CHAPTER 6
Filters: Sex and
Other Misconceptions
A good interrogator is always hedging bets, seeing how much he can get away with. The techniques he uses center on his ability to manipulate your filters—gender-related traits, cultural factors, and projections.
When I’m trying to build rapport with a mature Arab man in interrogation, I begin with the likelihood that he has a son, and that his son is the light of his life. So I may begin with, “Your oldest child, your son….” He will not say, “No, my daughter.” It will not happen. Even if he has a daughter that is his oldest child, he would not admit that to an Anglo. And then I would refer to the son by one of the popular names for an oldest male and have roughly a 40 percent chance of getting it right. By this time, I’ve used his own filters to convince him that I know more about him than I actually do.
A fortune teller without any special powers, except of the knowledge of communication filters, will be able to do the same thing. You walk away $100 poorer, convinced that she saw into your past: therefore, she must know something about your future.
If I know you spent the first 20 years of your life in upstate New York, with no heavy ethnic orientation, I can make certain assumptions about your body language. The kind of movements you make will be somewhat at odds with what is normal and acceptable for someone from the backwoods of Georgia. The cadence of your speech, word choices, and other aspects of your verbal, vocal, and non-verbal communication will help me profile you.
Now turn around all of these things I’ve said about filters and focus on yourself. If you can’t identify your own filters, recognize how they affect your view of others, or learn to control them, your ability to read someone else’s body language will be impaired. Assumptions, projections, and biases can clog your ability to sense and intuit information about someone.
Gender
Men and women can more easily understand each other than act similar to each other. That said, understanding each other is far from easy. The biological and anatomical differences that influence behavior also switch on powerful filters that make it hard for us to eliminate biases we have about the opposite sex. In briefly reviewing those differences, I want to center your attention on both. Why gender-related filters have such control over our thinking and how they operate, and how men and women differ in their body language.
The discussion starts with the impact of the primary sex organs, which do not only affect how we see our identity, but they also affect how we think, move, and live. This is mainly through the introduction of hormones to our systems, which starts in the womb. Whether we want to admit it or not, we all start as female. If doses of testosterone later flood the fetus, the tissue that would have become an ovary can descend to become a testicle. Some researchers have documented that the length of man’s or woman’s ring finger in comparison to the index finger will tell you how much testosterone a person was exposed to as a fetus. People with longer ring fingers theoretically were exposed to more testosterone in the womb than others.
In my younger, higher risk-taking days, a female interrogator once told me that I suffered from testosterone poisoning. The implications are clear. Whether you measure it in broken bones or the cost of car insurance, testosterone drives young males to take more physical risks than young females. Jim McCormick, whose expertise as a speaker, author, and coach is risk-taking, conducted a study related to the risk inclination of various populations:
My research shows that men’s and women’s inclination to take social and creative risks are essentially identical. The greatest difference in risk inclination between men and women is in physical risks, with men noticeably more comfortable with physical risks.
The two types of risks for which women indicate a greater risk inclination than men are relationship risks and emotional risks. Of note is that women’s general risk inclination increases for many women once they are beyond childbearing age.
As I talk about gender, I want you to keep in mind that our wonderfully complex brains and learning have affected everything we discuss here. And from a biological perspective, I also want to acknowledge that there are women who have more traditionally male behavior patterns, and vice versa. Simple observation bears out that fact.
As Jim’s data highlight, young women are less likely to take physical risks, but I often get a sideways glance from young women in my class when I tell them why: I think the underlying reason is that it’s their nature is to protect the egg.
An ovary typically produces and releases one egg per month; a female is born with every egg she will ever have. Given the premise that human beings are first and foremost designed for preservation of species, it is logical to assert that the egg is precious and the body gives us the instinct to protect it. We want to forget how important instinct is to us because it reminds us we are shaved apes. Males, on the other hand, produce sperm on a daily basis so there is no need to stockpile. One man can fertilize dozens of women easily. Men, unlike most women, are quite satisfied with taking risks if it gets them an immediate reward.
