The Body Language Expert & Motivational Speaker

Last night a group of us went to Stone Mountain for the Laser show and Fireworks. I am a sucker for Marching Bands, Fountains and Fireworks, so I was especially excited to sit on the big green lawn in front of the mountain and watch the people and the fountain on the lake. The weather was perfect the fried chicken was tasty and the people were, as always fascinating. In my master’s program in nonverbal communication I studied crowd theory, something I have blogged about in the past. Crowd theory says that when a group is crowded together they can be moved to action more quickly and be persuaded more easily. Politicians use it all the time. Think of the crowds swarming around Obama these days. At Stone Mountain it played out wonderfully. Kids got up and danced the Macarena. Everyone cheered to the patriotic music and laughed at the cow cartoons. It felt wonderful to be swept up in the energy and happiness of the crowd. That is something that is hard to do when you are sitting on your sofa watching Netflix. So if you get out in a crowd this Fourth of July weekend notice how you feel. See if you’re swept up in the zeal. Happy red white and blue day!

Look at his face when he gets emotional and you will notice that his lips press together, a signal that typically shows that someone is trying to suppress emotion. It would make sense that a former prisoner of war would have learned to do this.  But you can tell he has strong emotions and tries to suppress enormous anger because his cheeks with often fill up with that anger like a puffer fish and blow out. Look for that exasperation signal in people when they are under stress. It let’s you know who is mad and who may explode at any moment. 

I have received a lot of emails about the Narcissism read of Obama. I have been reading about Narcissism a great deal. One of my favorite college classes at Florida State was Mythology and I remember very clearly the relish with which our very animated professor told the story of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. Narcissists generally crave attention, are overconfident of their abilities, lack empathy and can show erratic behavior. I was reading a research study by  Drew Pinsky, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at USC. He is known as “Dr. Drew,” on the radio advice show Loveline for the last 20 years. He says that “They are also well-liked, especially on first meeting, are extroverted and perform well in public.”

 Pinsky and Young asked 200 guest celebrities on Loveline to anonymously complete the standard Narcissism Personality Inventory profile, which measures “authority,” “exhibitionism,” “superiority,” “entitlement,” “exploitativeness,”
“self-sufficiency,” and “vanity” as components of narcissism.

While an earlier study found a base test score of 15.3 for the adult population of the U.S., Pinsky and Young found a celebrity average NPI score of 17.84 in their survey, and a whopping 19.2 score for female celebrities, driven by notably higher results for “exhibitionism,” “superiority,” and “vanity.”

“The industry attracts and retains women who place a very strong emphasis on their physical appearance,” the authors conclude. And for reality TV personalities, who scored 19.45 on the NPI, Pinsky and Young say, “Reality television has provided an outlet for narcissistic individuals, many with limited abilities, to believe that they can succeed in the entertainment industry.”

Pile all that on top of the sense of “entitlement” and “exploitativeness” you may recognize the fabulously wealthy party girl heiress, Paris Hilton a veritable poster child for towering, gilded narcissism.

“Knowing that many celebrities have narcissistic tendencies may allow entertainment industry decision makers such as studio executives, producers, directors, agents, publicists and casting agents to work with them more effectively,” Young explained. “It may also provide greater insight into celebrity behavior for the general public.” I think it also may give us insight into the kind of person we may want to be our next president.

 ”Power red turned to powder blue not long after Bush took the Oval Office in 2001. For five of his State of the Union addresses, the President has worn a blue tie with a dark suit. He’s also favored the color for news conferences and state appearances over the years. Overall, blue is America’s favorite color, people associate it with (being steadfast and constant, always there, dependable,”  

AP Photo President George W. Bush talks during a joint press conference with Egyptian President Hosing Mubarak, following their talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Wednesday, Jan. 16.

 I have always wondered why Senator Hillary Clinton suits look like the rejects from a thrift shop.

