Former FBI Agent Breaks Down Universal Body Language | WIRED

the limbic system has primacy over our brain it can hijack neural activity instantly and that's why when you smell smoke or somebody gets too close or if you hear a loud noise our limbic system kicks in it's one of those beautiful things that has evolved with us my name is joe navarro and i am a non-verbal communications expert we are a species that is always communicating but we're also communicating with gestures in fact we have been primarily communicating with gestures for millions of years i think about 2.5 million years ago we were all still in africa we were surrounded by predators at all times lions tigers wild dogs all these things were after us so we evolved to communicate silently but effectively we had to move through the jungle we had to move between trees we had to move in all sorts of environments very quietly and still be able to communicate that which mattered the most which was what are my needs wants and desires and what are my fears if one of us saw a tiger or a lion we evolved the capacity to freeze in place so that by freezing the predator would move on and not notice us this has been with us for millions of years all our earlier ancestors all our hominids had to adapt to this one behavior which was to freeze and it allowed to survive another day those that ran initiated the chase trip bite sequence it was that movement that was so perilous to our species and so we have behaviors that are hardwired in us it's part of our paleo circuits these very ancient circuits that have allowed us to survive deep within the brain is an area called the limbic system and the limbic system is both exquisite and elegant in that it merely responds to the world it doesn't have to really think about the world the limbic system is often also referred to as the mammalian brain and it can be activated in a variety of ways for instance if the room suddenly gets too hot your limbic system can be activated or if it gets too cold if you smell smoke the olympic system is immediately activated it is on while we sleep it is on while we think we are in charge when we're writing something the limbic system is running in the background it's like software it's looking at it's listening for it's sensing are there things out there that could hurt me i'll give you an example if if you take two gas stations and they're identical but you dim the lights of one versus the other people will go to the better lit gas station without realizing why they're doing it and they're doing it because light represents visual clarity and you naturally feel safer so even though they may charge you a little bit more you'll still go there because there's something about being able to see everything with greater clarity those of you who have children probably remember whenever the baby was startled the baby would immediately bring up its hands and its fingers would be spread out this is called the moral reflex and this reflex we share with all primates which allows us to immediately grab onto the hair of those hairy individuals which we used to be and allows us to hang on this was essential for survival remember even before we were australopithecines dependent on our ability to be able to hang on to hair so that a very mobile and very agile mother could move about while we assisted in hanging on the babinski reflex is very similar it has to do with the feet if you stroke the foot of a child at a very young age before they're two their toes immediately spread out again so they can grab onto hair and hang on or maybe you've never noticed for instance when you lay a young baby down as you put them on their back their hand and arm goes into what's called the fencing posture and that is as they lay down their head will turn to one side and their arm will immediately come up as though they're fencing we think we go into the fencing posture at this early age to protect us from rolling over if our arms were at our side then we become a more perfect object to roll one of the other vestigial behaviors is we have a reflex that orients us it's referred to as the orientation reflex and it's very ancient in fact it's most likely pre-reptilian it probably goes back to our amphibian past and that is that anytime there's any movement any any change in pattern we orient on that and so our eyes turn to it we react to it and then if it's coming at us we will raise a hand to block it fishermen will tell you that fish will actually notice them they'll notice the movement on the surface so they move away fish are aware that they will be hunted down by birds and so their orientation reflex is what usually saves them but for humans we have never lost this because this is key to survival we could not have survived as a species if we could not respond to changes in imagery or changes in pattern you know often times when you're sitting talking to somebody and somebody walks by and your attention turns to them or the screen on a nearby television is on and then all of a sudden there's a change in color or a change in pattern the orientation reflex makes us take notice and a lot of guys use as an excuse to look at the football game when they should be paying attention to their friends but in fact it is anchored in our biology and our physiology we have passed this on to react to anything that's different because it goes directly to our survival mode [Music] because the limbic system is responsible for our survival it can hijack neural activity instantly and that's why you cannot run to the edge of a building and just look down your brain says slow down inch your way to the edge of that building and then look down one of the other things the limbic system does is it orients us away from anything that we perceive as hurtful or that we don't particularly care for it says i will not permit you to expose your ventral side to that person which you perceive as nasty or dangerous or whatever and so we have a lot of collateral behaviors that are associated with a startling situation for instance with primates we know that when they're scared or they're angry they open up their mouths and they show their large canines well we've lost our large canines but in displaying our teeth this was supposed to scare others you'll see people react by tucking in their thumbs and this is very much part of what we do in our species which is when we're scared we tend to bring our fingers together and tuck our thumbs in it's not just when somebody frightens us you can see it sometimes at the poker table you'll have poker players that have a lousy hand and you'll see their fingers come together and their thumbs disappear indicating just how weak they are [Music] we're not sure why we tend to tuck our thumbs in it may be in part something that we evolved as we move through areas where there's a lot of vegetation so that our opposable thumbs don't catch on different objects i remember an fbi agent friend of mine during an operation we were taking down some drug dealers and we were jumping from one house to the other over a fence and his thumb caught and just it was just completely ripped off so it's not far-fetched that this is a behavior that we use so that we don't have any appendages sort of loose that could get caught and the other one that we most often see is bringing a hand to the neck and bring this little area here called the suprasternal notch and if you look at the photographs that are out there of predators this area of the body is primarily where they go to suffocate their their prey and so our paleo circuits when we're struggling with something or we hear even something that's terrible we instinctively develop this set of procedures where we cover the neck cover the mouth or tuck the chin in in an effort to protect ourselves most of our behaviors that are universal come from the limbic system and so when i see a limbic response in madison wisconsin of somebody touching their neck i will also see in botswana there's no difference because they're universal they're also very reliable and so we can use it to assess others to determine what are they thinking what are they feeling or what might they be fearing

Channel: WIRED

Views: 286,568

Rating: 4.9077535 out of 5

Keywords: humans, non verbals, body language, limbic system, unintentional body language, body language break down, break down body language, body language expalnation, wired body language, wired body language guy, fbi body language, joe navarro, joe navarro fbi, joe navarro body language, body language expert, body language expert joe navarro, moro reflex, moro reflex explained, reflexes, wired moro reflex, fencing reflex, moro reflex babies, unconscious reaction, primal brain, wired

Id: aThjX4rsnfk

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020

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