Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds

Summary

Summary of Habits and Hustle Podcast, Episode 437: "Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds"

Release Date: April 1, 2025

In Episode 437 of Habits and Hustle, host Jen Cohen engages in a compelling conversation with Annie Särnblad, famously known as the "Human Lie Detector." Annie delves into the intricate world of facial expressions, unveiling how subtle micro expressions can reveal true emotions and detect deceit in mere seconds. This detailed summary captures the essence of their discussion, highlighting key insights, notable quotes, and practical applications.

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1. Introduction to Annie Särnblad

Annie Särnblad introduces herself as an expert in reading facial expressions to discern emotions and detect lies. With over 25 years of experience living abroad and studying multiple languages, Annie has honed her skills in facial action coding systems, enabling her to interpret thousands of muscle combinations and facial expressions accurately.

Notable Quote:

"I can numerically code anybody; who can, or anybody who is trained in facial action coding systems can take the 10,000 different muscle combinations and read thousands of different facial expressions." — Annie Särnblad [02:29]

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2. Understanding Facial Expressions: Macro vs. Micro

Annie distinguishes between macro and micro expressions, emphasizing their roles in communication and deception detection.

• Macro Expressions: These are full-fledged facial expressions that convey clear emotions such as happiness, anger, or disgust. For instance, a genuine smile involves not just the mouth but also the cheeks lifting, creating "smile bags" under the eyes.

• Micro Expressions: Involuntary and fleeting facial expressions that reveal true emotions before a person can consciously mask them. These occur within a fraction of a second and are crucial for detecting deceit.

Notable Quote:

"The facial expression says exactly what someone is feeling in the exact moment they're feeling it. The micro expression does because the micro expression precedes the thought process and is involuntary." — Annie Särnblad [06:03]

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3. Reading Emotions and Detecting Lies

Annie elaborates on how micro expressions are universal and biologically hardwired, regardless of culture, ethnicity, or socialization. These expressions are preceding cognitive processes, making them reliable indicators of underlying emotions.

Key Points:

• Micro expressions are consistent across different cultures and backgrounds.
• They occur before the conscious mind can fabricate responses, making deceit easily detectable.
• While macro expressions can be faked, micro expressions are difficult to control and thus are more reliable.

Notable Quote:

"You can't really fake your facial expression, especially the micro expressions, because they latch onto your true feelings involuntarily." — Annie Särnblad [09:27]

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4. Teaching Children to Recognize Emotions and Predatory Behavior

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Annie's dedication to teaching children how to recognize and interpret facial expressions to ensure their safety. By simplifying the complex science of facial expressions, children can identify when someone may have harmful intentions.

Key Points:

• Teaching children to recognize signs like disgust, anger, and contempt helps them identify predatory behavior.
• Developing a shared vocabulary within the family enhances children's ability to report suspicious behavior.
• Early education in recognizing micro expressions can empower children to stay safe in various environments.

Notable Quote:

"Every kid should know to report to their caregiver if someone shows contempt and disgust. That's a red flag." — Annie Särnblad [32:00]

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5. Recognizing Sincerity vs. Phoniness in Relationships

Annie discusses the importance of aligning words with facial expressions to gauge sincerity. Incongruence between verbal and non-verbal cues often indicates insincerity or hidden motives.

Key Points:

• Genuine emotions are reflected consistently in both words and facial expressions.
• Discrepancies between verbal affirmations and facial expressions can signal deceit or ulterior motives.
• Understanding these cues helps individuals navigate personal and professional relationships more effectively.

Notable Quote:

"If somebody's saying really positive words and showing negative facial expressions, that's a problem. That's a red flag." — Annie Särnblad [22:06]

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6. Spotting Narcissists through Facial Expressions

Annie provides insights into identifying narcissistic behavior through subtle facial cues. Narcissists often display a lack of genuine empathy, which can be detected through their facial expressions.

Key Points:

• Absence of chin puckering indicates a lack of empathy.
• Narcissists may exhibit contempt through unilateral lip tucks.
• Initial charm or "love bombing" is followed by abusive behavior, detectable through inconsistent facial expressions.

Notable Quote:

"The absence of chin puckering indicates a lack of empathy. Narcissists do not show the genuine facial cues that demonstrate caring emotions." — Annie Särnblad [47:50]

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7. Applications in Business and High-Stakes Negotiations

Annie expands on how her expertise applies to the business realm, particularly in sales and negotiations. By reading facial expressions, professionals can better understand clients' true intentions and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Key Points:

• Observing signs like pupil dilation or clenching lips can indicate fear or resistance.
• Recognizing these cues helps negotiators determine when to advance or retreat in discussions.
• Enhanced observation skills lead to more effective and empathetic business interactions.

Notable Quote:

"In mergers and acquisitions, observing signs like pupil dilation or tightening lips can indicate fear or resistance, helping negotiators adjust their strategies." — Annie Särnblad [61:12]

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8. Conclusion and Upcoming Projects

Annie shares her upcoming projects, including a subscription service designed to teach individuals how to recognize and interpret facial expressions in an accessible, bite-sized format. Her book, Diary of a Human Lie Detector, delves deeper into her methodologies and experiences.

Notable Quote:

"I'm launching a subscription service in about four weeks where people can learn these skills in manageable chunks, ensuring they can quickly apply them in real-life situations." — Annie Särnblad [64:24]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "The muscle movement precedes the moment of cognition. You can't really fake your facial expression, especially the micro expressions, because they latch onto your true feelings involuntarily." — Annie Särnblad [09:27]
• "If somebody's saying really positive words and showing negative facial expressions, that's a problem. That's a red flag." — Annie Särnblad [22:06]
• "The absence of chin puckering indicates a lack of empathy. Narcissists do not show the genuine facial cues that demonstrate caring emotions." — Annie Särnblad [47:50]
• "I'm launching a subscription service in about four weeks where people can learn these skills in manageable chunks, ensuring they can quickly apply them in real-life situations." — Annie Särnblad [64:24]

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Final Thoughts

Annie Särnblad's profound understanding of facial expressions offers invaluable tools for enhancing personal and professional interactions. By mastering the art of reading micro and macro expressions, individuals can foster more authentic relationships, safeguard themselves against deceit, and navigate complex social landscapes with confidence.

For more insights and to access Annie's resources, visit her website AnnieSarnblatt.com or follow her on Instagram.

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Transcript

[A]

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

[B]

Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is healthspan living better and longer, there are very few non negotiables. One of them quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentous. Momentous goes all in on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives and label accuracy. And that's why they're trusted by all 32 NFL teams and top collegiate sports dietitians across the country. Here's the thing, they don't sell every supplement under the sun because they believe in nailing the basics, which with rock solid consistency. And those basics are protein and creatine. Momentous sources. Creapure, the purest form of creatine monohydrate available. An absolute must for both men and women who want peak physical and cognitive performance. So if you're serious about leveling up, go to livemomentous.com and use code. Jen for 20% off. Just act now. Start today. Jen for 20% off livemomentous.com I've been very excited to talk to you, Annie, for a lot of hosts of reasons. I just want to tell the audience, because we're going to go right into it. Annie's is, I guess, AKA the Human Lie Detector. That's basically your. I guess that's what you're known for. That's what you're known as, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, God. I'm scared, by the way. So basically I want to just give a little brief. So her book is called Diary of a Human Lie Detector. Facial Expressions in Love, Lust and Lies. And you basically know thousands of facial expressions and you can read thousands of different facial expressions to tell if somebody is lying to you, if they like you, if they what they're, if they're a narcissist, if they're a psychopath. I mean, I'm actually kind of nervous interviewing you because you're going to be watching my face and I'm now going to be like, oh, I shouldn't do this, I should sit like that. Does that ever happen? Do people get scared to talk to you?

