Exploring the Myths of Body Language Analysis on TV and You Tube

Doug Downs (00:03):

I want you to think back for a moment to when you were in high school and you were developing your first crush. What you needed to do, and you probably didn't realize this at the time, was to follow the steps of the old sales funnel. You needed to get the other person's attention. You needed to encourage them to take an interest in you, then a desire for you and then for them to take the action that you wanted, whether it was to initiate a connection or to respond to your initiation any way you look at it. Step one was to get their attention and no, step one wasn't to text them or ask a common friend. Step one was eye contact. You needed to know that they knew who you were, that you existed, and then you made all kinds of judgments. Did they hold the eye contact? Was there frequent eye contact? What about their body language? What were the signals? Then maybe you worked up the nerve to talk with them or even text. What was the tone of the conversation? Did they lean forward when you were in person together? Did they use open gestures? Did they smile,

Crowd Noise (01:23):

(Crowd Noise)

Doug Downs (01:25):

Nevermind the words you were exchanging. You could just tell from their body language and their tone right. After all, isn't it true that 93% of all communication is nonverbal? You've heard that somewhere. We all seem to do things that way. Reading body language and facial expressions first, but claims you read on the web from experts are rarely grounded in science regardless. In today's world, we do make decisions based on nonverbal cues. We choose new employees. We choose whom to couple with and whom to dislike. We make decisions like who to arrest and even whether someone is guilty or not based on a variety of ideas. Some of them, no more scientific value than what was claimed during the Middle Ages today on stories and strategies. In the words of Josh Billings, it ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure. That just ain't so.

(02:44):

My name is Doug Downs, and just as we get started this week, I want to send a special thank you to Karla who left us a message on Spotify for Podcasters just a few days ago. She was commenting in the Your Brain In Crisis Mode episode with Dr. Steve Joordan's, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, and she says, "How about Brazilian listeners?" Karla, you're absolutely right. We actually have lots of listeners in Brazil and we've never done an episode with an expert in Brazil. So if you're listening, send me an email, doug@storiesandstrategies.ca. That goes right to me. Dot CA at the end of it, and I'd love to chat about doing an episode in Brazil, either to find out about some of the strategies happening in Brazil or just to pick your brain about episodes that we should do. I think that's a great idea. Thanks for the message, Karla. My guest this week is Vincent Dino, joining today from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Bonjour Vincent.

Vincent Denault (03:43):

Hi, Bonjour. Salut.

Doug Downs (03:45):

How are things in Montreal today? The island city? Yeah, based on an island, right?

Vincent Denault (03:51):

Yeah, Montreal is an island. Everything is good here. The sky is clear, but it's cold outside.

Doug Downs (03:58):

And anyone not from Canada, thinking of a trip to Canada, so many people go to Toronto, which is a great city. Check out Toronto, but leave some time for Montreal. It is... so Quebec itself, it's so distinct and so different from the rest of Canada. See Montreal at the least, and if you can Quebec City, la ville du Quebec, it's absolutely gorgeous.

(04:22):

Vincent, you're a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University in Montreal. You have a PhD in Communication from the University of Montreal and a master of laws from the University of Quebec. You're also the co-founder of the Center for Studies in Nonverbal Communication Sciences of the Research Center of the Montreal Mental Health University Institute, and a co-founder of the Deception Research Society. And in addition to all that, I love this. You are also a coroner, which tells me, Vincent, at least a little bit more about your personality. You like to get down to the science of things, the understand the real why to things. Am I gauging that correctly? Is that a driver for you?

Vincent Denault (05:08):

Maybe it's a driver, maybe it's not what brought me to this job, but probably there's something there. I'm coroner since 2019 when I was doing my PhD in communication, I was somehow a little bit tired of writing and I needed some action. I was a litigation lawyer in the past, but in 2019, I saw there was an opening for a coroner job here in Montreal. I was interested, of course, in the job helping to understand the causes and the circumstances of death that happens when the causes and the circumstances are not known. I was also interested in helping families find answers.

