Former FBI Agent Answers MORE Body Language Questions From Twitter

Hi, I'm Joe Navarro.

For 25 years, I chased spies for the FBI.

And today I'm answering questions on Twitter.

This is Body Language Support.

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@McFaul and it comes with a photograph.

I'd love read @CIA's analysis of the body language

in this photo.

One of them is in charge, one of them is the subordinate,

and their body language clearly is detailing which is which.

Because when you're in charge,

you can sit any style you like.

This is your domain.

When you are the supplicant, when you are there asking

for help, your behaviors are more contrite.

Your arms are more restricted, your legs are restricted,

and we see all of that here.

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@Theulteriorkid asks,

are there secret handshake identifiers?

Asking for a friend.

Yes.

There are many groups out there

that have all sorts of secret handshakes.

Unfortunately, what happens is,

and you run into this all the time,

you go to shake hands with somebody

and they've interlocked their fingers in a weird way.

And all of a sudden, you find their index finger right here

on the inside of your wrist.

This is your erogenous zone.

This is for intimacy.

This leaves a very negative feeling.

Or you get these social aardvarks

who wanna squeeze your hand to demonstrate

that they're strong and virile and so forth.

It just leaves a bad feeling in our mouth, so.

Are there secret handshakes?

Yeah, try to avoid them.

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@NikeSandalsPapi asks, so a female leg shaking means what?

She just cold?

Well, a lot of times we see behaviors that are repetitive.

I tend to bounce my legs a lot,

some people will twist their ring.

Some people will crack their knuckles.

Some people will play with their hair.

All repetitive behaviors are self-soothing behaviors.

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@vapemyworld asks, how do we identify bad people?

Bad people are identified by bad behaviors.

No one is bad until we see demonstrable bad behaviors.

If they decide to assault somebody,

if they decide to cheat someone,

if they do things that are unethical, immoral

or illegal.

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@Kourtneerenee asks,

do men not know what nonverbal cues and body language mean?

Or do they just ignore it?

I'm a man.

Some people are better at reading non-verbals than others.

Is there a difference between men and women,

and their ability to read non-verbals?

The answer is yes.

And it's obvious and it's for biological reasons.

Women bring babies into the world.

It is the mother who spends the most time with the child

and can look at everything from the texture of the skin

to how much humidity is in the eyes

to the color of the lips.

That traditionally has been a female function.

Now, that doesn't mean

that we cannot develop these skills,

but from a pure biological perspective,

they have that advantage

and that carries throughout life.

But it's one that we, men, can also grow.

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So @p_rittenhouse ask a very complex question.

Ordering shawarma today and the young lady wouldn't look

at me in the eyes.

That's okay.

There's no responsibility to do that.

I believe she is Syrian.

Does eye contact mean something important

in other cultures?

Eye contact is both cultural and personal.

In the United States, for instance, in New York,

we're allowed to stare at each other for 1.28 seconds.

In the Middle East, it's somewhere around between four

and six seconds.

That's cultural.

You may find yourself in a place where it's personal

and maybe you don't wanna make eye contact.

I wouldn't put too much emphasis on eye contact

other than we all have personal preferences.

Lack of eye contact should not equate to anything other

than this is what the person chooses.

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From @syuheikimizuka who asks,

why do hand gestures have such an impact?

Humans evolved to be very expressive with their hands.

A hundred thousand years ago,

we were all in the African savanna.

We were surrounded by predators: Hyenas, lions, lionesses,

these large felines.

And we had to communicate silently but effectively.

We used our facial gestures close-up

and we used our hand gestures to further communicate things

such as direction, anxiety, fear,

approach me and so forth.

This is part of our paleocircuits.

We know this because when we study children

who are born blind, then they've never seen,

they use the very same hand gestures.

Our hands attract attention.

And in fact, if you look at your hands,

no matter how dark your skin is, you always notice

that the palms of the hands are very easy to read.

We think that this has given us an advantage,

because when we reach out, when we gesture and so forth,

even in low light, it sends that powerful but silent signal.

The gestures hold our attention.

The gestures potentiate the message.

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@ppraeg asks, what are power poses

that I can use in Zoom talks?

Trying to improve my online presentation skills.

So we've talked about power poses in other videos.

And as Amy Cuddy made famous in her Ted talks,

these have to do with expansive gestures,

where if you are sitting down,

maybe you spread your hands on the table.

If you are standing up, you put your hands on your hips

with elbows out.

Even if you're relaxed and sitting with a group,

you put your hands behind your head, elbows out.

These are territorial displays.

But when we are in a virtual environment,

all of that goes away

because the camera can only see so much.

And so what you need to do is bring them here,

have them more in front of the camera.

You're using gestures that are formed,

so they look like, for instance, brackets

or the letter C where you demark and you set boundaries.