The next consideration in terms of behavior is that breeding for a female mammal is only the beginning of a relationship. She faces weeks, months, or even years of nurturing after that. Women are designed for nurturing. In contrast, breeding is a finite task for males: attract, breed, sleep. We can make elaborate plans to get to that end, but the end is just that. Without social constraints, males would not insert themselves in the nurturing the process. With social constraints—humans enjoy making life more complicated—males stay involved and help preserve culture.
If we assume, then, that breeding is a finite task for males and the beginning of a process for females, we can see there will be differences in the way we approach nearly everything. The long-term impact is that even when women of childbearing age are afraid, there is a part of them that instinctively protects the Holy Grail of the species: the egg. This behavior is all part of normal thinking and reactions, according to neuropsychiatrist and author Louann Brizenden: “The mommy-brain transformation gets under way at conception and can take over even the most career-oriented woman’s circuits, changing the way she thinks, feels, and what she finds important.” (The Female Brain, Random House, 2006, page 98.)
Step back several thousand years and look at the behavior patterns of our primitive ancestors. Males were the hunters out of necessity, not only because of our physique, but also because the females were either pregnant or tending the young. The male brain is also better suited to this type of finite-task thinking. We make wonderful long-range plans and stick to them. On the flip-side, we are not quite as good at making a flexible plan and constantly tweaking it to get a long-term result. Our male ancestors would have said, “There is this animal, who is always here at this time. Let us go kill it.” The females would say, “Somewhere out there are some really good berries. I am not sure where they are, but they will be good with meat so let us go find them.” This evolved into, “These berries are really good. Let’s make sure that bush stays alive.” Does that sound familiar? Is it any wonder that, through cooperation, the male and female brain came up with agriculture? The male brain conquered the plant by moving it; the female kept it alive. Granted, this is a simplistic look at male and female brains, but the concept does play out in our interaction.
Because we are shaved apes who do not want to be reminded of the hairy patches, my view isn’t popular. But when equal opportunity advocates accuse me of chauvinism, I respond, “You are missing the point.” To force a female to do things in male fashion is not equal opportunity, it is distorted idealism.
The impact of testosterone on our modern, highly developed brains should not be underestimated. Male brains do not develop the corpus callosum to the degree that women do, therefore, it does not communicate left to right with near the frequency or intensity of the female brain. The result is what women see as the one-trick-pony male mind. A woman will see many sides of the same equation as she looks for how to “nurture” the problem and create a solution. Another effect is that women are hyper-communicators and do so with many more words and much more nuance of body language.
Males tend to have clarity of focus on a single finite task, and as part of that focus, typically don’t have high-speed, vibrant interaction between the left and right brains. When a female observes that plodding process and asks, “Why didn’t you . . .?” and, “What if . . .?” one thought immediately enters the male mind: “Why can’t you think in a logical progressive fashion: A,B,C?” This difference in thinking makes the male mind think the female mind is flighty, when in fact, she’s processing creatively and logically in rapid succession. If men do not ask for directions, it is because we have a plan and we know that it is right from the beginning.
Just as the human skeleton dictates movement, the reproductive system plays its part in human behaviors and movements as well. This is never more visible than in children in the throes of puberty. A perfectly sane male child at 12 has lost his mind by 16. Suddenly, his brain has become more decidedly male and, as part of the process, is being outvoted two to one.
On November 1, 1986, when I was still with the Old Guard, our commander decided to bring a young female Marine who taught aerobics into our unit. The reason I remember the actual date is that most of us had been in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. for Halloween and a night of hard drinking. Aside from the fact she was very attractive and dressed in spandex, she had no value to the infantry unit. Testosterone filled the air as we scoffed at doing aerobics. Then the commander informed us that we could add old bowling pins to our routine, because he’d acquired them from the newly rehabbed alley. “Oh, great!” we muttered to each other. “Now we can look gay and dorky.” This macho attitude lasted for about 10 minutes until this ultra-fit tiny blonde woman worked our asses into the ground. She told us in the beginning to use only one pin, but, of course, we were men. In the end, we hit total muscle failure.
