, and then you will start acting confident because if something happened, but you can also do it with your body language and kind of trick your brain a little bit into thinking that way to help boost that level of confidence. So I don't use it as a, "Oh, that's a great way to do it." I use it, "That's a great way to understand how your brain interacts with your body and the effect that it has when it can come from your body to your brain or from your brain to your body." Right? That feedback loop is constant. So it can go either way. It can, excuse me, it could start at either location. Does that kind of make sense?

That's precisely it. And the idea is, if a yawn or a sneeze can work and spread through a crowd—and I don't mean the way COVID does or STDs—then visual cues in the environment, for example, you can be a better listener by crossing your arms and putting your hand up and nodding. One person saying something, even if you're not attending to what they're saying, the person will get a confidence boost, they'll speak better, you'll hear better, and they'll slow down their delivery system so you can have a communication. Right? How long does it make, take to make a movie? A movie, like a fast movie is like 45 days. You know what I'm saying? That's, hey, they have some like 45 projects, right? And, and it's a one-camera Bubba deal, and they're making this in Atlanta, and the, they call it the "Bubba" when one person is doing the camera, and then they pass it to the other person. That's for fishing and stuff, that's where that term came from. Right?

Yeah, I'm not being pedantic or... No, no, no, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

So now, Brian, if we do that shoestring budget film, and if the film is only an hour and 20 minutes long, but we've taken 10 times that in days to rehearse, why? Because incongruent signals send us off the reservation. Yes. So all of a sudden I'm starting to talk, and I'm trying to be a nice guy, and I'm trying, and it's coming off disingenuous, and it's coming off like you're a jerk. And so moviegoers say, "This isn't what I read in the book at all. These aren't the characters that I found." So now you got the audience that doesn't like it, the guy that wrote the film or the female that wrote the film hates it, the actors aren't getting into the world. So come on.

Yeah, you'll see that sometimes watching a movie or somewhere, like you don't like that character, and it's not by design; there's something up. And sometimes you see like they're, they're not good at playing their role. Right? They're not the best actor because you know, your, your brain is picking up on that incongruence. Right?

You're exactly right. I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, no, because the only another great way is that, is like, people with different either like mental health issues, personality disorders, autism spectrum, that kind of stuff. Like, you'll see because they're there, there's incongruence in what they're saying and how they're behaving for the context. Your brain immediately goes, "Like, what's up here? Something's up."

And it's to sense the potential of danger or my information has to be brought to a different manner to get that person on board. It's, for example, let's go back to Hollywood for a minute. Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey can play the creepiest person in the world. I wonder why. All you need to do is watch...

Yeah. Yeah.

Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, Brian. That's why science. Isaac. The idea if we take a look at him in a film like The Usual Suspects, right, where he makes these transformations and all that other stuff. And remember, Hollywood had to say, "Hey, look, you know, we're going to, we're going to hint at these things and we're going to expose them all the way." But the idea is, it really does show his range. His best range is a film called Horrible Bosses, yeah. And there's a character that he plays from that earlier on where he's the gives a thing about the shark. You know, "Shut up. Listen and learn." And I don't remember that film, but if you're a film buff, go look it up. The idea is Spacey has a wide range because he can play that devious because he knows it. It's him; he's playing his thing. Now we take a look at another actor, Vincent. I believe it's Vincent Pastorelli. Could play a great bad guy, could play a great mob guy, could play a great neighbor. He had this wide range of characters that were quirky, and he was quirky in his real life. He took a bunch of drugs, allegedly. His girlfriend died from gun violence. He went home, and he died himself. Now, nobody's putting all that stuff together because of Hollywood, but it's a suspicious situation that's brought on. And when you see the actor acting out his role, you have to think, "Did he leak a little bit of his true self?"

Oh, yeah.

So if you can believe that line, and what we're talking about now is a psychological stance. Certain people are predisposed to talk in front of crowds. Certain people are predisposed to, when they show up, other people want to listen to them. And naturally, okay, we boost them up into these roles where we feel comfortable. And that's why when we watch certain characters that sell us products or advertisement, we're willing to listen and learn from that person even though it's an act. It's... and what do we call that? Fundamental Attribution Error. Yeah.

And so, so people go, "Well, you know, sometimes I hear these terms that you talk about over and over." It's because your brain is a finite system, and it has a way of checks and balances and a way of probing the environment, and it's consistent. And if you're giving off an incongruent signal, if your body language isn't matching what's coming out of your mouth, your brain is going to call anomaly. And once every anomaly has to be investigated, so once you get used to picking out anomalies, you'll be better at HR. You'll be a better lover, a better parent, you know, the best way to learn about the person on your speed date is to shut up and let them talk because they're going to want to tell you things about this.

The, the, the date example, one is always great, yeah.

