Nonverbal Secrets to Building Trust | Dr. Abigail Maroño

0:03When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Survival of the fittest isn't about the traits that make you as an individual survive. it's about the traits that make the group that you're in thrive and survive so those traits that enhance cooperation and build trust those are the traits that flourish and those are the ones you've evolved to have

0:57you're not going to want to miss today's tips on your non-verbal communication abby is a world-class expert on nonverbal communication and social influence. Her PhD in academic research focuses specifically on nonverbal communication, trust, and cooperation. Abby shares how your feet could be sabotaging your trustworthiness. In fact, groundbreaking research reveals the shocking impact of lower body language on first impressions. Master the millisecond signals that determine whether people trust or doubt you. Backed by cutting edge science on how we make snap judgments in just 33 milliseconds. And lastly, learn why trying to detect lies is actually holding you back and how focusing on these proven trust-building signals can transform your relationships.

1:43Welcome to the show, Abby. Great to have you. Thank you for having me. Wonderful. Our good friend Joe Navarro had recommended that you would drop by in the chat with us. He certainly has brought up your research and we were fascinated in going through your research for this show. There's a lot of ideas that align and we're certainly excited to hear some of the science behind some of the body language communication that we have been preaching on this show for the last 15 years. I am excited to get started. So we'd love to just kick it off and to get to know a bit about you. What was it about body language that got you interested?

2:20I think it was because human beings are so complicated and so individual that you can't say that anybody has a particular personality type or people do things for certain reasons. They're so difficult to understand, yet body language is a universal language. It's something that we've carried with us through evolution and we all share certain traits and characteristics and we all do similar things for similar reasons. unconsciously in terms of our body language and I just felt that was incredible that we can identify these common patterns when everything about human beings seems to be completely different and I got really interested as everybody does when they start looking at non-verbal communication lie detection and everybody wants to be a human lie detector and it took me some time in the field of studying light detection to realize there is no such thing as a non-verbal cue of deception.

3:21I wrote two research papers trying to find cues for deception and we actually I mean the studies were really interesting because we took a really unique approach to the way we looked at body language but what we were actually just seeing is high stress high stress and discomfort and then I changed my perspective when I was doing my PhD to look at cooperation and creating a positive environments so that people feel safe and feel comfortable and feel familiar with you, that they want to share information with you. And then it kind of opened up a whole world where everything seems really positive and you realize, wow, human beings are so cooperative.

4:01And that is, you know, what we have evolved to do. We've evolved to cooperate. That is how we've survived. And I think especially in academia, I've always thought of everything is quite dog eat dog. And I know that business most of the time people say you know leadership is doggy dog but it really isn't because it is all about cooperation and trust and creating a positive environment for your colleagues and your employees and that's how you get to the top by working with other people cooperatively and that really is the key to successful relationships successful business Well, we are certainly huge fans of cooperation.

4:40And I know trust is something that a lot of us have this internal barometer around. But what does trust define from a scientific perspective as? so this is an interesting question because scientists have this way of making things very confusing and they take these these concepts and then they pull them apart into okay well what's cognitive trust okay what's effective trust what's behavioral trust what's this kind of trust and they really pull them apart and make them individual but they overlap in so many different ways and I just think that it's over complicated and the way I see trust is safety you know if we feel safe if our brain says you are not a threat I trust you if I feel that I can be vulnerable and you won't exploit me that's trust now how quickly can trust be built if we look at it from that lens so trust has evolved to be very very quick from non-verbal communication we actually judge trustworthiness in 33 milliseconds so it's literally the first judgment that we make about anybody before confidence before competence anything is trust and it can be we can perceive someone as trustworthy very very quickly but we can also perceive someone as untrustworthy just like that just as quick even if we've made that initial judgment of trustworthy all they have to do is one thing and our brain says no not safe and then it's gone so it depends on again the kind of trust that you're looking at if we're having an interaction now we have a one-time interaction then all your judgments are based on me in this one interaction but then if I am very very trustworthy and you think you know I trust you you seem trustworthy and then we have another interaction and I behave slightly differently all of that trust that's built up is gone.

6:35So to answer your question, it can be built very quickly. It can be built over a long period of time and it can be destroyed very quickly and it can be destroyed after a long period of time. If you've had this very, very long, lengthy, trustworthy relationship, one thing, one simple thing, and it can be broken down just like that. With our clients, one of the main points to building trust that we discuss is what after they come through they feel very good about being more vulnerable and being more open with new people because they learn its power so they want to communicate and build that trust with everybody and what they find after they have gotten comfortable with their vulnerability that other people aren't so comfortable with their vulnerability.