I use this story to illustrate one thing: men and women move very differently. While we were making very large square movements in order to remain masculine, the instructor and the men who didn’t care about being macho were making soft sweeping movements that used the energy of the swinging pins, instead of trying to control it.
The very nature of male movement is reflected in every part of our body language. When a man acts more like a woman, you will likely see superficial signs of female movement patterns, but the skeleton will anchor the movement in maleness.
With the physical and innately related mental gender differences in mind, let’s take a look at some basics of human communication. A good starting point is the gestures I touched on in Chapter 3—adaptors, barriers, and illustrators.
Adaptors
One of the most powerful differences between men and women is in the use of adaptors. I use the word “powerful” intentionally. Men are tactile creatures who prefer to overdo everything. If one nail is good, two are better. Comedians have made careers around this. A dentist once told me that the leading cause of tooth loss among men is gum disease triggered by brushing too hard. My personal version of this is the inclination to take two vitamins instead of one. Fortunately, my brain usually overrides that idiocy.
As I noted before, adaptors are nothing more than the body finding a way to comfort itself in a foreign or stressful situation. Think of a coyote pacing in a cage. We find our own ways. A man waiting outside the delivery room will likely look very much like the coyote. What do you think is going on in the coyote’s head? Is it any different from what is going through the expectant father’s head? Maybe the actual content differs, but the process is the same—obsession with one thing. When the brain obsesses, the body takes over.
The male tendency toward the tactile means that men will transfer more physical energy than women in using adaptors. A man will rub his eyes hard in response to stress, whereas a woman will rub lightly beneath the eyes, almost in petting fashion. A common assumption is that women don’t want to smear their makeup, but I have observed this type of touching in cultures where women don’t wear eye makeup. It is as if the nurturing piece of femaleness even transfers to the self.
A woman who is uncomfortable will place the fingers of one hand in the palm of the other, thereby creating not only an adaptor as she lightly massages her fingertips, but also a barrier to close out the offenders. I watched Carol Burnett, now 73, do this very thing this morning on a talk show. She has been away from the limelight for a while and her discomfort showed. I noticed other signs of fight or flight during the interview, too.
A man in a similar situation will wring his hands; the effect is a masculine let’s-get-down-to-business gesture while adapting and barriering. A man rubbing his legs is an inborn male approach to counteracting stress. As he rubs his thighs, the contact with his skin releases hormones to comfort him, while at the same time, the aggressive rubbing releases energy. This adaptor is not just for a baseball player on deck. You will also see it in the board room.
Women have a version of the batter-on-deck, too. I have sat in rooms with women who are suddenly “cold” as the meeting heats up. They cross their arms and pet themselves on the elbows and forearms. A learned behavior, it may have started in response to cold, but it has become a strategy for self-comforting and barriering. Because people actually do a variation of the move when they’re cold, this tends not to draw attention to discomfort.
The energy transfer effected by adaptors varies from individual to individual and culture to culture. The variations are too numerous to list—this book would turn into a body-language encyclopedia. The one constant is that, typically, men are more tactile than women, which means men’s adaptors are easier to identify than women’s.
Barriers
A barrier shields the self from threats, whether real or perceived, and demonstrates the need for control. Closing your eyelids, changing your angle of approach, and other subtle moves belong in the mix of those you know well: using hands or arms, desks, counters, books, and computers to put something between your torso and another person. Your choices of objects to use are often subconscious. In proper male fashion, most personal non-object barriering is bigger for men and women. Remember how men think: a little is good, so more is better.
Most often, men move the barrier further away from the body. As a result, the barriers are more evident. These barriers will likely find themselves closer to the person’s center of gravity as well. The exception to this is the fig leaf I described in Chapter 3.
Some barriers are meant to be impenetrable. Religious articles that represent faith cannot be safely tampered with; as such, they create the breastplate of God. Some of these barriers are meant for outward observation and others for internal reference only (for example, the Catholic scapula and Mormon temple garments). These barriers not only protect the wearer, they also tie the wearer to a commitment that takes priority over all else. You cannot overestimate the power of such an object. While outward representations are more acceptable on women in American culture, can you imagine arguing with a minister who is holding a copy of the Holy Bible as he critiques your immoral behavior? This specific class of men uses the object barrier more effectively than any other in American society. Most men have a tendency to rely on natural barriers.