Because it's interesting because it's how, you know, the the difference in men and women on that, on those situations because I remember, I remember being out at a bar restaurant. We were at the like the high table seating area in the bar, and looking over and seeing, uh, you know, these girls were hanging out, they were having some drinks, and you could tell the table full of guys, and I'm like, "Okay, one of them, they're clearly talking about those girls. One of them is going over there to approach, and he's going to eventually talk." Right? So as soon as he does, he walks over there, but all I could see at first was just the women's reactions. And like, they kind of like, I could hear him talking, but I couldn't see him because of where this post was. I couldn't see him, much of him, like just like the back of his head. And then like, I could, you know, see them and hear what he's saying. And all he was saying was like, "Hey, I'm so-and-so." You're just normal, "Hey, I'm trying to introduce myself," kind of thing. Like the words coming out weren't much. But I looked at their reaction; they're kind of pushed back a little bit. And then one like in her lap like put her purse, like, "Oh," in her lap all of a sudden. I'm like, "What the heck is going on?" It turned around, and I kind of like, you know, lean over to where I could see him. And the guy is standing there, and he's just talking to them, trying to hit on them, but he's like rocking back and forth, and his hips are going like back and forward and back and forward. Like, "Okay, dude, actually, exactly what you're thinking about doing right now, you clearly want to have sex with one of these women." And this one girl is getting like a little... Where did she put her purse?

Yeah, exactly. Right up in front of the vagine. She put a barricade up.

So in those situations, in that context, you could see, "Okay, she, that, you know, his behavior affected her, which changed her body language to where she was laughing, having a good time with her friends and her girlfriends, and then all of a sudden it was like things got a little bit weird, and she felt the need to put a barrier up." So you'll see that. Now again...

Hold on right there. I knew, I knew why she put up the barriers because I could hear and see. I mean, if I had been a thousand yards away with a pair of binos, you know, I maybe they were talking about her mom that just died or something, you get what I'm saying? Like, I can't contribute the difference that I want to make sure right at this point, because we know we, we've got some haters that hate everything, whatever.

Capital Z, yeah, exactly.

And because they don't read and they don't listen, and they want their way even if it's wrong. The way that we can say this with a great degree of certainty, Brian said, "I was a witness to this." Now we would do that, but instead of just witnessing and writing about it, we had people tagging along with us for years. They would do the studies and the tests and go over and go, "Hi, we're doing this. This person is saying one of these things is true. Could you tell us?" So they didn't use the confirmation bias, you know, "Are you happy? Are you sad? Did you, can you explain to me, explicate why you stood in this manner in which it..." And the person was, "Well, I was really turned up." Okay, and that includes not only places like Pacific Science and Engineering, Cognitive Performance, Brown. That's the Army Research Institute, OMR. Those people went over right when we were doing it, and we would make our, and I'll call it a prediction, and then we'd go over, and they would go, "Holy crap, these guys are right." That's different, Brian. That's different from me playing a parlor trick. I'll give you that. That's different than the news commentary because you never get to find out what the real answer is. So I know with great certainty that my stuff works because we were tested. People came and did experiments. Shelly and I went to see a guy that was performing in Arizona. We actually drove from Colorado all the way to Arizona to attend the, to tend to the guy's thing. I don't want to use his name; he's probably still out there, but he's a seer of things, yeah, and he can read your history.

Oh God, there's other stuff, yeah. TV shows.

Arizona. And it was right after a couple of months after September 11th. And I just lost my, we, we had lost people both Shelly and I, and we said, "Well, it's worth a try. Let's go down and see," because what we do, we don't believe it, but it's a good parlor trick, so let's watch it. So when we came in, there was this interview process that was going on with the seating and the people and the greeting that was before the event that I thought was telling, because I guarantee you that that was where all of the information was drawn from. "Hey, look at how these people sit, how they dress, what's that artifact that they're carrying?" And this one woman that came in that we picked out early, Shelly and I, had an ark. And on the ark was two of every animal. And it was this overly large piece of jewelry, let's call it. And the guy picked it out right away. So we were happy because we picked it out of the crowd when it was coming in. And the significance that Shelly and I assigned to it as rubes is rudimentary. We didn't know anything about this guy's play was, "That's the boat going to heaven." Because churches are built, Orthodox are built like ships. You feel like you're in the galley. Even the way the seating is. And it's the ship that's going to take you up to God. So Shelly and I are doing this, and we're doing what's called a cold read. And all of a sudden, the guy started saying, "I'm seeing somebody and it's about a boat to heaven, and this serious business and their friends worked for a company in New York that died during September 11th, and this was the remembrance that they got all those people sitting in the boat." Okay, Brian, that's not neuroscience. What that is, is that is looking at a totem pole of a Native American tribe and saying, "I think that's a salmon. I think that's a bear. Those things are important to their economy, and without salmon oil and bear juice, we're not going to make it into the next millennium." So I want to separate what we're talking about. We're saying that certain psychological stances, for example, anger, are easier to read than deceased disciples.

