 Hello Abby. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Wonderful. Our good friend Joe Navarro had recommended that you would drop by and chat with us. He certainly has brought up your research and we were fascinated in going through your research for this show. There's a lot of ideas that align and we're certainly excited to hear some of the science behind some of the body language communication that we have been preaching on this show for the last 15 years. Hey I'm excited to get started. So we'd love to just kick it off and to get to know a bit about you. What was it about body language that got you interested? I think it was because human beings are so complicated and so individual that you can't say that anybody has a particular personality type or people do things for certain reasons. You know they're so difficult to understand. Yeah body language is a universal language. It's something that we've carried with us through evolution and we all share certain traits and characteristics and we all do similar things, similar reasons unconsciously in terms of our body language and I just feel that's incredible that we can identify these common patterns when everything about human beings seems to be completely different and I got really interested as everybody does when they start looking at nonverbal communication, lie detection and everybody wants to be a human lie detector and it took me some time in the field of studying lie detection to realize there is no such thing as a nonverbal cue of deception. I wrote two research papers trying to find cues for deception and we actually I mean the studies were really interesting because we took a really unique approach to the way we looked at body language but what we were actually just seeing is high stress and discomfort and then I changed my perspective when I was doing my PhD to look at cooperation and creating a positive environment so that people feel safe and feel comfortable and feel familiar with you that they want to share information with you and then it kind of opened up a whole world where everything seems really positive and you realize wow human beings are so cooperative and that is you know what we have evolved to do we've evolved to cooperate that is how we've survived and I think especially in academia I've always thought of everything is quite doggy dog and I know that business most apparently was saying your leadership is doggy dog but it really isn't because it is all about cooperation and trust and creating a positive environment for your colleagues and your employees and that's how you get to the top by working with other people cooperatively and that really is the key to successful relationships and successful business. Well we are certainly huge fans of cooperation and I know trust is something that a lot of us have this internal barometer around but what does trust define from a scientific perspective as? So this is an interesting question because scientists have this way of making things very confusing and they take these these concepts and then they pull them apart into okay well what's cognitive trust okay what's effective trust what's behavioral trust what's this kind of trust and they really pull them apart and make them individual but they overlap in so many different ways and I just think that it's over complicated and the way I see trust is safety you know if we feel safe if our brain says you are not a threat I trust you if I feel that I can be vulnerable and you won't exploit me that's trust. Now how quickly can trust be built if we look at it from that lens? So trust has evolved to be very very quick from non-verbal communication we actually judge trustworthiness in 33 milliseconds so it's literally the first judgment that we make about anybody before confidence before competence anything it's trust and it can be we can perceive someone as trust very very quickly but we can also perceive someone as untrustworthy just like that just as quick even if we've made that initial judgment of trustworthy all they have to do is one thing and our brain says no not safe and then it's gone so it depends on again the kind of trust that you're looking at if we're having an interaction now we have a one-time interaction then all your judgments are based on me in this one interaction but then if I am very very trustworthy and you think you know I trust you you seem trustworthy and then we have another interaction and I behave slightly differently all of that trust that's built up is gone so to answer your question it can be built very quickly it can be built over a long period of time and it can be destroyed very quickly and it can be destroyed after a long period of time if you've had this very very long lengthy trustworthy relationship one thing one simple thing and it can be broken down just like that with our clients one of the main points to building trust that we discuss is what after they come through they feel very good about being more vulnerable and being more open with new people because they learn its power so they want to communicate and build that trust with everybody and what they find after they have gotten comfortable with their vulnerability that other people aren't so comfortable with their vulnerability and what I tell them is that nature is going to play its course and everybody has a different rate of how and look for different things in order to get comfortable with people however the one thing that you can't do is you can't push nature you can't expedite it but you can remove the hurdles that are in the way for people developing trust and for a lot of people they think that it is an additive steps in order to build trust with people when in actuality it's removing