Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds

Speaker 1 Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

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Speaker 2 I've been very excited to talk to you, Annie, for a lot of hosts of reasons. I'm just going to tell the audience, because we're going to go right into it.
Annie is,

Speaker 2 I guess, aka the human lie detector. That's basically your,

Speaker 2 I guess that's what you're known for. That's what you're known as, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 I'm scared. By the way, so basically, I want to just give a little brief.
So her book is called Diary of a Human Lie Detector: Facial Expressions in Love, Lust, and Lies.

Speaker 2 And you basically know thousands of facial expressions and you can read thousands of different facial expressions to tell if somebody is lying to you, if they like you, if they, what they're, if they're a narcissist, if they're a psychopath.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm actually kind of nervous interviewing you because you're going to be watching my face and I'm now going to be like, oh, I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't sit like that.

Speaker 2 Does that ever happen? Do people get scared to talk to you?

Speaker 1 Oh, all the time. And so just to clarify, like this, I can numerically code or anybody who is trained in facial action coding systems can take the 10,000 different muscle combinations.
And

Speaker 1 it's not thousands of facial expressions, but it is a lot of muscle combinations and it's a lot of facial expressions. And yes.

Speaker 1 People get really nervous, but almost nobody gets as nervous as men who have some kind of shame in their lives. They get really, really wound up.
Really?

Speaker 1 Women don't get nervous and they're a little clustered, but

Speaker 1 I think women innately, and not all of us, you know, because we do, thank goodness, have different wiring in our brains. Every individual is, you know, slightly different.

Speaker 1 But I think we women are used to

Speaker 1 some other people around us being able to read us really well.

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of us have good friends and family members that have kind of been able to read us or even hear that kind of hitch in our voice or tightness in our vocal cords and they'll kind of turn around quickly and say what's wrong when we you know what do you mean what's wrong i didn't say anything no i can hear it or i can feel it or i can sense it i can see it on you so i think we're just used to reading others or focusing on that those skills and we're used to being read more more often or more sometimes more hyper aware of it Or I think also probably women wear their emotions on their sleeves probably more.

Speaker 2 So it's more obvious.

Speaker 1 well we're certainly you know socialized to for it to be okay to show emotion it's it's expected from an earlier age i mean i had to catch myself a couple of times with my son I was more stern with him when he was crying once he got to a certain age than I was with my daughters.

Speaker 1 And I had to catch myself because I didn't want him not to show his emotion, but it was so hardwired into me to kind of be like, why are you whining?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's so true.

Speaker 1 I have a boy and a girl.

Speaker 2 And I definitely understand the difference between that.

Speaker 2 Like you treat the boy and the girl differently based on what's already kind of programmed and conditioned to how you think they should behave, right?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 I totally feel that I do that as well. Is there like a big difference? Or what's because you don't read body language, you read facial expressions.

Speaker 2 Which is more telling and which one is harder to, I guess, deceive?

Speaker 1 Okay, so I do read body language. I just don't teach it very often.
So I

Speaker 1 spent 25 years of my life living abroad and I studied eight languages through immersion.

Speaker 1 So I've spent, in addition to being, doing this facial action coding certification, I have spent years and years of my life not understanding what people are saying. So that's how I got so good.

Speaker 1 at reading body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, choice of words.

Speaker 1 That's what made me this sort of human lie detector combined with the science of facial expressions. But the question is excellent.

Speaker 1 So I usually define it in simple, in the simplest terms that body language varies from person to person.

Speaker 1 Even two siblings within the same family can have wildly different body language. You know, crossing your arms, for example, may mean that you're belligerent or you're angry or you're defensive.

Speaker 1 Certainly, if it comes into the context of having an argument, or if you see a little kid go,

Speaker 1 you know, and cross their arms, but it can also mean that you're Finnish or you're German or, or you, that's how you self-soothe or you're cold, or you're just a little uncomfortable thinking about something else.

Speaker 1 The facial expressions, the piece that I love and the reason that I've gotten so into teaching facial expressions is that they are biological responses. They are, they, they are the same.

Speaker 1 The micro expressions are the same regardless of culture, ethnicity, age, gender, socialization, no matter who who raised us, even people who are born blind make the same facial expressions, the same basic facial expressions.

Speaker 1 There are some cultural expressions, but I don't teach those. I don't focus on those.
So the facial expression says exactly what someone is feeling in the exact moment they're feeling it.

Speaker 1 The microexpression does it, does, because the micro expression precedes the thought process and is involuntary.

Speaker 1 So unless I change my thoughts, I can't stop my mic, myself, even me, from making the micro expression so i have three grown children wow

Speaker 2 table is a mess yeah yeah yeah i can imagine wait so this is very interesting you said you said a few things that i want to talk about number one so body language could be also not just dependent on it's dependent person to person but also culturally like what you do in one culture is could be very distinctly different how you do your body language is in another culture.

Speaker 2 But what you said was interesting that microfacial expressions, there's, it's, it doesn't matter what culture, who, what, age, ethnicity, doesn't matter. It's always the same.

Speaker 1 Because it's biologically hardwired into us. So I'll give you an example that when human beings are afraid, we do this.

Speaker 1 You know, we pull our upper eyelids back, and that's so that we can widen our field of vision so we can gauge like, how do I get out of this situation? Where can I escape?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a physiological response. And this, this, see, see the tendons of my neck jump? Yeah.
Yeah. And that's because fear opens our mouths.

Speaker 1 If you look at pictures of people in haunted houses, you know how sometimes you go through those haunted houses and you're doing like a Disney World or they snap the picture at the moment where your mouth like.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And if you look at those pictures, everybody across ethnicities, ages, genders, like everybody makes the same exact facial expression when they're absolutely terrified.
And we open our mouths.

Speaker 1 That's the only expression that really rectangularizes the entire mouth.

Speaker 1 And that's so we can scream bloody murder, so we can, you know, get help so there's a physical physiological reason that there's a change in blood flow and muscle movement for each facial expression and so the micro expression of fear is just see how that does that neck tendon and it's just this pull of like it's just like that little itch itching to come out and it can also be this pull back now there are other facial expressions that widen our eye aperture like excitement but we're then we're opening the the lower lid and the upper lip and it lid, sorry, and it gives you a different vibe.

Speaker 1 So, me going, oh, just a little bit for a hot second, that's very different than this,

Speaker 1 which communicates danger. You know, so

Speaker 2 danger. So, you're saying, you're saying that our facial expressions actually happen before our brain even processes it.

Speaker 1 The muscle movement precedes the moment of cognition.

Speaker 2 That is so interesting.

Speaker 2 I think so, too. Right? So, you can't really fake your facial expression, right?

Speaker 1 You can fake the macros. Like I can pretend to be happy or I can like do a big expression, but the tiny flicker of micro expression leaks out of us before we can stop it.

Speaker 1 That's it's it's like when you know up until the age of about two, we make these big facial expressions and we human beings scan the entire face.

Speaker 1 And once our parents start say, start really socializing us as human beings and they start saying, look me in the eyes when you speak to me.

Speaker 1 We start forgetting that sort of innate human species thing where we looked all over the face to gauge the expression and the emotion.

Speaker 1 It's like that was how we read people when we didn't have any access to words or socialization. It's hardwired into us.

Speaker 1 And so, people who maintain their hypervigilance, in other words, grow up in abusive situations or war zones, they tend to be really, really good at reading facial expressions because they don't lose that ability.