Or even, like, you can contempt and disgust are so close. Yeah, they're so close.

But anger and happiness aren't, what I'm trying to say. Now somebody's going to call and counter one of those classic obstructionists, and I'm talking about, and they're going to go, "Yeah, but sometimes people cry when they're happy." No, that's electrochemical neurotransmitters, and that's also science. You know, when you're overwhelmed by events, certain chemicals come on board, just like you were talking about when that guy went over there. If somebody swooned and they touched their hair and they turned their jugular and carotid, you'd see it. Why? Because oxytocin is a drug. It's how babies find moms. That's how certain things happen. You can't fight those. But the marginal ones, that's where the people are completely full of it. Well, they're assigning importance to something that's not important.

It's taking it, it's what I generally see happen is people take that quantum leap of logic, right, where their observation is correct, but they, they attribute way too much value. Perfect example is a female, what they'll do more so is like, if I'm like put my hair back and expose my neck and wrists or anything, those are what people would call like passivity signals, like I'm being, you know, it, and all it really is is I'm, I'm okay being vulnerable physically around you. Right? Meaning, meaning I, I'm comfortable, is all it means. But someone will go, "Oh, yeah, that chick's totally into me." It's like, "No, dude, no, she's okay, she's, she's the waitress, and she's taking your order, and she wants to get with everybody."

So again, you made a funny joke and made her laugh, that was exactly right. But you have to read that with historical. Look, I almost got fired from a company when we were in Florida because the people I was training them to train the Colombian Marines. And I, I don't mean Colombia as the gem of the ocean. I left before I could get fired. Yeah. And so we were having a conversation, and the conversation went to oxytocin and some other thing, and we were talking about neurotransmitters. And it's like, do you know where lipstick came from? Putting it on your lips because then your lips stimulate another part of your body that becomes blood engorged when you're a female. And men like that because it's the first of the four F's. That conversation got me dragged out into the right with the shepherd's crook, and it's like, "You can't have that conversation." I'm like, "Well, high schools have it in maturation class," right? You get what I'm trying to say? That's why dress designers make it so you can see the humps of the breast or the humps of the butt, right? Because it's all about this, and they say, "Oh, well, you know, I'm a Christian family." And, "Well, you know what? Christians procreate too." Back off the gas a little bit, pal, and understand that certain things tempt us sometimes when we touch our neck or when we touch our face, we're imagining that person coming out, and it manifests through, through a drug or a chemical or an electrochemical reaction. And that's okay. But those signals, Brian, those are best seen when you're with binos at a distance because they become automatic or autonomic, and the person doesn't even know they're giving them to you.

No, no, and you, you bring up another reason how people take that quantum leap of logic. When you're talking about the science behind why certain things evoke or provoke certain reactions or, or, you know, whether that be electrochemical neurotransmitter or social reactions. You know, you're just saying, "This is what, this is why that occurs." And people are going, "You're telling me that that woman wears that dress because she..." Like, no, that, that's not what we were doing.

No idea. But she was attracted to that dress because somewhere in the recesses of her mind, yeah.

The most primitive part of herself. Very impressive. I think, I think that this is attractive and will attract a minute. That, that's what I mean. And it doesn't mean anything other than that. And, and that's it. That's a good point to to bring up. And, and those differences are good and, and how, you know, you know, we, we get into, because you talk about congruence and clusters and all that stuff, the only real way to tell about a lot of this, if it has any value, is you have to have some sort of sustained observation.

Absolutely. I can't just do a snapshot real quick and tell.

Well, sometimes it is powerful. Do you, oh God, you remember the teams, and I forget which country it was from, when they showed the picture of the insider threat in Afghanistan, said, "One of these guys in this photo was the one that attacked us." And we were all watching that one right there. That sometimes it's so powerful, and they're like, "Holy, how did you know that?" You're like, "Dude, that's called mission focus and predatory looks since I know there was an attack. I'm picking who obviously I know they're in the photo." So so I, you know, I just, I don't know, so compare that...