7:24And what I tell them is that nature is going to play its course and everybody has a different rate of how and look for different things in order to get comfortable with people. However, the one thing that you can't do is you can't push nature. You can't expedite it, but you can remove the hurdles that are in the way for people developing trust. and for a lot of people they think that it is an additive steps in order to build trust with people when in actuality it's removing a lot of the the things that are getting in the way and keeping people from easily getting comfortable and building trust yeah and that's one thing that um i think people get wrong that they think that trustworthiness is a toolkit you know we can talk about non-verbal behaviors to show that I'm trustworthy or behaviors to show that I'm trustworthy, acts of the way that you speak and things.

8:20And they think that they can apply these and use them and then form this trustworthiness and then put them down and then go off and continue with their life. And that's not what trust is. It's not a set of steps that you can just follow and then it's done. It's something you really have to embed. You can't just say, okay, well, if I smile, they perceive me as trustworthy and that's it. And, you know, I'll apply these things at the beginning of the interaction and I don't need to worry about them later. If you're doing the behaviors at the beginning, you stop doing them, I'm going to stop seeing you as trustworthy.

8:52Just like if I, like I said before, we interact once, I see you as trustworthy another time, I don't. It's not a toolkit. It's a set of things that we understand can create a perception of trustworthiness. But one other thing that creates trustworthiness is consistency. We as human beings, we need consistency. It makes us comfortable. It makes us feel safe because it's predictable. It's not uncertain. And if we're interacting with someone and we don't know how they're going to be towards us, are they going to be angry? Are they going to be happy? Are they going to be sad? Are they going to be there?

9:26It creates uncertainty and it stops us feeling so safe in that interaction. And if someone is inconsistent and they're using these behaviors as a toolkit, they put them down sometimes pick them up, sometimes put them down another time. We don't feel safe. We can't predict how we're going to interact with them. So you're exactly right. And it is one of the most common mistakes that I think people make in the field of trustworthyness. Now, you mentioned something earlier about as humans, we are cooperative, but there is this misconception that it's dog eat dog. So can you talk a little bit about why trust and cooperation are important from an evolutionary perspective and why it is that we are predisposed to cooperation?

10:08Yeah, so I think this dog-eat-dog perspective comes from the survival of the fittest. You know, I need to beat you so I can produce offspring. It's just competition. But survival of the fittest isn't about the traits that make you as an individual survive. It's about the traits that make the group that you're in thrive and survive so those traits that enhance cooperation and build trust those are the traits that flourish and those are the ones we've evolved to have and if we think that we've evolved in this really uncertain environment where there's threats everywhere you know there's a predator here there might not be my next meal here so having these group relationships has helped our survival because you can rely on people and they can help for us they can protect us all of these things that are just essential.

11:01Also, reproduction, which is quite self-explanatory, that we need other people for those kinds of things. And we need to be able to identify who we can cooperate with. So the one way that we've done that is we've evolved these nonverbal communication tactics of showing trustworthiness. So rather than just saying, hey, you know, I'll cooperate with you, we need to instantly be able to detect who was cooperative. So we have evolved these behaviors which say I'm trustworthy so we can pick out who to cooperate with and there's a lot of argument on this topic that well that can't be the case because people could use these tactics and pretend to be cooperative and just show these trustworthy behaviors and actually be a deceptor be deceptive but the thing is because we are a cooperative species that non-cooperative isn't going to last very long because in our social group we have process so if someone isn't cooperative all it takes is one person to say they didn't cooperate and then the whole group know they're a non-cooperator so we don't need to look for you know tactics of these cues of deception that's not what we've evolved to look for we've evolved to be quick and look for trustworthiness and we see it in modern day now you know if you want to go to a restaurant what is the first thing that you do you look on google for reviews look for what people have said about it if you're getting into a new relationship and you know that they know a friend first thing you do what are they like tell me about them have they done anything wrong because we count on the gusts of other people and we see it in celebrity magazines and all of these things we we thrive on it as a species because that's when we get our information about you know who is deceptive and who is trustworthy.

12:49And that's why it's so important not to view this, as you said earlier, as a toolkit, because your reputation builds trust. And if you're just turning it on and turning it off with certain people that you view as high value, you know, we use this example in class, how you treat the janitor is exactly how you should treat the executive of the company, because your reputation matters. And that consistency is huge to building the trust that you're looking for. Yeah, and you see in corporate a lot of the time, and people say, oh, well, you know, it is dog eat dog, because they're this way, and they're up at the top.