If men use natural barriers more demonstratively, women use apparel and object barriers more openly. Take the woman who wears a 3-inch long cross. Is this primarily a symbol of religion or mostly a fashion statement? Put the same cross on a middle-aged man. What is the effect?
Illustrators
While men may brow-beat, women are more likely to make their points with the entire body. Because men have less of a tendency to engage the entire body and are less likely to gesture wildly, it is no surprise your third-grade teacher could get her point across without shouting. The illustrators used by men are typically uni-channel, such as hands, brow, or perhaps arms.
Even with the tremendous influence of hormones on the system, one cannot overemphasize the impact of nurture and all of the subprograms added to the human mind over the years a human is alive. Simply look at people who have experienced gender reassignment surgery to know that hormones cannot be the end of the story. Along with human behavior comes a concept of self.
Culture
Because men and women in the same culture confuse the body language of the other, imagine how easy this becomes across cultures. Culture is like a ghost in the machine. Most cultural influences are so subtle we cannot recognize them. The long-term influence of being exposed to a culture alters our minds and behaviors forever.
Adaptors
Adaptors are the most natural, non-contrived body language that humans posses, primarily because adaptors are not intended to emphasize the verbal. They are for the individual’s use only and most do not even realize they are using an adaptor.
Adaptors may be relatively consistent across cultures, but we can quickly make wrong assumptions if we look for something familiar. Just as false cognates in a foreign language (for instance, muwathif fucket—“Employees only ” in Arabic), assumptions about the meaning of a gesture by someone from another culture will likely trap you in a misunderstanding. If there are so many forms of adaptors that we cannot list them here, imagine what can happen when viewed from outside a culture. Every culture will develop specific taboos and meanings whose origins have long since passed from memory. People in these cultures learn that the specific action is taboo by social norming.
Assume you develop an adaptor that is to rub all of your extended fingers and thumb on one hand together while turned upright. This looks somewhat similar to a gesture for money in the United States. Now, let’s say your adaptor becomes one that places your other index finger in the cradle created by these extended fingertips. You do it frequently when you’re under stress. Now put an Iraqi in the room with you and raise the stress level. His shock and anger would interrupt the meeting because he construes your gesture as a foul insult that questions his parentage.
If the impact of cultural taboos can limit your options on adaptors—truly involuntary gestures—imagine the impact on the more intentional gestures of barriering and illustrating. Male culture alone affects how American men illustrate their thoughts and barrier themselves. When was the last time you saw an American man purse his lips, hand on hips, flounce, tilt his head, and sigh to make the point of exasperation? That’s Nathan Lane in The Bird Cage, not John Wayne. While any of pieces of body language alone may be acceptable, culture has taught most males that this is simply not acceptable male signaling. When we see this, it signals a different kind of male to the American eye. Male children whose primary caregiver is female may experiment with this signaling but quickly adapt out of it as their role models become male.
Barriers
Americans have a different sensibility about space and hygiene than most other cultures. Americans perceive an intrusion into personal space distressing, and that means any uninvited person needs to stand back at least arm’s length. When viewing the body language of others, Americans may read more into a relationship than is really there simply by inference due to proximity. In the Arab world, however, men may even stand close enough for noses to touch. There is a famous news photo of an older Palestinian gentleman and an Israeli soldier within fractions of an inch of each other. The solider is shouting and giving the international signal for “get the hell out of here.” At first glance, violence looks imminent until you see the older man has his hand touching the soldier—a sign they are beyond violence. The culture dictates that both men save face and it is exactly what is happening. The model of male interaction that I learned in Georgia would not include this message. I needed either an understanding of the Middle East or suspension of all I knew and a child’s observation to understand the body language.