Right here, Brian, the queue, you're getting 49 people in the photo. Exactly. So, so you see a person, okay, you don't know what the context is yet. Okay? So you can't establish relevance, but you see a person in a baseline, and it's the only person that's barricading this area and parking and moving. So they have an escape route. I don't know what's about to happen, but either that's a public speaker that wants to get out quickly, that's an armed robber, that's a suicide bomber, that's a criminal. So I'm right more than I'm wrong because normal humans don't—and when I say normal, I'm talking about clinically—they don't have a, uh, let me give you a perfect example of that. And we have a thing that's called a nystagmus. Nystagmus is a very simple thing: the eye shakes when it moves and stops, and when it's tracking things, it tracks them smoothly and then has to have the ability to move around, sort of like a building on springs to an earthquake, right? So if you think about this, the police, through science, adopted a thing called vertical gaze nystagmus or horizontal gaze nystagmus. Either go up and down, like the old Three Stooges movies, or left and right, and the eye jiggles. Well, it jiggles at such a frequency, and I'm streaming it down that you can compare that to everybody else. And when you have alcohol or drugs, it jiggles differently. So that comparison alone can give me probable cause to arrest you. But the point is, before they start a horizontal nystagmus gaze test, they have to find out, "Do you have any medical issues? Do you have standing nystagmus?" You get what I'm trying to say? Do you have these things that would be misconstrued as cues? Why don't we do that with everything? Now you and I do, and we teach our folks to do. We're not giving everything away for free, but the idea is that we have to take a look at the comparative baseline of all the different factors that could be. So if we see a person that's limping in, we can't say they're limping because they've got an RPG down their pant leg. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Yes, we have to compare the cue against the likelihood and against the environment. And in any question period where we are worried because there is a missing RPG, and the guy is kind of limping that way, we go over and we tap on his leg and go, "What's with the leg, Papi?" That's the difference. And Brian, what we're talking about now is science. Science is conducting experiments to confirm or reject a hypothesis.

And, and you brought up a good thing earlier too to, to talk about that is, is mirroring, right? So normal human, like we're talking to each other, we're having conversation, things are going well, we will start to mimic each other's behavior in subtle ways. So like, I might scratch my face, and then a couple seconds later, you might scratch yours. Uh, I might lean back a little bit, you might lean, but there's little subtle things to show, "Okay, even at a great distance, I could see that and say, 'Okay, those two are having a conversation. They're on transmit and receive. They're on the same frequency.'" Right? Right? Even if you're on board with what I'm saying, if you're agreeing with me, exactly right. Right? You'll start to mimic my behavior slightly. So I can throw a rock in the pond to see, right? I can be having that conversation, and maybe I'll change up the way I'm standing or I'll put my hands on my hips, and then you might actually autonomically do the same thing. Now, if I'm observing that, that, that's, that's good, right? That's a good thing. I can say, "Okay, this communication is going well. I should continue this." So there's little stuff like that that we can say, "All right, normal, normal in the clinical sense of human behavior, communication, and interaction will, will see some sort of mimicry." Right? We'll see that because of mirror neurons in our brain, because of just social mimicry and isopraxism and homophily. Right? So that'll start to, and that's how groups start to form, right? First we start behaving a little bit together, then we start wearing the same type of clothes, then we start using the same terminology. Right? When I see those in those teams or those groups, you go, "Okay, these, this is a, this, this team, this group, they're all on the same page." There's this sociological bond that you can see, and that'll manifest itself throughout. So then it's easy to compare the person that isn't part of that group because they're exhibiting none of those behaviors. They're, they're maybe not using the same terms, not dressed the same way. Uh, there's all of these other outliers versus them, you know, scratching their ear and tapping their foot at a certain time. But right, so before you even get to that stuff, what I'm saying, there's sociological ways you can show through mimicry how that body language is different than we said, remember, compared to that baseline. It's different than this known over here because that's what it starts with. I have to come... Absolutely, or I have to sustain that observation to see if I continue to see that anomaly. Does that kind of say...?

That's spot on. Again, we can prove it. A limited objective experiment is the best way to prove this. So put yourself, listeners and viewers at home, put yourself in a situation where you're going to go up, even if you don't like, they posted a job at the airport, and Lon works at the airport, so I'm going to go try out for it just to piss my neighbor off. You get what I'm trying to say? I think that's hilarious. So I'm going to have to go through the interview process. And if people that know me, if they give you a tutor, it looks like you're going to have to have more podcasts. But the idea is that I just think that shit's funny. So if you're in that situation, do the following: one, when you come into the room, don't shake hands; keep your hands in your pockets. And as a matter of fact, when the person goes to shake your hand, blade slightly away, change your orientation. Number two, when they say, "Please have a seat," take their seat. Number three, look at your phone the entire time as if the answer to whatever question is in the phone. And those type of things are so contrary to how humans behave in that environment that you'll not only not get the job, you'll get escorted off the premises. If that does in fact work, we prove the negative. So it's obvious that increasing the all the, the, the contrary, the alternative, the other side of that is going to be true, which means, okay, that we can prove that corollary would say, now increasing eye contact makes people feel good, but there's a creepy range, so stay out of the creepy range. Not enough, too much. Shaking a person's hand is fine, shaking their whole body, probably not so much. Getting close enough that your mirror neurons kick in is probably good. Sitting in the person's lap during the interview, probably not so good. That's what we're talking about, Brian, and isn't that the same in all of the domains, whether it's anchor point or, you know, physiological or sociological? It's the same. There's a sweet spot, and there's extremes. Stay away from the extremes, you're generally going to be okay.