a lot of the things that are getting in the way and keeping people from easily getting comfortable in building trust yeah and that's one thing that I think people get wrong that they think that trustworthiness is a tooltip you know we can talk about non-verbal behaviors to show the untrustworthy or behaviors to show the untrustworthy acts of you know the way that you speak and think and they think that they can apply these and use them and then form this trustworthiness and then put them down and they go off and continue with their lives and that's not what trust is because it's not a set of steps that you can just follow and then it's done it's something you really have to embed you can't just say okay well if I smile they perceive me as trustworthy and that's it and you know I'll apply these things at the beginning of the interaction and I don't need to worry about them later you're doing the behaviors at the beginning you stop doing them I'm going to stop seeing you with trustworthy just like if I like I said before we interact once I see you with trustworthy another time I don't it's not a tool kit it's a set of things that we understand can create a perception of trustworthiness but one other thing that creates trustworthiness is consistency we as human beings we need consistency it makes us comfortable it makes us so safe because it's predictable it's not uncertain and if we're interacting with someone and we don't know how they're going to be towards us are they going to be angry are they going to be happy are they going to be sad are they going to be there it creates uncertainty and it stops us feeling so safe in that interaction and if someone is inconsistent and they're using these behaviors as a tool kit they put them down sometimes pick them up sometimes put them down another time we don't feel safe we don't we can't predict how we're going to interact with them so you're exactly right and it is one of the most common mistakes that I think people make in the field of trustworthiness. Now you mentioned something earlier about as humans we are cooperative but there is this misconception that it's dog eat dog so can you talk a little bit about why trust and cooperation are important from an evolutionary perspective and why it is that we are predisposed to cooperation? Yeah so I think this dog eat dog perspective comes from the survival of the fittest you know I need to beat you so I can produce off-brain at this competition but survival of the fittest isn't about the traits that make you as an individual survive it's about the traits that make the group that you're in thrive and survive so those traits that enhance corporation and build trust those are the traits that flourish and those are the ones we've evolved to have and if we think that we've evolved in this really uncertain environment where there's threats everywhere you know there's a predator here there might not be my next meal here so having these group relationships has helped us to vital because you can rely on people they can hunt for us they can protect us all of these things that are just essential also reproduction which is quite self-explanatory that we need other people for those kinds of things and we need to be able to identify who we can cooperate with so the one way that we've done that is we've evolved these non-verbal communication tactics of showing trustworthiness so rather than just saying hey you know I'll cooperate with you we need to instantly be able to detect who was cooperative so we have evolved these behaviors which say I'm trustworthy we can pick out who to cooperate with and there's a lot of argument on this topic that well that can't be the case because people could use these tactics and pretend to be cooperative and just show these trustworthy behaviors and act to be a deceptive be deceptive but the thing is because we are a cooperative species that non-cooperative isn't going to last very long because in our social group we have profit so if someone isn't cooperative all it takes is one person to say they didn't cooperate and then the whole group know they're a non-cooperative so we don't need to look for you know tactics of these queues of deception that's not what we've evolved to look for we've evolved to be quick and look for trustworthiness and we see it in modern day now you know if you want to go to a restaurant what is the first thing that you do you look at google for reviews you look for what people said about it if you're getting into a new relationship and you know that they know a friend first thing you do what are they like tell me about them have they done anything wrong because we count on the gossip of other people and we see it in celebrity magazines and all of these things we we thrive on as a species because that when we get our information about you know who is effective and who is trustworthy and that's why it's so important not to view this as you said earlier as a toolkit because your reputation builds trust and if you're just turning it on and turning it off with certain people that you view as high value you know we use use this example in in class how you treat the janitor is exactly how you should treat the executive of the company because your reputation matters and that consistency is huge to building the trust that you're looking for yeah and you see incorporate a lot of the time and people say oh well you know it is dog eat dog because they're this way and they're up at the top they're doing amazing and they're not cooperative and they stand above people and it's like well that that doesn't mean that corporate corporation isn't the better way to go they might be successful with their manipulative tactic but it doesn't mean they