Is she making a statement about the importance of recycling? I am especially intrigued to see when she chooses to wear yellow. Oh my god a yellow suit. The last time I saw a savvy women wear a yellow suit was on the 80’s TV show designing women! Hillary represents women…I just want to reach into the TV screen pull Hilary out and take her shopping a Loemans.  Why does she sometimes choose a yellow suite? It could be because it is a great color to where when you’re feeling down. Yellow is color that stimulates our desires, promotes positively and prevents depression. Perhaps we should notice when Hilary chooses to wear that color. Perhaps she uses it to fight her blues. Hum do you think another reason school buses are yellow is to cheer up all those kids depressed to be on their way to the math test in Mrs. Hood’s class?) Because Yellow is a welcoming color, even the color of the pineapple put the entrances of colonial homes to show welcome) and a color that stimulates creativity and good communication it should be a great color for a candidate to wear to give a speech. Yep that cheery, optimistic, big bird color definitely catches our attention. But our eyes can’t rest on it. It’s an irritating color. McDonald’s uses it to get you in and then has it on the walls inside to irate you enough that you will leave and give room for more customers.  Of course sometimes she wears red or blue. Red: red reflects energy, power and strength. Red is a very eye color catching and this makes it useful in case that you want to draw some attention to yourself. Red stimulates fast heartbeat and breathing so it could be an irritating color when it’s over used. It boosts physical energy. Blue When you wear blue you leave an impression that you are loyal and trust worthy. It’s recommended that you choose blue in political meetings and job interviews, because the interviewer may unconsciously trust you more.

How does John McCain use his voice and how does it contrast with Obama’s? When a speaker like McCain reads his speeches or gives lists of things, the voice often lowers in volume and becomes a monotone. He still has some variation but without the high highs and low lows of pitch and volume that give Obama such dramatic variability.

McCain’s body language is tight and restrained, which affects the voice by making it more tight and strained. That impression of constraint can definitely work for him as a conservative. To Republican voters it can symbolically suggest that he will stand his ground and not shift positions, just as Obama’s dramatic vocal changes and verbal messages of change appeal to those who want change. The quality and pitch of McCain’s voice suggest safety and stability.

Low volume and lack of vocal variation worked for Franklin Roosevelt in his Fireside Chats during the Depression and World War II because it made people feel safe.(Although Roosevelt was able to rally for dramatic effect like Winston Churchill when he needed to.) If there was a real threat of attack on US soil tomorrow, McCain’s vocal tone and style would be a great asset in his race for the presidency.

I have been analyzing hours of tape for a three-part History Channel special that I am shooting this weekend. Here are my rough notes on Obama’s voice as he did his victory speech at the Iowa Caucus back in January.  Barack’s voice is naturally a deep, full, low baritone. According to research, deep low voices are perceived as more authoritative, believable, and trustworthy. Combine that with the ease with which he can speak loudly without any vocal strain, and you can hear his voice coming from the TV in another room and feel its authority and power.  As much as she tries to control it and make it sound lower, Hillary’s voice is not naturally low. When she attempts to lower it, she strains it and sounds screechy and angry.   

Obama’s paralanguage is chameleon-like. He changes his voice so dramatically to suit his location, his audience, and his topic, that it is difficult to know just what his real voice is or who he truly is. Listen to how Obama’s cadence has that certain rhythm like a Baptist preacher. Listen to how he speaks on beat and extends certain words. For example, “They saaaaaaaid this day would never come.”  Preachers have a special rhythmic pattern where their voices fluctuate up and down like a song and pause on a beat rhythmically like a paradiddle on a drum. His speaking is so musical and pleasing to the ear, that we can be moved by the rhythm and not even hear the words. In fact the words may actually lack substance and he can get by without really saying anything new in the speech.  

Obama’s vocal style is hypnotic, such that when his voice goes up and then he pauses, you almost want to cheer and say amen. You can’t help yourself.  He actually copies the feel and the cadence of Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” speech. Listen to how to his volume goes up and up and up…stirring the crowd, and then he pauses for effect. He waits until the audience cheers before he moves on to the next sentence. Pausing makes the word before the pause, and sometimes the entire sentence before the pause, sound more powerful and important.   And notice how he says particular words, like “you small towns and churches, Ameeerica, and affooordableeeee. As he draws these words out, he puts on a slightly more southern accent or he casually slurs the word. That makes him sound like one of the common folk. So even when we know that he came from an upper class family, when he says, “calloused hand by calloused hand,” he sounds like he was there with us working on the farm and plowing the field.

