The Body Language Expert & Motivational Speaker

As I continue to share my notes of the body language reads of the presidential candidates I realize I will catch a lot of flack for saying negative things. Know that I just report what the body language tells me. I do not have any specific political agenda.

Overall John Edwards is an animated, enthusiastic, candidate and this, combined with his attractiveness, make him, on the surface at least, a charismatic and appealing candidate. Nonverbally he quite literally talks out of the side of his mouth. Specifically he smiles and expresses more on the right side of his mouth. This side of the face is controlled by the more logical, rational left hemisphere. This pulled-up right side of the face is more permanent than Obama’s. It shows Edwards is more comfortable being logical and more comfortable when he goes to planned talking points.

Talking out of the side of the mouth is a nonverbal aspect I see in other politicians. When we see the twist on the right side, it makes it appear that the person is lying, and when we see this as a habitual cue or a permanent facial aspect, it appears that the person makes a habit of lying. Of course things like strokes can affect facial expression and may affect Vice-president Cheney’s mouth twist.

I’ve noticed that John Edwards’ eyes open wide and the eyebrows shoot up and his voice gets more animated when he goes to his planned talking points. He also does this unusual movement: he moves upward when he says his preplanned talking points. Specifically, his shoulders come up, his neck stretches up and his head goes up as he gets to a planned talking point.

If you have been following my blog for any length of time you have noticed that is a mixture of very academic discussions and editorialized ramblings about nonverbal communication. Today I want to vent some frustration that came from my body language read of Alec Baldwin on The View today. (If you missed it, watch it here). I am frustrated for many reasons. First, I realize I feel bad that I am reading into the heart of a man that feels his life has been devastated by the media. And I wonder if I am further exploiting a man who feels exploited. I am frustrated because he chose to be on the show today and then he took a perfect opportunity to take the high moral ground and apologize to his daughter and create positive attention to his cause of fighting parental alienation and blew it.

He said he learned three things with this experience, but the first “thing” was an attack on his ex, Kim Basinger, the second thing was a rant about the adult children of childhood abuse who berated him on his website, and the third point was merely a weird attack on the tabloid media. He didn’t seem to have any personal redemptive epiphanies. Perhaps he needs time and some sleep.

So let’s talk about his body language: Alec is typically an energetic, a dapper dresser and funny guest on talk shows. His gestures are large and swing out and away from his body, he leans forward aggressively to make a point, and speaks with a loud confident voice.
Today though, his shoulders where slouched his head was often down; he often was looking down, his arms where held in close and protective. His hands also were clasped together protectively in front of him. All these cues created a body language gesture cluster of defeat and exhaustion.

Throughout the interview he gave many self touch tactile signs. He touched his jacket, pulled the jacket edges together, picked invisible lint from his pants, touched the side of his face and clasped his hands together. These are called tactile signs. Tactile signs are physical contact with one’s own clothing or body parts especially the hands and face. Those self- touch cues showed that his sympathetic nervous system was in the fight-or-flight response. We unconsciously touch our bodies when emotions run high to comfort ourselves (Goodall 1986:125), relieve, or release. Physical contact with a body part stimulates tactile nerve endings and refocuses our orienting attention inward, away from stressful events “out there.”

In the interview. he was seated on the coach between Barbara Walters and Rosie O’donnell. During Barbara’s intro he sat with his hands protectively folded in his lap. In the silent pause after he and his story were introduced, he looked down and reached over to pat Rosie’s thigh to gain comfort and strength from his long time friend. She immediately gave him comfort by patting his back and gently leaving her hand there to show her support. Before he started speaking he looked down, pulled his pants leg up, picked invisible lint from the other pant leg and pulled the edges of his jacket together, all showing his high degree of stress and need to gain comfort. His choice of adjusting clothing also showed a concern or fear about his appearance. He was afraid he would not appear well.

I think many of us wondered if he was contrite about his behavior. Timing of cues is everything when interpreting. One very moving moment occurred when he talked about his anger concerning not being able to talk to his daughter for 10 days. He paused to collect him self and said with an emotional catch in his throat, “I took it out on the wrong person.” You could tell from downcast gaze, that went to his left (where we look when we accessing) , teary eyes, and a caught voice he felt horrible about what he had done. But I think we wanted him to say, “I am so sorry about what I said to my daughter.” After he said that statement he followed by saying I realize I was wrong …” as he briefly closed his eyes in a micro facial cue and closed his mouth for moment both signs he was trying to hold in his strong emotions and not cry.

After this Barbara commented that his anger was toward his ex not his daughter and as he said, “I think that goes with saying.” he scratched the side of his face showing anger and frustration.