Taboos are so strong that we can project an image onto people based on our own interpretation of their body language. We even anthropomorphize animals to give their body language human meaning. How many times have you heard about a smiling dog? Our own definitions of what body language means transfers to other people and cultures as well.
The colors of culture
Even color is cultural and you need to consider it in reading body language. White means innocence and purity in our North American culture, but not many others. In Asia, white is the symbol of death. Black means authority in many cultures, such as American, but not all. Last year, I went to a science fiction convention in Atlanta to promote my previous book, How to Spot a Liar. An extremely tall man wore a strikingly accurate costume, complete with respirator, to establish his presence as Darth Vader. A friend told me that, after sharing the elevator with Darth, he found himself intimidated. “Why?” I asked. He pinned it on the impressive respirator and on past memories, bad memories, that the black leather and cloak symbolized. Would Darth Vader be intimidating in fuchsia? How about lime green?
Color has come to connote specific messages in cultures through the ages. In past eras, certain colors have projected wealth due to expense of production. There were even sumptuary laws to prohibit the use of selected colors, such as purple, as well as wearing decorated styles of clothing by anyone less than royalty.
The contrast with the practices of modern America is startling—if you were a Medieval lord, you would wander the streets of Detroit in shock over the colors used in clothing. We live in a world where an average American can buy clothing in any color he or she wants. We have evolved to a perception that anyone, literally, can dress like royalty. In terms of commerce, a practical effect of that shows up on Canal Street in New York City (or in sidewalk stations along Lexington Avenue, and so on) any day of the week. Peddlers offer copies of designer bags and shoes.
Americans are not unique in our desire to have what the more privileged have, with color being a key element in that distinctive look (for example, the little black dress.) We simply have easier access to the knowledge of what they wear and how to get it. We evolve culturally as a result of that awareness and consumer power. An important characteristic of our society is that we can form tribes on an ad hoc basis because we have the resources, creativity, and, for the most part, societal acceptance of clothing, accessories, cars, and even buildings with “new” colors: mint, sunburst, and dark chocolate. During the 1970s, if you were “in” as a suburban homeowner you crammed your new split-level with appliances in harvest gold and avocado. You were not “in” if they were still there 10 years later, though. Members of every subculture, such as the suburban homeowner, have their own symbols of belonging. Golfers have a look, or a range of colorful looks, that they can enjoy on the golf course and nowhere else. Horseback riders have their own look. Within the equestrian community there are even subcultures, as there are subcultures among suburban homeowners. No self-respecting dressage rider will be caught in cowboy boots, whatever the color. Even less likely is a real cowboy in cherry-red jeans. Each subculture will, through approval and sanction, create its own color and style code.
These sanctions and approvals can take many forms. Approvals come though the use of compliments, adoration, and sanctions, through means ranging from avoidance and unvoiced disapproval all the way to both formal and informal methods of humiliation.
The role of humiliation
Public humiliation as punishment, and mockery as a tool of intimidation are just two types of cultural practices that alter a person’s body language with the specific intent of affecting his emotional state.
Whether intentionally inflicted or not, humiliation has an effect on the person’s body language if endured often enough. Interestingly, it is impossible to predict what this effect will be. I’ve heard from numerous fellow redheads that they have felt persecuted; they talk to me with a wink as if there were some red-head cult that needed to rise up in solidarity. As I mention earlier, I even had one say to me, “We have to stick together! They do not like us because we have red hair.” After wondering who “they” are, my response was a polite version of, “No, they do not like you because you are weird.” These are people who have taken a bit of ribbing as kids and never outgrown it. Their humiliation is, at the point, self-inflicted.
A person who is humiliated continuously either allows the humiliation to become defining, as in the case of the persecuted redhead, or learns to adapt and is no longer humiliated when ridiculed. Take big-nosed Steve Martin in Roxanne. He learned to expect certain behaviors based on past experience. At the first indicator of what was coming, he identified a course of action he would take. He found ways to drain the venom from remarks that ridiculed his nose; the person poking fun would often become the brunt of the joke.
