Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Well, welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. We've got Vanessa Van Edwards in the house. Good to see you. We are talking all things Master the Secret Language of charismatic communication.
I think the facial cues we give people really put off a lot of, if we can trust someone, if we can't trust someone, you know, if someone's interested, if they're enrolled, if they're unenrolled, all these different things. For 20 years, I had four missing teeth. When I was, I guess it was 16 and a half, I got eight teeth removed, four wisdom and then four more on the sides.
For many years, 20 years of my life, I had these gaps, right? And so I'd always smirk kind of on the side to kind of hide, to hide it.
One.
Chapter 2: How do facial cues affect trust and engagement?
And I don't know if that helped me or hurt me.
And you're like, no, it didn't.
So I would smile big, but then I would kind of like half smirk sometimes.
I've seen your smirk.
And after, my book cover too is kind of like just smiling, but it's a big smile, but it's not a showing the teeth smile. It's true. Is it better to smile without teeth or with teeth in order to enroll people in you as a human being to get anything you want in your life?
What research found is that a real smile, whether it shows teeth or not, the biggest difference is it has to reach up here.
The eyes.
The upper cheek muscles, actually. So those eye crinkles.
I do that a lot, though. I feel like I squint a lot.
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Chapter 3: What role do smiles play in communication?
I can't remember if I got this from you years ago. It's like looking at the hands and seeing are they in the pocket, are they not in the pocket? But go ahead, we'll get back to that.
Okay, so social rejection cues, and you know this. If you're in a business meeting and you suddenly feel like, am I disliked? He doesn't like this, she doesn't like this. When we see a cue of social rejection, our field of vision increases.
We see wider.
We literally see wider. Our pupils dilate so we see more. The reason why that study was like a light bulb for me was our cues are affecting others' physiology. Our physiology can change in a room in an instant. If we walk into a meeting and we feel not liked, if we feel rejected, if we feel like we're being judged, Our own physiology responds.
So if we're in a room and we're not feeling confident or in control and someone sends us a cue of rejection, one, you want to know what those are because it makes your field of vision bigger so you can see who else is sending me a cue, what's my escape route. That's literally what your body is trying to do. Ups your adrenaline, ups your cortisol. And no one can think well. Adrenaline, cortisol.
That's why in a meeting it can go downhill so quickly. You're in a presentation, you prepare it all week. Oh. And then you're like, oh, he just rolled his eyes. Oh, she just turned away. Oh, I just saw a weird foot movement. And then you lose your spot. You blank out, and the rest of the presentation goes badly. The good news is is what Matthew Lieberman found. This is from UCLA.
Once you label a cue, so if you say that was an eye roll, that was a scoff of exasperation, that was a contempt smirk, the moment you label it, your amygdala calms down. They've proven that when people are in FMRI machines and they show them a fearful face, so fearful face is when we widen the whites of our eyes and we raise our eyebrows up.
If you're laying in an FMRI machine and you see fear, you will begin to feel afraid. Your amygdala begins to activate and your body goes, well, if he's afraid, I better be afraid. But the moment you say in the FMRI, whew, that's just fear, your amygdala stops responding.
Interesting.
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Chapter 4: How can labeling rejection cues improve confidence?
Oh, you just got it. Of course. What's funny is, in fear, our eyes widen. If you widen your eyes as wide as possible so that you can see the whites, I can take in way more of my environment. When we're afraid, we want to see as much as possible. When we are trying to see details universally across cultures, we have to lessen the light coming into our eyes. So we squint.
The focus.
We focus. So if you were to try to see that dot over there on the wall, you harden your lower lids. And that is because scientifically proven, when we harden our lower lids, it reduces the amount of light and we can see more details. I can see the details on that camera better. when I lower lid flex.
This is why if you open People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, on almost every page, along with a flexed bicep, are flexed lids. And that is because women find a flexed lid, oh, so attractive.
So attractive. So an open lid is not sexy.
Is it sexy? Yes, because why? Women and men both want partners who are deeply scrutinizing, who are deeply looking at them. So if I'm sitting when talking to you and I go, oh, really? I just showed you, wow, that was super interesting. In fact, when we flex our lids, we're going from just listening to thinking deeply.
Interesting.
