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This photo shows a nonverbal behavior I call photo neck. When you are a little to far from the people you are being photgraphed with you will extend your next and pull your head toward the person you want to be seen as connected to. In this photo my sister is in the center and I am on your left. Notice how I am streching my neck so much I look like a long neck turtle. My sister's best freind is on your right. Her photo neck is much more relaxed. Check out your photo albulms and see how many people are exibiting this behavior. Remeber the more effort the in the person to extend the more they want to connected.

Atlanta skyline at night

I wanted to show off my city to my blog visitors. Isn't it beautiful.

How does airport security choose who to search?

People have been asking me about how security personal at the airport picks the people to screen more thoroughly. While there is standard screening rules, such as screening everyone who changes their flight times. I have been flying just about every week for the last 20 years and I have not observed nonverbal assessment screening rules being used.

I have noticed that screeners tend to pick what I call high complaints. That is people who appear nonverbally they will not give the screener a hard time. In fact when I mentioned to a friend who was a fireman at the Atlanta airport that I get asked to do the extra search all the time he was said he talked with screeners every day and they all say they choose high compliants. It makes sense. Why choose the big grumpily or scary guy to check when you can choose a short smiling blonde women. I mention this screening practice in my speeches and my audiences are filled with women who say they fit the compliant profile and are always given the extra screening. It may be a coincidence, but a scary one.

Would body language training help airport security?

Would studying body language of passengers improve airport security?

Passengers flying aboard El Al, Israel’s airline are interrogated by a trained professional before they are allowed to board the plane the interrogators ask key questions then study the body language of the passages as well as their tone of voice and mood. . This is the same technique I train law enforcement officers to use when interrogating a suspect. Remember when we were asked the old, “Did you pack your bag and have they been with you...” questions? Well if we train airport personal to not merely ask those questions, but watch for specific nonverbal cues or deceit and nervousness as they respond, such as overly long pauses, covering or touching the eyes nose and face or over the top confidence we could increase are security.

Israel’s airline also profile passengers, but this profiling does not merely entail race they watch the body language from the time the passengers leave their cars to the time they enter the plane, pretty intense. But, El Al is among the safest airlines in the world, despite the fact that it is one of the greatest targets for terrorism. El Al receives threats daily, yet it has not had a terrorist incident in more than 30 years, according to David Hermesh, El Al's president.
More on the airport security topic tomorrow. What are you curious about?

Santa's body language

What is Santa saying with his body language?

On Christmas eve, When I was a little girl my mother would get out a very special tall storybook covered with snowy glitter and read the night before Christmas.
Clement Clarke Moore composed "A Visit from St. Nicholas" on December 24, 1822 and though there were other nonverbal descriptions of St, Nick, the iconic image of Santa in this poem is stuck firmly into our consciousness with leftover Christmas cookie dough.

Let’s have fun and look at powerful nonverbal cues of St Nick given in the famous poem. The poem opens with Santa described as a "little old driver, so lively and quick. His advanced age, makes us think of him as comforting and fatherly but the nonverbal description of his behavior makes us also see him as vital and full of energy as well. This let’s us know he has enough energy to defy the boundaries of time and space and deliver toys to every boy and girl in one night!
Next Santa is heard whistling and shouting and calling his reindeer by name. Now if all he was doing was shouting we probably would see Santa as rather an aggressive guy. After all you really shouldn’t yell at animals. But, because he is also whistling and knows each of the reindeer’s names we have a friendlier perception of him. Whistling is something fun, and the shouting is softened and becomes another indication of his boundless energy. The powerful paralanguage acts assure us that he will get to our house in time for us to get our presents.
Then St Nick comes down the chimney, “with a bound.” I love that nonverbal behavior. The action bounding makes me see this red and white decked guy bouncing from house to house as if the fire place was a trampoline. This nonverbal detail lets us know that he is fun guy having a good time at work. He is coming down a chimney and landing in a fireplace. Obviously Santa lives on the edge. Think about it. He rides through the air in a sleigh and then jumps down a chimney without a parachute. And he is risking landing in fire. Santa is a daredevil. In fact these nonverbal actions are evidence that Santa is a truly bearded superhero.

Though he is not wearing the typical super hero outfit, instead, “He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot.” Ok, I will admit there are mythic superheroes in the fur and leather set; Shera, Thor, Grey skull and my all time fav, Tarzan. The fur gives him some primal superpowers that spandex and tights just don’t illicit. Santa is not described as wearing red and white is this poem, even though I gave him those super hero colors two paragraphs ago. Those colors were set into our Santa conscious through artists’ depictions in the 1920’s, most notably by an artist at Harpers. For trivia buffs this was long before Coca Cola created its string of ads picturing the red and white Clause. Though trivia websites often quote the soft drink company as the creators of his candy cane colored suit, Coca Cola give us a larger man sized Santa rather than the little elf fellow of this poem.
Red and white make a good dashing through the snow costume. Red is nonverbally a traditional power color. The color red is associated with strength, force, power, control and leadership, stimulation, warmth, excitement, good health, physical energy, and love. And white is associated with protection, purity, truth and sincerity. But the purity from the white was in his heart not on his sleeve because; the poem says “ his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.” Don’t you just love that detail? It makes us see him as a playful guy who is willing to get dirty.
In that same line the bundle of toys is, “flung” on his back. He doesn’t carry the bundle like a burden, but instead it’s flung with joy, the same way a kid would carry his baseball gear to a game or her camping stuff on an outdoor adventure.

As a child I the next description was my favorite part of the poem. “His eyes -- how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.”
I think I liked this part was because when it was read we would touch our eyes cheeks and nose and mouth as we got to each part and laugh as we touched them. If you read my nonverbal articles on eyes and smiling you know that twinkling implies that the eyes are pulled up at the side and there are little smile wrinkles around the eye. Cues that indicate real happiness. The mouth drawn up also indicates a true smile. As does the detail that he had a broad face. That I see in people and call an open face that shows friendliness.
Let’s skip the stump of pipe and smoke, realizing that Something Santa did before the surgeon general put out the tobacco memo. Instead let’s skip down to the next part of the poem the description of St. Nick’s tummy, “A little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.” This combined with his description as,”chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,” Actually conjures up images of cute a cuddly laughing baby. We can not help but smile. Santa is full of satisfaction and happy. He is not starving on the Adkins diet, craving bread.
Santa then gives traditional nonverbal cues to show he is harmless and not going to attack with, “A wink of his eye and a twist of his head.” Winking is a way of softening what could be threatening continuous eye-contact. That’s why it is recommended in books on flirting. The head tilt is also cue showing “I’m harmless.” Together they let the narrator feel this stranger who just bounded into his living room carrying a sack is charming interloper, not a dangerous intruder planning to abscond with the silver.
Santa doesn’t speak but gets right to work putting out the toys. Anyone who has read the latest research on the costs of multitasking knows this makes Santa not only a hard worker but a wise man as well. And such a John Grey, Mars not Venus kind of guy.
Then he shows his super powers again by, “laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod” and rising up the chimney. When I was in first grade and saw merry Poppins go up with in the air by laughing, I thought Santa must have taught her the trick.
And isn’t interesting that he touches his nose before he rises, just like bewitched wiggled her nose. The nose nonverbal symbolism indicates that his action is something special and secretive.
Then St. Nick springs to his sleigh and whistles and shouts his farewell leaving us with a final nonverbal description of his confidence and omnipotence.
I love this poem and I love the Iconic Image of Santa it invokes. It’s an image I have taken to bed with me on many a Christmas Eve and a comforting image for all good little boys and girls around the world.
Take time to re-read this wonderful poem during this Christmas season.