How To Leverage Nonverbal Communication

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. We're looking at data and privacy from the perspective of two generations.

Paige:

I'm Paige Biderman. I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I'm David Biderman, I'm the boomer. I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone, I'm a tech novice. In this podcast we'll be having conversations with cyber hackers, privacy experts, and guardians of security who can explain some of this to me.

Paige:

And Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

David:

Welcome to our podcast listeners. This is Disarming Data, where we talk to those in the field of data, engineering, psychology and other various skills. And today we're very honored to have Dr. Abbie Maroño with us, who is going to talk about nonverbal communication. I believe she's been a practitioner in the field of human behavior for, what? 19 years. You began publishing at a very young age, and you're now Director of Education at Social-Engineer, LLC. You have some other positions too, but I'll let you describe those. Welcome to Dr. Maroño. And Paige.

Paige:

We always like to just start by asking our guest where they grew up and how they got into what they're doing.

Abbie:

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I didn't start as a practitioner. I started in the field of academia and I published my first paper on non-verbals when I was 19. I haven't been in the field for 19 years. I'm only 25.

Paige:

[inaudible 00:02:02].

David:

You're kidding me.

Paige:

I know. I was like, she looks great.

Abbie:

I've been in the field for about eight years, but I started publishing when I was 19. Sorry, not eight years. I was really interested in nonverbal communication as an undergraduate when I first started. And pretty much as soon as I started as an undergraduate, it wasn't just reading the field. I wanted to be actively involved and I wanted to be part of the discovery. I started working with a lecturer of mine, and then we got involved with some X FBI agents, and that's where I met Joe Navarro. And then we published our first two papers and then I went on to do a PhD in nonverbal communication and information elicitation. This was at the University of Lancaster in the UK.

And then while I was still doing my PhD, I became a lecturer and I believe you call them professors here. I became a professor in psychology. And to say I'm a professor in psychology in the UK, it's like a huge promotion. And in here you just call lecturers professors. It's fantastic. And then I was pretty set. I bought my house in Upton, which is about an hour from London. I bought two cats. I settled and I thought I was going to be an academic for the rest of my life. And then I got approached by Chris Hadnagy, who is the CEO of Social-Engineer, which is a social engineering and information security company.

And he got hold of me through my contact, Joe Navarro, and he said, we are looking to hire a new employee and we need someone that works in human behavior. We need someone specifically with some expertise in non-verbals and informational elicitation. Does this sound like something you think you could do? And I said, well, that's the title of my thesis of my PhD. I could probably have some expertise in that. We met and it was just this perfect cohesive and perfect fit relationship. So now as you've said, I'm the Director of Education at Social-Engineer.

Paige:

Why do you think body language cues are so important to study? What is the importance of it and how can normal people use it in everyday life essentially?

Abbie:

Well, non-verbals are so important because we make our first judgment on people based on non-verbal communication. It's what we've evolved to do. It was our first language. We know in our evolutionary history, much before we communicate with speech, we communicated non-verbally. And we can see that because we know we've been cooperating and communicating long before we had a certain throat bone that allowed us to speak. It's hardwired in us to respond to non-verbal cues. For example, the cue of trustworthiness or judging someone trustworthy based on their behavior is one of the first judgments that we make of a person. We make the judgment in under a second, and that judgment is very resistant to change.

So if you want to build strong relationships with people, obviously you need to be trustworthy in who you are and you need to be kind and caring and a generally nice person. But if you are not able to express trustworthiness with your non-verbals, you're going to build resistance from that person before you even enter that conversation and try and prove yourself. So the goal of non-verbals, it's that nudge in the right direction, whether you are a teacher, a businesswoman, someone just wanting to build strong, healthy relationships, having an understanding of good non-verbal communication will help you do that.

Paige:

So if trustworthiness is judged in under a second, is it unconsciously that someone just judged, like I'll just see someone and I'll just make that judgment without even thinking about it sort of?

Abbie:

We can see it in brain chemistry as well. So we know that oxytocin is released when we judge someone as trustworthy. And when there is trust, there is more oxytocin. When we see non-verbal cues of trustworthiness, for example, when we see someone smile, we see a release of oxytocin. So it helps us build strong trusting relationships.

Paige:

I think it was your thesis I found, because it said Lancaster University at the top. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about it because it seemed really interesting. The clip gathering, it seemed of different politicians and criminals and the most common body language when someone's lying or telling the truth and how people pick up on it, I think was what I was reading a bit.

Abbie:

Okay. What I did at Lancaster is looking at how we can use non-verbal mimicry to create cooperation. The studies that I did a while ago, they were the first ones and they were at Lincoln University, but it might have just changed my affiliation. And those studies were looking at if we can see non-verbal cues to deception. I would put my hands up here, and I was 19 when I did these papers, and I was desperately trying to find non-verbal cues to deception. I really was so deep into that literature and I loved Lie to Me. I really wanted to do my PhD on that topic. But in doing that study or those couple of studies, it became very clear that there is no such thing as a non-verbal indicator of deception. There is no supportive literature. There are any cues that mean someone is lying.

You cannot find a single validated, robust evidence or study with robust evidence that there is a cue of deception in the literature anywhere. There are indicators that are more common in people who are deceptive than people who are being trustworthy and being truthful. But that doesn't mean that it's a cue to deception. What it is, it's a cue to the emotion related to being deceptive. So when people are deceptive, they're under more cognitive stress, they're under more cognitive load, they also have more negative emotions, so you're more likely to get certain cues. But it doesn't mean that that's always the case. If you believe your own lie, you don't have that same negative response.