wouldn't be more successful if they were cooperative people are successful all the time using negative tactics but just because people aren't doesn't mean that it's the only way to get there or the best way to get there just think if that person who is at the top for being manipulative decided to actually become trustworthy and be cooperative imagine how much better they could do and what you do see around people that have got that way and got to the top without being trustworthy and without being cooperative you see this bad reputation around them you see lawsuits and you see complaints and you see unhappy staff you see staff that don't enjoy their jobs and staff that don't enjoy their job what means you know a non-corporative work environment a non-productive work environment yeah I think especially if you've experienced that environment you don't thrive in a manipulative untrustworthy environment so although you may see that person leading you may also find that's not the culture that you want to be a part of or a company that you want to sustain working for yeah if you don't feel safe when you go to work and you feel like you can't see yourself around people you can't relax or that you know you have to do everything perfectly you know exactly how your boss wants it that puts you so on edge and it doesn't motivate you to do your best that motivates you to just get by keep your head down and get on with the job that's not what we want our employees to feel we want our employees to go to work and strive to be their best for themselves because they enjoy being there for their colleagues and because they respect their leader not because they fear their leader now with trust being built quickly I'd love to talk about these non-verbal cues that were evolutionally wired to look for around trustworthiness but yeah so it starts with a smile we know how important the smile is and the smile truly is a social signal think about when you go bowling when you hit a strike you stay completely straight safe when you hit the strike is only when you turn around and see people that you smile you communicate I'm excited I'm happy that's what the smile has evolved to do to communicate to communicate I'm not a threat I'm happy I'm happy to see you this funny thing happens when we see a smile and see a true genuine smile so when the upper cheek the raise and we see the Dutchman eyes it release it releases oxycosin and when oxycosin suppresses that fight-off-flight instinct where we say you know I might not be safe I need to go or I might need to go the smile relaxes us and just says you know it's safe it's fine and any behavior that could expose a vulnerability so we've evolved like I said in a really dangerous environment and one part of our body that we protect is our throat which is why when we see things that scare us or when we hear bad news a lot of the time we we put our hand to our throat without realizing we protect our throat or if something has you know we've had horrible news we often kind of stroke our throat and it's that instinct to protect and they could be you know a predator or something that could harm us so when we want to show that we're trustworthy we kind of lean our head to the side to do this head tilt and we expose our neck because we're exposing a vulnerable part of our body and saying you know I don't think you're a threat I'm not a threat he's a vulnerable part to show you that I'm not a threat and dogs actually do that too and I think this behavior was first mentioned in Charles Darwin's book on the emotions of man and animals and he noticed it from his dog and he saw certain behaviors in his dog and then it kind of you know we started to learn oh humans do these too and then we really started to figure out you know this is a signal to say I'm trustworthy at saying and also anything that is very open so things like open postures and open palms that I'm talking to you I have my palms facing outwards you can see what is in my hands I haven't got a weapon my hands are behind my back your brain says uh oh there could be something there in the hand so always making sure that you are facing someone and have your palms out and showing you know I'm not hiding anything from you and this is also why people that hide information or hold back information can be perceived as untrustworthy so when we tell kind of half truth and we hold a bit of information back and bosses do this all the time where you know there's some bad news but they're not really telling you everything it's that we don't know what it is that they have so our brain says it's it's the worst it could possibly be so we feel uncomfortable we feel unconsciously that they are untrustworthy because it's that same feeling of there could be a threat there I can't see that there isn't a threat so my brain says there is well what's so interesting in the work that we've done over the last 15 years is that we'll tell our clients hey smiling is important but internally they feel like they are smiling all the time yet they're not openly expressing that full face smile and it takes us actually filming them and showing them the video for themselves to show the discomfort that they're showing in these situations where they're feeling a little bit of social anxiety some tension and pressure and once they realize just the simple change in that smile and showing it early and often as you communicate with someone it leads to an entirely different interaction so we're also wired to respond in turn and mirror back that smile and bring energy to our communication when we feel the other person is bringing that smile in and showcasing us that trustworthiness so really changes the tenor of the entire conversation yeah