13:25They're doing amazing, and they're not cooperative, and they stand above people. And it's like, well, that doesn't mean that cooperation isn't a better way to go. They might be successful with their manipulative tactics, but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be more successful if they were cooperative. People are successful all the time using negative tactics but just because people are doesn't mean that is the only way to get there or the best way to get there. Just think if that person who is at the top for being manipulative decided to actually become trustworthy and be cooperative, imagine how much better they could do.

14:02And what you do see around people that have got that way and got to the top without being trustworthy and without being cooperative, you see this bad reputation around them. You see lawsuits and you see complaints and you see unhappy staff. You see staff that don't enjoy their jobs and staff that don't enjoy their jobs. What means, you know, a non-cooperative work environment, a non-productive work environment. Hey, check this out. Do you want to unlock your X factor and become unstoppable at everything you do. At The Art of Charm, we believe that boosting your charisma, connection, and confidence is key to unlocking your true inner power.

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18:22Yeah, I think especially if you've experienced that environment, you don't thrive in a manipulative, untrustworthy environment. So although you may see that person leading, you may also find that's not the culture that you want to be a part of or a company that you want to sustain working for. Yeah, if you don't feel safe when you go to work and you feel like you can't see yourself around people you can't relax or that you know you have to do everything perfectly you know exactly how your boss wants it that puts you so on edge and it doesn't motivate you to do your best that motivates you to just get by keep your head down and get on with the job that's not we what we want our employees to feel we want our employees to go to work and strive to be their best for themselves because they enjoy being there for their colleagues and because they respect their leader, not because they fear their leader.

19:19Now, with trust being built quickly, I'd love to talk about these nonverbal cues that we're evolutionarily wired to look for around trustworthiness. But yeah, so it starts with a smile. We know how important the smile is. And the smile truly is a social signal. Think about when you go bowling, when you hit a strike. You stay completely straight face when you hit the strike. It's only when you turn around and see people that you smile. You communicate, I'm excited, I'm happy. That's what the smile has evolved to do, to communicate, to communicate, I'm not a threat, I'm happy, I'm happy to see you.

20:04This funny thing happens when we see a smile and see a true, genuine smile. so when the upper cheeks are raised and we see the dutchman eyes um it released it releases oxytocin and oxytocin suppresses that fight or flight instinct where we say you know i might not be safe i need to go or i might need to go the smile relaxes us and just says you know no it's safe it's fine um and any behavior that could expose a vulnerability so we've evolved like i said in a really dangerous environment and one part of our body that we protect is our throat which is why when we see things that scare us or when we hear bad news a lot of the time we we put our hand to our throat without realizing we protect our throat or if something has you know we've had horrible news we often kind of stroke our throat and it's that instinct to protect and they could be you know a predator or something that could harm us so when we want to show that we're trustworthy we kind of lean our head to the side to do this head tilt and we expose our neck because we're exposing a vulnerable part of our body and saying you know I don't think you're a threat I'm not a threat here's a vulnerable part to show you that I'm not a threat and dogs actually do that too and I think this behavior was first mentioned in Charles Darwin's book on the emotions of man and animals and he noticed it from his dog and he saw certain behaviors in his dog and then And it kind of, you know, we started to learn, oh, humans do these too.

21:35And then we really started to figure out, you know, this is a signal to say I'm trustworthy at the same. And also anything that is very open. So things like open postures and open palms. So if I'm talking to you, I have my palms facing outwards. You can see what is in my hands. I haven't got a weapon. My hands are behind my back. Your brain says, uh-oh, there could be something there in the hand. So always making sure that you are facing someone and have your palms out and showing, you know, I'm not hiding anything from you. And this is also why people that hide information or hold back information can be perceived as untrustworthy.

22:17So when we tell kind of half-truths and we hold a bit of information back, and bosses do this all the time where you know there's some bad news, but they're not really telling you everything. it's that we don't know what it is that they have so our brain says it's it's the worst it could possibly be so we feel uncomfortable we feel unconsciously that they are untrustworthy because it's that same feeling of there could be a threat there i can't see that there isn't a threat so my brain says there is well what's so interesting in in the work that we've done over the last 15 years is that we'll tell our clients, hey, smiling is important, but internally they feel like they are smiling all the time, yet they're not openly expressing that full face smile.

23:05And it takes us actually filming them and showing them the video for themselves to show the discomfort that they're showing in these situations where they're feeling a little bit of social anxiety, some tension and pressure. And once they realize just the simple change in that smile and showing it early and often as you communicate with someone, it leads to an entirely different interaction. So we're also wired to respond and turn and mirror back that smile and bring energy to our communication when we feel the other person is bringing that smile in and showcasing us that trustworthiness. So it really changes the tenor of the entire conversation.

