Dear reader,
part of doing
hypnosis and especially hypnotherapy, is to observe the client.
Something very important is to look for incongruence. That's when the
body contradicts the spoken word. You may have experienced this in
your daily life before. Usually, I guess, we get a strange feeling.
"Something" isn't quite right. It's when I'm with a friend
and ask him if he wants to come over to my flat. His mouth says
"yes", but he's shaking his head "no". So which
is it now?
A certain Albert
Mehrabian did an experiment and found out that if someone is
incongruent, we break down his non-verbals and what he says.
According to Mehrabian, about 55% is body language as such, 38% is
speech (how fast it's said and that kind of thing) and only 7% is
what's actually said. This means that when we're in doubt and someone
is incongruent, we tend to trust the non-verbals and body language
more than the actual talk. Mehrabian found that out in 1971. People
still like to quote that study. But they misquote it badly actually.
They leave out that his study was for incongruence and say that we
trust the words only 7% all the time. That's wrong! I guess this
misquoting and misinterpretation happens when people take out of the
study what they like and other people quote the people quoting that
study. I believe that rather few people actually read the original
story, but (mis)quote it all over the internet. That's so sad.
Another person
worth mentioning when the talk is about body language, incongruence
and lies is Paul Ekman. He's the lead expert on deception and lies.
According to Ekman, there are 7 basic emotions, which are the same
with every human around the globe. They are:
The pictures above
show Tim Roth and the pictures have been made as part of the tv
series "Lie To Me", where he plays the deception expert Dr.
Cal Lightman. He's modelled after Paul Ekman, who also worked as
consultant for the show. So "Lie To Me" isn't just any
wanna-be-science show. Much of the science on that show is actually
true and really works. FOX, which by now has cancelled LTM in the
middle of season 3, has since taken away Paul Ekman's blog where he
explains aspects of his science on almost all episodes. There are
only a few exceptions, for episodes in which nothing special
regarding his science came up. You can still read it here now: http://www.paulekman.com/lie-to-me/
Personally I have so far
only read "Why Kids Lie
"
by Paul Ekman. It's a nice read. Especially I found it interesting
that the book was a family project really. Paul started of, then his
son took over to write from a child's point of view, including some
advice for what parents should be doing or can do. And then his wife,
who worked as an attorney, wrote the last chapters.
"
by Paul Ekman. It's a nice read. Especially I found it interesting
that the book was a family project really. Paul started of, then his
son took over to write from a child's point of view, including some
advice for what parents should be doing or can do. And then his wife,
who worked as an attorney, wrote the last chapters.
What fascinates me
about body language and lie detection is the aspect of so called
micro-expressions. That's very quick expressions you make showing
your real emotion and then hide it with another expression. Paul
Ekman is better at explaining this, so I'll let him talk here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXm6YbXxSYk
I think it's
helpful to know the science of facial expression. Probably we don't
need to bring it to perfection to see micro-expressions. Knowing the
science of facial expressions as such, does help though. Lightman
makes that point at the end of the second episode of season 1. In the
pilot episode they get a new staff member, Ria Torres, who is a
natural. She can see and correctly read facial expressions, including
micro-expressions, without formal training. Lightman seems a bit
annoyed by her and teases her quite a bit in that second episode.
There are scenes when Torres says nothing, but Lightman reads her
face and she shows negative emotions. She pays him back in the final
scene when she reads his face. However he shrugs it off. When she
calls him a liar, he simply tells her to get used to it. Seeing
things is one thing. He tells her that without the science, she's
unable to see the whole picture and people get hurt. I have to agree
with him, that with the science of it in mind, we get a deeper
understanding.
Paul Ekman also created
programs to train yourself in recognising facial expressions as well
as micro-expressions. If you're interested in those kind of things,
check out his website.
One thing about
detecting lies: It's a widely accepted myth that liars would break
eye contact with you. The idea being that the liar can't stand
looking you into the eye for a longer time. Probably for fear of you
seeing he's lying. Actually eye contact says nothing about whether
someone lies or tells the truth. As Lightman and his colleagues
repeatedly state: The important thing is to have a base line. Some
sort of reference point which tells you what the person is like in a
fairly relaxed state. If you don't know what a person is like in a
relatively relaxed state, you're unable to tell anything about him.
If he has a twitching hand, even when you're talking small talk, it's
likely to be a normal behaviour for him and has nothing to do with
nervousness or impatience or anything like that. If that person has
calm hands in a small talk situation and the hand twitches when the
talk gets to more serious matters, it's likely that something is
going on now. But a twitching hand as such means nothing. Similarly,
if someone crosses his arms and legs, it doesn't necessarily mean
disagreement. Notice what the person is like when you think he's
fairly relaxed and telling the truth. Once the person does something
else and breaks this behaviour in some general way, these may be
signs of holding back informations and/or telling lies.
The british
magician, or self-proclaimed "psychological illusionist"
Derren Brown makes those points of how to tell a lie in his book "Tricks of the Mind
"
as well. He also explains a trick/experiment you can do with anybody
willing to take part. If you go for the three main sensory systems we
have visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Ask a person five or so
questions for each of those sensory systems. They should tell you the
truth. It can be really simple questions. Notice how they move their
eyes. If you think you know their pattern, you can ask them to tell
you a number of things (say five again) and one should be a lie. The
lie is when they don't keep their usual pattern of "truth
telling", as you established before. Derren Brown makes it
seemingly even more interesting and mysterious as he tells the person
only to think of the answers and not say them aloud. Here's a video
of Derren Brown doing this trick with car salesmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM
"
as well. He also explains a trick/experiment you can do with anybody
willing to take part. If you go for the three main sensory systems we
have visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Ask a person five or so
questions for each of those sensory systems. They should tell you the
truth. It can be really simple questions. Notice how they move their
eyes. If you think you know their pattern, you can ask them to tell
you a number of things (say five again) and one should be a lie. The
lie is when they don't keep their usual pattern of "truth
telling", as you established before. Derren Brown makes it
seemingly even more interesting and mysterious as he tells the person
only to think of the answers and not say them aloud. Here's a video
of Derren Brown doing this trick with car salesmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM
Go with Derren and
make your choice about which facts are lies. Again: don't just go for
eye contact or breaking eye contact. Eye contact or not are no
indicators for lies or truths!
The blog title today comes
from... you guessed it, Cal Lightman. In episode 2, season 3, we see
him having problems starting to write his new book. Instead he
procrastinates big time with making beans on toast at 4 a.m. and even
sets off the fire alarm when he burns the toast. He's distracted with
a video he watched on his laptop. So his daughter Emily comes down to
see what's going on. She suggests writing just any sentence. Lightman
rejects her first line, so he types into the laptop: "Let there
be Lightman." and presents it with his arms stretched in a
"ta-da!" kind of fashion. Emily tells him to hire a ghost
writer and decides to go to bed again. I love the scenes with the two
of them. Sometimes Emily seems much more grown-up than her dad. He
often does what he feels like doing, which isn't always appropriate
and sometimes even dangerous. See for yourself.
Well, I think
that's it for now. My take on body language, truth, lies and those
kind of things.
I'll keep you
posted! Stay tuned!
Sarah
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