Body Language Expert: “If You Get Anxious Around People, WATCH THIS!” (Command Instant Respect)

1. VEVanessa Van Edwards0:00

   It's actually a cycle, right? Like, the more confident we feel, the better we come across. And even, like, if we start on the outside, it also works in. I know this quite personally as I'm a recovering awkward person. So, uh, confidence always eluded me for many, many years. I have a problem where I'm a, a social over-thinker. I just tend to get in my head about cues, and I didn't realize that what was taking away my confidence was that I was misinterpreting a lot of cues. So I would assume that someone's neutral cue was negative, and that was... it just ruined all of my confidence. And so the very first thing I, I want people to think about is what is your perfect flavor of confidence? I think that when we think about people skills, we often idolize the extrovert, right? We think we all have to fake it till you make it. You have to fake being outgoing. You have to pretend to be an extrovert. I do not believe you have to be an extrovert to be confident or to be likable.

2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:53

   I mean, that's very powerful because I think a lot of people will probably say, "Vanessa, look, uh, I see people around me all the time who, who... they're confident, right? I can feel it when they come in the room, yet that's not me. Like, I can't be that."

3. VEVanessa Van Edwards1:07

   Mm.

4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:07

   And I guess what I hear you saying there is that it's not about us necessarily being that other person, it's trying to figure out what's our unique approach, or as you say, flavor to that confidence.

5. VEVanessa Van Edwards1:19

   Yes. So for example, I think, and this is a, a, a really big myth that we think that the life of the party, the bubbly extrovert, they're the people who are confident and likable. And yes, that is one flavor of charisma. But if you think about the most charismatic person you know or the most confident person you know, so just think about that person for a second. Think about a couple people you can think of in your mind. We also have the quiet, powerful introvert who's very confident. We also have a nurturing, empathetic healer who's also very confident. And so I think that if we can broaden our definition of what confidence means, we have more permission to feel authentically ourselves. And here's the biggest problem. We can feel inauthentic confidence, and this is actually proven. So Dr. Barbara Wild, she had a very simple experiment. She took photos of people. In one photo, she had them authentically smiling. They were actually thinking about something that made them happy, their puppy, their dog, their child, right? They were thinking about something that actually made them happy. In the second picture, she had the same people doing a fake smile, so not thinking about anything that made them happy, just smiling on the bottom half of their face. By the way, the difference between a, a real smile and a fake smile is that these upper cheek muscles are eng- engaged. So if you smile all the way up into your eyes, those crow's feet, that means it's a real smile versus just a smile on the bottom half of the face is a fake smile. So she took these photos, and she had participants look at the photos one at a time. She found that when people looked at the real smile, they caught the smile. They actually felt happier and more confident in themselves. When they looked at the fake smile, they had no mood change, no behavior change at all. In other words, when you are truly confident, you actually infect other people positively. When you are faking it, when you are trying to pretend to be an extrovert, you are less memorable. You are literally less impactful.

6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:08

   Over the last few years, because of the job I do with the public, I've had to do lots of photo shoots for books-

7. VEVanessa Van Edwards3:15

   [laughs]

8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:15

   ... or whatever might be coming out.

9. VEVanessa Van Edwards3:17

   Yeah.

10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:17

    And something photographers will often say is, "Smile with your eyes," right? And so I guess-

11. VEVanessa Van Edwards3:25

    Yeah

12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:25

    ... they must have that experience and also go, listen, if you, if you're trying to fake it, because we're saying smile now, it's like, actually, I can tell on that image, no, smile with your eyes. And I guess that just bolsters up what you're showing from your science and you've written about in your wonderful new book.

13. VEVanessa Van Edwards3:40

    I think that really good photographers, they know this smile into your eyes 'cause they know that that's the photo that's gonna feel more authentic, more like you. A couple little things I want you to think about for profile photos or if you're doing a photo shoot. So first is either really big smile, right? Think about something that truly makes you happy or neutral, right? You don't always have to smile. You can also be neutral. There's some very confident and powerful folks who have no smiles in their photos. And you also wanna avoid asymmetry. So the other thing that research found is, um, there's a universal contempt microexpression. And so this is a microexpression of scorn or disdain. It's very simple. You can even try it with me. It's a one-sided mouth raise. So if you raise up one side of your mouth, kind of into the smirk, you actually begin to feel like, huh, I know more. I know better. It's a really weird cycle. There's something called the facial feedback hypothesis, which is not only do our emotions cause our face, our face causes our emotions. So also be sure, go look at your, your LinkedIn profile, your dating profile pictures. Make sure you are not accidentally showing an asymmetrical smile. That's actually a sign of negativity.

14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:41

    It's incredible. I was trying to do that as you asked me to, and-

15. VEVanessa Van Edwards4:46

    What'd you feel?

16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:47

    Y- you just feel your mood change. You don't feel as... I, I didn't, I didn't feel as engaged. I didn't feel as, as happy, as excited to talk to you as I really am. I, I felt, I don't know, a bit flat, I guess, is what I felt. [laughs]

17. VEVanessa Van Edwards5:00

    Okay, so it's, what's really great is, let me just dive into contempt for a second, because by the way, now that you know it, you'll see it everywhere. You'll start to see this smirk everywhere. And remember, it's a sign of disdain or, or better than. So first is we did a massive facial expression survey. We had over 25,000 people try to guess what facial expressions meant. Contempt was the one that most people got wrong. The majority of people thought it was ambivalence or boredom. So it's, we don't even realize how negative it is. And Dr. John Gottman, he's a marriage and family counselor out of Seattle.