So if you convince yourself you're lying, you're not going to have those non-verbal indicators of what some people consider indicators of deception because they're not indicators of deception. They're indicators of high distress and high discomfort typically associated with deception. And I fell into that rabbit hole and I really wanted to believe in the literature. And because it is a field that people just study and study and study and study, that you think, well, there's got to be nonverbal cues of deception. And we see it in popular magazines. We see it in blogs with no scientific backing. We see it in documentaries, we see it in experts. They do videos on YouTube, how to spot deception detection, and it's clickbait because there's no scientific evidence to back up that there is a single queue of deception.

And I contributed to that partially by naming my study, cues to deception or sequence analysis of deception. And what I should have called it was sequence analysis of high stress associated with deception.

David:

That's interesting. You're going to laugh. I just finished reading a book called Liespotting. Have you ever heard that book?

Abbie:

Yeah.

David:

A lawyer I know who's really a super good lawyer, he recommended reading that book. And I guess it's based on another psychologist who had all these images. I can't remember, what was his name? It was-

Abbie:

Paul Ekman.

David:

Yes. Exactly.

Abbie:

There's lots of misunderstandings and misuses of Paul Ekman's work. He talked about microexpressions. Microexpressions are described as these really quick expressions of true emotion. It's not that you can detect if someone's lying, it's you can detect a leakage of the true emotion. And if that true emotion isn't what they are, then covering up with or pretending that they feel, you can then identify the true emotion. But again, it's associated with expressions of emotion, so the emotion associated with the lie. But on the note of microexpressions, Ekman himself even said that they don't occur very often. And the idea that you can detect microexpressions through the human eye has been vastly debated.

And there have been studies looking at thousands of hours of footage that said there were seven microexpressions that occurred in it, because they don't occur often. And we've even used AI to try and detect them, and a lot of AI isn't able to. So the idea that somebody can be trained in microexpressions and then detect them is very flawed. We can be trained in emotion detection and expressions of emotion, and absolutely that makes us better at detecting emotions. Is it microexpressions? Possibly not. There's some debate in the literature, but I stand on the side that, no, it's just being very good at detecting emotional expressions.

And if someone is saying, I'm really, really happy, but you do see this true expression of, well actually that corner depresses, which are these bits on that side of our mouth, when they're pulled down that's very hard to fake. Usually how people fake is by trying to push their chin up to make it appear that it's using that muscle. When you see that true expression of emotion using those facial nerves, you could say, well, actually, that emotion of happiness is false. Doesn't mean that they are lying. People experience multiple emotions at once. If I say I'm really excited, maybe I am excited, but I'm also nervous. I'm also a bit sad because I'm leaving my family.

When I moved to Florida and I said I'm so excited, I was also really scared. I was also really sad to leave my family. I was also really happy. So you might see multiple expressions of emotion. And it doesn't mean I'm lying, it just means it's the normal human condition to feel multiple things at once.

David:

That's interesting. But you're saying if someone lies and and the lie causes them to feel stress, they're going to have an expression of stress that's visible and detectable.

Abbie:

You can absolutely detect high stress and high discomfort. And I've done research myself looking at distress and discomfort displays in the lower body and you can absolutely detect them. But the idea that you can detect the reason why, is flawed. If you come into a conversation and you're really happy, I can say, I can see that you're happy. I can't say exactly what made you happy. For example, if we're having a conversation and maybe you are lying, maybe you're not, and I can see stress, well, how do I know that it's because of what I'm telling you? Or maybe you've had a stressful day, maybe you had an argument with your partner. Maybe you are just worried about something completely unrelated and that's causing stress and that's leaking through your non-verbals.

I cannot detect the why. The non-verbals and training in non-verbal communication allows me to see that emotion, be aware of what it is that I'm seeing, because we're constantly seeing things that we don't really understand what it is that we're seeing. I can use that information and that awareness that, well, this is actually how you're truly feeling. And then I use that to guide my questioning to now make you open up to me and so that you can have now a chance to tell me the truth and tell me what it is that you are feeling and what's making you feel that way.

Paige:

I read you looked a lot into false confessions. Was this part of what you were seeing or were you looking more on the other side of what non-verbal mimicry cues are used by law enforcement?

Abbie:

So they're separate. A lot of my studies overlap and people get confused like, why did you study this and then study this completely unrelated topic? And I'm like, I like to be entertained in the literature and I like to dive into different fields. The literature on false confessions wasn't actually a non-verbal literature. It wasn't a non-verbal study that was looking at the sequence of how we can pressure people into false confessions and identifying false confession. The mimicry literature, that was based on how we can use our own body language to create cooperation with another person.

Because when I was starting my PhD and I wanted to do deception detection, my supervisor said to me, please don't, please don't do it. He said it's going to turn into a mess basically because we don't understand what it is that we're seeing. And he said, it's going to get very complicated. And he said, I would advise you to dive into something else. And that's when I really found the flaws in the literature and really took a step back because I wanted to believe you can detect deception. So when I said, okay, well ignore what I want and what is it that I'm actually seeing? And that's when I went into, okay, well what if we put down invasive techniques? What if we stopped observing for things?

Because when we think about non-verbals and forensics and non-verbals in general, we think about, okay, well what am I looking at? Rather than, well, what am I expressing? How am I influencing people? Particularly in the investigative interview room, because we always think about how to look for cues of this and look for cues of that. And I thought, well, what part do we play in this? And that's when I looked at non-verbal mimicry. Because if you look at how to influence cooperation, and that's really what investigative interviews are, you're not trying to get confession, you're trying to get that person to give you information. You want them to give you information so you can build a realistic story of what happened. You want them to cooperate with you and you want to cooperate with them.

