Unveiling The Truth - by Joe Navarro, M.A.
At the height of the Cold War, an ex-Army soldier came under investigation for espionage. During lengthy interviews by FBI agents, he willingly implicated himself but refused to name others involved. For days, investigators went round and round with him, and yet the soldier would not reveal his still-active accomplices.
At the next meeting, the soldier was presented with thirty-two 3 x 5 cards, each containing the name of a fellow soldier who had access to the compromised secrets, but were not thus far implicated. Each card was momentarily shown to the soldier for any comments he was willing to make regarding these individuals. As the soldier viewed each card and remarked, the investigating agent was able to observe the orbits of the eyes, as well as pupil changes at close proximity. At the conclusion, the FBI agent thanked the soldier and left. Two days later, the agent returned to the interview carrying the military records of two individuals. When confronted with the files, the surprised soldier finally admitted their involvement with him in the espionage conspiracy.
What the soldier did not realize, as I noted in What Every Body is Saying, was that when he had seen the names of his two accomplices on the flash cards, his eyebrows had arched slightly in recognition, and then his pupils constricted with some slight squinting, an indication of concern. By relying on the known tells of discomfort (in this case: pupil constriction, squinting), the FBI agent was able to positively identify the two conspirators who later confessed to both Army and FBI investigators of their complicity (Navarro 2008, 173).
Nonverbals and Deception – The Truth
By now most people know that body language can be helpful in detecting deception. But what most people, including law enforcement officers don’t realize is that most of us are not very good at it. In fact, all the research points to the fact that most of us, including your author here, is no better than chance at detecting deception. Even the truly gifted barely rise to the sixty percentile in accuracy. So what are we to do?
I think it comes as a surprise to many people that when I was in the FBI I did not solely focus on deception (I assumed most people would lie to me), but rather, I concentrated on developing lead information and unveiling that which was being obfuscated.
I find, even today, too much time is wasted on trying to determine deception when other information which is being withheld may be of greater value. Parents, even business people doing “due diligence” can get sidelined trying to determine veracity when through nonverbal communications you can determine more accurately what is problematic, at issue, or is being concealed, minimized, or altered.
Putting Our Brains To Work
To use nonverbals for this task, requires an understanding of the workings of the brain and, in particular, the brain region known as the limbic system.
Over millions of years, our brains evolved a very elegant system for dealing with threats, danger, and emotions, called the limbic system, about which Gavin DeBecker, Daniel Goleman, and Joseph LeDoux have written extensively (see bibliography below). The limbic system serves as our early warning mechanism, in part to assure our survival as well as to deal with our sentiments. The limbic response to threats or to other things that trouble us consists of the freeze, flight, or fight mechanism often erroneously over-simplified as the fight or flight response. Additionally, some type of pacifying behavior typically follows a limbic response, which is why children cry and want to be held when they are suddenly frightened (Navarro 2007, 141-163).
The limbic region of the brain keeps us alive by reacting very effectively to threats or emotional events and then by channeling what we feel and sense into outward nonverbal messages (Panksepp, 1998, 33). For example, a baby who doesn’t like a certain food will have a limbic reaction that manifests to the mother as distancing from the food, grimacing, and tightening or pursing of the lips. Similarly, a person who is confronted by a snarling dog will have limbic reactions such as holding still and not moving, running if chased, and then fighting the dog if required. In each case (freeze, flight, fight), the confronted individuals reveal what they are sensing nonverbally through displays of inactivity, concern, fear, anger, despair, or resolve (Navarro 2008).
For millions of years before humans communicated through spoken language, a threat to one individual (such as rotten food, a snake, or a tiger) was a threat to all, and so our bodies evolved outward displays of emotions, discomfort, or danger to communicate what we perceive in conjunction with our brain’s limbic responses (Navarro 2007, 141-163).
Limbic responses, which are in essence emotional responses, are in fact universal (Ekman 2003, 21). When we see furrowing of the brow, the wide eyes of fear or recognition, clenching of jaws, the tightening of face and neck muscles, lip compression, a hard swallow, or a heaving chest, we can have confidence that the person is displaying the nonverbals of distress and discomfort.
Limbic responses apply across a broad spectrum of encounters, from bad food, to someone confronting us in an alley, to arguments with our loved ones, even to specific words (Vrij, 2003, 22-23). In the criminal arena, for example, for the innocent and honest, certain words and objects do not have the same weight as they do for someone who is complicit or knowledgeable with regard to a crime (Navarro 2003). An investigator asking an innocent person if he owns a Smith & Wesson revolver will not have the same impact as asking the identical question of a person who has used a Smith & Wesson revolver to kill someone. When the brain hears the question, the nonverbals of these two individuals (the innocent and the guilty) will be different, even without answering the question. For the guilty these words have a different weight; they in fact represent “a threat” that to the innocent means nothing. This would be like telling someone at home watching TV that an airline flight somewhere has been canceled; it is of no consequence to the individual, but not so to the person awaiting the arrival of a loved one.
As an interviewee hears questions, verbal cues will arouse the limbic system and the signs of distress will begin to manifest immediately. These signs principally include avoidance by changing the subject, remaining very still, showing little hand or arm movement, or foot withdrawal, distancing or leaning away, closing of the eyes, or pointing the feet towards an escape route. Further discomfort may be shown by a quick rubbing of the forehead as the question is pondered, massaging of the front of the neck with the fingers, the disappearance of lips and tightening of jaw muscles, rubbing of hands with interlaced fingers, or the squinting of the eyes (Navarro 2010, 19-78).
As the distress passes, the person will then pacify in some way (think of a child sucking his thumb after he falls and cries) by exhaling through puffed cheeks, or doing more hand to body touching, such as neck touching, neck massaging, temple rubbing, rubbing hands together, lip licking, lip biting, brushing pants with the palm of the hands, etc. These behaviors are universal and highly reliable. Humans perform these pacifying behaviors multiple times per hour as they deal with situational stressors. A difficult situation, near accident, or emotional confrontation will generate a need to pacify (Panksepp, 1998, 26, 252, 272). A near slip on the stairwell a few minutes ago as I was preparing to write this blog, caused me to exhale profoundly and rub my face. Pacifiers are ubiquitous, they are the brain’s way of dealing with stress in real time.