Speaker 1 So, it's almost like it's there before we're verbal and we lose it. It's almost like I think of it as baby language, or you know, that it's it's our

Speaker 1 universal non-verbal language.

Speaker 1 And when people get in romantic situations and they're going to kiss somebody for the first time, that's when they start tracking again because they sort of revert into that primitive brain.

Speaker 1 I want to know if you're going to reject me. So, I start like tracking, you know, looking all over the face.
Is there any clue? And people are not, we're not even aware we're doing it.

Speaker 2 Okay, so again, I love this.

Speaker 1 So, what's the difference between a macro expression and a micro expression okay the macro expression is the full expression it's the expression we would kind of make if we weren't socialized so the the macro expression of disgust which i call the no face is this it's that face of like you know you come with the peas or the mushed up like gross food that you have to eat you see i already do that like innately thinking about the gross it shuts off our nasal passages so it three main pieces wrinkles the skin next to our nose deepens our nasolabial furl i sometimes call this the nostril shadow because i find that's easier for people to remember and it pulls up our upper lips right it's that ew

Speaker 1 ew and it shuts off our nasal passages our sense of smell up to about 80 percent that's the macro but we learn don't make that face at grandma or like don't make that face at your sister it's it's rude to be like i don't like you or i don't want to eat this the micro expression is the piece so that's the macro i see it as the whole puzzle and for each expression when I'm teaching, I teach you what the whole puzzle looks like.

Speaker 1 So if you just get one or two puzzle pieces from that specific puzzle, you recognize it. So remember, I talked about wrinkling next to the nose and the deepening of the nasolabial furrow.

Speaker 1 Disgust is just this.

Speaker 1 But because it happens so fast, up to about a 25th of a second, just that little flicker, you almost have to prepare your gaze and look at this part of the face or you'll miss it.

Speaker 1 So if I'm asking you if you want to eat Italian food tonight, I might dip my gaze and just see if you if I get a little no.

Speaker 2 So, this is okay. So, by the way, guys, you got to watch the video on YouTube because you have to see exactly what Annie is doing.
But she was just like kind of pulsing like that.

Speaker 2 What do you call that thing? The nasal.

Speaker 1 I call it the nostril shadow because it's the shadow. It's like where people, people tend to get some fillers in there because they think it makes them look a little old.

Speaker 1 But it's this wrinkle that is next, just right next to the nostrils. Usually, when I make them micro myself, unless I'm really upset by something, then both sides jump.

Speaker 1 But usually it's just my left side, and everybody's got a side that they favor.

Speaker 1 And it's almost like, you know, when you get that tick on your eye sometimes when you're really tired or stressed and your eye is like right underneath your eye just jumps, that's what it feels like.

Speaker 1 And people often don't notice it when it's next to the nose, but it's just that little jump. And I sometimes call it like the bad bunny rabbit twitch.

Speaker 2 That's a good name for it, too. So basically, macro expressions are more the obvious ones, right? Like you're disgusted, you're happy, whatever.

Speaker 2 But the micro are like this, the very subtleties that you can actually really tell how someone is truly thinking or feeling.

Speaker 1 In that exact moment.

Speaker 2 In that exact moment. Okay, so, okay, so let's go over some stuff here.
So what are signs of like, how do you like, what are signs of someone

Speaker 2 of a fake smile? Like, what are signs of a fake smile? Because everyone is so like, hi, how nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 And, you know, like, I personally feel like I can, I can spot it like dead on, but I want to know if there are very specific things that you can like point to that my audience can get.

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.
So the easiest thing is that the smile has nothing to do with the mouth, nothing at all, really.

Speaker 1 Nothing to do with what the lips are doing. When we experience joy, our cheeks pop up.
They lose gravity. These are called our infraorbital triangles.
And you can see when I, when I, you can see it.

Speaker 1 Like it actually makes you happy when you, because it's contagious, right?

Speaker 1 So, when I actually look at you and smile, because I'm happy to see you, the that my cheeks actually make more of a ball and they rise.

Speaker 1 And depending on your baseline, the formation of your, you know, the angle of your face, but you're still going to see those cheeks pop up. And what happens is you get these beautiful smile bags.

Speaker 1 So, this skin right under my lower eyelid gets fat and puffs out. See that?

Speaker 1 Right. And it's easy peasy.
And my little one, Emma, who's now almost 21, she used to say, when the skin here gets fat, that means they're happy, mama.

Speaker 1 Because I trained them since they were itty bitty, since they were babies.

Speaker 1 And she was like so uninterested at whether or not there were crow's feet or whether or not like what was happening with the, with the muscles in the inforial triangle.

Speaker 1 And she was just like, if it's, if it's fat and you get this, you get this, this skin that sticks out.

Speaker 1 And it's, you can see on my face, as I get older, it's going to be be a little bit more puffy and it's going to hang a little bit so you're looking for the change in that person's face whatever their sort of normal neutral facial expression is so my you know depending on the day of my eye if the skin underneath my eyelids are is a little bit puffy you'll see but you'll see it'll bulge out to two or three times or four times its natural size you'll see this huge change so if you're trying to see if somebody's happy and you know what they generally look like all you have to do is see is the skin here fat and it's this this it's the same exact area area that we sometimes talk about we get increased pigmentation depending on the the natural pigment of our skin it might be brown or it might be purple it might be but it's a darker shade when we're not getting enough sleep and that's exactly that area that we're looking for that to bulge so i would think that faking a smile is pretty much pretty simple only because people know when they should be trying to look like they're happy or look like they're you know smiling because they know people are watching them and they can they can can kind of figure it out what i really yeah i was gonna say what i find interesting is when someone like let's say you get good news you know this whole thing about like schaten freud right when people actually find like misery in someone's and when someone feels happiness and was misery or like that's really what it is but there's a lot of times when like you like you do something really great and then people are like oh my god i'm so happy for you right like that like fakeness like that the phoniness how can you spot when someone's being phony and actually doesn't want the best for you or when they're envious of you or jealous of you yeah so in in swedish we call it eskode gladje which means injured injured cheerful or injured joy okay i like that too basically somebody's getting hurt and you're happy about it and so that's a really good question so the the things that i will look for is whether or not the facial expression is particularly the micro expressions knowing that the micro expressions leak people's true intentions and they can't hide them and they and most people can't make the micro expressions on demand.

Speaker 1 My kids can do a little bit of them, but like, you know, 20 years of practicing. Right.

Speaker 1 And so, first of all, if I'm saying something joyful, I should be, you know, maybe nodding or I should be lifting my infra real triangle, infrared triangles and showing that.

Speaker 1 That said, I can hear something and think that like, that's great. I just, I've had such a hard day or I have a migraine and I can't quite muster the joy.
That's also okay.

Speaker 1 You know, people sometimes have a hard time like reaching their joy especially if they're if they're struggling in their daily life or something you know if their house just burned down i mean seriously it's people are struggling today right but we're not talking about that as much

Speaker 1 yeah so what you're gonna watch for in so the the smile is one piece of it so does that does that do those words match that facial expression but is somebody giving you a compliment while showing that disgust that's a problem if i say jen i heard that you got a promotion.

Speaker 1 I'm so happy for you, Jen. And I, you can, you can feel it, right? That feels almost predatorily, you know, like, sorry, predatory.
Yeah. It feels really creepy.