If you have been watching Obama speak and give interviews you may have noticed that he seems to reveal spot light more than even the most egotistical of political candidates. He spends a half hour going through the crowd after he is introduced, shaking hands like a Messiah. He has this condescending look down his nose at your sneer when he talks to interviewers and looks especially perturbed and angry when berating someone who he perceives is attacking him. He morphs his voice and body language to suit each audience in a manner that goes beyond customization to easily acting a part. I believe he is narcissistic. Here are other narcissistic nonverbal and behavioral cues that one of my blog readers wrote about Obama.One of my readers is getting his doctorate on evolution and ecology and wrote me:

“I’ve spent years trying to recognize the most accurate indicators of NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). There are a handful that I’ve come to trust, though they’re a bit difficult to convey.

1. An amorphous expression that looks like a child, about three years old, needing approval. I’ve almost never seen this expression in someone who isn’t NPD (occasionally in Borderline Personality Disorder, a closely related type II personality disorder). To me, it’s an exceptionally good indicator. It’s often a fleeting micro-expression (hard to catch without practice). It’s an expression of yearning and need, directed toward the person they’re interacting with. In males, it makes the face look like that of a little boy. Some psychologists argue that a developmental stage goes awry in NPD, roughly around the age of three.
2. The eyes of NPDs usually have an unusual look. My face-reading friend describes them as “dead eyes”. I perceive NPD eyes as “no boundary between inside and outside”. Some people perceive them as magnetic. There’s reduced activity in some of the musculature around the eyes. This includes a reduced response to emotion-laden scenes or speech (e.g. less of a startle response to disturbing visuals). At times, it can produce a “detached” appearance - or a languid, even slightly sleepy look. The startle response of pupils (e.g. to disturbing scenes) is often diminished relative to normal people (both less of a change in pupil diameter, and a longer lag before pupil size changes). I think people with NPD also spend less time playing through internal imagery (visible in eye tracking and facial expressions).
3. There’s also something I call “frozen cheeks”. Muscles in the cheek region aren’t as mobile as in normal people. This is partly due to a subtle expression of contempt and partly due to increased control over appearance.

The contempt can often be an open clear-cut expression, but much of the time it’s just a subtle tensing of the musculature, underlying the “apparent” expression.

Obama displays all of these (the first as micro expressions). There’s also his entitlement body language, his glares, his cocked head and “looking down the nose”, etc.. He occupies quite a bit of space and also frequently initiates physical contact - e.g. putting his hand on someone’s back or arm.

An assured smooth gesture - in a way that’s slightly unusual given our culture’s definition of personal boundaries. The anger in his face is kind of interesting. Sometimes it’s blatant, but more often it’s a subtle expression. When Hillary scores a solid point in a debate, or when a journalist challenges him in a question, you can see a sustained increase in the subtle expression of anger. People with NPD often have a high level of latent anger that can be triggered by any injury to self-image (narcissistic injury).

In case you haven’t seen these, here are a links to a couple of YouTube videos that people have put together capturing some of Obama’s more blatant anger/contempt expressions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9coNTKQi544 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvFSECcANZE&feature=related

People with NPD are typically hypercompetitive and hate losing. One woman I know of would throw the checkerboard across the room if she lost a game of checkers with her eight year old son. Obama is clearly hypercompetitive and is known as a bad loser - people that he has played poker with comment on him being a poor loser, and he’s said to be a bad loser in politics as well (e.g. when he lost to Bobby Rush).

Narcissists that I’ve known are generally charming and very well-liked (except by those they’ve injured). They often set up a cult of personality, though on a much smaller scale than Obama - a circle of admiring people.

There’s a need for a high level of admiration.

Paul Street, a progressive columnist, had the following observations after attending an Obama rally in Iowa:

“So why wasn’t I dancing and singing along? Why did I have a terrible taste in my mouth two hours after Obama’s speech even as the sun shone and the warm spring breeze passed through my den just a mile east of the Pentacrest?

Part of it was the narcissism of the self-presentation. Obama does this creepy thing after being introduced.  He approaches the stage only after a good 5 minutes of passing through a parting sea of applauding audience members.

