Kindle Notes & Highlights
We can trace almost all of our failures back to three things: Our Communication Our Observation Our Behavior
Observation entails not only reading people, but situations.
How we manage and carry ourselves matters a lot.
Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.
Our brains are highly adaptive; they memorize patterns to instantly recognize when something is relevant or interesting.
When we encourage people to make decisions, we are making them ‘cut off’ the option to do anything else.
everyone is hiding suffering from the world around them.
We are frail creatures, and it’s okay.
We all know people who think they don’t wear a mask, and we struggle to interact with them as they typically have the thickest mask of all.
EVERYONE IS A PRODUCT OF CHILDHOOD SUFFERING AND REWARD
When we see through the lens of ‘reasons,’ everyone is human, and everyone is equally screwed up, just in different ways.
When we read behavior, context is key.
You’ve got a new understanding that fear causes the body to move faster, not just the eyelids.
When we are attracted to someone, for example, our pupils will dilate as we look at them.
When we see or hear something that we really like, our pupils will dilate. Things we dislike will cause our pupils to constrict.
The confirmation glance is simply a way to determine who’s in charge, who makes the decisions, and who you will ultimately need to persuade to adopt your ideas.
LIP COMPRESSION When a person squeezes their lips together, they are performing one of the first ways humans learn how to say ‘no.’
It’s critical that you’re able to identify the cause of the lip compression. Otherwise, spotting the behavior is next to useless.
Genuine facial expressions fade. False facial expressions will suddenly go away.
our true facial expressions are almost always symmetrical.
False expressions are likely to have more muscular tension in the face on one side than the other.
Nostril flaring occurs mostly as a response to an increase of adrenaline in the body. As the adrenaline levels increase, the brain needs more oxygen.
The adrenaline can be a product of strong feelings of excitement, happiness, or even anger.
Any behavior that obscures the mouth from your view is considered to be hushing behavior.
Compass Notes: Annotate both the Fig Leaf and Single-Arm Wrap using ‘Gp’ for genital protection, followed by the topic that you believe to be the cause of the behavior.
Digital extension is a small movement of the fingers away from the palm. The fingers are moving from a curled position (not a fist) to a less-curled position.
Digital flexion is a negative behavior. It can illustrate disagreement, doubt, anger, stress, and even fear.
Fidgeting occurs when we have increased adrenaline or when our brain is under-stimulated (bored) and is making an attempt to keep our mind active.
A good rule of thumb from body language expert Joe Navarro is that ‘all repetitive behavior is self-soothing.’
People who speak with exposed palms just above waist-level and expose their abdomens are more likely to be trusted by others.
One of the most common indicators of pre-violence is a behavior called ‘dominant leg retreat.’
When a person experiences strong disagreement with you, their dominant shoulder will move backward just like the foot does before a fight occurs.
When we shrug our shoulders, it can indicate either submission, an apology, or a lack of information.
We place objects between ourselves and others when we feel a need to distance, conceal, or protect ourselves from the conversation or the person.
Even something as small as placing a phone between you and the other person can be a barrier.
If you see placement of a barrier, ask yourself, ‘What were we just speaking about before this took place?’
There is no machine or human that can ‘detect’ lies. Even the polygraph is a machine that measures only stress responses.
We are all affected in conversations of all kinds by something called the ‘truth bias.’
This phenomenon suggests that when we like someone, even just a little, our brains will make a decision, without our knowledge, to see only truth.
RISING PITCH The tone of our voices tends to rise when we lie.
A deceptive statement will likely sound higher pitched than the rest of the conversation.
Liars will increase the speed of potentially deceptive statements.
Secondly, the person being deceptive will speed up their answer to avoid being interrupted.
James Pennebaker’s book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, describes this and many other fascinating phenomena about the way we speak and write.
this may occur is still rooted in the need to confess our sins but also serves to derail the interviewer.
a suspect may confess to a smaller crime in order to appear honest,
Exclusions remove you from the original answer by creating a caveat that allows escape from anything definitive.
When you hear a recollection after asking a question that involves a timed sequence that includes unnecessary detail and follows a detailed timeline, this is likely to be deception.
If we spot chronological stories that sound like they may be deceptive with too many details, we can ask someone to recall the events in reverse.
A confirmation glance is where a person glances at a friend before telling a story or glances at another interviewer after telling a story.