it's emotional contagion so if someone is showing you I'm smiling I'm happy I'm really excited you kind of get just instant more energy from interacting with them because you take on some of their emotions just like we have all been in a conversation with an energy drain where you are excited and they are so just mellow and their total voice is mellow and their behavior is a mellow and then you just start to feel tired it's the same thing it's just that we mimic people unconsciously and through that we take on their emotions and we can't help it again that's an evolved behavior and that's why I did my phd in unconscious mimicry and it really does work through emotional contagion so I read this article a while ago and it said that people that show some anxious behaviors are perceived better and I don't know where they got their science from that if we interact with someone and we show that we're anxious that perceived is more trustworthy and makes people more comfortable and that really isn't the case because when we show that we're anxious they feel anxious they take on that anxiety so especially in the field of non-bubble communication there is so much rubbish out there and this is an example of some rubbish that's out there and you know we do have to be very careful about what we read because these kinds of things there's other ones about you know you can tell people's personality by how open or closed their posture is and things and when we take this misinformation it causes us to interact with people differently so if we perceive someone as hiding something because they're crossing their arms we're going to interact with them like they're hiding something or if we see someone as being defensive because they're showing certain behaviors that we misinterpret as defensive we're going to start making them defensive by the way we talk to them so we have to make sure that we're being careful of one how we interact with people because of emotional contagion because we're passing them our emotions but also because there is a lot of misinformation that we have to be careful how we are interpreting their behaviors and responding yeah I think it's far more important to focus on what you're communicating outward than to start like you did seeking out deception lie detection and reading all of this in the non-bubble communication sure that would be great if we could just look at someone and instantly get a 100 accurate read on them but what's far more impactful is actually modulating our own behaviors showcasing these trustworthy signals with everyone making it a part of our personality to build and grow trust with others knowing that it improves our reputation and improves our communication and of course through cooperation it gets us ahead in our career for a lot of people as well the idea is that they they come to us for and certainly for the men they want to learn to approach women and but also in a networking event to be able to walk up to somebody that they're interested in talking to and make their pitch and so and for the ladies as well as they want to be able to break the chains of their social anxiety and walk up to folks that they find interesting and chat with as well and due to that without them realizing it what they end up doing before they come through and learning about this is they go out of their way to make the other person feel that they can trust them that they're not up to something so what they'll do is they'll put their hands behind their back to show that I'm safe and they'll shrink themselves and all of those behaviors as you mentioned give off a different vibe to the person that they're talking with and they're now uncomfortable and so they leave and it's fascinating how easily we pick up on others body language which also brings me to this point that you mentioned about how we're going to mimic the micro expressions that are going on and we can and we see those when we're dealing with people but this is something that we're now learning that we have all this technology and I can't read the micro expressions on your face through zoom through the technology and so these interactions are almost they're very surface level yeah I'm talking with my mom and we have this opportunity to chat via cross the country but it's not like I'm sitting with her on the couch and and our the nature takes over and we're mimicking each other to understand and have an empathy that phase the face level yeah I mean I move away from micro expressions as it's not really an area that I place myself in and I look more at what we can observe and things that we can see and assess for but virtually what I have found is it doesn't actually affect how much you can create trust we can create trust and cooperation exactly the same virtually it's just people aren't used to it because our brains have not had to deal with it we are what our limb existence it's still you know hundreds of thousands of years ago reacted to that kind of environment we didn't have laptops back then so it's all very new and we don't really know how to respond so we actually really are natural way like how we are now based on that's not natural when you usually have a conversation with someone unless it's at a restaurant typically you're more to the side it's not actually if I stood the straight on with every conversation it is quite intimidating but yet we do that online and again that has picked up as a bit of a threat and we typically stay really rigid as well we don't move so much and that rigidness creates untrustworthyness we don't do the head tilt and again untrustworthy and what people tend to do online is they don't have much of the upper body showing they'll have their face really close to the