[A]

Oh, all the time. And so just to clarify like that I can numerically code or anybody who can, who is trained in facial action coding systems can take the 10,000 different muscle combinations and it's not 10, it's not thousands of facial expressions, but it is a lot of muscle combinations. And it's a lot of facial expressions. And yes, people get really nervous, but almost nobody gets as nervous as men who have some kind of shame in their lives. They get really, really wound up.

[B]

Really not. Women don't get. Women don't get nervous if they have shame.

[A]

A little flustered. But I think we're. I think women innately, and not all of us, you know, because we, we do, thank goodness, have different wiring in our brains. Every individual, you know, slightly different. But I think we women are used to some other people around us being able to read us really well. I mean, a lot of us have good friends and family members that have kind of been able to read us or even hear that kind of hitch in our voice or tightness in our vocal cords. And they'll kind of turn around quickly and say, what's wrong? When we, you know, what do you mean, what's wrong? I didn't say anything. No, I can hear it or I can feel it or I can say it, sense it. I can see it on you. So I think we're just used to reading others or focusing on that, those skills. And we're used to being read more. More often or more. Sometimes more hyper aware of it.

[B]

Or I think also probably women wear their emotions on their sleeves. Probably more so it's more obvious.

[A]

Well, we're certainly, you know, socialized to. For it to be okay to show emotion. It's expected from an earlier age. I mean, I had to catch myself a couple of times with my son. I was more stern with him when he was crying once he got to a certain age than I was with my daughters. And I had to catch myself because I didn't want him not to show his emotion. But it was so hardwired into me to kind of be like, why are you whining?

[B]

Yeah, it's so true. I have a boy and a girl, and I definitely understand the difference between that. Like, you treat the boy and the girl differently based on what's already kind of programmed and conditioned to how you think they should behave. Right, right. I totally feel that I do that as well. Is there like a big difference or what's. Because you don't read body language. You read facial expressions, which is more telling and which one is harder to, I guess, deceive.

[A]

Okay, so I do read body language. I just don't teach it very often. So I spent. I spent 25 years of my life living abroad, and I studied eight languages through immersion. So I've spent, in addition to being Doing this facial action coding certification. I have spent years and years of my life not understanding what people are saying. So that's how I got so good at reading body language. Facial expressions, tone of ways, choice of words. That's what made me this sort of human lie detector combined with the science of facial expressions. But the question is excellent. So I usually define it in simple. In the simplest terms that body language varies from person to person. Even two siblings within the same family can have wildly different body language. You know, crossing your arms, for example, may mean that you're belligerent or you're angry or defensive. Certainly if it comes into the context of having an argument or if you see a little kid go, you know, and cross their arms. But it can also mean that you're Finnish or you're German or, or you. That's how you self soothe or you're cold or you're just a little uncomfortable thinking about something else. The facial expressions, the piece that I love and the reason that I've gotten so into teaching facial expressions is that they are biological responses. They are the same. The micro expressions are the same regardless of culture, ethnicity, age, gender, socialization, no matter who raised us. Even people who are born blind make the same facial expressions, the same basic facial expressions. There are some cultural expressions, but I don't teach those, I don't focus on those. So the facial expression says exactly what someone is feeling in the exact moment they're feeling it. The micro expression does because the micro expression precedes the thought process and is involuntary. So unless I change my thoughts, I can't stop myself, even me, from, from making the micro expression. So I have three grown children.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And our dinner table is a mess.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Wait, so this is very interesting. You said a few things that I want to talk about. Number one. So body language could be also not just dependent on. It's dependent person to person, but also culturally. Like what you do in one culture is, could be very distinctly different. How you do your body language is in another culture. Yeah, but what you said was interesting that micro facial expressions, there's, it's, it doesn't matter what culture, who, what age, ethnicity doesn't matter.

[A]

It's always the same because it's biologically hardwired into us. So I'll give you an example that when human beings are afraid, we do this. You know, we pull our upper eyelids back and that's so that we can widen our field of vision so we can gauge like, how do I get out of this? Situation, where can I escape? I mean, it's a physiological response. And this. See the tendons of my neck jump? And that's because fear opens our mouths. If you look at pictures of people in haunted houses, you know how sometimes you go through those haunted houses or you're doing like a Disney World, or they snap the picture at the moment where your mouth like. And if you look at those pictures, everybody, across ethnicities, ages, genders, like, everybody makes the same exact facial expression when they're absolutely terrified. And we open our mouths. That's the only expression that really rectangularizes the entire mouth. And that's so we can scream bloody murder, so we can get help. So there's a physical, physiological reason that there's a change in blood flow and muscle movement for each facial expression. And so the micro expression of fear is just. See how that does that neck tendon. And it's just this pull of like, it's just like that little itched itching to come out. And it can also be this pullback. Now there are other facial expressions that widen our eye aperture, like excitement. But we're. Then we're opening the. The lower lid and the upper lip and it. Lid, sorry. And it gives you a different vibe. So me going, oh, just a little bit for a hot second. That's very different than this, which communicates danger.

[B]

Danger. So you're saying, you're saying that our facial expressions actually happen before our brain even processes it.

[A]

The muscle movement precedes the moment of cognition.

[B]

That is so interesting.

[A]

I think so too.

[B]

Right. So you can't really fake your facial expression, right?

[A]

You can fake the macros. Like, I can pretend to be happier, I can, like do a big expression, but the tiny flicker of micro expression leaks out of us before we can stop it. That's. It's. It's like when, you know, up until the age about 2, we make these big facial expressions and we human beings scan the entire face. And once our parents start, say, start really socializing us as human beings and they start saying, look me in the eyes when you speak to me, we. We start forgetting that sort of innate human species thing where we looked all over the face to gauge the expression and the emotion. It's like that was how we read people when we didn't have any access to words or socialization. It's hardwired into us. And so people who maintain their hypervigilance, in other words, grow up in abusive situations or war zones. They tend to be really, really good at reading facial expressions because they don't lose that ability. So it's almost like it's there before we're verbal and we lose it. It's almost like I think of it as baby language or, you know, that it's our universal nonverbal language. And when people get in romantic situations and they're going to kiss somebody for the first time, that's when they start tracking again. Because they sort of revert into that primitive brain. I want to know if you're going to reject me. So I start, like, tracking, you know, looking all over the face. Is there any clue? And people are not. We're not even aware we're doing it.

[B]

Okay, so again, I love this. So what's the difference between a macro expression and a micro expression?

[A]

Okay, the macro expression is the first full expression. It's the expression we would kind of make if we weren't socialized. So the macro expression of disgust, which I call the no face, is this. It's that face of, like, you know, you come with the peas or the mushed up, like, gross food that you have to eat. You see, I already do that. Like, innately thinking about the gross. It shuts off our nasal passages. So it. Three main pieces, wrinkles the skin next to our nose, deepens our nasolabial furrow. I sometimes call this the nostril shadow. Cause I find that's easier for people to remember. And it pulls up our upper lips, right? It's that Ew.

[B]

Ew.

[A]

And it shuts off our nasal passages, our sense of smell, up to about 80%. That's the macro. But we learn, don't make that face at Grandma. Or, like, don't make that face at your sister. It's rude to be like, I don't like you, or, I don't want to eat this. The micro expression is the piece. So that's the macro. I see it as the whole puzzle. And for each expression, when I'm teaching, I teach you what the whole puzzle looks like. So if you just get one or two puzzle pieces from that specific puzzle, you recognize it. So remember I talked about wrinkling next to the nose and the deepening of the nasolabial furrow. Disgust is just this, but because it happens so fast, up to about a 25th of a second, just that little flicker. You almost have to prepare your gaze and look at this part of the face or you'll miss it. So if I'm asking you if you want to eat Italian food tonight, I might dip my gaze and just see if you. If I get a little no.