A nonverbal cue that he was very angry at what the tabloid media had done was indicated when he said something to effect of, “Everybody who works for the tabloid media is filled with self hatred,” while he punched his hand in symbolic attack downward in the palm of his other hand.

When Barbara asked him if he had talked to Ireland ( his daughter) He touched the side of his face and let his hand linger there as her named was mentioned, his gentle feelings for her showing by the hand to head gesture he had thinking to do about how he wanted to deal with his daughter.

One of the oddest body language signals was the rubbing of the right side of his nose a when he finally said, “I apologize to my daughter.” That is typically a cue that what you’re saying does not smell right to you, or that you are lying.

I am a huge classic movie buff and one of the first actors to add humanizing self touch cues to his acting was Humphrey Bogart. Last week I watched one of my favorite movies The Big Sleep (1946). In that movie Humphrey Bogart fingered his right earlobe with his right hand several times while pondering deep thoughts. That’s also a cue someone may use when what they are saying or what they are hearing doesn’t sound right to them. See if you can observe self touch cues the next time you watch someone on TV being interviewed or an actor in a movie.

Alec Baldwin is going to be on The View today and US Weekly has asked me to read his body language during the interview about his daughter. I’ll post my notes on it later but check the show out for yourself…you can check when it comes on in your area here.

Body language analysis of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

One of the most interesting and dramatic aspects of Obama’s body language and paralanguage is that it changes so much from speech to speech and location to location. While many candidates slow down their speech slightly to charm
their southern audiences and increase their rate for New York news shows, Obama makes an all-out transformation. For example, if you had never heard him speak before and watched him give his Selma Alabama speech you would note his voice is extremely slow and takes on the relaxed consonants and cadence of Alabama. When he was interviewed on 1/10/2007 concerning his response to the Bush speech, his voice pace is fast, his speech is clipped, and his consonants are
crisp.

A few generalizations are in order here. When you speak, you do want to adapt and match and mirror your audience to some degree. If you’re speaking to a southern audience, slow down
your speech slightly. If you’re speaking to college students, insert some hip words and phrases, but be careful of mimicking exactly. The most important thing you offer is you, so be you. Stay in integrity. The way Obama morphs makes me uncomfortable. I am uneasy with someone who can so easily transform themselves so completely that we loose their essence.

When Obama is out in a crowd, and he stops to talk to someone, he laser focuses on them. He gives them significant extended eye contact, leans forward and stays in their intimate zone of space. These behaviors we observed in the “charismatic” Bill Clinton.
Remember, what makes a candidate look honest and powerful to us when we view him or her on the small screen, may be counter to what may look appropriate to the audience he or she is speaking to when they are taped in front of a
live audience. When speaking behind a podium or on a stage without one, Obama does something rather unusual. He turns his face and body to the side or moves his entire body towards the audience to show his desire to empathize and
connect with them. However, when we view that on video we may read it as revealing something quite different.

For example, in the Selma speech, Obama turns his face and body to his right side then left again and again, rather than focusing front and center. Front and center speaking is read as more honest,
more forthright and powerful. On the tapes of speech 2 of 5 , he actually leans his body from the waist up out towards the audience of students as he makes each point. Typically candidates stay straight up and down to show they are “straight” and strong on issues.
Obama’s body language cues are different in debates and interviews than in speeches. In his third televised debate with Alan Keys, Obama becomes visibly angry. He jabs out his finger at the interviewer as a symbolic weapon, even once at the end of the interview. At one point he puts both hands up with the forefingers out symbolically firing as if there were guns in each hand. He pushes his hand out toward Keys, not just in a symbolic stop sign, but in a more
aggressive pushing away motion.

Nonverbally, we can see he is an emotional man. Look for interviews like his response to the Bush speech. Watch as his mouth goes up more on his left side. Our emotional right hemisphere controls the left side of the face and when there is a split face, one side shows up more than the other. Note which side on Obama. The mouth twisting up to his left says that he was feeling very emotional, and though he wished to control it, he couldn’t.

As an expert in body language I am often asked to do reads of political leaders. (Yes, I know you’re thinking, “How does one become an expert on such a weird thing?” Well,  I have communication degrees with a specialization in body language, taught the topic at the university level and have researched, written and spoken on it for over 25 years.)

Last week I was asked by Psychology Today to study tapes of the speeches and interviews of the top presidential candidates.  Over the next few weeks I will be posting the detailed notes I took as I read over 12 hours of tapes on the candidates. I wanted to start my discussion with a research study on the influence of body language on political choice.

How Body Language Influences Presidential Voting:
Body language influences us in so many ways, but did you know it profoundly affects who is chosen as president of the United States?  Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research studied the effects of charisma on politics. The study involved a group of Harvard undergraduates who were shown 10-second silent video clips of candidates in 58 gubernatorial elections between 1988 and 2000–candidates unfamiliar to the study participants. When asked who they
thought  had won the election,  the students almost always picked the winner. They didn’t know anything about the background of the candidates, and more importantly, never
heard a word they said. Their choices were made purely on the basis of body language!