Please. Candidates should stand humbly by the side of the stage and walk up right after being introduced.  I do not attend political rallies to see a pretend savior savoring popular adulation as he dances through the cool stream of the multitude.”

Though people with NPD often cultivate a circle of admirers, they tend to have few true friends. There’s often an odd hint of “aloneness” to them.

You mentioned that you found Obama “chameleon”-like.

This is common in NPD.For someone with NPD, it’s predominantly about the surface - the image in the mirror. There’s less of a solid core. One perspective that many psychologists subscribe to is that in NPD, the “true self” is greatly diminished or largely absent, having largely been replaced by a “false self”.  Another interesting characteristic, in my experience, is that people with NPD often take on a stance of amused indifference. Floating slightly above it all, sometimes with a slight bit of contempt. You can often see Obama doing this in interviews.The entitlement aspect comes through not only in his body language, but also in things he does and says.For example, he was interviewed about the tactics he used to first win elected office, as an Illinois State Senator. It was a very liberal Chicago district, so the only real opposition was in the Democratic primary. He had four opponents, including the incumbent (a woman named Alice Palmer - long time popular activist). Obama hired the best lawyers in Chicago and used aggressive legal tactics to challenge the nominating petitions of each of his opponents; knocking them all off the ballot so that he could run unopposed (it would have been very difficult for him to win the election if the incumbent remained on the ballot). In 2007 a reporter asked him about this:“Asked whether the district’s primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: ‘I think they ended up with a very good state senator.’And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: ‘If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people’s business.’

In my experience, people with NPD use language in a very distinctive way. I have found the following description by Sam Vaknin to be pretty accurate (though the description is too flowery for my taste):

“Narcissists …don’t talk, or communicate. They fend off. They hide and evade and avoid and disguise. In their planet of capricious and arbitrary unpredictability, of shifting semiotic and semantic dunes - they perfect the ability to say nothing in lengthy, Castro-like speeches.

It is the fact that language is put by Narcissists to a different use - not to communicate but to obscure, not to share but to abstain, not to learn but to defend and resist, not to teach but to preserve ever less tenable monopolies, to disagree without incurring wrath, to criticize without commitment, to agree without appearing to do so. Thus, an “agreement” with a narcissist is a vague expression of intent at a given moment - rather than the clear listing of long term, iron-cast and mutual commitments. Communication through unequivocal, unambiguous, information-rich symbol systems is such an integral and crucial part of our world - that its absence is not postulated even in the remotest galaxies which grace the skies of science fiction. In this sense, narcissists are nothing short of aliens.

With cerebral narcissists, language is a lover. The infatuation with its very sound leads to a pyrotechnic type of speech which sacrifices its meaning to its music. Its speakers pay more attention to the composition than to the content. They are swept by it, intoxicated by its perfection, inebriated by the spiraling complexity of its forms.”

Another interesting aspect of NPD is a desire and tendency to “merge” with others. With Obama this manifests, for example, in the nature of the personality cult he is encouraging. You can also see a bit of it in statements like “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for; we are the change that we seek.”

One of the core deficits in NPD - perhaps the core deficit - is a deficiency in empathy. They can talk about empathy (e.g. one NPD woman I know likes to lecture others about empathy), and their cognitive empathy is intact (they can correctly interpret what others are feeling - often better than average), but there’s a deficiency in affective empathy. That Obama can be empathy-challenged has been noted by the occasional reporter. e.g. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7486.html  

Several genetic studies have been done to separate environmental from genetic effects in NPD (mostly studies using twins). These studies have consistently shown NPD to be highly heritable. Across the studies that I’ve seen, the median estimate of heritability is somewhere roughly around 0.7 (on a linear scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being perfectly heritable). This doesn’t mean that someone with an NPD parent will necessarily be NPD, but it does mean that they’re at substantially increased risk.  There are also environmental risk factors (e.g. abuse or excessive adulation during childhood). Along these lines, the history of Obama’s father is really interesting (ignore the headline - the person composing the headline appears not to have read the article). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=431908&in_page_id=1770

Obama’s sister had an interesting comment:
 Sen. Barack Obama with sister Auma Obama, left, and grandmother Sarah Obama at his late father’s Kenyan village (Courtesy Mshale)

“Barack was a lot like my father - his hand movements, his gestures, how he talks, how he sits. He’s got certain quietness about him and he sits and he concentrates like my father. He can be in a room full of people and he withdraws on his own. And we’ve all got the Obama hands - the fingers and everything. So it was amazing to watch that, because I was meeting him for the first time but it felt like I knew him.” Another almost-universal feature of NPD is a strong sense of restlessness. Many psychologists attribute this to an internal feeling of emptiness. The feeling of emptiness leads to a desire/need for new experiences, as well as a desire for adulation, and a tendency toward drug and alcohol abuse.