camera or just kind of the camera way down looking up and we create trustworthiness and comfort through our body language to our face expression if you are in a really dark room or have a really bad camera or the camera is at a really weird angle I can't see your face expression clear enough to respond to them so it's not that we can't it's that we we don't realize how effective this tilt is virtually so we do it wrong and as well we actually have more of a power virtually because we have more control yeah we don't have the lower body anymore which takes away some power however when we're interacting in person we are in this moving environment where there's so much to control for and so much to think about if we are virtual I have complete control over this square that I'm sat in I have control over what's behind me I have control over what I'm wearing and how I act how much you can see and the light you know how close I am to natural light all of these things so it actually is almost easier to create trustworthiness and one thing that I always do is I have plants behind me because when we see greenery especially leafy plants it slows down the nervous system and creates calmness also light colors just a nice white background whereas a lot of people have really bad lighting or one thing that we see a lot that is really bad for trustworthiness is the filters that people put on their cameras yeah they have the the background I was in a meeting and someone had a lego house and everything they were saying I was trying to concentrate on what they were saying but I was just thinking you're in a lego house I can't stop looking at that area around them I kept staring at it and it takes our attention away from what they're saying and our limbic system has a lot of old to deal with this kind of stimuli so it's distracting and it's confusing for our brain to have this kind of interaction with these things in the background so we just need to be aware of the power we have virtually to create this cooperative and trustworthy atmosphere and really you know think about it for our meeting well I know with zoom and even in this interaction I've shrank my own screen many of us will get caught up in staring at ourselves and then become even more self-conscious instead of being direct with the camera removing the view of self obviously when we're interacting in person unless there's a mirror behind the person you're interacting with very rarely do you see yourself think about your own body language movements and how you're communicating but zoom has created that feedback loop which often robs our ability to listen actively to convey the trustworthiness that we're after now you did talk about the lower body being cut off I'd love to talk about what are those nonverbal signals that we're sending with our lower body that do help in building trustworthiness and so a really interesting study that I've recently done is looking at the power of the lower body to create perceptions of approachability so we talked about this orientation facing someone and orientating towards them and we know from research that when you orientate towards someone you're perceived as more approachable you're perceived as more warm and inviting and I wanted to see if okay well what about the lower body what is my upper body is facing towards you but my lower body is facing away and what about my foot specifically because we know that the lower body has an effect because studies have shown that the feet are on it so when we're nervous the rest of the body is saying I'm fine but the foot is tapping away because we think that people can't see it so if we're trying to control for our behaviors we think about my face my hands my upper body but we don't think okay I've got to control my feet we just kind of let them do that thing which is why I'm really interested to see if the feet carry any effect and what I found was that using a male and a female individually as targets so they had their upper body facing towards an observer lower body either facing towards or facing away and lower body facing towards they were perceived as approachable lower body facing away they were perceived as unapproachable statistically significant but what was interesting is the sex of the target didn't matter sex of the observer didn't matter what also didn't matter was how introverted or extroverted the observer was the only thing that mattered was the foot orientation and it just shows you tiny behaviors moving my foot towards or away from facing you can change how approachable and perceived and that's incredible and I did another study recently and it actually came out with this open versus closed gestures that I've been talking about but the finding was accidental because I wanted to see people's lower bodies when they were uncomfortable so when they were in an interview and the interviewee and the interviewer was you know a bit out of order so something too personal something a bit derogatory that makes the interviewee uncomfortable and what we saw was this sequence of people make themselves small with their lower body when they're uncomfortable they bring their knees together they tuck their feet below their chair but it's important the sequence that occurred so if I tuck my feet by my chair and they keep my knees out that doesn't actually indicate discomfort it's doing a number of these behaviors so bringing my knees and keeping my knees and then tucking my feet and then keeping my legs closed things like this where you see multiple closing gestures that's what indicates a discomfort and interestingly behaviors that we do associate with discomfort like we have blocking display so we kind of put our hands on top of our genitals