It needs to be mutually beneficial. You need to show your help in them, they help you. I thought, well, how can I do that in a non-invasive way using my body language? And when you look at the literature, non-verbal mimicry is considered a cooperation enhancing mechanism. Because when people are in a very positive interpersonal interaction, you see more mimicry. And what you can do is use mimicry as a tool to influence cooperation. And that's what I did. And I looked at the psychological mechanisms that underpinned that effect. And I trained people in non-verbal mimicry in very, very strict conditions and very, very strict training. And we trained in certain body parts too.

So it's not just we'll mimic them and you say, okay, well what body parts do I mimic? How often? When do I mimic them? To what degree? After what time that they've shown them? I created these training protocols and then we used this training in an investigative interview mock setting. And then the people who were being mimicked without being aware that they were being mimicked, were much more cooperative.

David:

What specific gestures or features or things do you mimic to make people more cooperative?

Abbie:

So what we did is, because the literature mimicry is pretty much like, okay, well we told them to mimic, so they mimicked. What did they mimic? And they say, well, they tapped their foot. Okay, well why? Why the foot? Why the arms? Why this? And what we did is in the first study we used motion capture. I used Xsens motion capture suits, and it's not a suit. It's like these sensors that you put on the body and there's 17 of them, and then it creates a human body AI representation. So I can then assess automatically the natural mimicry that occurs between people. And I have three conditions. I use people with high closeness, low closeness, and no closeness, strangers, acquaintances, and romantic partners.

And the reason I did this is because mimicry occurs more often in close relationships and cooperative relationships. So I wanted to see, well, what parts of the body were mimicked in all conditions, but to a higher degree in the high closeness condition? Because that would tell me if I take those body parts and mimic them as a tool, that would help me facilitate closeness the most. And closeness in itself helps facilitate cooperation. We reversed engineered it. I put them in a laboratory and it was like this mock interrogation room, but what I got them to do is solve puzzles together while they were stood up. So they were already in this collaborative, cooperative environment.

And then I assessed for the naturally occurring mimicry across the body, and it was the lower body, for example, walking backwards and forwards and moving the legs had the highest degree of mimicry, and then the head and the torso and the arms went non significant. But when the arms were considered with the upper body, for example, if I moved my torso and my arms at the same person, it had an effect. If I just moved my arms it didn't. So we took these and then we created a protocol. I can't remember off the top of my head what I used, but I think I did walking backwards and forwards. So if the participant walked backwards and forwards, you mimic them. If they tapped their foot, you mimic tapping the foot. If they nodded their head, you nod your head. If they turned their body, you turned your body.

And then I did it in, and there was one other one that I can't remember exactly what we did. I think after I submitted my thesis, I shut it away for a while, you just need to step away from that for a bit. But what we did was then we had three mimicry conditions. So every time that behavior occurred, the confederate would mimic it. And then every time three of the five behaviors occurred, the other condition would mimic it. And then we did a non mimicry condition. We could not only assess if mimicry worked, but okay, well if we manipulate it, to what degree does it work? And when we manipulated it every time it occurred, it had a stronger effect on cooperation.

Now there's a lot of misperceptions about the training of nonverbal mimicry because when you are focused on your own behavior, say if I said to you, David, okay, during this whole interview you need to make sure that your posture is completely up, your head is tilted upwards and you are keeping positive continent. How difficult is that now for you going to be to focus throughout this whole interview because you're going to be so distracted, it's going to add cognitive load. And every time you are thinking of my answer and what to say to me, you are not going to be cognitively fully there because you're focusing on your own behavior.

So one of the issues with putting non-verbal mimicry in an investigative interview setting is if you say to someone every time this person mimics, you need to mimic them, or every time this person does this behavior, you need to mimic them. So that reduces the ability of the investigator to do a good investigation. But like any skill, you can train non-verbals to be almost automatic. It's like people with really good media training when they start out, they're not very good behind camera. And then it becomes second nature just like driving a car or riding a bike, you don't think about what your feet are doing, you just do it. You can do the same with non-verbals. You can train it like a skill that it becomes second nature, but it takes a long time.

I trained my confederates 24 hours per confederate, and that's 24 hours of training, half hour here, an hour here, half hour here. That's a lot of training in one non-verbal skill. But that's how long it took me because I trained them until it was automatic and 90% accuracy. So when people say, this is flawed if you put it in an investigative interview setting, absolutely it is if you don't train effectively. But it takes a lot of commitment. And this is what I say to people when, because I train people in non-verbals as a coach and they think they can have a lesson or watch a video, and then they have amazing non-verbal communication. And you think, no, it's a skill that you need to constantly perfect. It's something that you have to really, really work at until it becomes automatic.

And then you can have this really good non-verbal communication. Obviously you can improve all the way, but if you are thinking about what you're doing to any degree, it's going to affect your verbal abilities. It was a very, very long three and a half years of study, and I did four studies on this topic, three and a half years for the PhD, but it worked and it was very effective.

David:

That's really interesting. One thing we're taught, I'm a lawyer, when you're meeting prospective clients, you're taught to mimic their gestures or mimic what they do, the way they pull themselves with the thought that that might make them more receptive to you. I don't know. Is that true?

Abbie:

Yeah, absolutely. It does help facilitate rapport. There are some caveats though. For example, like I said with the arms, because we use our arms a lot to speak, that can override the effect of mimicry. So if you are using your arms a lot and I'm mimicking them, what I found is that it was non-significant, that didn't have an effect on closeness and that didn't have an effect on cooperation. So if you haven't tested it like we tested it and you just thought, well, I'll mimic the arms, you might be doing yourself a disservice. And what we do know as well is if people know they are being mimicked, it has the reverse effect. So in our study we had to train very cautiously and after every participant was tested, we then asked them after they've been paid, so there was no motivation for them to say yes or no.