Speaker 1 But if I say, I hate broccoli or I hate bacon and, and, you know, then you're like, okay, well, that's a weird thing to hate, but all right, fair. Right, right, right.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, it doesn't bother, it doesn't give you that same visceral response that you almost want to sit back and create more distance from that person.

Speaker 1 So we intuitively know it because that's our universal facial expressions are universal nonverbal language, but we don't always have the words to put it on.

Speaker 1 We don't even consciously always know what we've seen or observed, observed, sorry.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 2 I thought we were going to say, like, what is the biggest mistake that people make when they're trying to, like they want to believe, if they want to believe somebody, like, are people, what's the biggest mistake that people are not looking for or when they make when they're trying to read somebody?

Speaker 1 I think they forget to dip their gaze. So, you know, we're so trained to be respectful.
And this is this

Speaker 1 culture, but you know, we're generally trained to look people in the eyes when we speak to them. And we're missing all of this information that's happening around their face.

Speaker 1 Like anger, for example, is just this tightening, clenching of the lips. I mean, I almost like, you see me? I'm clenching my hand as I'm doing that because anger clenches everything.

Speaker 1 I mean, it even clenches our neck and our shoulders as we prepare to fight in our fists.

Speaker 1 But like, if you're trying to figure out if somebody's mad, the easiest way is just to look at their mouth and see if they, if there's a change from their baseline.

Speaker 2 So it's all in the lower lip if someone's mad.

Speaker 1 So it's just this, like, you see, I don't have, I don't have particularly fleshy lips. My lips are fairly thin.
So they almost disappear completely. The pigment is gone when I'm angry.

Speaker 2 Right, but that's obvious, I think, right?

Speaker 1 Like that's really obvious. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, but, um, but people still miss it if they're looking at their eyes.

Speaker 2 Oh, right. So you're saying stand someone's total face yes not just don't

Speaker 1 don't hold your gaze on their mouth for more than three seconds at a time do you know why why

Speaker 1 because they're gonna lean in to kiss you really

Speaker 2 yeah it's I mean not everybody but I was gonna say everybody I mean or like guy versus girl well that's actually a good point

Speaker 1 It's the it's the strangest or if you do want somebody to kiss kiss you like look at their mouth well I literally had clients in Asia when I was working in Asia tiny and tilt their head, lean forward, and then catch themselves and be like, What am I doing?

Speaker 1 Because it's this sort of universal signal that I was signaling, and they stopped themselves, they weren't gonna do it.

Speaker 1 And there wasn't chemistry between us, but it was just almost like you know, when a baby lifts their face to kiss you, I mean, even if it's a strange baby, you almost like you catch yourself and you're like, I can't kiss this stranger's baby in the grocery store.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, that's so funny. So, you're saying, do not, if any, you should not look at someone's mouth for longer than three seconds.

Speaker 1 It's probably three seconds at a time, but you can go up and down, up and down, up and down. Just

Speaker 1 at a time.

Speaker 2 Yes. You look away.

Speaker 1 Just it's it's almost like when somebody is making that sort of that clear eye contact and they're just staring you at like for a long time and it's longer than your specific culture.

Speaker 1 holds eye contact, it almost feels either like they're they're asking for something.

Speaker 1 So it may be romance, it may be that they're they're angry but but something is going on with that length of eye contact that's deviating that's sending out some really clear signal so then like a natural instinct of somebody up to somebody is if you are caught in this like three second or more gaze on some on your lips the natural instinct is to lean in and kiss that is really funny when a head tilt first and then a lean

Speaker 2 she don't want to bump noses that is really funny actually because my my other question was like how do you know if someone actually like in the dating world right? Like, how to read signs?

Speaker 2 Like, does someone really like you? Or do they just want to sleep with you? Or do they even care about you?

Speaker 2 Like, how, like, I bet you, like, I think a lot of times people are not catching on very subtle hints and they make excuses for people's bad behavior or lack of phoning and calling.

Speaker 2 But if someone just says, oh, baby, I love you,

Speaker 1 they believe it. Okay.
So there's, there's two main pieces of this, and then I'll break them down. And the one piece is like whether or not somebody wants to sleep with you.

Speaker 1 And that's like, that is one of the big questions in life. Like, is this person attracted to me? That's huge.
And I sometimes think people focus too much on that, depending on what they want, right?

Speaker 1 But, but a lot of people want something real and want something deep and want something that's going to last.

Speaker 1 If you're looking for something real, deep, and you know, possibly permanent or long-lasting, you're going to want to see that there's emotional attachment.

Speaker 1 So let's go go look at, let's look at the, we're going to look at attraction and then we're going to look at emotionally attached or in other words, I care about you.

Speaker 1 So I'm attracted to you versus I care about you. So attracted is above in and under the eyes.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So above is that it took me years to figure this out.

Speaker 1 I watched a lot of trashy TV.

Speaker 1 But this piece, because I didn't learn that in my coding and that was not taught to me in facial expression.

Speaker 2 It wasn't. Okay.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 But I, but I knew, like, I knew there were these bedroom eyes. And like, what is that? So I actually, I think it clicked mostly when I watched the OC.

Speaker 2 Did you ever watch? Really? Oh my God. Brian Atwood.

Speaker 1 I remember. This character like just spends like half of his time showing off his eyelids.

Speaker 2 That is hilarious.

Speaker 1 Right. And it's like this almost like I call it when I'm teaching.
I say it's like pulling down the shades to make something romantic.

Speaker 1 You know, you want to like make the room a little more dark and romantic. So, you know, they just kind of do this where they loosen their, their eyelids.

Speaker 1 And it's a very different look than somebody who's like really sleepy because that's kind of this unfocused, my eyelids are drooping and I'm just like checked out.

Speaker 1 This is often with like a little bit of a head tilt, showing some vulnerability there and softness. And then you're just like almost showing off like, look how much eyelid I have.

Speaker 2 And that's how you can tell if someone's attracted to you. Okay.

Speaker 1 Right. And so that's a, that's a big piece.
And by the way, we're looking for that, that lowering.

Speaker 1 So we're looking again for the difference in the baseline, whether or not you have single-folded eyelids or double-folded eyelids. I have family members that are Chinese.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 You're looking for the movement. Okay.
So that's the eyelids. That's the bedroom eyes.
You're looking for a dilation of the pupils.

Speaker 1 So not that pupils are big, but that they become bigger during the conversation or interaction. So you're looking for

Speaker 1 a change. So people can have bigger pupils

Speaker 1 depending on kind of their baseline, or they can have bigger pupils one day because they're on certain medication. Drugs can make pupils either bigger or smaller.

Speaker 1 And so we're looking for the swelling of the pupils in the moment. So not the initial size that day.

Speaker 1 And we, you know, we wanted, we know that pupils expand and contract if the room is darker or lighter.

Speaker 1 If we're sitting outside and having a picnic and it's really sunny and there's some clouds, we know, you know, we know that

Speaker 1 when the sky becomes dark, our pupils are going to swell to allow in more light and this is i talk about that as almost like throwing the door open and saying like come in come in come in yeah

Speaker 1 opening that aperture and saying like come on in welcome but then what's the difference between someone who just wants to sleep with you versus someone who really cares about you wants to have like a real relationship right so so that difference so i just i'll finish this one so above the eyes in the eyes and under and under those smile bags from the joy you know we tend to get a little happier and more cheerful when we're around somebody that we're attracted to so that's the attraction.

Speaker 1 And then the achy-breaky heart, whether or not we empathize with somebody, whether or not we love them, whether or not we experience tenderness, that's right here on the chin.

