NLPhilia Blog

Cognitive Daily recently posted some research that may give us an easier way to improve our ability to tell when other people are lying to us:

But what if there was a shortcut in sniffing out a lie, relying on our own instinctual behavior? Would it be possible to improve the lie-detecting abilities of ordinary people without all that training? A team led by Mariëlle Stel had a hunch that our tendency to mimic the physical and facial expressions of the people we are speaking to might help us to tell when they are lying.

It isn’t what you are probably thinking. I think you’ll be surprised. Check it out:

Is There an Easier Way to Detect Lies Than What You See on TV?

Eyes for Lies points to a sweet video by Dr. David Matsumoto, “Characteristics of Basic Emotions”. In it, Dr. Matsumoto explains the differences between the seven “basic” or “universal” emotions and the rest.

I’ve long loved Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War. It’s a book on conflict resolution, not specific to war, and I’ve learned and used a great deal of its wisdom in my work.

Today I read an article by blogger Anil Polat at the foXnoMad blog, a blog about travel. Apparently, dealing with difficult airline ticket agents is an art form, and Mr. Polat has used Sun Tzu’s work to increse his own success:

Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War, written more than 2,000 years ago is one of the world’s most famous books on strategy. While Tzu was writing for generals in the army, the fundamentals of his wisdom can help you overcome even the most stubborn airline representative.

I enjoyed the article tremendously, recognizing my approach with angry customers in it.

Read the full article, Use Sun Tzu’s The Art of War To Win Battles At The Ticket Counter, at the foXnoMad blog.

Here’s Lionel Giles’ translation of The Art of War at the Internet Classics Archive. (Free, but not prettily formatted.)

Here’s Thomas Cleary’s translation at amazon.com. (If you want to buy it, though, I encourage you to get it by way of the link in Mr. Polat’s article, so as to thank him for writing it.)

“You know what they call me?” he asked, a little too loudly.

I’d been keeping an eye on him for a little while, off and on, because he was Italian. Some of the staff, for all of their intelligence, don’t know how to handle it when a guy whose parents came over from Italy starts acting normal. “Normal” for an Italian guy is to talk loudly and rapidly, wave his hands about, and get “uncomfortably” close, and on rare occasion I’ll get a call about a guy “getting in my face and yelling and making threatening gestures”. It’s kind of funny, I think.

I had no trouble connecting with him, and he was free with his verbal affection for me. To top it off, he was intoxicated and getting “up there in years”. A little earlier, he’d mentioned that his father died at age 90; not too long after, he mentioned, in a little too offhanded way, that he himself was 89. So I’m thinking that he’s thinking about how he’s probably going to die soon.

Anyway, so he asked me if I knew what they call him, and I said, “No, what do they call you?”

“They call me Wagon Wheel.”

I thought that an odd nickname. “Wagon wheel?”

“Yeah, Wagon Wheel.”

That’s odd,” I said.

“Yeah”, he added. “Wanna know why they call me Wagon Wheel?”

“Sure.”

“It’s cuz I been through a lotta shit!”

How could I not laugh?

I tore myself away and went to take care of other business, but I stopped in and checked on him a couple of times. When it came time to let him go home, he said, “Hey… are you going to remember anything? Have I given you anything?” It really mattered to him.

“Yeah, you bet. I’m gonna remember “Wagon Wheel”.

“You a wagon wheel? You been through a lotta shit?”

“Sure,” I said, “I been through a lotta shit. They could call me Wagon Wheel too.”

“Well, then, remember this,” he said. “There’s four wheels on a wagon. Three other wheels been through the same shit as you.”

If he was worried about leaving a legacy, he can stop after that.

Doug O’Brien sent me some AMAZING news: Andy Austin is coming to New York City!

IMPROV!: The Use of Improvisation and Drama in Slightly Crazy Environments

April 17th, 2009:

This introductory presentation will outline the “rules” and formula for successful and comedic improvisation.

As readers of The Rainbow Machine — Tales From a Neurolinguist’s Journal will be aware, I often like to utilize the building of humour, tension and drama into his change work sessions and rarely do I rely on any pre-set or rehearsed routines and scripts. Given my client group, often the client will bring their own drama and unique humour to the session and a high level of flexibility and responsivity is needed in such situations.

