"Scientists are increasingly coming to the conclusion that the mind is a prediction machine."
- The Tell, page 9
"…so much more than we understand or acknowledge molds our perception of those around us."- The Tell, page 136
Have you ever said, “I don’t know, I just don’t like him”? Even when we think we know why we like or dislike someone, we probably don’t completely. This is even further complicated by behaviors people specifically do to get you to like them. One I found to be the most potent is the Expressivity Halo. Studies show that you can get people to like you by acting like an extrovert (this works for first meetings as well as later trying to win over an initially cool response – and this works for everyone, even for introverts like me). Hertenstein asks the reader some intriguing questions such as How do we use the behavior? and How do we guard against this behavior being used on us? But then he doesn’t give us the answer. That got me thinking about my own answer to these questions. I realized I do act like an extrovert when meeting someone in a work situation for the first time and always when I’m the facilitator of training (groups or one-on-one). I now wonder if later, when the people discover that the real me only wants to communicate with them by text or email, they are put off or at the very least surprised.
I want the people to perceive me initially as an extrovert because of the Expressivity Halo. But if this is expected to be a long term relationship (like employment or a vendor relationship), I need by the next meeting or conversation to talk about the best ways to work with me/contact me so the person gets what they need from me.
"With practice he could identify the signals in real time."- The Tell, page 119
When most of us think of tells we think of the two most talked about: poker and lying. TV shows tell us to look for shifting gaze and lack of eye contact. The studies Hertenstein describes show it’s not these things at all, and that most law enforcement officers actually miss the liars. Even the secret service agents only picked out the liars 70% of the time.
When someone is lying their pupils are usually dilated and their voice is higher in pitch than normal. Easy to recognize but some really good liars can keep these things from happening. What they apparently can’t control are what the researchers have dubbed microexpressions. Microexpressions are expressions that are only exhibited for 1/12 of a second. This is so short a time period that when watching a video of people lying, the researcher had to watch frame by frame before he even saw them (it took 100 hours!). Once the researcher had a behavior to look for he began to see a few of them in real time. After much practice could see even more.
The microexpression tells of lying (remember, only exhibited for 1/12 of a second) are:
Be careful – if you only see one of these at a time it may not indicate lying. Look for a cluster of behaviors. Even then, the author cautions us, don’t make snap judgments. Instead let these signal you to ask more questions to determine if you’re getting the truth or a fabrication.
"…my main goal is to aid you in being a more sophisticated observer of others’ nonverbal signals and appearance, as well as to show you the predictive capacities of the mind."- The Tell, page 177
Our brains remember evidence to support the things we believe – like first impressions. Our brain wants to make us “right”. Sometimes, and we’ve all experienced this, our first impressions are wrong. So in using tells to make decisions about who to hire, whether someone is lying, who to let your children hang out with, we need to be constantly on the lookout for information that contradicts rather than merely supports our hunches. For example: you see the person in the waiting room you’re about to interview. They have unkempt hair and you immediately begin to figure out a way to make the interview as short as possible. Instead, look at the person’s resume for signs of high intelligence, ability to get things done and anything else that’s the opposite of what you think are behaviors of an employee with unkempt hair. This could be your best programmer or best mechanic, and you don’t want to lose this opportunity because of an inaccurate first impression.
But make no mistake, I agree with the author. If I were in charge of hiring salespeople or CEOs, I’d first design a study (or hire someone to) where potential customers assessed candidate’s interpersonal nonverbal cues. I’d then use those cues to assess actual candidates for the positions. And finally I would use what the cues predicted along with other information I collected to make holistic decisions about who would be successful in the position.
It was fun to read the psychological operations of causation, probability, correlation. I thought it was simply a how-to book on recognizing specific tells. But it was so much more. For me, as a behavioral psychologist, this book was pure heaven and all the more useful because of the detailed descriptions of the varied research on tells.
Matthew Hertenstein received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and is a faculty member at DePauw University. His work has been featured on the Today Show, ABC News, NPR, and in the New York Times, the Economist, and The Guardian (UK), among others. He lives in Greencastle, Indiana, with his wife, Margo, and his ever-curious son, Isaac.