Speaker 1 So if you tell me something hard or painful that you've experienced, I should be responding with a chin pucker if I care about you. or I care about the thing.

Speaker 1 And it's kind of that you can, you can make yourself do it by just saying, oh, by looking like puppy videos or baby videos, or if you look at pictures of your own children when they're really cute and chubby and little and you'll automatically pucker that chin.

Speaker 1 And I usually include the caveat of like, again, if somebody's having a hard time, they don't need to pucker their chin every time because you may be going on and on and on about venting about something.

Speaker 1 But if they never, when you talk about something physically, emotionally, or financially painful to you or somebody else close to you, they should be puckering their chin in empathy.

Speaker 1 And if they never do, that that's an issue.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's interesting. I I like that.
I think I saw that you said that that's for your chin is that, is that spot.

Speaker 2 Now, but don't most people, I shouldn't say most people, don't a lot of people know if you're telling them something that is

Speaker 2 vulnerable or telling them something that is meaningful, that the

Speaker 2 reaction that you should give is looking like you care. So therefore, they'll be like, oh, well, they can also, you can also fake that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people don't don't know how to fake their micro expressions at least i've never seen it like if someone said to me something terrible like oh you know like i'm i'm i i'm you know my house was just burnt down i'd be like oh my god that's horrible like right i mean that doesn't necessarily go ahead it doesn't mean you're in love with them but it just means that you that you like it's sort of like the the lowest bar is that they should at least care about you right but as you're becoming more intimate and vulnerable in your conversations with somebody, they should be caring about, they should be mirroring your facial expression.

Speaker 1 They should be participating. They should be leaning in and they should be responding to you.
And if they're not, that's an issue.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've seen it all the time where somebody has the right words, but when you talk about something that's really meaningful to you, they'll be like, oh, that's wonderful.

Speaker 1 And again, they're growling. Right, right.

Speaker 2 They're growling.

Speaker 1 Right. If somebody's growling, that's not good.
I mean,

Speaker 1 we know this stuff on some level, level, or at least a lot of us do.

Speaker 2 We do intuitively. That's why I find this very interesting, right? Because I think that naturally, a lot of us don't trust our own intuition, right?

Speaker 2 Like, you feel it when someone like likes you, doesn't like you, if we should do something, not do something, if something's safe. Like, what I find, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 What I was, what I think is interesting, you know, you talk about this, and what I really, what I kind of glommed on to when I found you was about the kids piece, right?

Speaker 2 Like, teaching kids what to look for and how to be safe and like teaching this to children at a young age. So like they don't get themselves into a situation that's dangerous, right?

Speaker 2 Like what to look for. Like what do you teach kids what to look for that is not safe? That's the first part.
It's part A.

Speaker 2 The second part of that question is what can you do the same type of training for somebody online as you can in person? Can you still pick up on these micro expressions as easily online?

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. So first let's go back to the kids piece.
I mean, that was my obsession. So my career was as a strategic advisor.
So I lived in

Speaker 1 Asia and then Europe and then and back in Asia again for 25 years, I guess 25, but part of that time I was at university, but my focus was working with managing directors and coaching.

Speaker 1 executives, usually CEOs at the top level, working with boards. I never intended to use any of my micro expressions or to even go public about it.

Speaker 1 There were only four people in the world that outside of my family that knew that I was trained and proficient in microexpressions.

Speaker 1 My obsession was to simplify the field of science so that I could teach my children to recognize predatory behavior.

Speaker 1 And in my sort of weird and wacky brain, I was like, if this is something that babies know, there has to be some possibility of putting more simple words on it.

Speaker 1 There has to be a simplified vocabulary and

Speaker 1 a way of making it kind of shorthand so that we can talk about it without doing like a long numerical code of every different muscle group that's moving or the facial expression.

Speaker 1 So my obsession was that, and I started off by just narrating it the way you narrate, like this is a banana, this is a spoon, this is a truck.

Speaker 1 I would, this is the no face, this is the ooh face, this is the yuck face.

Speaker 1 And then I would have them make it just the, you know how when you have a baby and you do this, somebody tells you you stick out your tongue and they'll stick out their tongue.

Speaker 1 So I would do that, but like on steroids. And I learned through trying over and over again that I would make my kids and myself really crabby if I did too much holding of the negative expressions.

Speaker 1 Finally, I finally realized that I was, my brain was reading that I was actually going through this trauma, that something was absolutely disgusting, or I was very angry, or I was terrified.

Speaker 1 Like that, that felt traumatizing to all of us. Right, right, right.
Yeah. And likewise, if you just do that happy expression over and over again, you just kind of fake it till you make it.

Speaker 1 The whole point of the facial expression is that it sends a message to the amygdala to process the emotion. And when there's too much facial paralysis, we're not able to process the emotion.

Speaker 1 The interpretation of processing gets stopped. So

Speaker 1 advanced stages of Parkinson's or Moebus, where there's facial paralysis, that impedes our ability to fully empathize, to fully understand our own feelings and to fully understand other people's because we need the facial movement for that.

Speaker 1 And so, for the kids, it was, I became obsessed with

Speaker 1 getting them to tell me when someone's facial expressions didn't match their words, or if just quite simply, tell me when anybody growls at you.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's just such a basic thing that every kid should know to report to whoever their caregiver is, this person is growling at me.

Speaker 1 And in my case, it was this man shows contempt and disgust when he talks to me. And that's a problem.
A grown man should not be showing contempt and disgust to a little kid.

Speaker 1 That's something is very, very off. Now, the microexpression shows the feeling and not the thought process, but it does exactly what you just said.
It shows us the red flags. We know something's off.

Speaker 1 And my kids had the advantage, or maybe sometimes the disadvantage because they kind of saw everything going on, but the advantage in terms of keeping them safe of having a joint vocabulary with their mother that they could say, that man shows contempt and disgust.

Speaker 1 And I would be so fast. I like was so on it because I wasn't protected as a little kid.
And so I just, it was my full-on obsession. I never intended to teach it to a wider audience.

Speaker 1 Part of what changed is I moved countries and I lost my professional network because I moved from Singapore to the U.S.

Speaker 1 And also what happened was as my children got older and AI, I was scared of AI getting everything and using it for nefarious purposes. I just was terrified of AI.
Really?

Speaker 1 And so I didn't want what I knew and what I had worked for years with my kids to be used

Speaker 1 for not good purposes. Once AI got so two things happened at the same time, my kids grew up and their friends,

Speaker 1 I was talking about microexpressions. I was doing some teaching at that time and their friends would come over and say, will you just teach me one thing?

Speaker 1 Or my son's friends would come over and they're like, How do I know if she likes me? Annie, like, quick, when Matias is in the bathroom, give me one thing I can look for.

Speaker 2 Yeah, by the way, I want to ask you, hey, well, this is fascinating.

Speaker 2 So, staying on the kids, besides the growl and what you taught us about this nasalabia area to look for in disgust, are there any other microexpressions that a kid or a parent listening can teach their kid quickly to look for?

Speaker 2 Besides, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 So the disgust is just this, right? So

Speaker 1 I'll show you what a knowing smile is.

Speaker 1 And then there's, I was taught when I learned facial expressions, when I, when I learned the coding of facial expressions, I was taught that contempt is the only facial expression that is always only unilateral.

Speaker 1 So I was taught that a lip tuck was contempt on just one side of the face.