and we feel attacked and we kind of protect ourselves and we a lot of the time we do cross our arms when we feel attacked but it isn't indicative of it and that that's the mistake but it is something that we do but it doesn't mean that when we do it that is what we feel and but we saw these blocking displays in all groups comfortable versus uncomfortable because of the context so it was the interview causing some discomfort display but the tucking of the feet and the bringing the legs together that was only to do with the interviewer making them uncomfortable so again it speaks to this importance of recognizing what displayed actually means if we said you know any time they show a blocking display they're uncomfortable and making them feel this way if we just went off of that because this one behavior means this one thing we would interpret it differently we would interpret it wrong because we don't take the context and it's the same virtually interviews create more discomfort so we're likely to see more discomfort display so because of virtual environment if somebody is showing anxious displays regularly despite you showing trustworthiness doesn't necessarily mean you're making them uncomfortable if everything else is saying uncomfortable i trust you but they are showing you know a couple of displays we see those behaviors in a virtual setting because it is unnatural we just have to take it in the bigger picture are all of their behaviors or most of their behaviors showing we discomfort or is it just one and then everything else is saying comfort because if it's just the one that's likely to be their pacifier that's likely to be the one thing that's there outlet you know i put on my pen sometimes or you know a lot of people touch their face or jiggle their foot and that's their pacifier has nothing to do with you has nothing to do with what you said it's all the other behaviors that you have to take into consideration as a whole and i think that's why it's so important for everyone to understand that again putting more emphasis on the signals that we send understanding that we actually have some power we can get people to mirror us we can add energy and trustworthiness to any interaction versus the opposite just observing and looking to read people based on these snapshots and tiny signals that we read online mean oh this person doesn't like us or this person is untrustworthy it just doesn't really add up effectively to reading communication it's better to start looking at yourself and projecting outward the confidence of trustworthiness that we need to build better relationships to build cooperation now this begs the question can we overcome distrust so can trust be rebuilt if we've made a mistake if we've showcased untrustworthiness or maybe we had a bad day and we didn't show up the same the previous way that we had shown up in interactions can we rebuild trust so we can rebuild trust but it depends on what broke the trust and it depends on how you go about rebuilding it and because people just say sorry and sometimes an apology is enough but an apology has to be appropriate for the condition so if say you embarrass me in public and we're really good friends close the trust you embarrass me in public and my trust is broken down and you want to apologize a simple apology isn't going to be enough it has to match what broke the trust so you're taking me into office privately and saying I'm really really sorry likely isn't going to be enough it has to match that embarrassment I felt I have to feel like you're doing something that makes you feel vulnerable or you feel embarrassed to match with how I felt otherwise that apology actually has the opposite effect so we just have to make sure that we take into consideration what broke the trust and the way we go about getting it has to equate to at least what broke the trust because if it doesn't and it's not enough it doesn't just not work it actually has negative consequences that it brings the trust even lower down so those really quick I'm sorry I didn't mean to I'm really sorry and we just throw them out thinking I know it's better than nothing it actually isn't better than nothing it's a lot worse than nothing because it reduces the trust even more so it sounds like in order to rebuild trust we have to understand how the trust was lost it's not something that we can flippantly rebuild and it needs to match at least the way our contrition needs to match the way the person felt in their losing trust for us yeah and we just need to remember sorry isn't better than nothing don't throw around those stories I won't do it again sorry because that can reduce the overall trust and it can reduce your perceived trustworthiness in general too so we have to make sure that you know that's saying don't tell me your sorry show me your sorry no it really is important that your behaviours say truly I am sorry and I'm going out of my way to do something that is negative for me to show you how sorry I am there has to be some kind of positive yourself because that's that's what an apology has really been designed to do to say this is negative for me this is something that I don't want to do I'm having a negative consequence for doing this so I'm doing it to show you how willing I am to gain your trust that if that story doesn't cost you anything then it isn't actually showing that you really want to rebuild that trust right so it doesn't value the relationship in a way that would rebuild the trust now what strikes me from all of this is the consistency that we need in our nonverbal communication and what we found with a lot of our clients is nonverbal communication is not something that many people even think about or are conscious