Doug Downs (06:02):

I love that drills down to the why for somebody which is important. So Vincent, I know there've been a lot of studies described in about 30,000 peer reviewed publications on nonverbal communication. This is not an unstudied field. Perhaps an awful lot of them have been misunderstood, and perhaps a great number of them have been misleading or not the greatest of scientific examples. The most famous one, which has been misunderstood more than anything else, is the Moravian myth, and it goes something like 93% of all communication is nonverbal marketers and PR people like me have been using that and so much of our material for years. Can you first burst that bubble for us? Is it true that 93% of all communication is nonverbal?

Vincent Denault (07:03):

So the direct answer to that question is no, that's not true. But I'll just come back to something you just mentioned a few seconds ago. Probably there are research that are misunderstood. I'm not sure about research that are misleading. So when a scientific paper is published in a peer review publication, there's a process to that and hopefully, well, not hopefully, and you excuse my English, I'm not a native English speaker, so sometimes I will change the words. That's just me because I don't speak on a daily basis. So I was about to say that when a paper is published in a peer review publication, after that, it's available to the worldwide community of researcher who if there is a problem with the paper, have the opportunity also to criticize that paper in another peer review

Doug Downs (08:01):

Publication. That's science. That is the process. Exactly.

Vincent Denault (08:04):

Yes, I get. Exactly, exactly. But there is research that can be misunderstood. But let's come back to that myth, the Mehrabian myth, so to speak. This 93% comes from it doesn't come from nowhere. So it's come from two real research from a very important researcher named Alberta Mehrabian. So this researcher is really an important researcher in the field of nonverbal communication, very influential in the 1960s. In those two paper, he addressed the issue of conflicting effect, communicated by a word, a facial expression, and the tone of the voice. It was not about nonverbal communication in general. So there are limitations to that research as it is the case with any scientific research. But let's forget the limitation, just the fact that it was not about nonverbal communication in general, but that's what the public and so-called experts remember inaccurately from the papers that Mirab published. So just for everyone at home listening to the podcast, what they should remember is that Alberta Mehrabian is a real researcher. He's a very influential researcher in the field of nonverbal communication, and he brought a lot of knowledge to the field. So he's very influential, and it is unfortunate that the public remember him for something. He actually did not say,

Doug Downs (09:50):

Yeah, folks like again, marketing and PR, folks like me, that took the over completely overly simplified result and portrayed it as a generic. Dr. Mehrabian was at UCLA and you described the incongruency of communications, which I think was somewhere in the name of a study. In other words, if I said to my wife, "Hey, I know Friday is our 25th anniversary, but there's a great game on at the pub and some of the boys, and I want to catch that. How about we do our anniversary thing Saturday instead?" If she folded her arms, gave me the look and said, "Oh, yeah, that's just fine." I would know 38% by the tone of her voice, 55% from her body language and 7% from her verbals. I would be able to summate for myself, oh, that's not fine. We're not good here.

Vincent Denault (10:48):

Let's just not put a number on this influence of nonverbal behaviour. Nonverbal behaviour is important. It's super important. It's part of our identity is part of our daily life, but this number is often, I would say used as an argument of authority to say that nonverbal communication is important. Nonverbal communication is important. You don't have to say that wrong number to argue about that importance. Now, I just want to make something clear. I don't question the honesty, the integrity, the intelligence, the abilities, the competence of anyone using that number, right? Everyone can make a mistake if nonverbal behavior is not their field of expertise, and they pick up that number. I don't have a problem with that. Where I have more questions so to speak, is when someone saying he or she is an expert in nonverbal communication and then uses that number now, it raises, in my opinion, a red flag about the accuracy of what the person is about to communicate. Now, even for those people, again, I don't question their honesty, their integrity or anything of that matter, I would then question the nature of their claims.