Speaker 1 Now, over the years, as I've poked and prodded, I've noticed that I do that lip tuck all all the time when someone talks about, I mean, you and I were talking about one of your TED talks.

Speaker 1 And I was saying, oh, you know, I used to tell my daughter that, you know, you have to try for something 10 times to be able to succeed once or to be able to count on succeeding once.

Speaker 1 And you said something very similar that I loved. And if what when you said that, I noticed when I was watching this video, like I tuck my, one corner of my mouth into my cheek.
It's not a smile.

Speaker 1 It's a tuck. And that just means, oh, I know all about this.

Speaker 1 And so that's the knowing smile. When you add the element of disgust from that facial expression, watch how this can change.
That's just like, oh, I know about this. Now watch.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 See how that feels so central. That's contempt.
Contempt has to have that element of disgust. So disgust is the biggest one.

Speaker 1 But disgust with that knowing smile, it's kind of like, I know something that you don't know. And it's not good.
It's just never good when there's that element of disgust.

Speaker 1 And then I think anger is really important for kids to understand. That's always tight lips.
And that can be like tight lips when they're clenched.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's really important when you're, when you're little. And when I've worked with kids on the spectrum, kids with autism, and teaching them facial expressions.

Speaker 1 Some of the students that I had were not adept at reading facial expressions, reading facial expressions of emotion, but they were my fastest learners that I've ever had in my entire career because the individuals with autism that I've worked with specifically, I know autism is very wide-ranging and it's this whole kaleidoscope of things.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
But with the individuals I was working with, the pattern recognition skills that they had were phenomenal for sure. Yeah.
Really quick study of it.

Speaker 1 And so I would show them what the, what the facial expression would look like. And then we would go through the second step, which would be like, what do you do if you notice someone is angry?

Speaker 1 And I worked with my own kids who are not on the spectrum, but have some other

Speaker 1 things going on.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I mean, a lot of people do. So

Speaker 1 of course but i would teach them this face with the lip funnel the angry lip funnel so that had the pieces of anger concentration anger here with the angry mouth when the lip is funneled out and that is what i would call so tight mouth that's funneled out i call that the gonna get you mouth so in in my book and with my kids i always talked about that is the run face because that's the face that people are going to do when they're going to verbally or physically assault you and so i i that's a really important facial expression for kids you know just everybody should know what it looks like if somebody's going to attack you and that's not the only face facial expression but that they are likely to attack you if they're making that facial making that face guys i got to tell you again if you're listening to this podcast and not watching it it's going to be hard to understand i definitely recommend you two being watching this one because i think even just for the fact if you have you're a parent and you want to teach your kids simple ways to look out for bad behavior it's important to listen to this and watch it i should say What's the youngest age that you can teach this to?

Speaker 1 So, with my own kids, I started exactly, you know, when they were, when they were infants, because I started narrating my facial expressions. Like, look, mama's happy, my cheeks are up.

Speaker 1 Like, my, my, I would talk about the smile, I would talk about fear, I would talk about, and I would get the babies can mirror the facial expression.

Speaker 1 Again, don't do it too long for the negative ones, please. The youngest student I've ever had, there was a risk of kidnapping, and she's, um, she was three when we started.

Speaker 2 Three. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. And I probably wouldn't have worked with somebody that young, but

Speaker 1 I mean, wait, some people in particular live in a dangerous world. Her parents are

Speaker 1 well known and their wealth is also well known.

Speaker 2 Oh, right. So then you would have to teach these people, especially kids from very, very powerful families, wealthy families, right? What to look for.

Speaker 2 Because in general, everyone's going to want something from you and they're going to have a lot, sometimes, a lot of times unfortunately a lot of negative or their reasonings for wanting to be close to you are

Speaker 1 not what would be like the innocent I would say right say not innocent exactly it so so they brought me in

Speaker 1 at that stage I had I had stopped teaching working with kids and was mostly you know traveling around doing keynotes and training with

Speaker 1 you know financial institutions or big sales groups And they attended a conference that a financial institute held for some of their wealthiest clients.

Speaker 1 And I had sat on stage, and I taught my kids, I used some examples, and I had said,

Speaker 1 I don't have the bandwidth to do individuals at this anymore. And they pulled me aside.

Speaker 1 I didn't recognize who they were.

Speaker 1 I'm mostly face blind,

Speaker 1 which is ironic. I remember every movement on someone's face, and I don't remember their, the color of their eyes or their facial features.
This is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 This is the cobbler has no shoes again. And this happened all the time.
I barely recognize my own children. They find it infuriating.

Speaker 2 Wow. That is amazing.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 It's really terrible. I recognize.
I can tell by your voice instantly. Like, I know.
And I can tell by your facial expressions if we get into a conversation.

Speaker 1 I can remember like this boy that I was in love with, the facial expressions that he made when he was 14 years old.

Speaker 2 That's like 40 years ago. Wow.
but you can't, but you're blind, otherwise, I do. Is it maybe a thing a reader glass, like reader glasses, can help you with, or no?

Speaker 1 No, it's not that I can't see the face, it's that I cannot. There's like a piece of my brain that can't remember it.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow, it's so funny!

Speaker 1 So, it's like I see you perfectly clearly, and I can remember, and I'm watching all these months. It's almost like I'm so interested in the microbe.

Speaker 1 I remember even, you know, when I was 14, I didn't know how to read facial expressions other than I had really good intuition. Um,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 But yeah, so so anyway, long story short, the parents said, you know, we just need you to do this. And it wasn't until they explained their situation and they were relentless.

Speaker 1 They were just like, this is not, you're going to have to do this for us. And I just kind of looked at them like, no, I don't.
Wow.

Speaker 1 And when they explained, I thought, oh, you know, like here I am being all cocky and glib.

Speaker 1 And they really, I do need to do this for them. And above all, I need to do it for their children.
And you can see I'm self-soothing.

Speaker 1 I'm touching my skin and trying to calm myself down because even just thinking about it worries me.

Speaker 1 So they brought me in wanting to teach her to recognize predatory behavior and have a joint vocabulary again with the parents to be able to alert them and the caregivers and anybody else that was involved in the caregiving of these children.

Speaker 1 The piece that I said, I said two things. One, I'll only do it if I train you as well.

Speaker 1 because there's no point in this child having this vocabulary and this knowledge that is not shared in the family.

Speaker 1 And it was,

Speaker 1 that was like, that's just a deal breaker.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, I won't ever, and I never have worked with kids without working with the parents because they have to have that as a language that keeps developing once I'm gone.

Speaker 1 And the other piece was, yes, this, there were two kids, but they need to understand predatory behavior and be able to identify.

Speaker 1 They also need to be able to tell when somebody really does love them.

Speaker 1 Because if you're living in this expectation that everybody wants a piece of you or your family or your dad or your mom, because they're well known in the world, you do need to, some, some people just don't care.

Speaker 1 Like some people are not interested in what your daddy does and are able to be, to see past that. And some people just aren't that motivated by money.

Speaker 1 I know a lot of people are, but some people could care less. But they, they might not give you 14 chances.

Speaker 1 They might just give you one or two if you're mean to them or you're, or if you're suspicious of them.

Speaker 1 People who are kind and loving and caring don't like being accused of not being kind and loving and caring.

Speaker 1 So, recognizing when somebody does love you, recognizing both negative intentions or impure intentions and

Speaker 1 really good loving intentions, both of those pieces are really important for us humans.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, that's a very good point, right? To recognize when someone actually does have good intentions, right? It's not always negative.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. There's so much love in the world.
There's so many good people. And some of us, some of the really good people are not great at expressing it in words.
No, that's true.