From the informal group all the way to highly formalized religious and national organizations, every culture engages in humiliation. Whether openly or subtly, groups rely on compliance to norms to help identify those who are undesirable. This creates a more homogenous society. We need ways to differentiate our monkeys from the other monkeys.
For the informal approach, watch kids in a school yard practice humiliation. The crueler kids—the bullies—perfect it as an art form until someone trumps them. This humiliation is part of the culture of the second grade (although a frightening number of middle-aged people act as though they’re 8 years old). If you do not have the latest shoes, the right haircut, or proper social skills, you are chastised—childhood sumptuary law. There are a few reasons for this: first to create a more cohesive culture; second to establish a pecking order; and third, to learn and polish skills that will be used in adult life. Most adults are more subtle and polished, but every adult culture still has some second-grade rules floating around.
In a more formal act of humiliation, Saudis cut off the right hand of convicted thieves, not to stop them from stealing again, but to humiliate them. Their dining practice is to eat from a common plate, and only to take food with the right hand because Arabs use the left hand (often without benefit of toilet paper) to take care of business in the bathroom. Cutting off the right hand of a man cripples him socially.
What happens to the repeat offender, you might ask? Starvation? No, his fellow citizens will simply remove his left foot. With his left hand he can operate a crutch, but not attend too many social engagements. This may sound brutal, but Saudi Arabia has a much lower rate of theft than the United States.
One side effect of the interrogation process is the softening of a male prisoner’s resistance before an interrogation as a result of the strip search. Even without an audience, the experience is agitating for most men regardless of nationality. Enduring this kind of display usually causes profound agitation. Contrast the reaction of an American Special Operations officer to stripping during interrogation exercises. As an American Army guy, I can tell you that having my clothes ripped off wouldn’t make me give up any secrets. Culturally, it just isn’t that big a deal and my movements during an exercise like that probably do not leak the slightest bit of stress. The U.S. military uses the locker-room mentality as the basis for hardening troops against the physical and emotional violations of their space and values.
Sanctions related to humiliating body language can take many forms. They come from avoidance and unvoiced disapproval all the way through blatant humiliation, both formal and informal.
Pop culture prejudice
In the 2006–2007 Survivor episodes filmed on the Cook Islands, the long-running reality TV show featured tribes segregated by race. At first, this jolted and offended lots of fans and foes of the series. As the idea got second consideration from many people, however, the pink elephant in the room became visible: humans do tend to go toward their own. If “your own” is visibly defined by features and color, then it’s easy to find your brethren. In other words, in the thinking of the show’s producers, if five African-Americans, five Asians, five Caucasians, and five Hispanics find themselves stranded on an island without the benefit of television cameras, there is a high likelihood that they will hang out with people of their own race if they have nothing more binding than race. Race can easily become secondary, however, to nationalism, or fraternal bonding such as common organizations or religious affiliation. It’s an exercise predicated on the operation of tribal distinctions at their most basic level: “You don’t look like me” or “You do look like me.” One of the most succinct commentaries I heard about this was a tongue-in-cheek remark by one of the African-American pundits on the NPR show News and Notes. He said he was going to “root for the Black tribe.”
Projection
In the beginning of this book I asked you to suspend the very thing that makes you human—your overdeveloped mind. Now we are at the crux of the matter. All of that programming given to you by your parents, school, religion, media, government, and personal relationships can cloud your vision to what you are seeing.
Projection means you see what you want to see. This is my operative definition, not a classical or clinical one.
I’ll start with the elderly and disabled. We project weakness of all kinds onto a person who has any weakness of body. We refuse to believe that a frail-looking senior citizen can murder or that someone in a wheelchair could commit a terrorist act. And when we accuse someone like that of a crime, what are we upright, healthy folks likely to feel? Guilt. That’s a big mistake—normal, but it’s the same reason why a woman such as Aileen Wuornos could get away with murder. She was a woman. How dangerous could she be?
When we look at someone who is elderly or disabled, even someone who is young and sick, or “the weaker sex,” some strong emotions may run beneath our responses and affect them. We see our humanity, our fragility, our vulnerability.