[B]

So this is. Okay, so, by the way, guys, you got to watch the video on YouTube because you have to see exactly what Annie is doing. But she was just, like, kind of pulsing like that. What do you call that thing? The nasal.

[A]

I call it the nostril shadow because it's the shadow. It's like, where people. People tend to get some fillers in there because they. They think it makes them look a little old. But it's. It's this wrinkle that is next. Just right next to the nostrils. Usually when I make them micro myself, unless I'm really upset by something, then both sides jump. But usually it's just my left side. And everybody's got a side that they favor. And it's almost like, you know, when you get that tick on your eye sometimes when you're really tired or stressed and your eyes, like, right underneath your eye just jumps. That's what it feels like. And people often don't notice it when it's next to the nose, but it's just that little jump. And I sometimes call it, like, the bad bunny rabbit twitch.

[B]

That's a good name for it too. So basically, macro expressions are more the obvious ones, right? Like, you're disgusted, you're happy, whatever. But the micro are like this. The very subtleties that you can actually really tell how someone is truly thinking or feeling exact moment in that exact moment. Okay, so. Okay, so let's go over some stuff here. So what are signs of. Like, how do you. Like, what are signs of someone of a fake smile? Like, what are signs of a fake smile? Because everyone is so like, hi, how nice to meet you. And, you know, like, I personally feel like I can spot it, like, dead on. But I want to know if there are very specific things that you can, like, point to that my audience can get.

[A]

Okay, so the easiest thing is that the smile has nothing to do with the mouth. Nothing at all, really. Nothing to do with what the lips are doing. When we experience joy, our cheeks pop up. They lose gravity. These are called our infraorbital triangles. And you can see. You can see it. Like, it actually makes you happy when you. Because it's contagious, right? So when I actually look at you and smile because I'm happy to see you, the. That my cheeks actually make more of a ball, and they rise and depending on your baseline, the formation of your, you know, the angle of your face, but you're still gonna see those cheeks pop up. And what happens is you get these beautiful smile bags. So this skin Right under my lower eyelid gets fat and puffs out. See that?

[B]

Mm.

[A]

Right. And it's easy peasy. And my little one, Emma, who's now almost 21, she used to say when the skin here gets fat, that means they're happy, Mama. Because I trained them since they were itty bitty since they were babies. And she was like so uninterested at whether or not there were crow's feet or whether or not like what was happening with the, with the muscles in the informal triangle. And she was just like, if it's, if it's fat and you get this, you get this, this skin that sticks out and it's. You can see on my face, as I get older, it's going to be a little bit more puffy and it's going to hang a little bit. So you're looking for the change in that person's face, whatever their sort of normal neutral facial expression is. So my, you know, depending on the day of my eye, if the skin underneath my eyelids is a little bit puffy, you'll see, but you'll see it'll bulge out to two or three times or four times its natural size. You'll see this huge change. So if you're trying to see if somebody's happy and you know what they generally look like, all you have to do is see is this skin here fat. And it's this, this. It's the same exact area that we sometimes talk about. We get increased pigmentation depending on the natural pigment of our skin. It might be brown or it might be purple. It might be, but it's a darker shade when we're not getting enough sleep. And that's exactly that area that we're looking for, that to bulge.

[B]

So I would think that faking a smile is pretty much pretty simple only because people know when they should be trying to look like they're happy or look like they're, you know, smiling because they know people are watching them and they can, they can kind of figure it out. What I really. Yeah, I was gonna say what I find interesting is when someone like, let's say you get good news. You know this whole thing about like Schotten Freud, right? When people actually find like misery in someone's and when someone feels happiness and was misery or like, that's really what it is. But there's a lot of times when like you, like, you do something really great and then people are like, oh my God, I'm so happy for you. Right? Like that, like fakeness, like the phoniness how can you spot when someone's being phony and actually doesn't want the best for you or when they're envious of you or jealous of you?

[A]

Yeah. So in Swedish we call it which means injured, injured, cheerful, or injured joy.

[B]

Okay, I like that, too.

[A]

Basically, somebody's getting hurt and you're happy about it. And that's a really good question. So the things that I will look for is whether or not the facial expression is particularly the micro expressions. Knowing that the micro expressions leak people's true intentions and they can't hide them. And most people can't make the micro expressions on demand. My kids can do a little bit of them, but like, you know, 20 years of practicing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so, first of all, if I'm saying something joyful, I should be, you know, maybe nodding or I should be lifting my infraorbial triangle, infraorbal triangles and showing that. That said, I can hear something and think that, like, that's great. I just. I've had such a hard day or I have a migraine and I can't quite muster the joy. That's also okay. You know, people sometimes have a hard time, like, reaching their joy, especially if they're. If they're struggling in their daily life or something. You know, if their house just burned down. I mean, seriously, it's. People are struggling today.

[B]

Right. But we're not talking about that as much. Yeah.

[A]

So what you're going to watch for in. So the smile is one piece of it. So does that, does that. Do those words match that facial expression? But is somebody giving you a compliment while showing that disgust? That's a problem. If I say, jen, I heard that you got a promotion. I'm so happy for you, Jen. And you can feel it. Right? That feels almost predatorily, you know, like, sorry, predatory. It feels really creepy. But if I say I hate broccoli or I hate bacon, and you know, then you're like, okay, well, that's a weird thing to hate, but all right.

[B]

Right, right, right, exactly.

[A]

It doesn't give you that same visceral response that you almost want to sit back and create more distance from that person. So we intuitively know it because that's our universal. Facial expressions are universal nonverbal language. But we don't always have the words to put it on. We don't. We don't even consciously always know what we've seen or observed. Observed. Sorry.

[B]

No, no, no. That. I got what you were saying. Like, what is the biggest mistake that people make when they're trying to. If they want to. If they want to believe somebody. Like, are people. What's the biggest mistake that people are not looking for or when they make, when they're trying to read somebody, I.

[A]

Think they forget to dip their gaze. So, you know, we're so trained to be respectful, and this is this culture and culture, but, you know, we're generally trained to look people in the eyes when we. When we speak to them, and we're missing all of this information that's happening around their face. Like anger, for example, is just this tightening clenching of the lips. When I was like, you see me, I'm clenching my hand as I'm doing that, because anger clenches everything. I mean, it even clenches our neck and our shoulders as we prepare to fight in our fists. But if you're trying to figure out if somebody's mad, the easiest way is just to look at their mouth and see if there's a change from their baseline.

[B]

So it's all in the lower lip if someone's mad.

[A]

So it's just this, like, you see, I don't have. I don't have particularly fleshy lips. My lips are fairly thin, so they almost disappear completely. The pigment is gone when I'm angry.

[B]

Right, but that's obvious, I think, right?

[A]

Like, if someone's angry. Yeah, yeah. But, but. But people still miss it if they're looking at their eyes.

[B]

Oh, right. So you're saying scan someone's total face.

[A]

Yes. Not just don't hold your gaze on their mouth for more than three seconds at a time. Do you know why?

[B]

Why?

[A]

Because they're going to lean in to kiss you.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah, it's. I mean, not everybody, but I was.

[B]

Going to say everybody. I mean, or like, guy versus girl. Well, that's actually a good point.