23:44Yeah, it's emotional contagion. So if someone is showing you, I'm smiling, I'm happy, I'm really excited you kind of get just instant more energy from interacting with them because you take on some of their emotions just like we have all been in a conversation with an energy drain where you are excited and they are so just mellow and their tone of voice is mellow and their behaviors are mellow and then you just start to feel tired it's the same thing it's just that we mimic people unconsciously and through that we take on their emotions and we can't help it again that's an evolved um behavior and that's why i did my phd in unconscious mimicry and it really does work through emotional contagion so i read this article a while ago and it said um that people that show some anxious behaviors are perceived better um and i don't know where they got the science from that if we interact with someone and we show that we're anxious that perceived as more trustworthy and makes people more comfortable and that really isn't the case because when we show that we're anxious they feel anxious they take on that anxiety so especially in the field of non-verbal communication there is so much rubbish out there and this is an example of some rubbish that's out there and you know we do have to be very careful about what we read because these kinds of things there's other ones about you know you can tell people's personalities by how open or closed their posture is and things and when we take this misinformation it causes us to interact with people differently so if we perceive someone as hiding something because they're crossing their arms we're going to interact with them like they're hiding something or if we see someone as being defensive because they're showing certain behaviors that we misinterpret as defensive we're going to start making them defensive by the way we talk to them so we have to make sure that we're being careful of one how we interact with people because of emotional contagion, because we're passing them our emotions, but also because there is a lot of misinformation that we have to be careful how we are interpreting their behaviors and responding.

25:56Yeah, I think it's far more important to focus on what you're communicating outward than to start like you did, seeking out deception, lie detection, and reading all of this into nonverbal communication. Sure, that would be great if we could just look at someone and instantly get a 100 % accurate read on them. But what's far more impactful is actually modulating our own behaviors, showcasing these trustworthy signals with everyone, making it a part of our personality to build and grow trust with others, knowing that it improves our reputation and improves our communication. And of course, through cooperation, it gets us ahead in our career.

26:33For a lot of people as well, the ideas that they come to us for, and certainly for the the men, they want to learn to approach women, but also in a networking event to be able to walk up to somebody that they're interested in talking to and make their pitch. And for the ladies as well, they want to be able to break the chains of their social anxiety and walk up to folks that they find interesting and chat with as well. And due to that, without them realizing it, what they end up doing before they come through and learning about this is they go out of their way to make the other person feel that they can trust them, that they're not up to something.

27:16So what they'll do is they'll put their hands behind their back to show that I'm safe and they'll shrink themselves. And all of those behaviors, as you mentioned, give off a different vibe to the person that they're talking with. And they're now uncomfortable. And so they leave. And it's fascinating how easily we pick up on others body language, which also brings me to this point that you mentioned about how we're going to mimic the micro expressions that are going on and we can, and we see those when we're dealing with people, but this is something that we're now learning that we have all this technology and I can't read the micro expressions on your face through zoom through the technology and so these interactions are almost they're very surface level yeah i'm talking with my mom and and we have this opportunity to chat via across the country but it's not like i'm sitting with her on the couch and and our that nature takes over and we're mimicking in each other to understand and have an empathy that at a face-to-face level Yeah, I mean, I move away from micro-expressions as it's not really an area that I place myself in.

28:37I look more at what we can observe and things that we can see and assess for. But virtually, what I have found is it doesn't actually affect how much you can create trust. We can create trust and cooperation exactly the same virtually. it's just people aren't used to it because our brains have not had to deal with this we are what our limbic system is still you know hundreds of thousands of years ago reacting to that kind of environment we didn't have laptops back then so it's all very new and we don't really know how to respond so we act in a really unnatural way like how we are now face on that's not natural when you usually have a conversation with someone unless it's at a restaurant typically you're more to the side it's not actually if I stood straight on with every conversation it's quite intimidating but yet we do that online and again that is picked up as a bit of a threat and we typically stay really rigid as well we don't move so much and that rigidness creates untrustworthiness we don't do the head tilt and again untrustworthy and what people tend to do online is they don't have much of their upper body showing they'll have their face really close to the camera or just kind of the camera way down looking out and we create trustworthiness and comfort through our body language through our facial expressions if you are in a really dark room or have a really bad camera or the camera is at a really weird angle I can't see your facial expressions clear enough to respond to them so it's not that we can't it's that we we don't realize how effective this skill is virtually so we do it wrong and as well we actually have more of a power virtually because we have more control yeah we don't have the lower body anymore which takes away some power however when we're interacting in person we are in this moving environment where there's so much to control for and so much to think about if we are virtual I have complete control control over this square that I'm sat in.

