Pickpocket - Apr 2012

Have you made progress throughout this month? Did you discover those six expressions I mentioned in my last article? I bet you did! Good job! It is best if you found all six of them, but you still did good work even if you found only one expression.
   

The Introduction of Principles, Reading NVB

Last time, Pickpoket mentioned about how you need to observe instead of only looking. The little test that I suggested to you last time can enhance your observational abilities. After we understand how important it is to observe people carefully, it is crucial to learn how to observe the scenes behind they stand against and the NVB people normally do.

No.2－Background Is Key.

Image: Anastasiia-Ku.com

If you understand the background deeper, you can interpret more about someone’s behavior and expressions. Once you ignore the background information, usually your judgment will be compromised. For instance, you hear a loud car crash ahead of you. As you approach, you find a teenage girl sweating and shaking in the driver seat of a car which is crashed with another. You could be wrong if you think that that girl drove and crashed into someone’s car if you ignore the red traffic light which is on the same road of her car.
   
Background always can tell us so much information and the details of it can lead us what have been done on people and the influence of behavior. People are exposed in a situation or a background, thus their behavior must be influenced by them. As there are various situations, people’s behavior will also depend on the situation.

If a man wore the same suit in different places has different meanings, when he is in an office, he may be judged as a worker or a boss if he wears an expensive tie; when he is in an airport, he may be judged as a businessman who has worldwide affairs he needs to take care of; when he is in school, he may be judged as a teacher or a principal if he wears a pair of shiny shoes. You can see how differently we can judge a man with one prop against different backgrounds.

So remember to be aware of the background when you read people! 

No.3 －Identify The General NVB

   
After paying attention to the background information, you must focus on non-verbal behavior (NVB). It is nearly impossible to judge a person’s NVB in a short period of time because you cannot judge recent behavior with past norms. Since you do not have anything to compare current behavior patterns, it is difficult to understand your subject. Therefore, you must first establish the normal behavior patterns of the individual you are observing.

Photo: crhoy.com

People think it is easy to judge when a person is lying or not, just by observing simple changes or twitches in facial muscles or by nervous body language. It is not that simple. It is hard to predict whether or not this seemingly nervous behavior is truly because the individual can mislead the observer because there simply is no standard reaction to judge whether a person is lying or not. He assumes that the ‘reaction’ is based on the individual, and not a common reaction made by others too.

Photo: sosyalmedyaport.com

Since you want to learn how to ‘pickpocket’ another’s mind, firstly you need to observe the people around you in a crowded place to check if there is any common behavioral traits among them. This might be too general to you, so here are some hints to help you. As mentioned in the previous article of ‘Pickpocket’, you learned about observing people’s expressions as they talk on the phone. This time, try to find common behavior and expressions such as muscle changes on people talking on the phone. I believe the experience you received from the task presented to you in the last issue, you can observe common expressions, which you can now easily link to common behavior patterns. 

In the meantime, you can also observe some contrasting behavior amongst individuals. As you are setting the baseline for phone conversation behavior, you can also observe some very unique behavior, different from your expected baseline behavior. This new task will train you to set a baseline behavior amongst a crowd of individuals. The fifth principle will teach you how to set a baseline behavior for individuals, but before this, it would help you if you could master the task at hand.

Next installment I will write about the principle No.4 －The Idiosyncratic Nonverbal Behavior and No.5 －Set The Baseline

Practice makes perfect!

Pick their thoughts! They cannot hide their expression and hold their intentions from your eyes!

Jason Lam

Reference:

Navarro, J., & Karlins, M. (2009).What every BODY is saying an ex-FBI agent's guide to speed reading people (Kindle ed.). S.I.: William Morrow Paperbacks