Speaker 2 I, yeah, I agree with you. And I think especially, but that's more of a situation like you were saying, when someone has a lot of people who are constantly wanting from you.

Speaker 2 And like they may probably,

Speaker 2 a lot of people, an influx of people who have bad intentions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you'll find people. Yes, it pulls them in, right?

Speaker 2 It pulls you in.

Speaker 2 Well, then. When you, but you're saying something earlier, though, like when they're like, how can you tell when

Speaker 2 your kid's friends are like, like how can you tell if a girl likes me what can how can you tell like you said the the bedroom drawn eyelids it was like a show of like attraction is so is that how you can tell if someone likes you or is there other things too absolutely absolutely but the biggest thing that i told this particular point

Speaker 1 there was another kid one of my daughter emma her friend her friend came over and i think I had just started on Instagram.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I've only been on Instagram, I want to say about a year and a half. Before then, I had like one post and 30 followers.

Speaker 1 So I started posting. And this guy

Speaker 1 was, you know, a friend, a classmate of hers from high school. And he said, wait, I heard you could like read people and like, what?

Speaker 2 Like, can Eva do that?

Speaker 1 And all this stuff. And she was going, don't, don't tell them you're creating a monster.
And I told him about the pupil dilation.

Speaker 1 You know, if you're in a conversation, that girl's really interested, her pupils will swell in the moment. In other words, they will expand.
And that's kind of, it's not a yes.

Speaker 1 You always have to ask for consent, but it is that, you know, it's interest.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she was so mad at me.

Speaker 2 I can imagine. Did you tell? So basically the pupils, the eyelids.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like what other things would you tell me?

Speaker 1 So speaking of body language, one thing that the one thing that people do sometimes do on purpose, so there are a lot of people that have studied body language and are cognizant of this, but most people aren't.

Speaker 1 And it's that mirroring of body language when we really feel aligned with somebody, whether it's romantic or not.

Speaker 1 I mean, even in a boardroom, I can like gaze around and see which board members are kind of aligned with each other because someone will lean forward and the person, you know, that is feeling like we're kind of a team.

Speaker 1 You know, we're such paced mental the other person will lean forward and then somebody will lean back. I had, I think I wrote it in the book.
I had this interaction with my high school boyfriend.

Speaker 1 And it was the first time we'd had a real conversation in over 30 years.

Speaker 1 And I was talking to him and i had well that's so funny that you just put three fingers up because i had all right crazy fingers i had three fingers on my face and i looked at him and he had that's just like telepathy seriously this is this is crazy

Speaker 1 that's true i did the same thing i reached for my face and you did it with three too

Speaker 2 I didn't do that. I did.
By the way, I didn't put my hair on the side because you did it while you were saying that mirroring. And I was actually going to do it and I stopped myself.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's because we're aligned. It's because you're getting what I'm saying and I'm getting what you're saying.
And

Speaker 1 you're like, yeah, this is interesting.

Speaker 1 So I had three fingers on my face and I looked at him and I noticed he had three fingers on his face and I went like this.

Speaker 1 And I was like, you mirror me down to my fingertips. And he was like, what does that mean? And I was like,

Speaker 2 That's right. The mirroring for sure, though, is a good one.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So how do you spot, this is a couple of ones I know that you talk about, I think, because people are very curious. It's very hot right now, the topic of narcissism and narcissists.

Speaker 2 And people ask you all the time, like, how do you spot a narcissist? How can you really tell by their facial expression or micro expression?

Speaker 1 The piece that really

Speaker 1 is absent for me.

Speaker 1 is that pucker of the chin.

Speaker 1 The narcissist that I know, and I'm not an expert per se in narcissism, I talk about it constantly and partly because my absolute best friend, what my middle child is named after her, is a clinical psychologist.

Speaker 1 We talk every single day.

Speaker 1 And we discuss all of our work and all of these things. And we talk about narciss all the time because it comes up in her work and in my work.

Speaker 1 The piece that I look for with the facial expressions is that lack of puckering. The empathy is absent.
The genuine deep care. The words are the right words.

Speaker 1 The facial expressions, there's, there's all these red flags with the facial expressions. They don't match.

Speaker 1 There's a growling with the, you know, when something good happens to the other person because the narcissist is looking for supply, right?

Speaker 1 They're looking to take usually that my understanding, at least, and in my life experience is that they tend to go after fairly powerful, confident people a lot of the time because that's much more interesting to take down somebody.

Speaker 1 It's much more of a challenge to to take down somebody powerful than it is to take somebody weak and sort of socially isolate and control them.

Speaker 1 That's not always the case, but I found that in my life with the narcissists that I tend to have attracted in my past. And then there's this piece of going moving away from the facial expression.

Speaker 1 There's this initial stage of love bombing where it's like too good to be true and they're parroting and mirroring everything back to you both in it with the body language, but they're so into it.

Speaker 1 And I actually

Speaker 1 believe that the narcissists that I've been involved with romantically, which by the way, just to be clear, not my ex-husband,

Speaker 1 have experienced some of that love-bombing phrase together with me, especially when I was in my early 20s, that there was a moment of really feeling that infatuation.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's, you know, just that they're made of stone. I think that there's sometimes moments of that really deep connection.
And I always look for the intermittent reinforcement, right?

Speaker 1 That there's this amazing period where everything's almost like heightened and magical.

Speaker 1 And then you're forever trying to get back to those moments, but the behavior gets more and more abusive over time. Narcissists don't like it when you are thriving.

Speaker 1 whether that's financially, whether that's other men are attracted to you. If it's a male narcissist, there's lots of female narcissists as well.

Speaker 1 But it's all like head games and it all has to do with control.

Speaker 2 You know, what's interesting? You just said something that I've spoken to tons of clinical psychologists and experts, narcissism experts.

Speaker 2 One thing that's interesting that you said, and I tend to agree, but most people don't say that, is narcissistic men who are truly narcissists will rather be with a very strong girl because

Speaker 2 it's more of a challenge to like knock them down than a weaker, more insecure, docile, because those girls are easier targets for them.

Speaker 1 Right. It's already

Speaker 1 deal. Well, yeah, I think if you're

Speaker 1 like the whole like scenario, the whole game is already completed if it's easy if the person is too weak and submissive.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think if you're like an alpha who's super competitive and like just want to have like see if I can the challenge piece of it, I guess you can have a narcissist though.

Speaker 2 And I know plenty of narcissists, believe me, who are so insecure

Speaker 2 that they just won't even bother. Exactly.
I live in like the mecca

Speaker 2 that they're so insecure, they wouldn't last with the strong girl. Like they don't have the, they don't have the stamina.
So then they'll go for the weaker, the weaker girl.

Speaker 2 The ones who have the stamina and have actually, because I don't think necessarily like every narcissist has to be

Speaker 2 like outwardly insecure person, right? Some of them actually, they try to believe that they're actually

Speaker 1 well and some of them are like these pillars of community outwardly and and in their familial relationships and their romantic relationships and with their children are are awful and like i said i am not a clinical psychologist i am very like i am an expert in facial expressions that i know upside down in the dark i 24 seven

Speaker 1 multiple decades. That's my full-on obsession.
I am very, very educated. I have a master's degree in anthropology.
Yes. I've lived in nine countries, as I said.
I've been all over the world.

