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
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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
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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