[A]

It's the. It's the strangest. Or if you do want somebody to kiss, kiss you. Like, look at their mouth. Well, how do you know? I literally had clients in Asia when I was working in Asia, trying to tilt their head, lean forward, and then catch themselves and be, what am I doing? Because it's this sort of universal signal that I was signaling, and they stopped themselves. They weren't gonna do it. And there wasn't chemistry between us, but it was just almost like, you know, when a baby lifts their face to kiss you? I mean, even if it's a strange baby, you almost like, you catch yourself and you're like, I can't kiss this stranger's baby in the grocery store.

[B]

Oh, my God. That's so funny. So you're saying do not, if any, you should not look at someone's mouth for longer than three seconds, longer than.

[A]

Three seconds at a time. But you can go up and down, up and down, up and just at a time. Yes, you look away. It's almost like when somebody is making that sort of that clear eye contact and they're just staring you for a long time and it's longer than your specific culture holds eye contact, it almost feels either like they're asking for something. So it may be romance, it may be that they're angry, but something is going on with that length of eye contact that's deviating, that's sending out some really clear signal.

[B]

So then like a natural instinct of somebody to somebody is if you are caught in this like 3 second or more gaze on some, on your lips, the natural instinct is to lean in and kiss. That is really funny.

[A]

With a head tilt first and then a lean. She don't want to bump noses.

[B]

That is really funny actually, because my, my other question was like, how do you know if someone actually like in the dating world, right? Like how to read signs like does someone really like you or do they just want to sleep with you or do they even care about you? Like how? Like I bet you like. I think a lot of times people are not catching on very subtle hints and they make excuses for people's bad behavior or lack of phoning and calling. But if someone just says, oh baby, I love you, dah dah dah dah dah, they believe it.

[A]

Okay, so there's, there's two main pieces of this and then I'll break them down and the one piece is like whether or not somebody wants to sleep with you. And that's like, that is one of the big questions in life. Like, is this person attracted to me? That's huge. And I sometimes think people focus too much on that depending on what they want, right? But a lot of people want something real and want something deep and want something that's going to last. If you're looking for something real deep and you know, possibly permanent or long lasting, you're going to want to see that there's emotional attachment. So let's go look at, let's look at the. We're going to look at attraction and then we're going to look at emotionally attached or in other words, I care about you, so I'm attracted to you versus I care about you. So attracted is above, in and under the eyes. Okay, so above is that. It took me Years to figure this out. I watched a lot of trashy tv. But this piece, because I didn't learn that in my coding, that was not taught to me in facial expressions. It wasn't? Okay, no, but I. But I knew, like, I knew there were these bedroom eyes and, like, what is that? So I actually. I think it clicked mostly when I watched the O.C.

[B]

Did you ever watch that? Really? Oh, my God.

[A]

No, I did. I remember character, like, just spends, like, half of his time showing off his eyelids.

[B]

That is hilarious.

[A]

Right? And it's like this almost like I call it when I'm teaching, I say it's like pulling down the shades to make something romantic. You know, do you want to, like, make the room a little more dark and romantic? So, you know, they just kind of do this where they loosen their. Their eyelids. And it's a very different look than somebody who's, like, really sleepy because that's kind of this unfocused. My eyelids are drooping, and I'm just, like, checked out. This is often with, like, a little bit of a head tilt showing some vulnerability there and softness. And then you're just, like, almost showing off. Like, look how much eyelid I have.

[B]

And that's how you can tell if someone's attracted to you. Okay, Right.

[A]

And so that's a. That's a big piece. And by the way, we're looking for that. That lowering. So we're looking again for the difference in the baseline whether or not you have single folded eyelids or double folded eyelids. I have family members that. That are Chinese. It doesn't matter. You're looking for the movement. Okay, so that's the eyelids. That's the bedroom eyes. You're looking for a dilation of the pupils. So not the pupils are big, but that they become bigger during the conversation or interaction.

[B]

So you're looking for change.

[A]

So people can have bigger pupils, depend on kind of depending on kind of their baseline, or they can have bigger pupils one day because they're on certain medication. Drugs can make pupils either bigger or smaller. And so we're looking for the swelling of the pupils in the moment, so not the initial size that day. We're looking. We, you know, we want. We know that pupils expand and contract if the room is darker or lighter. If we're sitting outside and having a picnic and it's really sunny and there's some clouds, we know, you know, we know that when the. When the sky becomes dark, our pupils are going to swell to allow in more light. And this is. I talk about that as almost like throwing the door open and saying, like, come in, come in, come in. Because you're opening that aperture and saying, like, come on in, welcome.

[B]

But then what's the difference between someone who just wants to sleep with you versus someone who really cares about you, wants to have, like, a real relationship?

[A]

Right. So that difference. So I just. I'll finish this one. So above the eyes, in the eyes, and under. And under those smile bags from the joy. You know, we tend to get a little happier and more cheerful when we're around somebody that we're attracted to. So that's the attraction and then the achy breaky heart. Whether or not we empathize with somebody, whether or not we love them, whether or not we experience tenderness, that's right here on the chin. So if you tell me something hard or something painful that you've experienced, I should be responding with a chin pucker. If I care about you or I care about the thing. And it's kind of that you can make yourself do it by just saying, aw. By looking like puppy videos or baby videos, or if you look at pictures of your own children when they're really cute and chubby and little and you. You'll automatically pucker that chin. And I usually include the caveat of, like, again, if somebody's having a hard time, they don't need to pucker their chin every time. Because you may be going on and on and on about venting about something, but if they. When you talk about something physically, emotionally, or financially painful to you or somebody else close to you, they should be puckering their chin in empathy. And if they never do that, that's an issue.

[B]

Wow, that's interesting. I like that. I think I saw that you said that. That's for your. Your chin. Is that. Is that spot now? But don't most people. I shouldn't say most people don't. A lot of people know if you're telling them something that is vulnerable or. Or telling them something that is meaningful, that the, The. The reaction that you should give is looking like you care. So therefore they'll be like, oh, well, they can also. You can also fake that.

[A]

Yeah, people don't. Don't know how to fake their micro expressions. At least I've never seen it.

[B]

Like, if someone said to me something terrible like, oh, you know, like, I'm. I'm. You know, my house was just burnt down, I'd be like, oh, my God, that's horrible. Like, right. I mean, that doesn't necessarily. Go ahead.

[A]

It doesn't mean you're in love with them, but it just means that you, that you like, it's sort of like the, the lowest bar is that they should at least care about you, right? But as you're becoming more intimate and vulnerable in your conversations with somebody, they should be caring about, they should be mirroring your facial expression, they should be participating, they should be leaning in, and they should be responding to you. And if they're not, that's an issue. I mean, I've seen it all the time where somebody has the right words, but when you talk about something that's really meaningful to you, they'll be like, oh, that's wonderful. And again, they're growling, right?

[B]

Right. They're growling, right?

[A]

If somebody's growling, that's not good. I mean, we know this stuff on some level, or at least a lot of us do.

[B]

We do intuitively. That's why I find this very interesting, right? Because I think that naturally a lot of us don't trust our own intuition, right? Like you feel it when someone like, likes you, doesn't like you, if we should do something, not do something, if something's safe. Like what I find, you know what I mean? What I was. What I think is interesting, you know, you talk about this and what I really, what I kind of glommed onto when I found you was about the kids piece, right? Like teaching kids what to look for and how to be safe and like teaching this to children at a young age so, like, they don't get themselves into a situation that's dangerous, right? Like what to look for. Like, what do you teach kids what to look for that is not safe. That's the first part. It's part a. The second part of that question is what can you do the same type of training for somebody online as you can in person? Can you still pick up on these micro expressions as easily online?