We're literally trying to see something better. So if you're in a negotiation or on a date or with a friend and they go, really? And they harden their lower lids, you are like, ooh, ding, ding, I just hit something good. And so the other way that we control cues is, OK, let's say that you're, and this actually happened to me. So this is a story I share in the book.
I was in a meeting with a very high-powered exec team. And if the presentation went well, they were going to invite me back for more presentations. So the stakes were very high. And it was a small group. And I was in a particular part of my presentation talking about chemicals. And I noticed an executive across the room fluxes lower lids at me, kind of fluxes lower lids. He's looking at the slide.
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Chapter 5: What experiment reveals about our ability to detect lies?
So we did a massive experiment in our lab where we asked people to send in videos of themselves lying. Actually, you play it in the book. It's called Lie to Me. So I have you lie to me. Play this lie to me game. Diagnose your own tells.
Chapter 6: What are the key danger zone cues to notice when lying?
It's very important to know your own tells because you should know what your danger zone cues are when you're leaking them.
And one of the, you should know those.
It's good to know those in the back of your pocket. Do that with your partner, right? You want them to know what those are too. So one thing that we noticed is on lies, that was one of the biggest indicators. So in the Lie to Me game, we ask you to do two things. We ask you to tell us an embarrassing story, your most embarrassing story, and then a fake embarrassing story.
And we want to see if we can tell the difference. If we cut the clips, can we know which one is the fake one?
Man, that'd be interesting.
Yes. And it's amazing. You see the same danger zone cues over and over again right before someone's about to lie and tell their fake embarrassing story. They go, okay. And they lip purse right before they're going to do it. And that's because we don't like lying. Our body knows it's going to get us into trouble. So we're like, stop it, stop it, stop it. And we hold ourselves back.
You ask a woman, how much do you weigh? She'll go, mm. Like literally close those lips because no woman wants to talk about how much she weighs. So it's a withholding gesture.
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Chapter 7: How does body language impact perceptions of warmth and competence?
And so that's the first thing is you want to look for some of the bigger cues, withholding gestures. Lip purse is one. A sudden distancing behavior. So we also noticed that liars in our lab, they wanted to like get away from the lie, like as if it smelled. So like when they were telling their most embarrassing story, they'd be like leaning in, using gestures. Oh, it's so embarrassing.
Remember, embarrassing stories are negative. Right. It's not like it's a positive memory. It's like people are like, and they do a shame touch.
Chapter 8: What are the most powerful communication cues for leaders?
The universal shame touch is when people touch their fingers to the side of their forehead. Yes, this happened to my mom. Oh, gosh, I'm so embarrassed.
So they usually tell the truth and they do like this.
Yes, because they're actually embarrassed, right? So these are all good, like congruent, right? We're seeing embarrassment and shame gesture. We're seeing negative nonverbal and people shaking their head. I can't believe that happened, right? Like, oh, they're so upset that happened. We're seeing cringes. We're seeing fear. We're seeing sadness. congruent, right?
Like that's all congruent emotion. On the bad stories, we often see people will lip purse and they try to get away from it. So they'll say a statement and then, Uh, you know, and then, um, and they're literally like as far away. I hope I'm not messing up my audio. They're as far away from the lie as they can possibly get. They're leaning back.
They'll sometimes literally lean their head back in the chair. And that's because physically we want to distance ourselves from things we don't like. So we're looking for lip purses, sudden distancing, and there's a lot of cues that we can't control. Right? So blink rate is another one. Eye blocking behavior is, um, liars have higher blink rates.
They blink more.
Yeah. Actually, in Britney Spears, she had a really interesting interview that I actually break this down on my YouTube channel. So you have to read the book if you want to see it, where I break down the cues in this early interview. This is right before the conservatorship started. So very, very full of cues because it's right before it happened. And she gets asked a very difficult question.
And she all of a sudden her blink rate goes from a normal rate to a high rate. So she starts to really quickly change. blink her eyes like this and that is because when we're really nervous we literally want to close out stimuli to not see what's happening so we can process what's happening. So blink rate is something that a lot of manipulative people cannot control.
In fact, when I share this, people go, oh, I know a very narcissistic manipulative person who has a very high blink rate.
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