We asked them if they were aware that they were being mimicked after we told them the true reason for the study. And if people had said yes, we got rid of their data. But because of the training that we had, nobody said yes. Nobody knew that. And actually usually what you find in psychological studies is people like to say, well, I knew what was going on all along, even when they don't. So for it to be that way, that nobody said that they knew what was going on, we knew that we did a good job. So if you just mimic people and say, okay, well every time they scratch the head, I'm going to scratch my head. That's a really overt gesture. So if you mimic their posture, they're less likely to notice. If you mimic their arm movements constantly, they're more likely to notice and think they're mimicking me. Why are they copying me?

And it can reduce likability, it can reduce rapport. But also the timing is important. So if you mimic within one to three seconds after they do something, it becomes more obvious. We've got this sweet part, sweet spot of five plus or minus two. So if you do it within three to seven seconds, it's a bit more subtle and more effective. If you do it after seven to 10 seconds, the effect stops carrying. So if you do a behavior and then 10 seconds later I do it's no longer mimicry, that effect doesn't stand anymore. But if you do it straight after you do it, then it becomes really obvious that that's what they're doing. And if you're having an interaction with someone and they're copying all of your behaviors, you don't think, wow, I really like this person. You think, why are they copying me?

Paige:

That's really interesting.

David:

What are other non-verbal expressions other than mimicry?

Abbie:

One that I love is, one of the strongest predictors of perceived trustworthiness is emotional expressivity. So if people are generally emotionally expressive, so if you've ever had an interaction with someone and their face is just very blank, like if we did the whole podcast and the whole podcast, I just kept this one expression and I just talk to you like this and I say, trust me. And I talk about my research, I talk about my work and my face is so unexpressive, that reduces perceived trustworthiness. But people who are very expressive are perceived as more trustworthy. And we can understand it from an evolved nature because people who are more expressive are more likely to be showing you how they truly feel than people who hide it. Because if they're not being expressive, it's difficult for you to judge how it is that they're feeling.

But it's not just being positively expressive, because obviously that's important, people who are expressive, but are only ever say scowling or reminiscing, they're probably not going to be perceived as trustworthy. It's generally positive countenance, but it's also consistency and appropriateness with the context. So if you are telling me you've had a really bad day and I'm like, I'm so sorry and that's so awful, and I have this big grin on my face, you'd say, well, her apology is not sincere. So it's got to be consistent. If I'm talking about I went through this terrible event, my face should show that. And if you're telling me about something you went through, my face should show empathy. And if I'm talking about a great day I've had, I should show happiness. If I say I was surprised, I should show surprise. So it's about being expressive but also being consistent.

And the reason that I love this study is because it's one of the most highly supported studies in terms of perceived trustworthiness, along with the smile. But people think that when they are in negotiations or in a business meeting, if I put on my poker face I'm really going to get the best results because they're not going to know how I feel. Exactly. They're not going to know how you feel. We can't judge perceived trustworthiness or we can't judge trustworthiness if we can't see emotional expressivity. So what they're going to do is say he's not trustworthy, which is going to make them resistant. The key component of cooperation, which is the point of a negotiation, the point of these meetings is to get that person to cooperate with you. You want it to be mutually beneficial. You want everybody to feel good, is you need to be trustworthy, they need to trust you.

You would not want your hands in the money of somebody you do not trust. So you want that person to trust you. And if you are saying, well, I'm going to bring my poker face to this negotiation, you are already doing yourself a disservice before you step into it. And actually human beings are hardwired to want to cooperate. It's not that they're stepping into the meeting like, well, I don't want to be cooperative, I want to get the best deal for me and I want them to be put out. We have a reward network in the brain and it reaches from the striatum to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. And what happens is when we perceive a reward in the future, this network is activated. And when we are being rewarded, so if I knocked on your door and said, here's $1,000, that network would be activated because that's great.

And if I took $1,000, that network would not be activated because it's not rewarding. When we are cooperating with someone who is cooperating with us or cooperating with someone we believe will cooperate with us, that network is activated, because it feels good, it feels rewarding to be cooperative naturally. Now, if we cooperate with that person and they are uncooperative with us or we perceive them to be unfair, that network is activated when we think of them being punished. So if they are non-cooperative, we perceive it rewarding to punish them. That's not someone that you're going to want to enter a business relationship with. That's someone you are going to want to stop that negotiation and you want the worst deal for them.

So the best thing we can do is put down that poker phase, come in with good nonverbals, recognize that actually the way to get information from people is to understand the fact that people are naturally cooperative. People want to give you information, you just need to be someone they feel safe to give that information too. So you need to work on being perceived as more trustworthy and being more trustworthy. And then everybody benefits. But we just tend to dive into nonverbals of, okay, well how do I detect deception? And if you are looking for deception on a person, you're going to be suspicious, you're going to put them on edge, you're going to build resistance. We're going to put the negative side of nonverbals to the side and say, well actually how does the brain work? How do human beings actually work? And then we step into the negotiation with that knowledge and we can create cooperation and we can create trust.

David:

We do if you're in trial or when you're trying a case against the other side, it's usually, well, of course, it's by definition adversarial. So it's not necessarily a cooperative relationship. And so it's very hard to try to settle a case with somebody that you've been trying a case again, say in the middle of the trial, you want to, let's try to settle it. It's very hard. So what a lot of law firms do or good law firms do, is they'll have a separate negotiator because the people in the trial, they just can't negotiate. Anyway, that's was my observation.

