As you may know, I am a student of body language, aka nonverbal communication. I've been fascinated by Trump's use of certain gestures, and this video explains their meaning and function. At root, he has hypnotized a great number of people and most likely he did it with these gestures, not with the stunning illogic of his words.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/opinions/hand-gestures-matter-for-presidents-van-edwards-opinion/index.html

As a student of nonverbal communication, I'm always fascinated when a new tidbit comes along.  It appears that there is one more universal microexpression to add to the current list of seven, and that is the "not" face, or the face that says "I don't agree".  It isn't completely unique, instead it borrows from the expressions of digust, anger and contempt.  The other four previously identified microexpressions are fear, sadness, surprise, and happiness. Here's a good explanation of all of this.

This is a great post with a few specifics about gestures that mean something different in other places.
http://www.scienceofpeople.com/2014/07/gestures-shouldnt-making-abroad/
by Michiel Andreae from The Netherlands
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I was wearing my new black PEACE T-shirt, that says shalom in Hebrew and something analogous in Arabic.  We were walking back to our condo along the coastal trail in Kapa'a, and I stopped in the restroom to let off happy hour.  While I was in there the locals accosted Will and he approached a pack of 4 guys and one gal who were hanging out by a sign.  One guy tried to sell him some herb, and when he didn't want any, asked to buy some.  When I came out of the rest room, I approached Will and the gang at the sign, and the woman asked if he was my man, and said something about how I should tell those guys to be nice to him.  At this point two of the guys left, leaving only the two, one young, one old, crouched beside the sign.  The woman, who turns out to be named Laura and has lived 44 years on Kauai, is of hispanic origin as indicated by her perturbation of my name.  She was tipsy.  Had all her teeth so I didn't suspect meth.  The remaining two brown men never entered the conversation, they stared at the ground and sneaked peeks at us when we looked away.  The woman kept talking about clothing and climates and places she had been, and Will was polite and engaged.  I was watching his back, watching our backs, because there were a lot of people toward the beach from us and the men weren't acting friendly.  A white man, drunk, passed by us and I turned to watch him.  He approached me and said we should not be at this beach, "It is not a good beach, not good people" and he told me we should move along.  He shook my hand and left.  I started backing away from Laura, and turning around to watch the goings ons in the parking lot.  My body language would tell anyone that I was watching for hazards and extricating myself from her.  Eventually Will managed to get away and she finally took the cue and made her goodbyes.  I didn't need to hear any more about her clothing challenges when traveling.  I know how cold it can be in Oregon.  And I didn't want to be around if the natives were restless.  I do think she was trying to protect us.  Thank you Laura and all the peace loving people of the world.  Thank you for tolerating the clueless tourists.

Check out the photo of this convicted rapist who did it again and got convicted again.
Handsome, eh?


What does it tell you?
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SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23861354
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2013 Aug;17(3):248-72. doi: 10.1177/1088868313495593.
Targeting the good target: an integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived.
Human LJ1, Biesanz JC.
Abstract
A person's judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. Specifically, this review summarizes the characteristics that are likely to promote judgeability and explores its potential consequences. A diverse range of characteristics are identified as predictors of judgeability, all relating to three broader categories: psychological adjustment, social status, and socialization. Furthermore, being judgeable has a variety of potential, largely positive, consequences for the target, leaving good targets poised for greater personal and interpersonal well-being. Nevertheless, many questions on this topic remain and it is crucial for this relatively understudied topic to receive more systematic empirical attention.
KEYWORDS:
accuracy; expressivity; judgeability; person perception; well-being
PMID: 23861354 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

I sample propaganda from all sides of the US political spectrum. Today I got an email from Dick Cheney. I will have to check with my republican friends to find out if they actually think highly of Dick, because as far as I can tell he is evil incarnate. Anyway, Dick sent me a link and asked me to give money to the National Republican Congressional Committee. The headline on the donation page is "Stop Democrats from controlling all of Washington" and the image is one of Obama, Hillary and Biden walking toward the camera, smiling. Here: https://www.nrcc.org/defeat-liberal-democrats/. I showed it to my coworkers today and they could not figure out how that image supports the republican desire to oust the Dems, aside from who was in it. I did notice that Obama's hands are in his pockets (hidden hands = deceitful), and that all three are laughing as if about an inside joke. Also Biden has his arm around Hillary in comfortable buddy gesture. The last thing to notice about the image is that it is shot from above, looking down on Obama's head as he looks down to walk. I am told that this angle makes a person seem less powerful. I would have thought, though, that they'd go for something that made him look more evil, but I guess that having an inside joke with hands in pockets is bad enough. Dick didn't get any of my money, though.

We're on season 3, watching the last season of Lie to Me. The first season is perhaps the best, with plenty of good information mixed in about how to read people's emotions on their faces and bodies. The second season turns into a FBI story, and the third season is more police oriented---they were trying for a larger audience but apparently didn't get it. Only dorks like me who are curious about nonverbal communication stick with it.

The lead character, Cal Lightman, is a great study in body language. I don't know the actor's name but I am impressed. He does this thing I call the "Lightman Flop" which is to say that he jumps up into the air and lands on people's couches in a sprawled position that says "I own this place" and also "climb aboard" to any attractive women. He also shows his distrust of various characters with a toothy "smile" that isn't friendly at all---it's more of a snarl, and he is showing his teeth as if to say "Look out, I bite". One other notable thing that Cal the character does is he is very relaxed, intentionally relaxed. Being able to shrug off tension, to grimace and then release the face, is something most of us could use some practice at. Watching his swaying walk and the way his mouth hangs open when he is listening carefully has me experimenting with new ways of relaxing myself, and of conveying that I am paying my full attention. One of the recent episodes in season 3 showed him training a cop to fool lie detection specialists, and the main tidbit I took from it is "relax your cheeks" and keep after it, to avoid showing emotions that you don't want to show.

There's a lot that is said out loud in this program to teach people about nonverbal cues, but there is more that is not said, it is simply modeled, and it is up to the watcher to identify it.

Went to a science pub on body language 9/10/13 in Portland, OR. Notes from that lecture are behind the cut.
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