30:47I have control over what's behind me. I have control over what I'm wearing and how I act, how much you can see and the light, you know, how close I am to natural light, all of these things. So acting is almost easier to create trustworthiness. And one thing that I always do is I have plants behind me because when we see greenery, especially leafy plants it slows down the nervous system and creates calmness um also light colors just a nice white background where a lot of people have really bad lighting or one thing that we see a lot that is really bad for truckloadiness is the filters that people put on their cameras yeah where they have the background i was in a meeting um and someone had a lego house and everything they were saying i was trying to concentrate on what they were saying but i was just thinking you're in a lego house i can't stop looking at that area around them i kept staring at it and it takes our attention away from what they're saying and our limbic system has not evolved to deal with this kind of stimuli so it's distracting and it's confusing for our brains to have this kind of interaction with these things in the background.

32:04So we just need to be aware of the power we have virtually to create this cooperative and trustworthy atmosphere and really, you know, think about it for our meetings. Think you're the only one struggling with performance issues in the bedroom? You're not. And now there's an easier way to fix it from home. That's where RexMD comes in. It's an online telehealth service that helps men get real FDA approved medications straight to your door. Everything's done online. No doctor's office, no waiting rooms, no awkward conversations. Here's how it works. First, share your symptoms, health history, and goals through a short quiz.

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34:10Visit GoodToKnowFacts.org. Well, I know with Zoom and even in this interaction, I've shrank my own screen. many of us will get caught up in staring at ourselves and then become even more self-conscious instead of being direct with the camera, removing the view of self. Obviously, when we're interacting in person, unless there's a mirror behind the person you're interacting with, very rarely do you see yourself, think about your own body language movements and how you're communicating. But Zoom has created that feedback loop, which often robs our ability to listen actively, to convey the trustworthiness that we're after.

34:47Now, you did talk about the lower body being cut off. I'd love to talk about what are those nonverbal signals that we're sending with our lower body that do help in building trustworthiness. So a really interesting study that I've recently done is looking at the power of the lower body to create perceptions of approachability. So we talked about this orientation facing someone and orientating towards them. and we know from research that when you orientate towards someone you're perceived as more approachable you're perceived as more warm and inviting and I wanted to see if okay well what about the lower body what if my upper body is facing towards you but my lower body is facing away and what about my foot specifically because we know that the lower body has an effect because studies have shown that the feet are honest so when we're nervous the rest of the body's saying I'm fine but the foot is tapping away because we think that people can't see it so if we're trying to control for our behaviors we think about my face my hands my upper body but we don't think okay I've got to control my feet we just kind of let them do their thing which is why I was really interested to see if the feet carry any effect and what I found was that using a male and a female individually as targets so they had their upper body facing towards an observer lower body either facing towards or facing away and lower body facing towards they were perceived as approachable lower body facing away they were perceived as unapproachable statistically significant but what was interesting is the sex of the target didn't matter sex of the observer didn't matter what also didn't matter was how introverted or extroverted the observer was the only thing that mattered was the foot orientation and it just shows you know tiny behaviors moving my foot towards or away from facing you can change how approachable I'm perceived and that's incredible and I did another study recently and it actually came out with this open versus closed gestures that I've been talking about but the finding was accidental because I wanted to see people's lower bodies when they were uncomfortable so when they were in an interview and the interviewee and the interviewer was you know a bit out of order said something too personal something a bit derogatory that made the interviewee uncomfortable and what we saw was this sequence of people make themselves small with their lower body when they're uncomfortable they bring their knees together they tuck their feet below their chair but it's important the sequence that occurred so if I tuck my feet by my chair and then keep my knees out that doesn't actually indicate discomfort it's doing a number of these behaviors so bringing my knees and keeping my knees and then tucking my feet and then keeping my legs closed things like this where you see multiple closing gestures that's what indicated discomfort and interestingly behaviors that we do associate with discomfort like and we have blocking display so we kind of put our hands on top of our genitals and we feel attacked and we kind of protect ourselves and we a lot of the time we do cross our arms when we feel attacked but it isn't indicative of it and that that's a mistake but it is something that we do but it doesn't mean that when we do it that is what we feel um but we saw these blocking displays in all groups comfortable versus uncomfortable because of the context so it was the interview causing some discomfort display but the tucking of the feet and the bringing the legs together that was only to do with the interviewer making them uncomfortable so again it speaks to this importance of recognizing what displayed actually mean if we said you know anytime they show a blocking display they're uncomfortable and making them feel this way if we just went off of that and said this one behavior means this one thing we would interpret it differently.