Joe Navarro Talks about Touching Necks

Understand what the implications are of someone touching their neck and how this can differ between men and women.

Joe Navarro has a new book, Louder Than Words: Take Your Career from Average to Exceptional with the Hidden Power of Nonverbal Intelligence
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Joe Navarro Talks about Touching Necks

Freeze, Fight, or Flight

I've been studying in the field for a long time, and when I read about this concept in this book... it was one of those defining moments. It is not often a "new" concept is verbalized.

Joe Navarro, the author and former FBI agent, says that often we don't have only two options when surprised as is most often reported: fight or flight. We actually have three options: freeze, flight, or fight. It actually makes sense. Now I don't buy his orgins of this behavior, but the studies in this area support his conclusions.

Whenever we are faced with cognitive processing we are in fact freezing. This would be most common in interrogations at the police station- as compared to the would be attacker in the garage parking lot.

When we lie, we often show clues because we are processing information, and weighing our options.

Joe Navarro, I tip my hat to you, for being the first to recognize it and write about it in a book. Cheers!

To those of you that haven't checked out this book, I can highly recommended it- especially if you are in law enforcement, the examples he provides are from the field as a top FBI agent who several times wrote for the FBI bulletin.◦

Freeze, Fight, or Flight

"You know I'd never do something that terrible to another human being."

If you get an answer like the above headline, to a question like, "Did you steal that old woman's purse?" You've got someone trying to pull your leg...

It is saying your too good to do that sort of thing. It is avoiding the direct question with an indirect answer. It takes the human element out of the question. The answer is distancing from the actual crime. Whenever someone abstractly denies wrong doing and they are taking the "high road" you are dealing with a liar.

Here is another one along the same lines, "Did you cheat on me with Linda?"
"I could never do something so wrong in the eyes of God..."
(whenever someone uses God be on the lookout, that is another sign, more on that in another post.)

Here is another example from the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin:

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,The , July, 2001 by Joe Navarro, John R. Schafer
"The young mother leaned back and cleared her throat. Her eyes teared and her voice quivered as she explained how her baby disappeared. Her clasped hands trembled slightly and her feet pointed toward the door. Her demeanor appeared too subdued. Reluctant to call the mother a liar, the investigator asked her if she had a reason to lie. She answered, "I never lie. My mother taught me always to tell the truth." The investigator had seen and heard enough--he asked the woman to take a polygraph examination. During the postpolygraph interview, the woman confessed that she had suffocated her baby. Both her verbal and nonverbal behaviors had revealed the gruesome truth."◦

"You know I'd never do something that terrible to another human being."