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Sotomayor Explains "Wise Latina" Comment
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Jennifer Garner Shows Spontaneous Surprise
See how the mouth opens wide; eyes open up. It is clear she is happy by the shape of her mouth and the facial muscles in her cheeks.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Judge Sonia Sotomayor Shows us the Percision Grip
WASHINGTON - JULY 14: Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor answers questions from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) during the second day of her confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill July 14, 2009 in Washington, DC. Sotomayor faces a full day of questioning from Senators on the committee today. Sotomayor, an appeals court judge and U.S. President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, will become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court if confirmed. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
When someone is speaking and is showing you the precision grip it symbolically conveys that they are holding that concept in their hands. It reinforces what they are saying with great precision and accuracy. It is favorite among politicians and I have heard it called the politician's grip.
If you currently find yourself pointing as you are talking, it is much better to use this gesture, as people find pointing offensive.
If you see someone almost doing this, where the thumb and the forefinger almost touch (or are not together- in varying degrees) this is a clear signal of uncertainty. I see this among all types of people, but I especially notice it with lawyers who are defending those accused of crimes which is incredibility interesting (if the lawyer is incredibility confident- which most trial lawyers are- I have to think it could be a sign that the lawyer does not have confidence in their client's guilt or innocence depending on the situation and context).◦
Lying in Handwriting
One place where you can look is in the lower case "o" and "a" when searching for integrity and honesty.
There are many ways people can write the "o" and "a" and if you see huge inner loops this is a sign that a person is not trustworthy. You can also see this with hooks, or squiggles inside the oval.
Take a look at the following three examples:
It goes for your p's and q's, so mind your p's and q's... I am so sorry- I couldn't resist.
The cleaner the insides of these letters the more candid and blunt they are.◦
Roadside Crosses
As I have mentioned before on this blog, Roadside Crosses is released.
Look for this to be a movie in the future (about two years I would guess based on how long it is to put the right people together).
The main character is Kathryn Dance and the book covers a case lands on the desk of Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigations foremost body language expert.
On Simon&Schuster's website they have released an expert from the audiobook.
Click here to visit the website.◦
Victim or Faker?
There are times when someone accuses another of a terrible crime. I'd like to think someone wouldn't do such a terrible thing to another person. Unfortunately it does happen. Sometimes people want to be "the victim" because they like the attention they receive. Other times it is to hurt the other person. No matter the reason, it does happen.
We need to be able to determine the likely hood that the crime did or did not take place.
The below video is showing someone who was a victim. The crime was committed years ago, but the pain is still there. Watch it. Empathize with her pain. Try to understand it. This event will live with her for the rest of her life. I only hope she finds a way to find peace.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
One other gesture that is not shown in the video, in women, they will often place their hand in front of their neck, covering the space where their collarbone and neck meet. It is a reflex protective gesture.◦
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
How We Look at the Face
Prof Schyns said: “Facial expressions and the interpretation of them are a fundamental part of human communication and our study has revealed how the brain uses facial details in order to make crucial social judgements.
“Our study suggests that facial expressions co-evolved with the brain - the former to be deciphered, the latter to decipher. With time-resolved brain data, we reveal both how the brain uses different expressive features and how long it takes to process enough information for the critical social judgements we take for granted.”
There are six basic facial expressions: happy, fear, surprise, disgust, anger and sadness. All of these expressions have distinctive characteristics that the brain can easily distinguish between.
Volunteers in the study were shown each expression on 10 different faces, five male, five female, while brain-imaging equipment monitored how quickly different parts of the brain interpreted them.
The results showed that between 140-200ms of the picture being shown, an information processing mechanism starts independently in both left and right brain hemispheres, looking first at the eyes, then the rest of the face before zooming back in on specific features associated with the basic emotions.
By the end of this process, the brain has enough information to accurately predict the emotional state of the person displaying the facial expression.
To read the entire study, click here.