Abbie:

And that's a great observation. And if you know that you are somebody that they're not going to feel comfortable with and you know that because of the position that you are in, for example, people in really high power positions a lot of the time can be perceived as quite threatening. And when we see someone as a threat, what happens is it increases our stress levels and it increases our cortisol and it makes us resistant to them. And it actually stops us being able to access this rich quality information, which is one of the reasons in high stress environments that people don't give accurate information. You have an argument and then you think back, I wish I said this. Why couldn't I access that information? And it's because too much cortisol in the brain stops us being able to retrieve our memories as well because our neurons are overcharged.

So if you know that you are in a position that's naturally going to create that stress for someone, having another person for them to then put that energy into and feel more comfortable with is a brilliant strategy. Because as trustworthy as you are, and you can be trying to facilitate co cooperation, if you know that the cards don't play in your favor and you think, well, I'm just naturally going to build resistance, what I can do is give this person a safe space in another person and make it their duty to try and get that information. That is a great strategy.

Paige:

So a big part of it is consistency. This is a little different, but I went to Poland and I was working with Ukrainian refugees there. It was difficult because obviously they're very upset and very, I think they've obviously lost a lot of trust in people, so it was hard to know how to meet them where they were at. Is it just being super consistent with any person despite where, and that will build trust over time?

Abbie:

Trust is different than trustworthiness. And this often gets confused, because you can be trustworthy and not have trust. You can have trust and not be trustworthy, but if you are untrustworthy, that trust is not going to take long to crumble. But trustworthiness is a precursor for trust. It doesn't mean that you will get trust, but it means that you are more likely to get trust. So you need to be trustworthy but also appear trustworthy. And if you appear trustworthy, you have great non-verbals, you seem really trustworthy on the surface, but you aren't, and you don't actually put the energy into being a kinder person. You just think, well, if I'm perceived as a kinder person, fine. The longer you interact with that person, it's not going to take long before they see, well actually their long-term behaviors don't match up with that perception that I had. It's inconsistent.

So that trust that you've built through perception is going to crumble. You've got to have both. You need the nonverbals, because if you are trustworthy but you don't appear trustworthy, well then people might not trust you. Now you can be as trustworthy as you want, but if you don't look it and you don't appear it, again, you are setting a barrier for yourself. You've got to have both to build that relationship. But you can't just expect, I'm going to perfect my nonverbals of trustworthiness and everybody's going to trust me. Maybe they will for that first 30 seconds. Maybe they will for that first 30 minutes. The second that your behavior doesn't match up, say you have an interview and you talk about how you are always so on time and productive, the second you turn up five minutes late, it's ruined, doesn't matter about that perception that's built or how honest you appeared or how approachable you appeared.

If your behavior isn't trustworthy, isn't consistent, doesn't matter because it's broken. You've got to have both. But that nonverbal perception of trustworthiness is really important. It's really, really important, because it creates a willingness to trust or a resistance to trust. And then your actual trustworthiness can come into play.

Paige:

That's really interesting. It's interesting because people say not to curse, but people always say, I have resting bitch face. And so they're always like, you're so much nicer than I thought you would be. And I'm always like, I don't even know I'm doing that. I don't know that that's what my constant face is like. And I know other people that obviously have that, but is it just working on smiling more essentially?

Abbie:

Funny story on that, I have the same affliction. Absolutely I do. And when I was an undergrad, I worked at restaurants and coffee shops and all sorts, and one of the restaurants I worked at was Nando's and I was put as front of house. So I greeted staff. They moved me and made me one of the cooks because customers complained that I looked too miserable. And I said, I'm not miserable. That's just how my face looks. That is just how I look. And it was the same anytime people would speak to me and they'd go, wow, this is the first time I've ever seen you smile. And as soon as I've talked, they'll see that I was really okay and I wasn't miserable, but I got moved because it didn't look good to have someone greeting customers that constantly have this resting bitch face.

I had to work on that. And it is very difficult because like I said, nonverbals is a skill that takes time to learn. And it's not about, okay, well this behavior is what I should show, so I'm going to learn it. It's about adapting your natural behaviors. So you don't just start with, okay, I need to show all of these behaviors and then suddenly become a completely different nonverbal person. It's about saying, okay, well this is what's comfortable to me. Let me make this minor adjustment till it becomes automatic. Once I'm comfortable, let me make this minor adjustment. Because if I say, okay, you need to keep your head up, you need to keep your posture, you need to do this and this and this and this, you're not going to do any of it. You need to focus on things that are actually obtainable, work on them, perfect them, move to the next.

And it's a lot of back and forth because you think you've done it really well. And then someone says, are you okay? And you think, oh God, I'm doing it again with my face. So then you have to work on it again and you realize, okay, I need to go back and perfect it slightly.

Paige:

How long does it take on average for someone to change their natural nonverbals?

Abbie:

That's a difficult question, because I trained some people who are almost there. And it's like any skill, some people are much quicker than others. Some people you train them in a couple weeks and then it's a whole new person, and you're like, wow, does this is feel natural? And they go, yeah, it feels really natural. Actually it feels better. I just didn't know how to present myself. Whereas other people you see them in a month and they're like, I'm really struggling with this. And they just need a bit more guidance because depends on what your natural behaviors are and what your natural inclination is. I'd say on average it doesn't take people a huge amount of time, people improve almost instantly.

It just takes a long time to get to where they want to be. And I don't think anybody is where they want to be anyway, everybody can still improve, but to put a number on it or say you'll have this many sessions and then you'll be this great. I think, again, flawed thinking because human beings are so individual and that's the beauty of it. Good nonverbal communication typically looks a certain way, but it looks like variations of that good behavior because it depends on that person's natural behaviors too.

David:

So how does Paige stop the resting bitch expression?