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so first let's go back to the kids piece. I mean, that was my obsession. So. So my career was as a strategic advisor. So I lived in. In Asia and then Europe and then and back in asia again for 25 years, I guess. 25. That part of that time I was at university, but my focus was working with managing directors and coaching executives, usually CEOs at the top level, working with boards. I never intended to use any of my micro expressions or to even go public about it. There were only four people in the world that outside of my family that knew that I was trained and proficient in micro expressions. My obsession was to simplify the Field of science so that I could teach my children to recognize predatory behavior. And in my sort of weird and wacky brain, I was like, if this is something that babies know, there has to be some possibility of putting more simple words on it. There we. There has to be a simplified vocabulary and a way of making it kind of shorthand so that we can talk about it without doing, like, a long numerical code of every different muscle group that's moving with the facial expression. So my obsession was that. And I started off by just narrating it the way you narrate. Like, this is a banana. This is a spirit spoon. This is a truck. I would. This is the no face. This is the ew face. This is the yuck face. And then I would have them make it just the. You know how when you have a baby and you do this, somebody tells you you stick out your tongue, and they'll stick out their tongue. So I would do that, but, like, on steroids. And I learned through trying over and over again that I would make my kids and myself really crabby if I did too much holding of the negative expressions. That finally. I finally realized that I was. My brain was reading, that I was actually going through this trauma, that something was absolutely disgusting or I was very angry or I was terrified. Like that. That felt traumatizing to all of us.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

Yeah. And likewise, if you just do that happy expression over and over again, you just kind of fake it till you make it. The whole point of the facial expression is that it sends a message to the amygdala to process the emotion. And when there's too much facial paralysis, we're not able to process the emotion, the interpretation of processing gets stopped. So high advanced stages of Parkinson's or moebis, where there's facial paralysis, that impedes our ability to fully empathize, to fully understand our own feelings and to fully understand other people's, because we need the facial movement for that. And so for the kids, it was. I became obsessed with. With getting them to tell me when someone's facial expressions didn't match their words or just quite simply tell me when anybody growls at you. I mean, that's just such a basic thing that every kid should know to report to whoever their caregiver is. This person is growling at me. And in my case, it was this man shows contempt and disgust when he talks to me. And that's a problem. A grown man should not be showing contempt and disgusting to a little kid. That's. Something is very, very off. Now, the Micro expression shows the feeling and not the thought process, but it does exactly what you just said. It shows us the red flags. We know something's off. And my kids had the advantage, or maybe sometimes the disadvantage because they kind of saw everything going on. But the advantage in terms of keeping them safe, of having a joint vocabulary with their mother that they could say, that man shows contempt and disgust. And I would be so fast, like was so on it because I wasn't protected as a, as a little kid. And so I just, it was my full on obsession. I never intended to teach it to a wider audience. And part of what changed is I moved countries and I lost my professional network because I moved from Singapore to the US and also what happened was as my children got older and AI I was scared of AI getting everything and using it for nefarious purposes. I just was terrified of AI really. And so I didn't want what I knew and what I had worked for years with my kids to be used for not good purposes. Once AI got so two things happened at the same time. My kids grew up and their friends. I was talking about micro expressions. I was doing some teaching at that time. And their friends would come over and say, will you just teach me one thing? Or my sons friends would come over and they're like, how do I know if she likes me, Annie, like quick, when, when Matisse is in the bathroom, give me one thing I can look for.

[B]

Yeah. By the way, I want to ask you. Hey, hold on. This is fascinating. So staying on the kids, besides the growl and what you taught us about this nasal labia area to look for in disgust, are there any other micro expressions that a kid or a parent listening can teach their kid quickly to look for? Beside. That's a good one.

[A]

So the disgust is just this, right? So what? I'll show you what a knowing smile is. And then there's. I was taught when I learned facial expressions, when I learned the coding of facial expressions, I was taught that contempt is the only facial expression that is always only unilateral. So I was taught that a lip tuck was contempt on just one side of the face. Now, over the years as I've poked and prodded, I've noticed that I do that lip tuck all the time when someone talks about. I mean, you and I were talking about one of your TED talks and I was saying, oh, you know, I used to tell my daughter that, you know, you have to try for something 10 times to be able to succeed once or to be able to count on Succeeding once. And you, you said something very similar that I loved. And if what. When you said that, I noticed when I was watching this video, like, I tuck my one corner of my mouth into my cheek. It's not a smile, it's a tuck. And that just means, oh, I know all about this. And so that's the annoying smile. When you add the element of disgust from that facial expression. Watch how this can change. That's just like, oh, I know about this. Now watch. See how that feels? So since that's contempt, contempt has to have that element of disgust. So disgust is the biggest one. But disgust with that knowing smile, it's kind of like, I know something that you don't know. And it's not good. It's just never good when there's that element of disgust. And then I think anger is really important for kids to understand. That's always tight lips. And that can be like tight lips when they're clenched. I mean, that's really important when you're little. And when I've worked with kids on the spectrum, kids with autism, and teaching them facial expressions, some of the students that I had were not adept at reading facial expressions, reading facial expressions of emotion, but they were my fastest learners that I've ever, ever had in my entire career. Because the. The individuals with autism that I've worked with specifically, I know autism is very wide ranging and it's this whole kaleidoscope of things.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But with the individuals I was working with, the pattern recognition skills that they had were phenomenal, for sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Really quick study of it. And so I would show them what the, what the facial expression would look like. And then we would go through. The second step would be like, what do you do if you notice someone is angry? And I worked with my own kids who are not on the spectrum, but have some other, other things going on. And, you know, and we, a lot of people do, so of course. But I would teach them this face with the lip funnel, the angry lip funnel. So that had the pieces of anger, concentration, anger here with the angry mouth when the lip is funneled out. And that is what I would call so tight mouth that's funneled out. I call that the gonna get you mouth. So in my book and with my kids, I always talked about that as the run face, because that's the face that people are going to do when they're going to verbally or physically assault you. And so that's a really important facial expression for just everybody should know what it looks like. If Somebody's gonna attack you. And that's not the only facial expression, but that they are likely to attack you if they're making that facial.

[B]

Making that face. Guys, I gotta tell you again, if you're listening to this podcast and not watching it, it's gonna be hard to understand. I definitely recommend YouTube being watching this one because I think even just for the fact if you have. You're a parent and you want to teach your kids simple ways to look out for bad behavior, it's important to listen to this and watch it. I should say, what's the youngest age that you can teach this to?

[A]

So with my own kids, I started exactly, you know, when they were. When they were infants because I started narrating my facial expressions like, look, mama's happy. My cheeks are up. Like my, my. I would talk about the smile, I would talk about fear, I would talk about. And I would get. The babies can mirror the facial expression again. Don't do it too long for the negative ones, please. The youngest student I've ever had, there was a risk of kidnapping. And she's. She was three when we started.

[B]

Three. Wow.

[A]

And I probably wouldn't have worked with somebody that young, but I mean, wait. Some people in particular live in a dangerous world. Her parents are well known and their wealth is also well known.

[B]

Oh, right. So then you would have to teach these people, especially kids from very, very powerful families, wealthy families. Right. What to look for. Because in general, everyone's going to want something from you and they're going to have a lot, sometimes, a lot of times, unfortunately, a lot of negative or their reasonings for wanting to be close to you are not. What would be like, innocent? I would say not innocent.

[A]

That's exactly it. So they brought me in at that stage. I had stopped teaching, working with kids, and was mostly traveling around doing keynotes and training with financial institutions or big sales groups. And they attended a conference that a financial institute held for some of their wealthiest clients. And I had said on stage, and I taught my kids, I used some examples and I had said, I don't have the bandwidth to do individuals at this anymore. And they pulled me aside. I didn't recognize who they were.

[B]

I'm mostly face blind, which is ironic.