Abstract: Competent social organisms will read the social signals of their peers. In primates, the face has evolved to transmit the organism's internal emotional state. Adaptive action suggests that the brain of the receiver has co-evolved to efficiently decode expression signals. Here, we review and integrate the evidence for this hypothesis. With a computational approach, we co-examined facial expressions as signals for data transmission and the brain as receiver and decoder of these signals. First, we show in a model observer that facial expressions form a lowly correlated signal set. Second, using time-resolved EEG data, we show how the brain uses spatial frequency information impinging on the retina to decorrelate expression categories. Between 140 to 200 ms following stimulus onset, independently in the left and right hemispheres, an information processing mechanism starts locally with encoding the eye, irrespective of expression, followed by a zooming out to processing the entire face, followed by a zooming back in to diagnostic features (e.g. the opened eyes in “fear”, the mouth in “happy”). A model categorizer demonstrates that at 200 ms, the left and right brain have represented enough information to predict behavioral categorization performance.
Citation: Schyns PG, Petro LS, Smith ML (2009) Transmission of Facial Expressions of Emotion Co-Evolved with Their Efficient Decoding in the Brain: Behavioral and Brain Evidence. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5625. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005625◦
Obama Shows Open Palms
WASHINGTON - JULY 13: US President Barack Obama speaks to attendees in the Rose Garden of the White House on July 13, 2009 in Washington, DC. Obama was welcoming members of the Columbus Crew soccer team, Major League Soccer champions for 2008. (Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images)
Open palms is showing others you have nothing to conceal and creates a sense of honesty. If one, or both of the palms are facing up it is a good sign that you are hearing the truth.
Now, this is a well known trick among those who might be trying to deceive you- so if you are buying a car or being offered the deal of the century- look for other signs that put you on alert... The person showing palms up should be relaxed, and the palms up gesture should be smooth and natural.
WASHINGTON - JULY 13: Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor makes her opening statement during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee July 13, 2009 in Washington, DC. Sotomayor, an appeals court judge and U.S. President Barack Obama�s first Supreme Court nominee, will become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court if confirmed. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Here we see it again over at the capitol. Judge Sotomayor was very calm and relaxed, which is a clear sign, that shows she is confident, because it is rare for anyone to appear relaxed at any senate hearing... much less a supreme court confirmation hearing.◦
Statement Analysis Explained
Statement Analysis is now being used by the FBI, the Secret Service, and many other federal agencies; it is being used by law enforcement agencies and military agencies throughout the U.S., Canada, and Australia; by bank and insurance investigators; and by private industry.
Statement Analysis is a linguistic polygraph.
"Statement Analysis depends entirely upon analyzing written or verbal statements. The basic premise is that the structure and content of a subject's statement will reveal when there is an attempt at deception. We all write in different ways, with different characteristic choices of words, and what we use words for is to define our reality. When we lie, we're trying to juggle two things in our minds at the same time: the real events and the invented or disguised version of them. The language we use reflects that tension -- and when it does, the language we use does not follow our normal patterns." says Donald Bender a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in clinical and forensic statement analysis.
Statement Analysis looks at the words, tense, how the writer refers to themselves and others, to determine the likelihood of a truthful statement.
So often, we are looking for nonverbal behaviors that we do not adequately examine the words that are being said, and how they are being said. Investigators will often have several people in the interview room, each with a specific item they are focusing on for this very reason. It is hard to focus on both the noverbals and the words at the same time.
The author of the above book has a website where you can learn more about this concept at http://www.statementanalysis.com/.
Knowing this is critical to determining truthfulness; this needs to be a skill you develop.◦
Monday, July 13, 2009
Paul Ekman is ready to assign grades to the Fox drama he inspired
An article was published by the Washington Post today, July 13, 2009 called "On TV, reading between the lies" by Marc D. Allan.
"With the first season of “Lie to Me” completed, Paul Ekman is ready to assign grades to the Fox drama he inspired: A-minus for entertainment value, B-plus for realism."
Read On TV, reading between the lies◦
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