Abbie:

Every time I was in a meeting I reminded myself of, okay, how would I feel if that's what their face looked like? And it was like, how would I respond to someone and what effect would that have on me if they looked this way? So every meeting, at the beginning of the meeting I'd say to myself, okay, remember to smile, remember to smile. And then I just practiced. And it was really uncomfortable, but I recorded myself having fake meetings and watched myself and I recorded myself reading a script, because when you're reading a script, you're focused. So I kept recording myself reading this script and reading different articles and blogs until while I was talking my nonverbals felt more comfortable to be smiling and to be positive while I was talking rather than that natural reading something.

And my face is like this. Whenever I was reading out an order, I was always reading it like this because I was concentrating on the words. And then it takes a bit of time to be like, okay, I need to do both. And it's only when you see yourself doing it, you are like, wow, that really is not a nice thing to look. And someone looks really miserable and really angry and you think I wasn't angry reading that.

David:

That's pretty interesting. We do that. I hate to keep talking about the law, but we do that when we try to get witnesses ready for a deposition or something. We'll videotape them and then we'll show them the videotape and then they can see how they project.

Abbie:

It can be really confronting, can't it? When you think, oh well this look really, really natural, and you watch it back and say, I look like a robot, really uncomfortable. And you think while you're doing it you look really fluid. And then you watch it. And I think when need those confronting moments, it's like when you listen to a speech and you think, God, that was awful, but I thought I was killing it at that time. And those are the moments that really make you think and really make you pull back and practice. And I had one of those when I was doing a podcast and I came from academia, so I thought I knew about, okay, well I know all of the information, but I never implemented it because I wasn't a practitioner.

And then I watched myself on a couple of podcasts and I read some of the comments and they were like, she says the right stuff. She doesn't show it. How we're supposed to believe someone that doesn't utilize their own information? And I had to step away. I stopped doing some media because I thought I don't actually know how to present myself, I just know the information of what to implement. I had to work on my own. And that's when I started coaching other people once I started feeling more comfortable with my own, because it is a very different skillset than understanding the knowledge.

Paige:

Are certain nonverbals just attached to certain emotions? For example, how would someone's nonverbal present empathy for example?

Abbie:

We have a facial nerve which is connected to the brainstem. So when we feel a certain emotion, we have these certain behaviors that go with it and we naturally recognize them. For example, you know a smile goes with happiness. You know that it doesn't go with sadness. With empathy, you see the eyebrows come down, you do see the lip corner, the presses come down and you see the eyes widen or pull in the middle. So you naturally recognize that expression. A lot of the time we miss label expressions. So we are naturally very good at recognizing behaviors, but not always, because we are biased. So if I go in and say, well, he's going to be in a bad mood with me, or he doesn't agree with me, I might misinterpret some of his expressions. He might be very quizzical, a bit confused, and then I say, well he doesn't agree with me.

That's him being resistant, because I believe that he will be. When we read an email and we read it with our emotions, we are likely to read it slightly wrong than it was intended. And so much miscommunication happens over text because we read things with our own emotional bias. And we can do that with nonverbals too. For example, if someone's turning away and we thank God they turn their body away from me because they're not interested, when they're turning away because maybe they're distracted by something or maybe they're really stressed and they don't feel well and we read their behaviors as resistance to us rather than noticing the emotion and asking. So understanding and training in nonverbal communication, reading the literature and reading, okay, well what emotional expressions am I actually seeing?

I would recommend go and read Paul Ekman's work, because there is obviously a lot of debate on how accurate these emotional expressions are of the stereotypical expressions, and I wouldn't recommend microexpressions, but do look into expressions of emotion, look into body language of emotion, look into what does the literature say about confidence and go to the academic literature, not to blogs, not to popular blogs, not documentaries, not published books that don't go through a university peer publishing, because people can write what they want in them. They're entertaining, but go to the actual academic literature and see what's there. Go to university lectures and Yale puts their lectures online. Harvard put a lot of their lectures online, and this information, accurate scientific information is available to us.

We just have to look for the right sources. Because if you are looking at a bad source, say I go get all of my information from blogs and I say, well this expression means happiness, this expression is empathy. But that person that wrote it has miscommunicated and misunderstood the literature, I'm now going to have an incorrect interpretation. So go to the correct sources, check it with Peer Review, check it with Validated and obtain the information that way. But I would start with Paul Ekman studies, because he really was the founder of a lot of what we know about emotional expressivity and whether or not you agree with what's there, you need to understand that to then understand the development. If you are interested in non-verbals at all, the one book that I say everybody has to read is The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. It was really the first book on nonverbals and there's such a rich source of information in there.

Paige:

Did they find that we have similar nonverbals to animals?

Abbie:

To a degree, to a degree. For example, dogs, Darwin focused a lot of his work on dogs because that's what made him realize that they have certain indicators of certain behaviors.

Paige:

Really?

Abbie:

So he watched his dog a lot. And his dog when he would greet other dogs would show flanks and turn to the side to show he wasn't a threat. And then they would have a friendly interaction. And if they showed them their side, they're opening themselves up to attack of another doc. When they did that, no attack occurred. It was like a friendly hello. We do a similar thing with our necks. So we tilt our head to the side. It's this head tilt to show I'm trustworthy, I'm not a threat, because the neck is a very vulnerable part of the body. We protect our neck from predators. We look back at our ancestors, there was threat of saber-toothed tigers and predators. If they get us by the neck, they kill us. So when we show one neck and we do this head tilt, it shows I'm exposing a vulnerable part of my body to you. So I'm not here to threaten.