of so we use video work in our classroom to really showcase and highlight some signals so they can start to clue themselves in and be a bit more conscious so in listening to this we heard a lot of nonverbal signals that are important for trustworthiness where do you think our audience should start if they want to start bringing these nonverbals into their communication in a more consistent manner so I think it all starts with education because like you said you know there's so much to learn that when we are focusing on ourselves and focusing on them trying to decode them and display it's too much that it becomes uncomfortable we do eventually have to realize that it is a system so we observe others and the step says and respond correctly and then show us so it is this cycle we have to understand it but unless we start by first okay understanding what do signals mean learn what signals show trustworthiness and really go into the site read the literature read the research and start you know figuring out how to improve yours start implementing it start seeing a change and then start trying to assess the others but it starts with education and it is a difficult process because learning anything is uncomfortable and we think our body language is easy but it is like learning a whole new language we have to figure out what things mean and it's complicated because different cultures have different things that mean different things so depending on you know what gender what culture what context and interact with people is going to change how our non-verbals are interpreted so we have to just start somewhere start with the basic start reading start getting educated on the display and then start implementing them well I love that linking it to verbal language because you don't get fluent just from reading a couple books and doing a couple workbooks you get fluent from actually implementing and practicing the language the tenses etc same thing with non-verbal communication you get fluent by bringing it into every interaction you're having not just picking and choosing on the job interview or the first date or when you're in the elevator and you're pitching someone but instead look at it as something that you can practice and hone in every interaction that you have and what I love about it is you do get that back because of the power of mirroring when you're adding these new non-verbal trustworthy signals people start reacting to you differently and it energizes you and it adds to the communication versus what many of us who aren't conscious of our non-verbal communication we're getting into boring small talk situations we're taking energy from the interaction and people aren't responding in kind and of course it feels like a lot more work than really just adding that smile now there is another piece to this that we hear a lot of misconceptions around and that's eye contact and I think many people start much like you around okay lie detection now I get all into eye contact am I making enough what's too much oh I heard if I look away that means I'm not trustworthy so I have to maintain eye contact so what are the right balances with eye contact and how can we use it to our advantage when it comes to trustworthiness and maybe what are those myths that we can dispel for audience around eye contact so in terms of the myth we think that people that look away are lying or people that look away are hiding something and that just isn't true people look away at the time they might be uncomfortable they might be very comfortable but they just don't give much eye contact in terms of how to give good eye we have this sort of optimum square and it's from the nose to the eyes square triangle sorry from the eyes to the nose and it's this this is the business gate the eyes to the nose and that's where we look and then we kind of have a more social gaze which is from the eyes to the mouth and then that's where we look sort of in a social setting and then we have the intimate gaze which is the eyes down to the chest so you wouldn't look from the eyes to the chest in a business setting like you should also avoid in a business setting looking from the eyes to the mouth you stay within that business game so that's kind of a good paradigm of where to look in different settings in terms of how much to look I don't think there is you know a perfect amount of eye contact to give also because people differ in how much eye contact they like to receive so give good eye contact you know regular eye contact but don't stare at somebody because that makes them uncomfortable and just recognize you know do they look like I'm making them uncomfortable by looking at them too much and if they they start to look a bit nervous let's just move your gaze away you don't have to completely turn and ignore them but just you know flip to other things and show them you're listening and then kind of flip to other things and show them you're listening again so just you have to figure out how they're comfortable and how you're comfortable as well because if you're thinking okay eye contact eye contact eye contact you're probably gonna miss the fact that they're like why are they giving me so much eye contact it's uncomfortable so don't think too much about it I would just stay within the correct gaze frame and then go with what feels comfortable and that is as much attention really that I give to eye contact because I think it really is again just that simple that we look for this perfect amount or perfect equation for things and we over complicate it and then struggle to do it perfectly and we've heard in the past that the direction that you're looking when you're breaking eye contact is accessing different brain cues