Speaker 1 I've tested this. And people will say, well, you know, I had somebody the other day that I was talking to and they said, well, not in Asia.

Speaker 1 And I was like, honey, I've lived in three different countries in Asia for almost 12 years. Like, I have

Speaker 1 practices in Singapore. I was in Singapore for a little over nine years.
And, you know, it's this beautiful melting pot of people from all over the world. I mean, that is where I trained my children.

Speaker 1 So it is, it is a universal thing.

Speaker 1 I do think that my experience with narcissists, I consider myself a fairly strong woman. I was abused as a child.

Speaker 1 So I do fight the instinct to hide still in my life, to make myself small and to blend in with the woodwork and to be a people pleaser.

Speaker 1 That said, as I've grown older and older, like I've had to learn to fight and I've had to learn to create a life that was very, very different from the life that I was born into.

Speaker 2 That's why your word at 50 was bold.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
It was. I like that.
Yeah. I was given a necklace in silver that said bold for my 50th for my best friend.
And I used to hide it under my clothes because I wasn't that bold.

Speaker 2 Oh, not yet. You were working up to showing it.

Speaker 1 I was working on it. You were wearing it, though.
I was, you know, getting ready to publish my book. And I was just, I knew I had to go out on social media.

Speaker 1 I was absolutely terrified of taking up space in the world just because I know know as a woman, you take up any kind of space and you become a target.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've had, I don't answer, I don't answer telephone calls from anybody that's not on my contact list. I get crazy, like really terrible emails sometimes.
I get some lovely ones too.

Speaker 1 My email address is no longer public. And my, I mean, you know what it's like.

Speaker 2 Totally. I agree with you.
Let me ask you two more questions and then I'll let you go because I know we had so much technical issues. My phone's blowing up.
You're probably.

Speaker 1 I can do this all all day.

Speaker 2 I know. And I love your, you got a very nice, nice spirit about you, Annie.
I really, you really do. You're welcome.

Speaker 2 How could you spot a liar in a minute? Is there like just like some like telltale signs that someone can just tell right away?

Speaker 1 Right. So lie detection, people, that the people that I love listening to about lie detection, the people that I, Joan of Or, I love him.
FBI agent. He just wrote a book about body.

Speaker 1 He's written a couple books, but he's, you want to get your information from people who have been in life or death scenarios if you're looking for lie detection.

Speaker 1 I want to, I want somebody who's been in the military or somebody that's been, where it's really been high stakes and not just somebody who says, like, I'm an expert

Speaker 1 on body language because I just, you know, everybody's always told me I'm good at it. Like, I want somebody who's really been trained.
You know, give me a hostage negotiator. Give me boss.

Speaker 1 Like, give me, give me somebody who's been through it.

Speaker 1 I totally agree.

Speaker 2 I like this guy I've had on the podcast. Just not to interrupt you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, tell me.

Speaker 2 Joe Navarra, I just wrote him down. I'm going to reach out to him and let you know him.

Speaker 1 I've never met him. And everywhere I go to ski, somebody's like, we had Joe Navarra last year.

Speaker 2 I'm going to look into him. I love this guy.
He wrote the book,

Speaker 2 why am I blanking? He's like a hostage negotiator.

Speaker 1 He's very role. Chris Voss.
Chris Voss.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I like him. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I do a lot of places where he's, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in fact, there was one guy that I don't think the podcast was ever published.

Speaker 1 And he said in the pre-interview, he's like, I don't like Chris. I didn't like him.
I interviewed him and I didn't like him. And I was like, oh, shit, you're not going to like me either.

Speaker 1 And he didn't.

Speaker 2 Are you serious?

Speaker 2 That's hilarious.

Speaker 1 He did not like somebody getting insight into like what was going on. And I was like, dude, I'm not analyzing you.
We're just having a conversation. I know.

Speaker 2 That's someone that should, that's very interesting, actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's a very interesting person.

Speaker 2 That's ready. That's a sure sign.
But, you know, right there.

Speaker 1 Yes. So we we talk about that sometime offline because it was, I'll tell you the whole story.
It was really, really interesting.

Speaker 1 And I just like, I sat there in that chair and I was like, this is not going to ever go up. See the light of day.
Wow. Because you got some stuff that you are hiding, sir.

Speaker 1 And it's none of my business. And like, can we please get back to talking about

Speaker 1 it? Please get back to me.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Back to me, back to you.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 1 So the piece that is really interesting, because

Speaker 1 people who are experts in lie detection will tell you they look for three things. The general idea is like three hotspots.

Speaker 1 You're looking for three clues because lie detection is really, really hard, as it turns out.

Speaker 1 So there are all sorts of, you know, if somebody's using a qualifier, the one I like is the guy, the guy who told me he was a mostly good guy, wanted to date me.

Speaker 2 Mostly good guy.

Speaker 1 Like, ooh, turned out, yeah, he was married.

Speaker 1 Not so great. That was like a red flag.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, hell no.
But that was a red flag.

Speaker 1 And when you know those red flags so clearly, it's really, you don't, I mean, you don't want to ignore them. But it's nice to like not do the six months and then find out you're being betrayed.
Right.

Speaker 1 So, so there's, there's, I think you had a guest. I can't remember what her name was.
I, I listened to her the other day. You had such a good conversation.
It was such great chemistry. She wrote cues.

Speaker 2 Oh, you mean Vanessa Van Edwards? She wrote social cues. She's a body language person.
Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 She's actually, I had not read her work, but I'm going to now because I thought that that interview was.

Speaker 2 Thank you. She's very good.

Speaker 1 But she talks about like going up, like raising your voice as a question. That's one of the things I look for.

Speaker 1 Nodding, and this is not universal, but it is practically universal in North America, U.S., Canada, Mexico.

Speaker 1 You know, this means yes, this means no, Western Europe, not the same in Asia and places in Asia or, you know, India, Sri Lanka. They do a bunch of different head movements.

Speaker 1 But, but, you know, when Hillary Clinton says, I knew my husband was a good man and she's, you know, she should be doing this. And instead, she goes, and my husband's a good man.

Speaker 2 She did, she nodded the other way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in one of her episodes of Grit that I believe is on Apple TV.

Speaker 1 And I thought about, I thought about using it as like a clip for my microservice. I thought I'm going to get in so much trouble.

Speaker 1 But though she was allowing one of the women that she interviewed to actually ask her why she stayed with Bill, and she said, because I knew my husband was a good man.

Speaker 1 That's not good. Wow.
Yeah. So I look for that, like that, that really clear disconnect.

Speaker 1 But with the facial expressions, the thing that I love, and I think the reason that I'm so obsessed with this science, with this science, and by the way, I've worked with clients like the Museum of Science in Boston.

Speaker 1 This is scientific stuff.

Speaker 1 I teach it in a very pragmatic way. I'm not sure all my...

Speaker 1 the people in my field that are really good at the laboratory research would agree.

Speaker 1 My tendency to like advance my ability and my children's tendency is to go out and kind of provoke people and see if we can get the same facial expression for the complex facial expressions over and over and over again in the situation in like similar situations.

Speaker 1 Do we get the same response? Like, is that what the facial expression of hurt looks like? Or is this what the knowing smile looks like? How do we play? How do we test? So I'm an anthropologist.

Speaker 1 All my stuff is like field work where I'm like digging in the dirt myself.

Speaker 1 But I look for that facial expression not matching the words. Like I said, is somebody saying, nice to meet you and they're showing disgust? or I really want to do this and they're showing disgust.