And it serves, not so much as a power pose,

but as a confidence pose.

And that's what really matters when you are

on a small screen.

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@MadameAmbassK, and she asks,

do you agree that every Myers-Briggs personality type has

a specific body language signature?

That's her question.

And my answer is no.

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So great question from @SonyaTheFreeze and she asks,

enjoying your power of body language book.

Thank you.

Going through it a second time and I'm wondering

what the hell is up with close talkers?

Our need for spacial distance is both cultural and personal.

And so, because each one of us has different needs,

what I try to teach is to always start further apart.

So let's say you shake hands.

Maybe you do a fist bump.

Maybe you shake hands, but you do it at a greater distance.

And then from that greater point, you self-adjust.

Maybe you move in closer, or maybe you stay where you're at.

But we wanna honor spatial differences,

simply for this reason.

Any time somebody violates our space,

no matter how benign it is, we feel uncomfortable.

It causes what I call limbic hijacking.

It makes us hypervigilant.

It makes us uncomfortable.

But here's the whammy.

It also limits the amount of time

that we want this person to be nearest or around us.

So if you wanna increase what we call face time,

one of the things that you wanna do is

to have an appropriate space

so that everybody feels comfortable.

That can be cultural, but it can also be personal.

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@Natalia_MVP and she asks,

are micro expressions more pronounced when people are

on Zoom calls?

Or are we better at noticing micro expressions

because we keep staring into the screen?

So let's start with a couple of things.

Number one, let's try and get away from micro expressions.

Because, in fact, they're just expressions.

If they were micro, we probably wouldn't see them.

If they're fast, that they occur very quickly,

then we say they are tachikinesic.

As in the tachometer in your car, it moves very fast.

They yield information, but very quickly.

So we just refer to them as gestures.

So as to the question, when you're on a Zoom call,

what's gonna determine your ability

to observe behaviors actually has a lot to do

with two things.

The camera that's being used by the other person

and the lighting.

If there's grease or oils or dirt on the camera

and it's a low-resolution camera, little lighting,

you're gonna miss these little behaviors

to the point that something that is easy to see live,

which is for instance, the furrowing of the labella,

this little area of the head.

If the camera is not right, if the lighting isn't right,

you're gonna miss these behaviors.

One other thing that we found that's fascinating is

that where you think that maybe having a neutral face

on a virtual call is the best thing to do,

it actually works against you.

The brain looks at a face and says, This is a happy person

or This is unhappy or possibly a threat.

And what happens is when a face presents as neutral,

it registers negatively.

So what we try to teach people that do a lot

of virtual calls is to at least

not in acknowledgement smile, use your eyebrows

to express agreement or surprise, but avoid a neutral face.

Because when we query those participants

and ask about that person who had a neutral face,

they're always rated negatively.

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So we have a question from @haadmalik1 and he asks,

why does shaking your head mean no and nodding means yes?

You know, there are behaviors

that over time become standardized,

because of social conventions.

We know that, for the most part, nodding,

the forward nod is perceived

as accepting, as positive,

as saying yes.

Now, there are cultures where this is not the norm.

And we see that, for instance, in Bulgaria.

There are times when somebody nods,

what means is they disagree.

But for the most part, what the research tells us is this.

As you go around the world,

you're pretty much gonna find the same behaviors.

These things are universal.

And that's why they're so reliable.

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So we have a question from @AnaelBodwell and she asked,

how important is body posture when delivering speeches?

I remember when I was at university

and professors always spoke behind a podium.

Now, look at Ted talks.

There's no podium.

Those days are over.

If you're still talking behind a podium,

it's almost anachronistic.

In essence, a presentation now has taken on new form.

Because now, when we only have 15 minutes,

as we see with corporations that have gone

from a one-hour presentation to 12 or 15 minutes.

When we go from presentation to a performance,

then yeah, posture, presence,

how we look, all of that becomes important.

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@erin_chase asks,

Hey, Joe, what do you think about teaching preteens

and teens body language to help them stay safe,

and what are some of the things you teach them

to watch out for?

I think we need to teach children

at a very young age about body language,

in part because it helps them to navigate a complex world.

They go into classrooms where they may be running

into children that they've never met before.

And if we can teach them some simple things

as when you approach others, approach them at angles,

not directly, because they will perceive you as friendlier.

That if you teach them that if somebody, a child,

is grabbing their clothing, they're probably shy,

maybe they're introverted.

What a great opportunity to welcome them

and be friendly with them so that they're less stressed.

Why wait till you're 30 years old to learn these things?

Why not learn them at a very young age?

And especially now where there's so much emphasis

on using media to communicate.

I would say, most definitely, you can begin

to teach children at a very young age what to look for,

and they'll thank you for it in the end.

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So thank you again.

Thank you for your questions.

Hope to get some more in the future.

You've been watching Body Language Support.

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