No previous acting experience is required and no one will be expected to perform in front of the group. Book early and hold on to your hats, because this will be a fun and fast paced evening.

LESSONS FROM THE CUCKOO’S NEST: Further Tales From a Neurolinguist’s Journal.

April 18 & 19th, 2009:

Working with other people’s madness isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always fun – but it can be. Psychological and emotional pain is rarely ever funny but I often question if change really needs to be serious. Far from joking at another person’s expense, during this weekend workshop you will be introduced to, and will explore, some therapeutic patterns and algorithms that I have found useful when working with challenging clientèle and serious mental illnesses.

I’ve learned a lot from Andy over the years, both in e-mail and on Usenet. Now I get to meet him and train with him. If I’m alive in April, I’ll be there!

Update: Here’s the link to sign up! There are discounts for signing up early, so go!

I remember the Psychiatric Social Worker as being a wonderful lady, and I liked her a lot. Smart, curious, well-educated, and really easy on the eyes. Sometimes I wondered about her street smarts, though.

The night I’m thinking of, she was evaluating a big, burly, truck-driver-looking guy because he’d threatened to kill himself. She’d decided he meant it and needed to stay with us for a few days. Under state law, we have to give everybody a chance to sign themselves in, and she was going to do that… and if he refused, she’d have him committed against his will.

(We do it more often than we like. It sounds mean, but, really, it’s not. Most people in that position end up glad we did it.)

She was worried that he’d react violently when she offered him this apparent Hobson’s Choice, so she asked me to be close by. I stood just out of sight and listened. He didn’t react violently, but he did do something interesting.

He repeated, “I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t.”

She did her best to assure him that it was his choice, and he’d say, “I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t.” Then he’d ask her what she thought he should do, and she’d repeat that she couldn’t choose for him, that it was his choice. And again he’d say, “I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t.”

This went on for, I’m guessing, FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES. He couldn’t choose, she wouldn’t help. (She couldn’t help. I’m not blaming her for this. He was in a bind, he knew it; he wanted out of it, and she had no way of figuring out how to help without appearing to lead or coerce him. So she was in a bind too.)

I decided I’d stood there long enough, feeling sorry for them both. So I walked around the corner and “listened” for a couple of “I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t” rounds. Then I said:

“Look, man… you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t, right?”

“Yeah!” he said. Frustrated. Wanting help.

So I said, “Well, you might as well get it over with.”

He tilted his head, went inside for a second, nodded, grabbed the clipboard, and signed himself in.

The Social Worker was shocked, but didn’t say anything to me.

I’ll only point out to her, if she’s reading this, that I didn’t tell him which choice to make… I only suggested that he make one. Choosing to be committed would have been every bit as valid a response to my statement as signing himself in, and I would have found it every bit as respectable. The truth is, though, signing himself in was in line with his values and being committed was not, so he chose to sign.

I don’t ordinarily pay much attention to Psychology Today magazine, but their RSS feed pointed me to a couple of articles on the basics of persuasion.:

Persuasion: Battle on the Car Lot:

How does a car salesman get you behind the wheel? By being a keen observer of human behavior—and not letting you say “no.”

Data Mine: From Persuasion to Impotence:

Bargaining techniques and making bad decisions: why smart women don’t want sugar daddies and how to avoid erectile dysfunction.

The second article is only partially about persuasion, but it has some good stuff about paraverbal and nonverbal framing. The rest of the article has to do with other good stuff. I especially appreciated the idea of group therapy for impotence (woohoo!) helping a man “hold his head up” <adolescent snicker> .

This story is much funnier when my friend Deb tells it because she’s the nurse who was involved. Because she couldn’t really see everything I was doing, she likes to exaggerate her level of frustration.

The patient was a rather large and muscular guy who looked as if he’d been in a few fights in his life. I’m not sure what he was doing, but the staff were quite intimidated. When I got there, he was sitting in one of the common areas, slouched in his chair, with a look of exaggerated indifference on his face. Deb was sitting at the opposite end of the table and talking to him with a great sense of reason in her voice. (It’s hard to describe the tone in more detail. Sorry.) I sat down at the table, too, in view of him but not her, and I slouched in my chair and put an exaggerated indifference on my face.