Speaker 1 Now, really important to remember that I can see exactly what you're feeling. I know the feeling for sure with the facial movement in my coaches.
I do not know what somebody's thinking.

Speaker 1 So if you ask me to come back on your podcast next week and I do that, it may just be like next week I'm traveling. I'm with a client all next week.
That's going to be hard for me.

Speaker 1 It doesn't mean I don't want to come back. But if every time you mention ever doing anything with me,

Speaker 1 you know, it's the cue cue to repeat the experiment. Does somebody do that multiple times?

Speaker 1 Is every time we talk about, you know, Annie and Jen doing something, I kind of go like this, then that's an issue that you're going to want to find out. But again, it only shows the feeling.

Speaker 1 But if someone's saying like really positive words and showing negative facial expressions, that's a problem. That's a red flag.

Speaker 2 I think that's interesting too, because it's not just a one-off sometimes. There has to be consistency.
Yes. And like, so like if you're in a sales situation, right? Yes.

Speaker 2 Right. Like this is a big one for people who are

Speaker 2 in like business. And, you know, how can you tell if someone is responsive to what you're trying to do and when to back off and when to kind of keep on going?

Speaker 1 So the biggest, I do a lot of training for people in investment situations.

Speaker 1 I started, I actually started, I talked about managing consulting, but my first, um, my first job was 20 months as an analyst in private equity.

Speaker 1 I was terrible at it.

Speaker 1 I was terrible at it. But I do a lot of training for mergers and acquisitions.

Speaker 1 And I do a lot of training these days for legal teams and people that are in just high, any kind of really high stakes negotiation.

Speaker 1 And I teach them to figure out like which are the parts of their pitch that are really high stakes.

Speaker 1 Like when you're presenting a price for something, when you're doing valuation and you're discussing that, you're going to want to see like, does the person do this? That's fear. That's a problem.

Speaker 1 Do they clench their lips in anger? That's also a problem. Do they raise their inforbital triangles in pleasure? That's meaning that are they nodding a lot and their cheeks are popping up?

Speaker 1 That means they like it. Do their pupils start to swell? That means they like it.
And again, when you start the meeting, you're going to gauge how big, this is really high stakes.

Speaker 1 You're looking at the person across the table and you're going to tell yourself, I have to use words in my brain. I have to literally say, okay, their pupils are medium sized.

Speaker 1 So that if I'm looking away, because I'm not staring at them, especially if it's a team the entire time, I need to remember what size the pupils were at the beginning.

Speaker 1 So if I look away and then look back and the pupils are doubled in size, my brain will register that. If that's something that's a little bit fiddly, it takes a lot of effort.

Speaker 1 It's like going to the gym, you have to learn the movement and the muscle movement. But that piece, if I see pupil dilation, I'm done.
I'm not going to keep selling. I'm done with the selling.

Speaker 1 Now we just talk about whatever they want to talk about because you know, if you've ever, you know, you've done sales, right?

Speaker 2 you you know that there's a risk of overselling and losing them so you don't want to go past that point yeah so what i picked up from this podcast where there's some very universal signs that can play in lots of areas the dilation of the pupils the way somebody's mouth is the way their their mouth is up or down

Speaker 2 that that growl was a big one

Speaker 2 and the puffy cheeks to tell someone's like happy likes you smiling like there's a few very like core movements that I think that are just can play into lots of different scenarios, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly right. And I, um,

Speaker 1 you know, my goal, I do, I do coaching in my life. I work with, with, mostly with CEOs and boards and managing directors and teach them how to navigate really difficult relationships.

Speaker 1 And then I do a lot of micro expressions training and corporate training.

Speaker 1 But on the side, I feel like it's extremely important to get this knowledge out into the world and that's why i do the social media and i have online courses that are that are expensive and kind of corporate but the thing that i'm going to launch now hopefully within about four weeks is a subscription service so people can pay you know eight dollars or so a month and get these in bite-sized chunk chunks because that was about the best synopsis i've ever heard right where you're going like and i learned this and i learned this and i learned this and i learned this most people's brain can't brains can't absorb as much as you did that quickly.

Speaker 1 Thank you. So most people just need it really broken down and like piece by piece.
And then you just practice repetition, repetition and see it on a lot of different faces.

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I just saw it clear as day. And once it clicks in your brain, you're done.

Speaker 1 For the rest of your life, you will see this everywhere and you'll you'll not understand why you didn't see it before.

Speaker 2 Well, it's fun. Thank you for saying that.
I find that life is, it's all about patterns, right? Like picking up on, maybe I'm also autistic. Maybe I'm on the spectrum.

Speaker 2 Like you were saying, the people that you worked with who had autism, they picked up on patterns quite quickly.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, like, and so what I, I mean, maybe what I think I might be good at or not, or what I think I, we thrive in is that pattern recognition of in general.

Speaker 2 Like I'm very, I try, I, what I'm good at, I'm good at. And what I'm bad at, I'm like, just terrible at.

Speaker 1 Me too. And right?

Speaker 2 Like most people.

Speaker 1 I'm dyslexic. I can't remember faces I can't remember

Speaker 2 I can't remember by the way me too I can't remember anything I can't do administrative work I'm terrible at communication the bot but observe like like picking up on social cues and observations and all these things like I feel like a lot of this it's about just like their transferable skills like what's going to be bad in this area is also going to be bad in that area so of all the thousands of micro expressions it really comes down to like a top 20 or top 10 that are the most important foundational pieces.

Speaker 1 Yes, I mean, you can combine and combine and combine, but like if you, my obsession with the kids was trying to figure out how to teach this in a simplified way.

Speaker 1 So the obsession was, and I don't believe anybody had ever done it before.

Speaker 1 If they have, I have, I have not seen it, was to identify one piece of the face that was unique to only that feeling, that emotion, that expression.

Speaker 1 So for example, disgust is always going to have a movement right here. Anger is always going to have tight lips.

Speaker 1 Now, anger also has a furrowing of the brows, but the problem is we furrow a brow in concentration as well. So maybe just problem solving.
So that piece and the idea that

Speaker 1 I think my brain is similar to yours in that.

Speaker 1 You want that, not the shortcut, because it's not that you're trying to skip the hard work or the challenging pieces, but you're like, give me what I want to focus on. And let me focus on that.

Speaker 2 And what's tangible, This is what it is also like, give me the tangible pieces that I can implement that can be the most helpful. I'm never going to be an expert or a specialist like you.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to, I'm not trained. I'm not going to be memorizing all these things.

Speaker 2 But there's in any what in whatever anybody does, if you can top line two or three, take two or three great takeaways for the average person to make their life, circumstances, whatever, just a smidgen better, 10% better.

Speaker 2 Right. That's what I'm looking for.
And I think you gave it to us. So

Speaker 2 you're welcome. Okay.
The book is called Diary of a Human Lie Detector, boom, boom, boom. And her coaching or the subscription service, all that.

Speaker 2 When is that coming out, Annie? You said?

Speaker 1 Probably about, well, we're aiming to have it out in about four weeks. But yeah, people can check my Instagram or my website, anniestarnbled.com, and it will be.
It will be.

Speaker 1 Perfect.

Speaker 2 There you go, guys. Check her out.
She's great. Thank you again, Annie, for for everything.
I appreciate you being on the show.

Speaker 1 Oh, my pleasure, Jen. It was awesome.

Speaker 2 Thank you.