No, I, I, I agree with that. And, and then, you know, the, the, the other thing I noticed with stuff is words matter, right? We always say, "Oh, yeah," and, and how we describe something because then it could change the way we observe something. So I'll see people say like, "Oh, that's," you know, think of like a little kid in trouble, like looking down, maybe cross one arm over the other, kind of shake back and forth, and they're like doing some sort of like pacifying behavior. They feel uncomfortable. You'll see that. But, you know, that also changes over time because sometimes they'll get the little one, the insurgent, right? She wants to go stay out later with her friends or go outside or go do something. She'll come up and look down and go, "Can I, um, is it okay if I..." So she's mimicking that behavior because she's trying to make me go, "Oh, hey, what's wrong? Are you okay?" Right? Hermione Granger using her magic wand to change the environment. Yeah. But, but so, so it's, it's always important how we describe it. And the reason why I bring that up, one of the biggest terms I hear that I have an issue with is something when someone calls it a "pre-attack indicator."

Oh, come on.

Which is a horrible term, and I suggest everyone deletes it from their vocabulary. But, uh, that's just my opinion right there. And I think something more important or a better way, a more accurate way to describe something would be a "pre-event indicator." Right? So somebody's been talking...

Pre-event indicators, Brian, forever.

But exactly right. But you kind of brought up that example before. As you're talking to someone, also the shoulders come up, they start balling their fists, the corrugator muscle, the nose opens up, they start breathing heavier. Like, "Okay, those are anger cues." Right? But that's a pre-event indicator. I, I, you may see that in someone who's just about to take off on a 50-yard sprint. Right? Not punch me in the face. But the second, but the second I call it a "pre-attack indicator," I now biased it. I have now biased my own, and my own observation, and now said, "Now I start seeing everything else as building on top of that." Right? So...

Street it up again, Brian. An erection, and sorry folks, this is okay for everybody because even kids get them. An erection can be accidental, incidental, it can be a pre-event indication, or it can be none of the above because sometimes you wake up with one, you don't know your brain's recycling a dream, and you're like, "Uh, boy, I wish I could go to the bathroom right now, but I can't." Sometimes it's because you see a scintillating or titillating information, right? And it processes chemically or neurally. Sometimes you have an extreme head injury. I've seen blow-tops where everything else is dead, and something else is not because the neural pathways are all mixed up now, and the message has got to go somewhere. So there's a panacea, Brian, of different potential choices, but it only becomes a pre-event indicator of something when it's going to be used for what it was designed for. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So now if a person's in the bedroom, we've got the music and all that other stuff is going, it's likely to show this. In those other instances, there's a chemical, or a medical, or a physiological, or a mental reason that those things are happening. So, so, and why am I going down that path? Because it's something that you can see or think of or have had or have had access to before that shows you how those things are. So one thing doesn't necessarily mean anything. And therefore, what's the guy with the enigma code? Turing, committed suicide. Turing was gay, so to fix them, they chemically castrated. Okay, but think about it, there was a problem. They faced the earth and contributed to defeating the German code in World War II, virtually single-handedly. Yeah. When it came to information and intelligence processing. But we're here saying, because that, we decided that this makes it this, and therefore the chemical castration is the right way to solve it. Shut up. Don't read into, don't square peg round hole it. Don't read into it unless you have compelling evidence, artifacts, and evidence that would tend to show that the, the totality, all of those clusters of cues coming together would suggest this is a likelihood.

The other term that I, I, I have a problem with is when, when someone uses the term "furtive gesture."

Oh, defense attorneys are clapping. Yeah.

You know, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But well, rightly so, right? We can get better meaning, you know, we've said, you know, affirmative gesture attempting to like conceal or hide something in an action, right? That can be described as a furtive gesture. There's, there's a bunch of different uses I've seen for it, so I actually don't entirely know what the meaning of it is anymore. But can you explain why that may not be the best choice of words or could be articulated better? Right? You know, we're talking about reading body language, and the term "furtive gesture" has been, been used quite a bit, but that's going to get you, you're going to know you're right.

So this is what I would do. I would, I would talk to the prosecuting attorney, and I would say, "Okay, let's bring the jury out to the parking lot where they parked, where the jury parked to come inside." I would have one of them at random, chosen by the bailiff or chosen by the defense attorney, unlock their car, and I would say, "Do me a favor, take three things out of the glove box, take three things out of the trunk, and then take three things from under the driver's seat." Now what you're going to find is the things in the glove box, although dated, are going to be stuff: the Mentos you couldn't find, the the registration from four years ago, yeah.