[A]

I remember every movement on someone's face and I don't remember the color of their eyes or their face, facial features.

[B]

This is unbelievable. This is. The cobbler has no shoes. Again, like, this happens all the time.

[A]

I barely recognize my own children. They find it infuriating.

[B]

Wow, that is amazing.

[A]

No, it's really terrible. I recognize. I can. I can tell by your voice instantly, like, I know. And I can tell by your facial expressions if we get into a conversation. I can remember, like, this boy that I was in love with, the facial expressions that he made when he was 14 years old. That's like 40 years ago.

[B]

Wow. But you can't. But you're blind otherwise. I do. Is it maybe a thing a reader, like reader glasses can help you with or.

[A]

No, no, it's not that I can't see the face. It's that I cannot. There's like a piece of my brain that can't remember it.

[B]

Oh, wow. It's so funny.

[A]

I see you perfectly clearly and I can remember. And I'm watching all these months, almost like I'm so interested in the microbe. I remember even, you know, when I was 14, I didn't know how to read facial expressions other than I had really good intuition.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But. Yeah, so. So anyway, long story short, the parents said, you know, we just need you to do this. And it wasn't until they explained their situation and they, they were relentless. They were just like, this is not. You're gonna have to do this for us. And I just kind of looked at them like, no, I don't.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And when they explained, I thought, oh, you know, like, here I am being all cocky and glib. And they really. I do need to do this for them. And above all, I need to do it for their children. And you can see I'm self soothing. I'm touching my skin and trying to calm myself down because even just thinking about it worries me. So they brought me in, wanting to teach her to recognize predatory behavior and have a joint vocabulary again with the parents, to be able to alert them and the caregivers. Anybody else that was involved in the caregiving of these children. The piece that I said, I said two things. One, I'll only do it if I train you as well. Because there's no point in this child having this vocabulary and this knowledge that is not shared in the family. And it was. That was like, that's just a deal breaker. Otherwise I won't ever. And I never have worked with kids without working with the parents because they have to have that as a language that keeps developing once I'm gone. And the other piece was, yes, this. They were two kids, but they need to understand predatory behavior and be able to identify. They also need to be able to tell when somebody really does love them. Because if you're living in this Expectation that everybody wants a piece of you or your family or your dad or your mom because they're well known in the world. You do need to. Some. Some people just don't care. Like, some people are not interested in what your daddy does and are able to be. To see past that. I mean, some people just aren't that motivated by money. I know a lot of people are, but some people could care less. Less. But they, they might not give you 14 chances. They might just give you one or two if you're mean to them and you're. Or if you're suspicious of them. People who are kind and loving and caring don't like being accused of not being kind and loving and caring. So recognizing when somebody does love you, recognizing both negative intentions or impure intentions and, and really good loving intentions. Both of those pieces are really important for us humans.

[B]

Yeah, no, that's a very good point. Right. To recognize when someone actually does have good intentions. Right. It's not always negative. Yeah, always.

[A]

There's so much love in the world. There's so many good people. And some of us, some of the really good people are not great at expressing it in words.

[B]

No, that's true. I, Yeah, I agree with you and I think especially. But that's more, that's more of a situation, like you were saying, when someone has a lot of people who are constantly wanting from you and like, they may probably a lot of people. An influx of people who have bad intentions. Yeah, you'll find people.

[A]

Yes. It pulls them in, right?

[B]

It pulls you in. Well, then when you, when you're saying something earlier, though, like, when they're like, how can you tell when you're, you're, you're a kid's friend? Like, how can you tell if a girl likes me? What can, how can you tell? Like you said, the bedroom, drawn eyelids. It was like a show of, like, attraction. So is that how you can tell if someone likes you or is there other things too?

[A]

Absolutely. But the biggest thing that I told this particular point, there was another kid, one of my daughter, Emma, her friend. Her friend came over and I think I had just started on Instagram and I've only been on Instagram, I wanna say about a year and a half before then I had one post and 30 followers. So I started posting and this guy was, you know, a friend, a classmate of hers from high school. And he said, wait, I heard you could like, read people. And like, what? Like, can Evan do that? And all this stuff. And she was going, don't. Don't tell him you're creating a monster. And I told him about the pupil dilation. You know, if you're in a conversation, that girl's really interested. Her pupils will swell in the moment. In other words, they will expand. And that's kind of. It's not a yes. You always have to ask for consent, but it is that, you know, it's interesting. And she was so mad at me.

[B]

I can imagine. Did you tell. So, basically, the pupils, the eyelids. Yeah. Like, what other things would you tell?

[A]

So, speaking of body language, one thing that. The one thing that people do sometimes do on purpose. There are a lot of people that have studied body language and are cognizant of this, but most people aren't. And it's that mirroring of body language. When we really feel aligned with somebody, whether it's romantic or not. I mean, even in a boardroom, I can see, like, gaze around and see which board members are kind of aligned with each other because someone will lean forward, and the person, you know, that is feeling like we're kind of a team. You know, we're such packed mentality. The other person will lean forward, and then somebody will lean back. I had. I think I wrote it in the book. I had this interaction with my high school boyfriend, and it was the first time we'd had a real conversation in over 30 years. And I was talking to him, and I had. Well, that's so funny that you just put three fingers up, because I had three fingers. I had three fingers on my face, and I looked at him and he had. That's just like telepathy. Seriously, this is. This is crazy. That's true.

[B]

I did the same thing.

[A]

My face. And you did it with three, too.

[B]

I didn't do that. I did, by the way. I didn't put my hair on the side because you. You did it while you were saying that. Mirroring. And I was actually going to do it, and I stopped myself.

[A]

But it's because we're aligned. It's because you're getting what I'm saying, and I'm getting what you're saying. And you're like, yeah, this is interesting. And so I had three fingers on my face, and I looked at him, and I noticed he had three fingers on his face. And I went like, this finger? And I was like, you mirror me down to my fingertips. And he was like, what does that mean?

[B]

And I was like, that's right. The mirroring, for sure, though, is a good one. Yes, I. Okay, so how do you start. Spot this Is a couple ones I know that you talk about, I think, because people are very curious. It's very hot right now, the topic of narcissism and narcissists. And people ask you all the time, like, how do you spot a narcissist? How can you really tell by their facial expression or micro expression?

[A]

The piece that really is absent for me is that pucker of the chin. The narcissist that I know, and I'm not an expert per se in narcissism. I talk about it constantly, partly because my absolute best friend, when my middle child is named after her, is a clinical psychologist. We talk every single day and we discuss all of our work and all of these things. And we talk about narcissism all the time because it comes up in her work and in my work. The piece that I look for with the facial expressions is that lack of puckering. The empathy is absent, the genuine deep care. The words are the right words, the facial expressions. There's all these red flags with the facial expressions. They don't match. There's a growling with the, you know, when something good happens to the other person. Because the narcissist is looking for supply, right? They're looking to take usually that. My understanding at least, and in my life experience, is that they tend to go after fairly powerful, confident people a lot of the time, because that's much more interesting to take down somebody. It's much more of a challenge to take down somebody powerful than it is to take somebody weak and sort of socially isolate and control them. That's not always the case, but I found that in my life with a narcissist that I tend to have attracted in my past. And then there's this piece of moving away from the facial expression. There's this initial stage of love bombing where it's like too good to be true. And they're parroting and mirroring everything back to you both with the body language. But they're so into it. And I actually believe that the narcissists that I've been involved with romantically, which, by the way, just to be clear, not my ex husband, have experienced some of that love bombing phrase together with me, especially when I was in my early 20s, that there was a moment of really feeling that infatuation. I don't think it's, you know, just that they're made of stone. I think that there's sometimes moments of that really deep connection, and I always look for the intermittent reinforcement, right, that there's this amazing period where Everything's almost like heightened and magical and then you're forever trying to get back to those moments, but the behavior gets more and more abusive over time. Narcissists don't like it when you are thriving, whether that's financially, whether that's other men are attracted to you. If it's a male narcissist, there's lots of female narcissists as well. But it's, it's all like head games and it all has to do with control.