Obama writes about his own restlessness, and it’s been commented on by others. e.g. from a Vanity Fair article:
“A chronic restlessness, an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me.” He has tried to turn this to his advantage. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington,” he said in announcing that he would run for president. “But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” Obama’s restlessness is a quality that would lead him to conclude, again and again, that the time had come to make a move—to take a chance, to aim higher - when others told him to wait his turn.”

Anyway, those are some of the reasons I think Obama has NPD.

Though NPD is rare in the general population (1-2%), for a very complicated set of reasons I’ve ended up having contact with a pretty large sample size.

So I’ve developed good recognition skills.

I’ll include the DSM IV criteria for NPD.

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:  
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance  
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brillance, beauty, or ideal love  
3. believes that he or she is “special” and unique  
4. requires excessive admiration  
5. has a sense of entitlement  
6. is interpersonally exploitative  
7. lacks empathy  
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her  
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Though such abstract criteria don’t capture it in its entirety (and could be misapplied). If you have extended personal contact with people diagnosed with NPD, you’ll find that it’s a really distinctive entity (unmistakable for garden-variety narcissism or other personality quirks).”
~Greg Gelembiuk

Today I was on CNN Headline News and Fox News talking about Senator McCain’s body language as he responded to the New York Times story of his alleged affair with a lobbyist. The big questions were “Did he have an affair?” and “If so, did that result in any improprieties regarding public policy?” McCain’s bottom line was his statement indicating that he did not. Unlike the Roger Clemens testimony I analyzed last week in which Roger was angry and upset and had multiple deception cues (see analysis on this blog), McCain was even and calm in his responses. He was not too calm and restrained and he was not angry. Extremes on either emotional end would have made me suspicious. When someone is lying their behavior usually tends to go to some extreme outside of their normal demeanor.

While McCain did not show clear deception cues he did have a few telling and rather interesting nervousness cues. First, in his statement. “At no time have I ever done anything to betray the public trust … or made any decisions  … anything  … public.  He vocally punched up the words ever, anything, public, decisions and the final public. He also pushed his head forward as he said most of those words. The most punched was the word public on public trust. Politicians and liars choose their words carefully. He didn’t make any DECISIONS to betray PUBLIC trust. This still leaves him an opening to have had actions that betrayed a private trust.

Next, McCain said “I am very disappointed in the New York Times article. It’s not true. He used the contraction it’s rather than saying “it is not true.” Liars tend to want to emphasize the is not, but in this statement he used the contraction of a truth teller. In the next question, I wondered if his staff had talked to him about appearing to be too close to a lobbyist. He nodded his head no first, and then said no, showing his feelings before speaking his feelings, which is an indication of honesty.

When asked, “No meeting (with staffers about it) ever occurred?” he again shook his head no, then said no and as he did, he showed this one small tell of anger, shutting his mouth tightly to hold in his mad face, and then his cheeks puffed up with surprised anger. When asked, “Did you ever have such a relationship (romantic), he shut his eyes said no, shut his eyes again, then grimaced. Here he was showing his displeasure with being asked the question, but there were no clear indications of deceit.

When asked, “Do you feel that in terms of your relationship, you were closer with her than with others?” he responded by shaking his no and simultaneously saying no, and his voice got softer on the no, showing there may have been a question in his mind about what closer relationship might mean. (Think of the significance of Clinton’s word choice, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”) But even these cues did not show any clear deceit on McCain’s part. 

As he talked about the letters he wrote to the FCC, his voice and body language were calm, again not restrained or overly tense as he explained why he did nothing inappropriate. He certainly was telling the truth about that.