The car doesn't work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. When you go in the trunk, you're going to find stuff that's normally in the trunk: the tire, the spare. You're also going to find my gym equipment, you get what I'm trying to say, that kind of stuff. When you reach under the seat, first of all, your hand is going to be shitty and gummy and sweaty. Yeah. Okay, you're going to get a mouse turd, and you're going to get that wrapper. Yeah. So, so would you say that it's less likely that you store something of value under your seat? Okay. And then something somebody would say, "That's reasonable." Now once I got you thinking reasonable, I say, "Now I pull behind you and put on the red and blues." The first thing you think about is reaching under your seat into that mouse sticky, horrible thing. I can't see the, the even over the steering wheel. I don't know what's there. Yeah, I'm weaving and all that other stuff, right? But that was my first thing, not to go into the glove box where my to reach back into my, my laundry bag and grab a towel because now I'm sweating. But I want to reach under the seat. So I would now assign that piece of lexicon "furtive" to that motion and say, "The likelihood increases in my mind that the person's trying to discard or hide an item." I just got that jury on board. You see how that works, Brian? What I did is I did a limited objective experiment, and I put likelihood as the key. That's not saying certainty. Certainty and likelihood are two completely different things. But all I got to get is one person and a jury going, "Yeah, I guess that's pretty furtive." You see what I'm trying to say? So that's how life is in the day-to-day of a profiler. And you know that you know that we have now created monsters in our own brains. Yeah. And we don't think like normal human beings; we're constantly doing redentation, taking things apart, putting them back together, wondering what the gestalt vision of something is different at a distance. Don't we do that to everything now? You know...

Well, and and so that, that's a, that's a great point on how to use that term or clearly define what you meant by it, right? Because each one of those things, one, you're using two comparisons, and it's something that everyone's done, and anyone, I, I, how many people now have even ever reached underneath the seat of their car unless it was they were in, you know, at the car wash cleaning it out with the little vacuum thing that they have that you guys saw?

So, so I think that the nozzle was built to get under the drive.

Exactly. So, so it's a, you, when using it as a comparison, it will obviously hold more value and make more sense. Um, the other thing that, that we, we do a lot as humans, it's just another thing I kind of want to discuss a little bit is, um, like autonomic self-touch, right, or different behaviors. So like, I always say like, you could sit in a parking lot and watch people get in and out of their cars and tell who has a concealed, you know, handgun on them because, you know, what do they do as soon as they get out? They touch it. You're like, "Okay, that person does an appendix carry; it's right there in the front." Or that one a person does it in their, in their, in the back. I don't know what you call that, but whatever, that, that's where they're carrying. So you can see stuff like that. But we do that with everything, right? When someone says, "Hey, do we have everything?" People touch their phone or their keys in their pocket and grab it and make sure. Little stuff like that. Or my favorite was, remember with Blackheart when he would forget to buy or he didn't, he ran out of Copenhagen. When he ran out of chew, he would sit there talking to a bunch of Marines, stand in front of him, and act just with his fingers like he's packing a can of dip until one of them, one of them would either take their dip out or touch their pocket that had it in. And just like, "Hey, man, can I get a pinch off you?" And they never got like, "How did you know I had that in there?" You know, it's just that, that stuff will happen autonomically. We'll mimic that. I'll see that you have that, and I'll touch that. I'll see, "Oh, Greg, you're a police officer carrying a gun. You have a gun on you. I see it right there." I'll touch mine, even though I'm not supposed to have it on me. Right? So, so that's, that's a, that's a powerful indicator as well, that autonomic self-touch. So you can use that. Again, like Hermione Granger's wand. And if you want to break up a conversation, grab your phone. You don't have to check your phone, just hold your phone in a few seconds, everybody around you at the room is going to hold their phone, and they're going to start, and if you actually glance at yours, oh, they're screwed. They're going to glance at theirs as well. You remember we were doing a crew from Coronado, and we took them to an area that had a vast parking lot, and everybody had their binos and their NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) and their thermals. And we said, "Put away the NVGs and the thermals, just use your naked eye, then your binos to confirm which of these cars is occupied. Go." The idea was just wait a few minutes, the person that was in the driver's seat talking to, you know, the person next to him or eating or anything else, would adjust themselves in a seat. And what would they always touch to give them leverage? The steering wheel. And put their foot on the brake. Those two items would give them the torque necessary to adjust on their seat. So randomly you would see a set of tail lights come on, and I would go, "What do you think?" And they would look and they go, "Holy, how do you do that?" Brian, the environment speaks to you. You have to read those cues. So you've got the known, okay, then you've got the unknown, the thing you're going after. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Between those points, you have to find artifacts and evidence to focus what it is that you're trying to find without putting your thumb on the scale and creating a connection. If you create the connection outside of autonomic or automatic or biological or physical, what's going to happen is you're always going to skew your own results. And that's why when you take a look, we just had a genius on the show not too long ago, and we actually asked them why they couldn't recreate some of those experiments over and over. Well, it's because the conditions changed each time. I did the experiment with Maslow's example, but I don't want to talk to that again. But the idea is if you get seven people that are doctoral candidates in a Harvard class, yeah, it's going to be different than the friends we hang around with doing it at flipping Applebee's. And so the idea is that you have to get good by receiving the right amount of training and then constantly sensing your environment. And Brian, the way I've been teaching this for for my entire life was rocking the pond. Rock hits the pond, ripples go out, hit the lily pad, frog jumps, bird flies, and all we see is the bird. An inquisitive mind would go, "Why is that bird flying?" And try to work back to see what were those influences, what were those arousals or schema that came up that created that bird flying. If we walk around like that, we can be situationally aware. We can be in tune with our environment, and we're not going to be hyper alert or, you know, scared of everything that moves in our environment.