[B]

You know what's interesting? You just said something that I've spoken to tons of clinical psychologists and experts, narcissism experts. One thing that's interesting that you said, and I tend to agree, but most people don't say that is narcissistic. Men who are truly narcissists will rather be with a very strong girl because it's, it's more of a challenge to like knock them down than a weaker, more insecure docile. Because those girls are easier targets for them.

[A]

Right. It's already.

[B]

If you're competitive.

[A]

Well, yeah, I think if you're like the whole like scenario, the whole game is already completed.

[B]

If it's easy, if the person is.

[A]

Too weak and submissive.

[B]

Yeah. I think if you're like an alpha who's super competitive and like just want to have like see if like the challenge piece of it. I guess you can have a narcissist though. And I know plenty of narcissists, believe me, who are so insecure you live in narrow. They just won't even bother. Exactly. I live in like the mecca that they're so insecure they wouldn't blast with the strong girl. Like they don't have the stamina. So then they'll go for the weaker, the weaker girl. The ones who have the stamina and have actually. Because I don't think necessarily like every narcissist has to be like outwardly insecure person. Right. Some of them actually, they, they try to believe that they're actually.

[A]

Well and some of them are like these pillars of community outwardly and, and in their familial relationships and their romantic relationships and with their children are, are awful. And like I said, I am not a clinical psychologist. I am very like, I am an expert in facial expressions that I know upside down in the dark. I 24 seven, multiple decades. That's my full on obsession. I am very, very educated. I have a master's degree in anthropology. Yes. I've lived in nine countries. As I said, I've been all over the world. I've tested this, and people will say, well, you know, I had somebody the other day that I was talking to, and they said, well, not in Asia. And I was like, honey, I've lived in three different countries in Asia for almost 12 years.

[B]

Like, I have.

[A]

I have practices. And in Singapore. I was in Singapore for a little over nine years. And, you know, it's this beautiful melting pot of people from all over the world. I mean, that is where I trained my children. So it is. It is a universal thing. I. I do think that my experience with narcissists. I consider myself a fairly strong woman. I was abused as a child, so I do fight the instinct to hide still in my life, to. To make myself small and to blend in with the woodwork and to be a people pleaser. That said, as I've grown older and older, like, I've had to learn to fight, and I've had to learn to create a life that was very, very different from the life that I was born into.

[B]

That's why your word at 50 was bold.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, it was. I like that. Yeah. It was given a necklace in silver that said bold for my 50th, for my best friend. And I used to hide it under my clothes because I wasn't that bold.

[B]

Oh, not yet. You were working up to showing it to the world.

[A]

I was working on it.

[B]

You were wearing it, though.

[A]

I was getting ready to publish my book, and I was just. I knew I had to go out on social media. I was absolutely terrified of taking up space in the world just because I know, as a woman, you take up any kind of space and you become a target. I mean, I've had. I don't answer. I don't answer telephone calls from anybody that's not on my contact list. I get crazy, like, really terrible emails sometimes. I get some lovely ones, too. My email address is no longer public, and my. I mean, you know what it's like.

[B]

Totally, I agree with you. Let me ask you two more questions, and then I'll let you go, because I know we had so much technical issues. My phone's blowing up. You're probably.

[A]

I can do this all day.

[B]

I know, and I love your. You got a very nice, Nice spirit about you, Annie. I really. You really do. You're welcome. How could you spot a liar in a minute? Is there, like, just, like, some, like, telltale signs that someone can just tell right away?

[A]

Right, so lie detection, people that. The people that I love listening to about lie detection, the people that I. Joan of our. I love him. FBI agent. He just wrote a book about body. He. He's written a couple books, but he's. You want to get your information from people who have been in life or death scenarios. If you're looking for lie detection, I want to. I want somebody who's been in the military or somebody that's been where it's really been high stakes. And not just somebody who says, like, I'm an expert on my. On body language. Because I just, you know, everybody's always told me I'm good at it. Like, I want somebody who's really been trained, you know, give me a hostage negotiator. Give me boss. Like, give me. Give me somebody who's been through it.

[B]

I totally agree. I like this guy. I've had on the pod. Just not to interrupt you.

[A]

Yeah, no, tell me.

[B]

Joe Navarro just wrote him down. I'm gonna, I'm gonna reach out to him every.

[A]

I've never met him. And everywhere I go to speak, somebody's like, we had Joe Navarro last year.

[B]

I'm gonna look into him. I love this guy. He wrote the book. Why am I blanking? He's like a hostage negotiator. He's very well known. Chris Moss. Yeah, I like him.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, I do a lot of places where he's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, there was one guy that I don't think the podcast was ever published and he said in the pre interview, he's like, I don't like Chris. I didn't like him. I interviewed him and I didn't like him. And I was like, oh, shit, you're not going to like me either. And he didn't.

[B]

Are you serious? That's hilarious. I.

[A]

He did not like somebody getting insight into, like, what was going on. And I was like, dude, I'm not analyzing you. We're just having a conversation.

[B]

I know that's. That's someone that. That's very interesting, actually. Yeah, that's a very interesting person. That, that, that's ready. That's a. That's a sure sign. But, you know, right there.

[A]

Yes. So we talk about that sometime offline. Because it was. I'll tell you the whole story. It was really, really interesting. And I, I just like, I sat there in that chair and I was like, this is not gonna ever go up. See the light of day. Wow. Because you got some stuff that you are hiding, sir, and it's none of my business. And like, can we please get back to talking about.

[B]

Exactly. Let's get back to Me. Exactly.

[A]

Back to me.

[B]

Exactly. I love it.

[A]

So the light. So the piece that is really interesting because people who are experts in lie detection will tell you they look for three things that the general idea is, like three hotspots. You're looking for three clues. Because lie detection is really, really hard, as it turns out. So there are all sorts of. You know, if somebody's using a qualifier, though, when I like the guy who told me he was a mostly good guy, wanted to date me.

[B]

Mostly good guy.

[A]

Like, ooh, turned out, yeah, he was married.

[B]

Not so great.

[A]

That was like a red flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, hell no. But that was a red flag. And when you know those red flags. So clearly it's really. You don't. I mean, you don't want to ignore them, but it's nice to, like, not do the six months and then find out you're being betrayed. Right? So. So there's. There's. I think you had a guest. I can't remember what her name was. I listened to her the other day. You had such a good conversation. It was such great chemistry. She wrote cues.

[B]

Oh, you mean Vanessa Van Edwards. She wrote social cues. She's a body language person.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes. She's actually. I had not read her work, but I'm going to now. Cause I thought that that interview was.

[B]

Thank you. She's very good.

[A]

But she talks about, like, going up, like, raising your voice as a question. That's one of the things I look for nodding. And this is not universal, but it is practically universal in North America, us, Canada, Mexico. You know, this means yes. This means no Western Europe. Not the same in Asia. And cases in Asia or, you know, India, Sri Lanka, they do a bunch of different head movements. But. But, you know, when Hillary Clinton says, I knew my husband was a good man. And she's, you know, she should be doing this. And instead she goes, and my husband's a good man.

[B]

She did. She nodded the other way.