18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:33

    Yeah.

19. VEVanessa Van Edwards5:33

    He did a massive marriage experiment. I'm sure you've talked about this on your show before. And he looked at married couples looking for patterns. He wanted to know, can you predict if a couple will get divorced or stay together? So he brought the couples into his lab, and he tested them on everything he could think of. You know, he gave them IQ tests and personality tests. He observed them. He interviewed them. He looked at their histories.And he followed those couples for 30 years, so a massive amount of data. He found that the one predictor of divorce was that in the intake interview, if one member of the couple showed contempt towards the other, there was with 93.6% accuracy they would get divorced. John Gottman can watch a silent video of a couple, and if he sees that smirk, that one-sided mouth raise, he can predict with 93% accuracy that couple will get divorced. Why? Just as you mentioned, I- you said, "I felt kind of flat. I felt like all of a sudden not excited." Contempt is one of the only emotions that doesn't go away. Fear comes in a burst, you self-soothe. Anger comes in a burst, you calm down. Happiness comes all at once, you go back to neutral. But contempt or disrespect, it grows and it festers if it's not addressed, and it grows and it breeds into hatred. And so I think that why some of these cues are so powerful is if we can spot a cue at its infancy and address it, we then prevent any kind of negative growth-

20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:58

    Yeah

21. VEVanessa Van Edwards6:58

    ... out of that hidden emotion.

22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:01

    I think the eye roll as well is associated with contempt. Is that right?

23. VEVanessa Van Edwards7:05

    So the eye roll is funny. It's, uh, a negative behavior, and it's a little softer than a scorn, right? So if we roll our eyes, sometimes it can be that you're trying to process something. For example, humans tend to look away when they're trying to process something. So if you've said something that someone doesn't like or they're trying to process, they might eye roll to be like, "Ugh, I don't know about that." An eye roll paired with a scoff, though, pretty contemptuous, right? Just an, "Ugh." That's the one... [laughs] That- that's a really negative one.

24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:31

    So let's say someone hears this, Vanessa, right? They're listening or they're watching, and this evening they see that their partner is exhibiting that cue to them, right? One part of them potentially could be really scared, thinking, "Wait a minute. Hold on a minute. I just heard that that's gonna lead to a divorce." Or could it be that with that knowledge we can actually address it and do something about it? Help me understand that.

25. VEVanessa Van Edwards7:59

    Yes. Every time you spot a cue, it's an opportunity. So if you see that on your partner's face, think of that as an opportunity. That is information, super valuable information for you to learn more, find out more, dig deeper. So you have a couple different options when you spot a cue. So there are 96 different cues, right? There's a lot of cues that we're getting sent all the time. Contempt is one of the more powerful ones. You have a choice with contempt or any negative cue or red flag. One, you can say, "Hmm, I noticed that contempt around this topic or this idea. I wonder what was going on there. I'm gonna keep that in the back of my head and do more research." That's just information for you.

26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:35

    Yeah.

27. VEVanessa Van Edwards8:35

    How wonderful to have, uh, more valuable information. Second, you can absolutely address it. So everyone in my life speaks cues, right? We... I'll be like, "Hey, I saw contempt. Is everything okay?" I will literally say that. Or if you wanna be more, you know, more soft about it, you can say, "Does that make sense? Are we all good? How are you feeling? You okay? Does that work with you?" Right? So even having a tiny moment of acknowledgement I think is a gift.

28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:02

    Yeah.

29. VEVanessa Van Edwards9:02

    And this is how I like to think about, about reading people, is we are so in need of belonging. We so want to be with people who truly, deeply understand us. And how amazing for you to go into an interaction with your partner or your best friend or your colleague and say, "I respect you so much that I don't wanna just listen to you with my ears. I j- I don't want to just hear the words. I wanna listen to you with my entire body. I wanna look at your cues, hear your voice, listen to your words, and I want to deeply understand you." So I think that the intention here is that every time you spot a cue, it's an opportunity to learn more, learn more about them, learn more about yourself, learn about more about the relationship.

30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:43

    Yeah. It, it's, it's really powerful, that, because a- as you described that, I was thinking, let's say I'm in a work meeting and I'm describing something and you notice this, then that's good information. You're like, "Ah, maybe this isn't landing as I thought it would. Maybe there's a problem here. Maybe I need to just keep that in the back of my mind and come back to it later," right? Whereas if you hadn't noticed that, you might think, "Oh, everyone's got this. I can just move on." So I can see the relevance there. I can see the relevance in a personal relationship, where someone is saying with their words, "Hey, yeah, I got it. Everything's fine," yet you're noticing something else. And I think that speaks to a wider point, that as I immerse myself in your work, which I have been doing, which I love, and, and, and your new book, you talk about cues, and you put them into these four categories, don't you? Non-verbal, vocal, verbal, and imagery.

Episode duration: 1:23:17