No, and that, that's a, that's a good general point, I think, when it comes to the body language stuff. Um, you know, the, the, the three big things, which is why I want to bring them up, is one, the context, you know, congruence, and, um, clusters. Right? If you know, if there's something, if someone feels like they're evasive on something or, or you think that's what's happening, well, you have to keep the observation going and come back to that. Compare it to something else, compare it to a note, compare it to a likely, you know, you already know the answer to a question, you know, when you're talking about interviewing stuff or, or, or talking with people. But there really is, you know, no just relying on, well, just relying on one any single domain at all, you're, you're getting into the realm of unscientific. Right? I can't just go at the one thing. I have to couple it with or cluster it or, or, you know, with something else. So some other domain, whether that be the context or the component. So I can't just look at one specific behavior that someone, um, demonstrated or did. I have to take it into the, you know, the totality of the circumstances, everything that went into that and why they did it. So that's the other thing too. Again, when we jump to that, you know, I don't always know why someone did something, but I can tell that they did it, and there was a catalyst for it. That's...

But let me give you the other side of that coin just for those people that are really paying attention. I'll give you an example of subject matter expertise. I am a subject matter expert on my daughter Andrea. Every week...

Okay, yeah.

Because for 11 years, no matter what I told her to do, she would close one eye, roll the other one, and that meant, "Oh my God, did you really tell me to do that, geez, Dad." And I knew all the behavior that was going to happen after it, and I knew I was going to reinforce over and over what I was going to say because she wasn't on board with whatever I gave her. 11 straight years of living in the same house, talking to her every day and trying to get her to do certain things, and that was Andrea's response. Now I can't look at your kid, right? I can't look at a kid in the mall and, and you know, the kid's got Bell's palsy, and say, "Oh, there's the Andrea look." You get what I'm trying to say? Or look over here and see your daughter or son respond to external stimulus and draw the same conclusion. But when it comes to Andrea and that move, I can testify with a great deal of certainty that every time that I saw it over those 365 times 11, which is three thousand this, yeah, whatever days, which comes out to this hours that I saw it, that you can testify too. So I can testify on the stand to, "Well, my daughter used to do this thing, and it kind of looked like that, and based on the other factors..." You see what I'm saying? So it can get me in the room, Brian, it can get me in the cube of the ice cube tray, but that doesn't mean that it's conclusive. That means that it's likely. And so those standards are still great standards to write a search warrant or an arrest warrant or fire somebody as, you know, being from HR, or just watch your people and determine which one's, you know, thieving off you, taking office supplies. So I just want to make sure that yes, you can be a subject matter expert, but the standard is really well in eliminator.

You know that's a great example because if the, the insurgent does that too. If I, when I asked her, I go, "Hey, would you brush your teeth?" I know if she, if she gives me a minute, like looks right at me and says, "Yep, uh, brush my teeth," I know she did. But she pauses for a second, and what she does is she like licks her teeth, almost like right and she goes, "Yeah." And I'm like, "Okay, get your ass in there right now."

Exactly. Or I'm brushing them for you.

Right, because, but, but again, that comes from me seeing that before. Go, "That looked odd, let me walk in there," and the toothbrush is bone dry, and there's the sink is is bone dry. I was like, "Hey, come here." Right? But I again, that, that happened over time, that I've seen that enough in that specific context. Now Greg, if I ask you if you brush your teeth and you do the same thing, that's completely different. I can't apply the same stance.

They're not my teeth. Exactly. I'm like, "Ed, no." But exactly that point, Brian. So, so we can tell with, listen, I'm going to make another pitch for training, not because we need the money, but the idea is that you need to get, look, every book that's written is written from the perspective of the author trying to get you to make a car sale or, yeah.

Or do something else. So therefore they're immediately suspended with their parlors. Those are the parlor tricks. Parlor tricks, exactly.

The other thing is if somebody tells you just stick with this one or two cues. Yeah, but they have to be in the right context. So if you're a copper or if you're HR, if you're a teacher, or if you're a parent, getting to training where you train in all the domains, and human behavior and body language are part of the topic, you're probably going to be okay. And one thing is nothing.