Part of it may be that that other person doesn’t have the repertoire of body language that makes us feel comfortable. Subconsciously, we conclude that our own communication is curtailed by her physical limitations.
In writing this book, I wanted to do some people watching with Maryann on the street, in stores, at a coffee shop, and in bars. We were visiting with one of her friends whose home town bar scene could be characterized by the word “tame,” but she thought one of them might have a little more action than others. Never having been there, we wondered how she arrived at that conclusion. Rumors. Hearsay. I had a feeling that a trip to one of the bars would help me demonstrate the effects of projection, especially how it interferes with a real understanding of body language.
Maryann’s friend took one look at the waitress and thought she had her pegged. She read the tattoo, suggestive top, and sexy walk as signs of a certain kind of person. A very different person came over to meet us, however. The tattoo was of her children’s names interlaced around her arm. Up close, the top looked more like a good choice for a hot summer day than part of a come-hither wardrobe. And I would not have called her walk sexy; that’s a descriptor coming from someone who projected that an attractive woman with a tattoo and halter top would have a sexy walk. An accurate interpretation of the woman’s body language would use words such as open, vulnerable, and attentive.
What is the ape in this photo doing?
(a) He’s sucking his thumb to reduce stress.
(b) He’s trying to tell you he has a toothache.
(c) He has his thumb in his mouth.
Eliminate any projection or conjecture from your evaluation and the only answer that’s valid is (c).
Exercise
Do something similar to what Maryann and I did: Walk into an environment where you would not normally go. Depending on who you are, that could be a library, a bowling alley, a church, or a gym. Allow your projections to take hold as you observe people. Make a point of striking up a conversation with at least one of the people you have “pegged.” Did you have any surprises and, if so, what did they tell you about yourself?
By nature, people filter everything we see and hear. This well-developed adult brain is constantly trying to put things in context, to create schemas that work in our world, to find patterns and connections. You must subdue that drive to be good at reading body language. You need to stop forcing things to make sense, and to focus solely on what people do and the similarities and differences between what they do.
Our lives are filled with rituals and routines that have made us successful or not. These strongly held beliefs and strategies color everything we see, hear, and do. Some of us have created elaborate tactics that prey on the rituals others have in place and I’ll explore some very public examples of this in Part III. Trying to overlay all new information onto an old grid taints the information. Your filters will prevent you from seeing clearly.
Caricatures and stereotypes overemphasize at least one trait that people can identify easily about a person or group. These super-typical mannerisms and cultural differences still exist, but outside of comedy clubs, it’s no longer acceptable to use them to characterize a group. In an effort to honor diverse traditions and not hurt anyone’s feelings—the long way of saying “be politically correct”—we’ve shoved most of these down society’s linguistic garbage disposal. Ah! But out of sight does not mean out of mind. Though most of these have faded from public view, they still inhabit our conscious and subconscious. The result is a powerful filter that can blind the mind’s eye.
Projection is the most dangerous blinder you can put on, and its real power derives from other things I talked about in this chapter—prejudices rooted in culture and gender. You have to ask yourself the question, “Which group of people am I biased against?” If you say none, you are delusional. You may be prejudiced against 5’3” blondes who went to Catholic school and have perfect grammar. Not a bad group to most of us, but if you don’t like them, you must identify your prejudice and look carefully at that group’s body language if you want to communicate with them.
Other things can blind our vision as well, such as reading a book by an expert and taking everything at face value without adapting it to fit your own mind, personality, and the situation. This R.E.A.D. system means that you need to learn to look at a person and decide what something means when that particular person does it, and in a particular context. No book can do that. Relying on a laundry list of gestures and drawing conclusions, such as “hands on hips means…” are the worst kinds of projection.
What’s likely to really trip you up, though? Think back to the “walking while thinking of a bad day” exercise. The emotional down shifted your posture and balance to low gear. Simply being in an emotional slump can profoundly skew your perception of another person’s body language. No one likes you, so you’re gonna go eat worms. You need to get past that down state, past your high state, past your own mood if you want to be really skilled at reading body language.