Former FBI Agent Breaks Down Political Body Language | WIRED

politicians realize that non-verbals are important and so when they choose an outfit when they choose how they're going to come out whether or not they're going to be smiling or shaking hands one thing i can assure you this has been rehearsed many times it is theater it's absolute theater and one of the things that we will be looking for is how well these actors do their job my name is joe navarro and for 25 years i was a spy catcher with the fbi and i am a non-verbal communications expert as we approach the height of the political season the question i'm asked is you know what do you look for in the body language of the people that will be in the debate i look at everything that's involved because we have to look at all the non-verbals [Music] we always notice when the candidates come on stage they're always waving at somebody in the audience or pointing a finger and so forth sometimes these are actually bogus gestures because they know the cameras in the audience will take pictures anytime there's a large gesture and so they may actually do these things with no one in mind you'll notice that rarely are debaters allowed to stand or sit close to each other usually there's at least seven to ten feet of space and the reason for that is debaters actually don't want you to see that there's a height difference and so by separating the two individuals we don't notice that difference you'll see an unusual amount of the color blue in the background somewhere between the color of the ocean and the sky which is soothing to the human brain the wearing of a navy blue suit white shirts often a red or burgundy tie subconsciously we see the significance of that because it is what we see in the american flag red white and blue what's really become ubiquitous is the lapel pin of the american flag this is something that 30 years ago even 20 years ago we hardly saw but now it's almost part of our attire you know if you think about it is someone less patriotic because on this day they're not wearing the american flag of course not this is reaching out to you at a subconscious level it's part of the theater part of the orchestration which we now demand [Music] we're looking for their behaviors to see are these consistent with what we have seen in the past we certainly shouldn't be using body language to try to determine if they're speaking the truth these are orchestrated events and that's not what we use body language for we use body language to supplement and confirm what we are seeing are the words being supported by the gestures or are there gestures taken away from their words what i look for is as the moderator asks a question do i see lip biting do i see any kind of ventilating behavior such as pulling on the collar do i see any kind of facial distress do i see furrowing of the forehead they can in fact take care of it if you just stay out of the way oh really here oh really here's a nice anything that might indicate to me that the individual doesn't like the question he or she is being asked the other thing i look for is any kind of hesitation throat clearing are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists you prepared perhaps the raising of a shoulder the lowering of a shoulder stand back and stand by anything that conveys lack of confidence i want to see the hands i want to see those thumbs that come up because when we're confident the thumbs pop up when we lack confidence they come down i want to see if there's any kind of steepling steepling is a high indicator of confidence or do we see the interlacing of the fingers which is i'm struggling with something or i'm having difficulty one of the ones that you may not even think about nothing will ever be said but you'll see behaviors like the light touching of the eye with the fingertip this is both a blocking behavior and a comforting behavior one of the facial nerves that attends to the eyelid the minute we put pressure on that nerve it begins to send messages to the brain to calm down what in essence they're saying is i screwed up or i really don't like that one of the things that happens in political debates are the things that we never plan for for instance in 2016 now president trump walking behind hillary clinton during the debates it almost looked like he was stalking her i mean i can just imagine me trying to talk to the camera right now with somebody loitering behind me that actually actuates a limbic response so we may see behaviors that arise as a result of the action of another candidate and we certainly saw that in 2016 when uh some candidates refused to shake the hands of others or when humor was used when it really wasn't well intended and that's when we see authenticity that's when we really see what is in the heart and the mind and the sentiment of this individual and how they react to it gestures and communication are all intertwined they're not two separate things we know that because we've done research and when we restrict people's hands they in fact have less recall they're in fact less energetic and they communicate much less we used to say you know when somebody in authority gestures they need to adjust your wide and they need to gesture smoothly and of course in the zoom world those gestures need to be up here where people can see them humans are so sensitive to non-verbals that if i were to point my finger at the audience and say you we actually have a visceral reaction to that which is usually very negative now think about how many times a school teacher has called on us and gone like that we know that if we turn that gesture into an open palm vertical gesture we like that we prefer that probably the most popular one is this thumb gesture that you often see the candidate is making a point and the thumb is just barely sticking out from beyond the index finger anytime we grasp something we're saying i'm talking to you about something that's important to me i'm sort of grasping it which is to be differentiated for instance for when we talk and we say with precision so this is a precision grip i want you to think about this so some of the other gestures we'll see is the open palm gesture it shows that we're open that we are receptive the palms are up the fingers are wide this is very appealing some of the other gestures we may see is if the person is doing this so normally a baton gesture is a cadence behavior that denotes i am asking you to come visit me but when we do it this way what we're in fact uh saying if we slow it down is i'm really not so much behind that because it's literally pushing away rather than being receptive the other behavior we may see is the touching of the heart and the chest which we often see portrayed as so-called honesty displays they are in fact neutral because i've seen both individuals that are guilty of crimes and the innocent use this gesture so it gives the appearance of being honest but it doesn't mean that they're being honest so one of the questions i'm asked is do politicians rehearse their hand gestures some do some don't some absolutely refuse to receive any kind of training others are well coached the question is you know how much of it is authentically theirs and how much of it is borrowed usually if they've been in office a long time or they've been in politics for a long time they will be reluctant to change any of their non-verbals let's look at president trump's gestures his most favored one is to talk with the index finger to the thumb and one glorious nation under god sometimes he does the elbow flop as he's emphasizing i don't see any protest often times his eyelids will come down to block when he's hearing something he doesn't like you can see the when he pinches the corner of his mouth when he's being sarcastic or exercising disdain or contempt he does a lip purse when he disagrees or doesn't like a question being asked and then of course he does the lip pull when he definitely doesn't like the question being asked and if you notice anytime he's sitting in the white house surrounded by people he always hugs himself and yet when you compare him to when he's on his show the apprentice he always has a territorial display and you see this contrast and you have to ask yourself why do we see this behavior on a tv show and why we're not seeing this in a in a presidential cabinet let's look at joe biden's gestures he does a lot of lip touching we call it a pensive behavior you often see it as people are pondering when he's making a point uh he tends to furrow his glabella he squints his eyes voice often is lowered for emphasis you should go out and vote and as with many people when something bothers him the lips disappear and this is something that i'm often asked about does this have anything to do with deception and it has absolutely nothing to do with deception these are the behaviors that we adopt and that we use that help us to communicate what we're thinking about at that moment rarely do people remember what is said but we tend to remember the images to this day we still teach about uh governor dukakis on a military tank wearing this tanker's helmet and how odd he looked and you know we scoff sometimes at the non-verbals and yet here was one that we can clearly show that just from appearing on that tank it really diminished his posture you know some people see these behaviors as a shorthand i wouldn't call it that behaviors gestures are part of communication we have primarily communicated non-verbally we find ourselves using these gestures all the time and there's a reason for it people usually respond to them people that know us well respond to them and so we don't separate them as ancillary to communication they are in fact part of communication

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: language show, joe navarro, body language, political body language, wired body language, fbi body language, nonverbals, non verbal, non verbals, the language show wired, joe navarro wired interview, fbi agent, fbi agent joe navarro, politicians, election, joe biden, donald trump, donald trump wired, joe biden wired, joe navarro body language, donald trump body language, joe biden body language, body language break down, body language interpret, trump vs biden, wired

Id: CfNEHW3qgso

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020