Yeah, and, and you, you can, you can also stick with the most universal cues, right? Everywhere in the world, you know, your head goes up and down, that's, that's, that's yes. If it goes side to side, no. I mean, except for that, maybe that one tribe, yeah, somewhere in the middle. But then that's so obscure. Like things like that are general, generalizations that you can use because they work in any domain, in any culture, in any country, that kind of thing. Because that, that's completely universal. So it's the whole, you know, congruence. If I'm, if I'm saying yes, but my head's going left and right, no, that's, that's kind of difficult to do, right? This is so, so that I'm seeing incongruence. So little things like that are, are big. And then, you know, the, the some of the differences between men and women, their body language, what that means. But, um, I, I like sticking to the big core takeaways, you know, like we said, feet, farthest thing from your prefrontal cortex, most honest part of your body. Right? Stuff like that. And then we talk about orientation, right? Orientation is huge. Right? You can only orient on one, technically, your brain can only do one thing well at a time. Right? We don't...

Well, and why does your brain orient? Your brain orients the rest of your body because you only have a certain functional field of view, right? Six degrees or 11 degrees. And the brain wants to turn your olfactory, your mouth, your ears, your eyes, the sensory input portions towards what the stimula, the, the external arousal is to get the most out of it. Now if you're hearing a sound and you don't orient towards the sound, you're so familiar with it, you've got it, or you're so clueless, you get what I'm trying to say? But everything, think of a little, one of the restaurants, yeah. A little kid in a restaurant hears a kid cry, immediately they start to orient. Why? Because in their kid brain, they're going, "If that kid's crying, I need to know." Yeah. What happens when somebody drops a tray of dishes in a restaurant? We all orient because that could have been the front door getting flogged out by a terrorist. So those big picture things, Brian, are much more credible than the nuance, "Oh, do you see where that person, you know what I'm saying, rubbed their cheek and then blinked once?" And that's generally horseshit.

Yeah, yeah. And plus, those could be nervous ticks; there could be people doing all kinds of different stuff. There's, there's, there's reasons for that. And that's another way, me coming back from the dentist. When I come back from the dentist, I do stuff that is definitely...

We got to, we got to, we got to schedule a podcast for right when you get back for the day the next time because you are so doped up, it's absolutely hilarious. But if I catch you when you're going up, it's good. It's, it's on the back end when you're coming down, and I'm like, "Okay, no more of this conversation, we got to go."

Well, I don't know what I said, so I have to go back and listen, and I go, "Who is that man?" So yeah, so stuff like that is, is important to, to understand. And again, even when we talk about this, like, even we don't, I don't want to get into it on this one, but like deception indicators. Right?

Yeah, that's a whole show.

Yeah. But which is a good another way to determine it's like, "I didn't say the person was lying. I'm saying they're exhibiting deception indicators." I don't know why they're being deceptive. This might just be an embarrassing conversation for them. They may have done nothing wrong; they just don't feel like talking to you about it. So that, that's another, that's another one. But that, that gets into a whole, a whole other, uh, episode.

Remember just a week or so ago, we were doing that incredible broadcast for the show. We had such a good time for those folks. I hope we got some new listeners, and I definitely hope to do that again. And when we were talking offline with Craig, who loved him to death, he was saying, "Well, what are some of the big picture things?" And we were saying, "Long three-quarter length wool jacket, hottest part of the summer." Yeah. Now listen, that's a starting point, right? Not the ending point, but that would be the same advice I would give my son that was going to, you know, on a vacation to a foreign country or to a Marine at Okinawa, you get what I'm trying to say, because there's been tension and there might be a body bomber. The idea is big picture signals generally are anomalous against the baseline. That's where you focus more of your time. You're likely to come up with something. I'm not going to tell you what it is. Yeah. That's probably where the danger, "Warning, Will Robinson!" is going to be found too, you know.

All right. Well, yeah, I know. And I think that's a good, that's a good spot to kind of bring in for a landing on, um, any, any other last, um, points on body language?

I'm going to be doped up on the 30th, so if you want to... I told you, protect that day. Remember, we'll schedule a good one for that. But, uh, yeah, we appreciate everyone tuning in. We've got more on the Patreon site. And, um, like, please do us a favor, share it with your friends, tell them about it if you like it. Hit, hit up a review at the bottom if you can. That, it helps out a lot to get our stuff out there, and we can keep going with this. And of course, always reach out to us, leftofgreg@gmail.com, if you're interested in us covering a certain topic. There's training coming up too, right, Brian? I mean, isn't there an event that's coming up where you go...

Yeah, they, they can, they can, they can follow us on social media and find all the details there. And that's cool. And reach out for the, for the training in the Midwest, in Indiana, uh, in July. I'd like to know about that. So we can definitely find the links and episode details to that if they, they want to learn more and come out for a few days. So, uh, I think that's all I got for today, Greg.

That's all I got for today, Brian. Oh no, again, yeah, remember everyone about body language, right? You know, context, congruence, clusters. Right? That's, that's kind of the three, my big three takeaways that I could give that you could, you could use today after listening to this podcast. I think so.

Thanks everyone for tuning in. Don't forget that training changes behavior.