What explained this? “Shapiro was reluctant to call it charisma, although his colleague Daniel J. Benjamin, a fellow at the University of Michigan had no such qualms. He noted “We found that snap decisions based on charisma are good predictors of election outcomes.”

How did they define charisma? They used a definition from German sociologist
Max Weber, who studied charisma, described it as a gift of power and leadership. They were looking at the body language, those strong power
characteristics and then generalizing about the body language of a leader. In fact, According to US psychologist, Alex Todorov, people respond intuitively to faces so rapidly, that their reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction. The results of the newest research say that when we see a new face, our brains decide whether that person is attractive and trustworthy
within one-tenth of a second.

“What we learn only through the
ears makes less impression
upon our minds than what is
presented to the trustworthy eye. ”

-Horace
Why do people looking at you sometime shift their focus from one eye to the
other?

When someone is nervous or uneasy or lying they can rapidly shift the focus
of their eye contact from one eye to the other.

How do I know if someone is doing this because he is lying?

A person who has just told you a lie will either stare straight into your
eyes (usually if they are an extrovert or a practiced liar) or will rapidly
and rather stressfully flick their eyes rapidly from one of your eyes to the
other looking for signs in you that their lie has been successful.
Someone who is telling the truth will just look more slowly from one of your
eyes to the other eye in the same rhythm and beat as the conversation.

People will stare straight into your eyes without blinking and not look from
one to the other if they consider themselves to be dominant (As the DISC
“Driver” personality) or if they are angry.

If you’re attracted to someone you may look into their eyes with out
blinking, but typically, perhaps because you’re nervous and unsure or seeing
reassurance, you will look from one eye to the other.

Check this behavior out today in those you meet!

Last night my Thursday night discussion group talked about the Virginia Tech Shooting.

 It was such a horrible and senseless tragedy. One of the members was very angry that

the students did not fight back or attack the shooter. I tried  to explain to her the age, personality

 factors and the nonverbal factors that effected the students’ behavior in the crises. Here is what I said:

1.      We forget that these where young college students, I taught college
for eleven years; these are children, not mature adults who have had to be
responsible for their lives and actions for many years. 
2.      They were tech students… a personality type that is not typically
reactive or aggressive. Most I believe were a get-it-right  “C” DISC
personality type that studies and researches a problem seeking the perfect,
right answer then slowly takes action. 
3.      They were in a group. Nonverbal group behavior is very different
than an individual’s  may be in a crisis. Groups will respond together as one. If there is
no strong leader (as there was in the classroom with the older male teacher Liviu Librescu,
who was so heroic), groups of like minded people may freeze. 
4.      They where in shock. I remember being in front of my audience near
ground zero on 911 when a participant came back in the room and told us the
planes had hit the tower. We all sat frozen in our seats for a good 90
seconds. I then took action, but I was the leader and I froze!

      When I heard the news of this tragedy I immediately flashed to my
nonverbal communication class at Florida State. The class size was around
150 students each semester. I loved my students so very very much. The class
was very close. I taught in a large amphitheater hall with one unlocked
entrance. I started crying, as I realized what if that had happened in my
class I was down at the bottom of the class so far from the door, I could
not have protected my students in time.
5.   There was loud unusual noise and chaos and no where to run. We think
that the fight/flight response kicks in; we fight or flee, but if there is
not  a place to run and you do not think you can safely fight your primitive
brain that is active in that moment does not know what to do.

Some of you know I use to teach at a law enforcement training center and that I am particularly interested in what body language can make people open up. In grad school I wrote a paper on body language to increase self disclosure and I have been researching that process ever since.

Recently I have been corresponding with a police officer about some of his experiences Here is one of his stories that I thought was interesting.

“After hearing your handshake lesson and reading the article in your book, I started shaking every one’s hand I was introduced to. I meet people all day long, but I used to shake hands only about 1/2 the time. I notice now that when you offer it first, usually there’s a brief smile on the other end of it- almost like they do not expect a cop to be friendly- it works!”
“Now, when I shake a suspects hand, we have already made inroads into the rapport-building phase of interviewing him. I of course want a confession- or at least an admission from a bad guy to help me make my case…I clearly remember at least 3 times when I was on domestic calls and would not shake a guy’s hand. The call would be all but over and we were literally leaving the scene. Me not shaking the dude’s hand at the close of “business” would make him mad all over again. Hey it’s a tactical consideration, but I wonder if I could have shaken more hands now.”

I would love to know what you think. Do you think shaking hands can make people self disclose more? Do you have a story to share?