And it is perceived as a really warm, inviting gesture. Obviously the fact that our bodies are built differently than animals mean that we have different vulnerabilities and obviously physiology plays a large part into it. Like our fight or flight response, when we are scared, our blood flow goes to our feet. So it's why the feet move very quickly. We turn our feet when we want to get away. When we are angry, our blood flow comes up to our arms and our chest, which is why you see that big people push their chest out. Well that's where their blood flow is going. They're getting ready for a fight. So physiology does play a part in non-verbals too. And that is also determined by evolution.

Paige:

That's so interesting. So it's not necessarily when they talk about, I always joke because I don't go for runs anymore. I was like, well, if someone was chasing me, my adrenaline would kick in. But it's a big part of it is blood flow going to my feet essentially.

Abbie:

When we are under stress, our fight to flight instinct kicks in and our hypothalamus goes, there's a threat. It alerts pituitary glands. Our pituitary glands then release ACTH and release cortisol. So what happens is then we flood with cortisol and adrenaline and then our heart rate increases, our digestive system stops working as well. We want to make ourself lighter and we're ready to go. Because when we have ACTH released, that then prepares us to start releasing cortisol and to start releasing adrenaline. And those are the two chemicals that we really, really need to amp ourself up. If you are going to run, you want your body to be in a state where your blood flow is increasing, your heart rate is increasing.

This is why obviously chronic stress is really negative, because you're in this state of excitation, whereas acute stress, so you see someone behind you and then your hypothalamus kicks in and you go, that is lifesaving. But if you perceive this long-term chronic stress, that has an effect. But you also see nonverbal associates of say long-term chronic stress, which is also associated with depression. And you do see associated nonverbal behaviors with certain mood disorders.

Paige:

Because high cortisol levels a lot of the times go together with depression, right?

Abbie:

Long-term high cortisol. Cortisol is so necessary for us, it's part of our natural stress response, is lifesaving. And if we had no cortisol, we wouldn't be able to make any memories, because our neurons are electric. We need that electrical impulses, we need them to have enough energy to pass on signals. And cortisol is a big part of that. Too much or not enough means it can't do its job properly. Not enough, you have no stress whatsoever, they're so undercharged. If you have too much charge, then they are too charged to pass on that information and it's too much excitation. The idea that we need no stress at all is incorrect. Our body functions in a way to create homeostasis and to keep itself, that's why we have the synthetic and the parasynthetic nervous system. So we amp up and then when the stress is gone we calm down and that cortisol remains back to its optimum, just like adrenaline goes back to its optimum.

Paige:

Have they found that people that have chronic high cortisol levels when they're in a dangerous situation where normally fight or flight would kick in, it doesn't kick in because they just are constantly having the high cortisol levels anyway?

Abbie:

If you look at people with PTSD and people with chronic stress, particularly PTSD, because that is where their fight or flight instinct has really gone AWOL, what you see is this kind of freeze or constant freezing collapse. And there's research if anyone's interested in this, on the polyvagal theory. It's probably not the right theory for this podcast as it gets really clinical. But if you aren't interested in this, I'd say to go to the polyvagal theory. But when people are in this constant state when they have PTSD or they're very, very constantly over excitation, their response to stress can be very minimal and can just be this collapsed state where you think there's going to be an emotional trigger, but it's just not occurring and we have fight, flight or freeze. And they stay in that and it goes into this collapse and it is really, really sad to see, because the body is overworked so much that it can't work anymore.

Paige:

That's so interesting. Because I did know that it used to, in recent years they have added freeze to the fight, flight.

Abbie:

Fight or flight response is what everybody's comfortable, but it's a fight, flight or freeze response. So if there's a predator, do you instantly react? Or for a second maybe there isn't a predator or you think there might be, sometimes you need to freeze and think, okay, well if I move, will it attack me? You need to freeze to consider and then go. It's fight, flight or freeze response that we found.

David:

Before we leave you, you got to tell us about what your company does, Social-Engineer, LLC. We forgot to ask.

Abbie:

Yes. I get so much into the research and being an academic background, I always just love to dive into the psychology and I forget to talk about the practical stuff often. I just like information for information sake, My boss is always telling me, Abbie, you need to talk about practical stuff. So what our company does is we work in social engineering and information security. There is a constant threat of social engineering. So you get a fraudulent phone call or a fraudulent email and it tricks you into thinking that it's not fraudulent and then you give them your information. What we do is we want to protect people from that. So companies will hire us to social engineer their staff and their company, so we can then write a report on how we got their information.

We're not interested in actually stealing their financiers or stealing their money or anything like that, but we prove that we can and we show to them how we did it and we write them a report of all of their vulnerabilities and then we teach them how to mitigate that risk. And what I do for them is I implement the science. It's all based on scientific principles and psychology of influence and trustworthiness and nonverbals and so forth. I implement the science into what we do to make sure that we are the most effective we can be. The company is amazing. I love what we do because we're ethical. We know that things like instilling fear into people is effective to get their data.

We don't do that. We use pro-social influence. We would never use those negative tactics that actual attackers use. We teach people about those tactics, we teach them how to recognize dangerous manipulation, but we don't use that to get that information and expose their vulnerabilities to them. Not at all. We use the positive social influence and then we write a report and teach them how to protect themselves.

David:

Wow. So this would be like preventing hackers from coming into your company?

Abbie:

It's also like physical.

David:

Oh really?

Abbie:

If have a building that's very secure, you keep a lot of information on site. One thing that is a threat to your company is say someone is going to pretend to be a workman, someone is going to pretend to be an employee, or someone's going to pretend to be a handyman and get in. It's all about how do I appear like I should be here? I pretend that I'm someone that belongs here and make people think I am. We will simulate that too. We'll have our staff break into buildings and break into places and put USB keys. It's not got any malicious technology on it, but we put it in to show that we did and say, this is what an attacker could have done. This is how we did it. This is how you now protect yourself from people like us, but the bad guys.