When she said anything I thought he should agree with, I’d shift my expression to “Well, that makes sense”, and then shift it back to mirror his.

(Deb would say something like, “I called him so he could help me, and all he did was sit there!“)

And when I figured he and I were on the same wavelength, I yawned. A little noisily, but not loudly.

(Deb would nearly shout at this point in the story, “And then he started yawning! I’m trying to defuse a dangerous situation and he’s yawning!“)

I sat and listened and paced him for another minute and yawned again. And then he yawned too. I guess he got tired or something. No more fight in him. Shortly, he asked her if he could just go to bed.

As we walked out of the room, she gave me the “WTF did you do?!” look. I just shrugged.

She was really going off on the nurses, and they couldn’t get control of her. It can get scary for a psych nurse when a patient goes there… probably because they believe Torrey. I’ve never found the mentally ill to be any scarier than anyone else, so I guess I have an advantage. I got there within a minute of the call. All they wanted was for her to go be quiet in her room for a few minutes.

The patient, a textbook Borderline, was throwing a first-class tantrum. Keep in mind that a lot of therapists refuse to work with people who have her problem, and that most of the ones who will work with them don’t have much success. The great skill of Borderline Personality Disorder is Jerking People Around; they do it better than absolutely anybody.

One of the things a Borderline will do is, they’ll place you into one of two categories. You’re an angel or a demon. You can jump immediately from one category to the other, depending on whether or not you’re doing what the patient wants you to do. If you care at all, even a little, about the relationship, they will quickly condition you. It’s either amazing or sad to watch.

Nurses are taught to maintain a “professional distance” with patients. That tends to work with most, but the Borderlines will scream, “You don’t even care about me! You’re supposed to be nurses! Nurses are supposed to care about people!” (Yes, I learned a lot about double-binds from these situations.)

Personally, I think the key is that I care more about my opinion of myself than I care about anyone else’s opinion of me. Like me? Great! Don’t like me? That’s still OK. I like me.

I walked over to the ranting patient and asked her what was going on. After she got a sentence out, I shifted my stance to mirror hers. Then I started to nod in time with the rhythm of her ranting. Once in a while, I’d feed back to her a word or two. One of the nurses stood nearby. I usually appreciate that. This time, though, the nurse picked up on something the patient said and tried to respond.

The next thing that happened caught me off guard. The patient wheeled on the nurse and shouted, “Excuse me! I’m having a conversation with this man!” The nurse blushed a dark maroon, apologized, and walked away. To my credit, I suppressed my smile before the patient turned back to me. (Well, it was funny.)

After a minute or so more, I said to her, “OK. Head on back to your room and wait there for a bit. I’ll talk to the nurses and get their side of the story.”

She thanked me and went to do what the staff wanted her to do all along.

This article at the Mind Hacks Blog summarizes some research being done in the area of how we decide to trust (or mistrust) a person based on the shape of their face. It starts with an article at the Boston Globe, with an accompanying graphic illustration of the pertinent facial characteristics:

behavioral scientists have also begun to unravel the inner workings of trust. Their aim is to decode the subtle signals that we send out and pick up, the cues that, often without our knowledge, shape our sense of someone’s reliability. Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors – where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin – can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves. We size up someone’s trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them, and while we can revise our first impression, there are powerful psychological tendencies that often prevent us from doing so – tendencies that apply even more strongly if we’ve grown close.

Here’s something else I found interesting:

Another set of cues, and a particularly powerful one, is body language. Mimicry, in particular, seems to put us at our ease. Recent work by Tanya Chartrand, a psychology professor at Duke, and work by Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee, media scholars at Stanford, have shown that if a person, or even a computer-animated figure, mimics our movements while talking to us, we will find our interlocutor significantly more persuasive and honest.

Cute, eh? Go read the Globe article; it’s great.

If you love academic writing, or even more detail, here’s a PDF of a Princeton University study on the subject.