Doug Downs (12:22):

So what are we judging then? You mentioned that nonverbal has impact, and it's true. As soon as I see someone, if I see they're cross or I think they're cross, I might be more cautious. If I see they're smiling and accommodating, I might be more gregarious. What exactly are we judging when we judge the nonverbal behaviour? Is it simply, do I think they're just like me? Is that all I'm really making a judgment on?

Vincent Denault (12:54):

No, you make judgment intuitively on the variety of characteristic. You judge a variety of characteristic of the person in front of you or the environment you're in based on nonverbal communication. So nonverbal communication is not just gestures or facial expression. Nonverbal communication is also your appearance, the tone of your voice, your physical characteristics, the environment you're in. All of that is part of, again, your daily life, and it influences your perception of the world and your decision making process. So you don't have to read a book on nonverbal behaviour to be influenced by nonverbal behaviour. You are influenced on the, I mean, nonverbal communication happens when you're in the belly of your mother before you see for example, or before you ear. You will touch things, not necessarily with your end, but with your shoulder, with your face touch is part of nonverbal communication. So this is really central to the fabric of who we are.

(14:21):

But then what is suggested in popular culture is that you can harness that to learn what people are thinking and not saying. Of course, when you see someone on the street and the person looks aggressive, like looking down, and with the closed end like that, you will probably feel that something is wrong there. You will just walk away and that's it, right? You will not go through the scientific literature about imminent attack and that kind of stuff. You don't need to read a book about body language, and by the way, there is no such thing as the language of the body. There is something like nonverbal behaviour, so it's really part of who we are. The problem is that, and of course you can, I would say that you can, if you're about to speak to a public, or you should probably know that you will not address the public the same way you would address your friend in a bar.

(15:27):

You will probably not sit on the couch the same way on the stage that you would sit on the couch when watching a movie, right? Okay. So these are all elements of nonverbal communication. They will influence how you perceive other, and they will influence how you are perceived by others. The problem comes when, again, popular culture, and this doesn't come from 2009 and lie to me, it comes way before that. You have movies that present misconception about nonverbal communication that I've presented misconception about nonverbal communication for a long time, and the problem comes when those misconceptions influence the decision-making process of you and I. It doesn't really, I probably would argue that it's not a problem if that influence, for example, your perception of, I don't know, when you go to the restaurant and you look at people that, however, if it influenced the perception of a judges police officer, that's another story. Now, the consequence

Doug Downs (16:41):

Juries is another example. Juries make decisions an awful lot based on this.

Vincent Denault (16:46):

Exactly, exactly. Yes. That's when things become more dangerous, I would say.

Doug Downs (16:53):

Talk me through that, and some of your work is involved this way in helping judges and juries understand the impacts of facial expressions in body language and overcoming those to try to pursue the facts, bring out the coroner in your approach to things, find the science to things, and not just the qualitative impression.

Vincent Denault (17:16):

When witnesses come to testify in a court, they will tell their side of the story, right? Well, how do judges determine or jurors determine what actually happened? So one of the factors, so how do judges and jurors determine the credibility of the witnesses? Right. Well, one of the factors that influence credibility assessment is how people express themselves. So how do they speak? How do they behave in court? Now, if the outcome of a trial rests on the credibility of witnesses, it means that essentially the outcome, the outcome of trials can be a matter of nonverbal communication or nonverbal behaviour. So essentially what it means is that there are probably trials, well, not probably, there are trials where the outcome can be determined by how a witness will behave in a court. So a reality that's just a fact, and in those cases, when the outcome of a trial is determined by nonverbal behaviour, if the assessment of nonverbal behavior is influenced by stereotypes and prejudice, well, it can result in miscarriages of justice.

Doug Downs (19:02):

As someone in marketing, my job is to persuade and to influence a target audience to my client's thing and to take action on that liking of the thing, whether they buy it or stop doing something, whatever it is. How do I use nonverbal communication to help with that influence?