It's a lot of fun. And actually next week I have a first in-person training session, because like I said, I just implement the science. I don't do the physical break-ins or the actual data collection. And I get to do that for my first time next week.

David:

That's great. Wow. And all over the country, all over the world?

Abbie:

All over the world. All over the world. Most of our clients are in the US but we've got some coming up in the UK and my boss travels all over the place and coming back with these crazy stories of what they've done and things I probably can't mention on here.

David:

Is there an increasing need for that?

Abbie:

Absolutely. Everybody thinks that, oh well it's just the big companies that are under threaten, it's not me. Well, how many of us have had fraudulent phone calls or emails? And everybody that has a business or any bank account, any money in their bank is at risk. Anyone that has any information that's secure, could harm you, could harm your family, could harm your business. You are at risk. All you have to do now is just look in the news and type the word fraud in and it is everywhere. And they use your information that is online and we live online. Our whole lives are online, so if anybody wants our social security number or anybody wants to know anything about us, if they know how to get it online, they can then create a profile of what this person is, build a fake identity so they know how to appeal to me, and then use that to influence me.

What they do is they create a virtual profile of who you are based on your information, and they create fake characters. They'll phone you up as a person that they're not, they're pretending to be someone, because they're using the psychological principles of who you are and how to appeal to you, to now get you to be convinced that they are who they say they are and to get you to trust them. And it's so easy to do now because all of our lives are online. We teach people how to recognize that and how to protect their data, how to protect themselves, how to protect their companies.

Paige:

Just real quick, a lot of younger people listen to this podcast, so everyone's on the apps like the dating apps like Hinge and Bumble, and there's a lot of catfishing that goes on in the apps. Have you studied any of the signs that the person that you're talking to isn't real? Because so many of my friends actually have been catfished. It's way more common than someone would think.

Abbie:

We put so much on those dating sites, we answer questions about ourselves and that's a sweet spot for attacker because they'd say, well, how do I appeal to this person? Well, they've told me exactly what they want, exactly what they like and exactly what they're looking for and things about themselves. They can create very easy profiles to attack you. Really the only way to know for certain is to video call that person. If all of their pictures, I have seen, one of the reasons that I stepped off of social media was because there were multiple fake accounts of me and because I lived online, they were very convincing. I thought that was me and I was thinking, I don't have this profile and on all kinds of sites, but the information's out there. People can build these very realistic, even in full Instagram accounts and Twitter accounts and dating profiles and profiles on sites that you really don't want your pictures on.

It's nothing you can do. It does look like you and it seems like you. Video call that person because that's the quickest way to see if they are who they say they are, and don't put yourself in situations where you're going to be alone with them straight away. And that's usually the first thing people do when they go on dates. We have this come over and watch Netflix generation, it's very dangerous because there are dangerous people online. I know I sound like a mother saying that, but it's the only thing we really can do. Have public dates and make sure you video call that person, you see them, so you can identify that person is that person in their pictures. You are able to have interactions with them publicly before you put yourself in a dangerous situation. And really that is all we can do in that situation to protect ourselves.

Paige:

That would make sense. So no Netflix and chill on the first dates.

Abbie:

Not the first date. It's up to them, but I would suggest safety first.

David:

That's scary. I don't know. Anyway, I would not go on one of those.

Paige:

You've been married for many years.

David:

Okay. Okay. One other question. So suppose you were talking to a young person who was thinking about going into psychology. What would you say to them and what would you say you ought to do and what are the benefits and what are the risks, what are the rewards?

Abbie:

I would say psychology is the best field in the world. I'm biased, but I think it's just the most exciting field, because whatever you want to go into, it applies. No matter what business you go into. If you work with people or work with anybody that works with people or have any kind of relationship with people, psychology will benefit you. But it's very difficult because human beings are complicated and people often step into psychology thinking that it's going to be a really easy subject and isn't. It's very, very difficult, but it's so rewarding. My suggestion would be to anybody thinking about psychology, do it. It's amazing.

David:

Right. That's good.

Paige:

Well, we really appreciate you coming on and taking the time.

David:

Great. Dr. Maroño. It was great. It was great. We always ask one question, which is, during COVID, how did you make it during the isolation? Did you read books? Did you watch videos, podcasts? What was your best coping mechanism, I guess?

Abbie:

I bought two cats.

Paige:

My dad has a bunch of cats. He is like the cats in our backyard at their home. Chickens grace.

David:

You don't have to buy.

Abbie:

I was never lonely again. Since I got the cats I've never been lonely. But animals are amazing for mental health. They even prescribe animals to people with PTSD a lot of the time, because of the physiological effect that it has. That was my coping mechanism and it worked really well for me.

David:

That's great. Did you bring them to Florida from the UK?

Abbie:

Yes, I did.

David:

Come on.

Abbie:

I bought them when I was a lecturer and still in COVID, and I relocated to Florida and I did bring both my cats with me. It was an interesting flight.

David:

I can imagine. They were on-

Abbie:

They went in the cabin with me.

David:

Were they quiet?

Abbie:

No.

David:

Oh no.

Paige:

That's what happens when I fly with my dog. He's just like whining the whole flight and I just have to look around and be like, sorry, there's nothing I can do.

David:

That's pretty good. Well, again, you don't have to buy a cat if you live where I live. They just come right up to your back door and we can't get rid of them. All right. Well, Dr. Maroño, this is great. Thank you so much for your time and it just was a great conversation and we look forward to staying in touch.

Paige:

Thank you so much.

Abbie:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.