[A]

Yeah. In one of her episodes of Grit, that I believe is on Apple tv. And I thought about. I thought about using it as like a clip for my mega resources. I thought, I'm gonna get inspired. So much trouble. But though she was allowing one of the women that she interviewed to actually ask her why she stayed with Bill. And she said, because I knew my husband was a good man. That's not good.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. So I look for that like, that, that, like, really clear disconnect, but with the facial expressions, the thing that I love and I think the reason that I'm so obsessed with this science, with this science. And by the way, I've worked with clients like the Museum of Science in Boston. This is scientific stuff. I teach it in a very pragmatic way. I'm not sure all my, the people in my field that are really good at the laboratory research would agree. My tendency to advance my ability and my children's tendency is to go out and kind of provoke people and see if we can get the same facial expression for the complex facial expressions over and over and over again. In similar situations, do we get the same response? Like, is that what the facial expression of hurt looks like? Or is this what the knowing smile looks like? How do we play? How do we test? So I'm an anthropologist. All my stuff is like field work where I'm like digging in the dirt myself, but I look for that facial expression not matching the words. Like I said, is somebody saying, nice to meet you and they're showing disgust or I really want to do this and they're showing disgust. Now. Really important to remember that I can see exactly what you're feeling. I know the feeling for sure. With the facial movement in micro expressions, I do not know what somebody's thinking. So if you ask me to come back on your podcast next week and I do that, it may just be like, next week I'm traveling, I'm with a client all next week. That's gonna be hard for me. Doesn't mean I don't wanna come back. But if every time you mention ever doing anything with me, you know, it's that it's the cue to repeat the experiment. Does somebody do that multiple times? Is every time we talk about, you know, Annie and Jen doing something, I kind of go like this. Then that's an issue that you're going to want to find out. But again, it only shows the feeling. But if someone's saying like really positive words and showing negative facial expressions, that's a problem. That's a red flag.

[B]

I think that's interesting too, because it's not just a one off. Sometimes there has to be consistency.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And like, so like, if you're in a sales situation. Right.

[A]

Yes. Right.

[B]

Like this is a big one for people who are in like business. And, you know, how can you tell if someone is responsive to what you're trying to do and when to back off and when to kind of keep on going.

[A]

So the biggest. I do a lot of training for people in investment situations. I started, I actually started, I talked about managing consulting, but my first My first job was 20 months as an analyst in private equity.

[B]

I was terrible at it.

[A]

I was terrible at it. But I do a lot of training for mergers and acquisitions and I do a lot of training these days for legal teams and people that are in just high, any kind of really high stakes negotiation. And I teach them to figure out which are the parts of their pitch that are really high stakes. Like when you're presenting a price for something, when you're doing valuation and you're discussing that you're going to want to see, does the person do this? That's fear. That's a problem. Do they clench their lips in anger? That's also a problem. Do they raise their informal triangles in pleasure? That's meaning that are they nodding a lot and their cheeks are popping up? That means they like it. Do their pupils start to swell? That means they like it. And again, when you start the meeting, you're gonna gauge how big this is really high stakes. You're looking at the person across the table and you're gonna tell yourself, I have to use words in my brain. I have to literally say, okay. Their pupils are medium sized so that if I'm looking away because I'm not staring at them, especially if it's a team, the entire time, I need to remember what size the pupils were at the beginning. So if I look away and then look back and the pupils are doubled in size, my brain will register that if that's something that's a little bit fiddly, it takes a lot of effort. It's like going to the gym. You have to learn the movement and the muscle movement. But that piece, if I see pupil dilation, I'm done. I'm not going to keep selling. I'm done with the selling. Now we just talk about whatever they want to talk about because, you know, if you've ever, you know, you've done sales, right, you, you know that there's a risk of overselling and losing them. So you don't want to go past that point. Yeah.

[B]

So what I picked up from this podcast were there's some very universal signs that can play in lots of areas. The dilation of the pupils, the way somebody's mouth is, the way their, their mouth is up or down. That, that growl was a big one. And the puffy cheeks to tell someone's like, happy, likes you smiling. Like, there's a few very, like, core movements that I think that are just. Can play into lots of different scenarios. Right?

[A]

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly Right. And I, you know, my goal, I do, I do coaching in my life. I work with, with mostly with CEOs and boards and managing directors and teach them how to navigate really difficult relationships. And then I do a lot of micro expressions training and corporate training. But on the side I feel like it's extremely important to get this knowledge out into the world. And that's why I do the social media and I have online courses that are, that are expensive and kind of corporate. But the thing that I'm going to launch now, hopefully within about four weeks, is a subscription service. So people can Pay, you know, $8 or so a month and get these in bite sized chunk chunks because that was about the best synopsis I've ever heard.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I learned this and I learned this and I learned this and I learned this. Most people's brain can, brains can't absorb as much as you did that quickly.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

So most people just need it really broken down and like piece by piece. And then you just practice repetition, repetition and see it on a lot of different faces and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I just saw it clear as day. And once it clicks in your brain, you're done for the rest of your life. You will see this everywhere and you'll, you'll not understand why you didn't see it before.

[B]

Well, it's fun. Thank you for saying that. I find that life is, it's all about patterns, right? Like picking up on. Maybe I'm also autistic. Maybe I'm on the spectrum. Like you were saying, the people that you worked with who had autism, they picked up on patterns quite quickly. And do you know, like, and so what, I mean, maybe what I think I might be good at or not or what I think I may thrive in is that pattern recognition of, in general, Like, I'm very, I try. What I'm good at, I'm good at and what I'm bad at, I'm like just terrible at. Me too. Right? Like most people, I'm dyslexic.

[A]

I can't remember faces. I work with faces.

[B]

I can't remember, by the way. Me too. I can't remember anything. I can't do administrative work. I'm terrible at communication, the bot. But observe like, like picking up on social cues and observations and all these things. Like I, I feel like a lot of this, it's about just like their transferable skills. Like what's going to be bad in this area is also going to be bad in that area. So of all the thousands of micro expressions, it really comes down to like a top 20 or top 10 that are the most important foundational pieces.

[A]

Yes. I mean, you can combine and combine and combine, but like, if you. My obsession with the kids was trying to figure out how to teach this in a simplified way. So the obsession was. And I don't believe anybody had ever done it before, if they have, I have not seen it was to identify one piece of the face that was unique to only that feeling, that emotion, that expression. So, for example, disgust is always going to have a movement right here. Anger's always going to have tight lips. Now, anger also has a furrowing of the brows, but the problem is we furrow our brow in concentration as well. So maybe just problem solving. So that piece and the idea that I think my brain is similar to yours in that you want not the shortcut, because it's not that you're trying to skip the hard work or the challenging pieces, but you're like, give me what I want to focus on and let me start.

[B]

And what's tangible? This is what it is also like, give me the tangible pieces that I can implement that can be the most helpful. I'm never going to be an expert or a specialist like you, and I'm going to. I'm not trained. I'm not going to be memorizing all these things. But there's in any. What in whatever anybody does, if you can top line, two or three, take two or three great takeaways from the average person to make their life circumstances, whatever, just a smidgen better, 10% better.

[A]

Right?

[B]

That's what I'm looking for. And I think you gave it to us, so thank you. You're welcome. Okay. The book is called Diary of a Human Lie Detector. Boom, boom, boom. And her coaching, or the subscription service, all that. When is that coming out, Annie? You said probably about.

[A]

Well, we're aiming to have it out in about four weeks, but, yeah, you can check my Instagram or my website, Annie Sarnblatt.com and it will be. It will be perfect.

[B]

There you go, guys. Check her out. She's great. Thank you again, Annie, for everything. I appreciate you being on the show.

[A]

Oh, my pleasure, Jen. It was awesome.

[B]

Thank you.