Vincent Denault (19:28):

Well, I would first point out that I'm not an expert in marketing, just so just absolutely

Doug Downs (19:35):

Fair enough.

Vincent Denault (19:36):

I think enough, a good quality, well, at least the quality of that I look for in researchers is the fact that researchers know the limit of their competencies, so they know the limit of their knowledge. So that's why I'm saying, first of all, I'm not a marketing expert. What would think about, so to speak, I would probably make the link between marketing practitioners and lawyers trying to persuade a judge or jurors. So probably in different, I would, my intuition, and I might be wrong, is that the rules of the game might be different, but ultimately the goal would be similar. Lawyers will try to persuade the judges or the jurors that their client are right, and probably, and you tell me if I'm wrong, that someone in marketing would try to persuade the public that they have the right service or that their client provide the right service or the right goods.

(20:53):

So nonverbal communication then plays an important role in that because the public, in the same way as a judge, all stereotypes and beliefs about nonverbal behaviour. So for example, I'll give you one example that everyone will understand if you are about to present to someone a product, and probably the same way as a lawyer, would try to present to a judge the position of their clients. If the lawyer was to talk about the position of their clients, looking away, looking away, well, would that influence, in your opinion, Doug, would that influence how the judge will perceive the position of the lawyer?

Doug Downs (21:46):

Yes, because there's a lack of eye contact, which is exceptionally powerful.

Vincent Denault (21:51):

Exactly, because, and also there is that myth that looking away is not a good thing. There's this belief that the eyes, you can see the soul of someone in their eyes looking the eyes is very important because otherwise you might be lying in this kind of stuff. So when you ask someone to be persuasive or someone wants to be persuasive, it is important to take into account the stereotypes and prejudices that the person in front of you might have.

Doug Downs (22:29):

What exactly am I judging though? When I'm judging the eye contact, when I'm judging the body language, what makes I get it? It's my stereotypes, the mood I'm in or the social factors I've had in my day, but what exactly is leading me to that believable, not believable, likable, not likable judgment.

Vincent Denault (22:51):

The point of view where I would address it, and again, to understand an issue, probably the best way is to look at that issue from variety of point of view. But the point of view that I am comfortable addressing is how popular culture brings us to have similar beliefs that are erroneous. I was mentioning to you a few minutes ago, movies, if you go to Scarface, you remember the movie Scarface with Al Pacinos? Okay. So in that movie, the central character played by Al Pacinos says at one time, Chico, the eyes, the eyes don't lie. Pac,

Tony (Al Pacino) (23:35):

She like me,

Chico (Steven Bauer) (23:38):

She like you. How do you know?

Tony (Al Pacino) (23:41):

I know. The eyes Chico. They never lie.

Vincent Denault (23:49):

So all of those elements, and that's part of the issue because now you have social medias where videos are seen millions of times where people claim that you can detect liars this way or that other way, and some of those videos are made by celebrities. There's this video on TikTok by Dr. Phil. He seems like a great guy. Nothing to say against him. He's a super celebrity, but in that video, his claim are just bs. I mean, he says that depending on how your feet point the direction of your feet, then it's a sign of a lie. If you say, honestly, then what come next is a lie that's just bss. But let's imagine for a second that you are constantly sent misconception about something. My intuition, and again, I might be wrong, but it'll come and influence in ways that you probably don't even notice how you perceive others. So this is one of the reason and the reason I'm comfortable speaking about why such misconceptions come and influence our decision making process on a daily basis.

Doug Downs (25:21):

I really appreciate your time, Vincent. Thank you. Merci bien pour votre temps.

Vincent Denault (25:29):

C'est un plasir. Thanks for the invitation.

Doug Downs (25:32):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Vincent Denault, we have his contact information in the show notes, and if you want to hire him to train you to read behaviours and detect liars, please download the transcript and read the episode. Again, he doesn't do those trainings. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you like this episode, body language won't help us. Please do us a favour, share it with one friend for listening.