is there any science around the direction that you're actually looking when you break eye contact no no I mean we do look in different directions when we access different parts of our brain but I mean we use a hundred percent of our brain you know most of the time there isn't a part of our brain that isn't active at some point um so I think that sits within that myth of you know we use 10 percent of our brain that's saying you know we um if we're creative we only use the right side or the left side all of these things same with you know we look in a certain direction when we're lying that you'll fit within that paradigm of just myth that you know again don't think too much into them because there really isn't any science backing them. Now with all of this research that you've done on nonverbal communication how have you brought it into your life is there anything that you've changed or now utilized from the research you've done in your nonverbal communication? Yes so I am not a touchy-feely person at all touching has always made me very uncomfortable but touching is something we have evolved to do it makes people feel very safe so because I know that that is um something that makes people feel safe same with you know open gestures I was always a very nervous person very very closed off I didn't really like being you know touched at all I did not like touching other people but I learned how powerful these are so I learned to get comfortable with them and it took me time because like you said it's not a toolkit you have to actually get comfortable so I I implemented what I know that that makes other people more comfortable because you know isn't that what we want when we interact with people we want to make them feel comfortable we want to make them feel good we want to make them leave the conversation thinking so nice to talk to that person I felt really good I felt safe so if you know that you do behaviors that aren't perceived well but they're comfortable to you try and learn to do the other behaviors learn to get comfortable with this stuff and make other people feel safe and you know anything is it's practice and it will become a habit eventually and now I'm a lot more touchy-feely I'm very open I have my hands out a lot and I'm always kind of armed out and things like that and you just you know eventually one day you think oh I don't even think about it anymore that's the best feeling in the world when it becomes who you are and how you act normally without having to be so conscious about it but it does take some conscious effort to get there and we all have these I mean that's the the beauty of nonverbal communication is we have conditioned ourselves to self soothe maybe it's looking at your phone maybe it's putting a drink in front of your chest maybe it's rubbing your stomach or grabbing your neck and yeah you may have to break a few bad habits but this is something that you can practice with everyone every interaction is an opportunity for you to practice your nonverbal communication and and now with the power of zoom we can do it in a more controlled environment like our home our office etc yeah and we can record ourselves and it's very uncomfortable I find uncomfortable seeing myself do anything if you watch a video or a talk of yourself it just it makes you crazy but you have to learn to kind of get comfortable with that do a talk and record yourself doing it or have an interaction with someone record it and then assess your behavior after and look at what did you do and how would they react to it or what did you do wrong what did you do well and learn to get comfortable with your own behaviors and assessing yourself well that's the best part about it because the cringe actually means it's impactful so we just had a group of military special operators through the program and they have great body language they've obviously taken great care of themselves to be in great shape but even watching themselves on video they were cringing they couldn't believe that they looked and appeared that way and the second round of video work instant change because they consciously seeing yourself feeling that cringe you want to make the change versus me saying hey you're not smiling enough Abby internally you're like AJ I'm definitely smiling but when you see yourself on video that you're not smiling it just carries much more weight with your subconscious mind to make that change yeah because you think when you see yourself you can put yourself in that other person's perspective and say you know I feel this way seeing myself my god that is how they must feel interacting with me and that's not how I want another person to feel I want them to feel good and comfortable and not cringe so I think when we watch it in cringe we just have to think okay do I want someone else to feel that way and what can I change so that they don't exactly such a valuable lesson well we love asking every guest what their x-factor is what personality trade skill set makes you so unique Abby um I think my ability just to keep going no matter how many times I fail at things I would just keep going the amount of failed studies um before I got my phd I had loads of rejections you just keep going failure really just means you know one less failure to go until I get what where I want to be I love that work in our audience find more about the work that you've done the research that you have so you can find my profile on my website which is abbeymaronov.com you can find me on twitter which is abbey maronov or i linked in which is abbey maronov thank you so much for stopping by I really appreciate all these great insights on nonverbal communication thank you so much for having me it's been a pleasure