How valid is body language analysis?

[Just thinking]

That's pretty much it ... do you think it has significant merit? ... can it be used in a court of law to support one side's arguments? Is it mostly woo, partially woo or something else?

Opinions?

[fuelair]

No on used in court. Yes, if very carefully used by a person who is thoroughly trained (the books for the general public generalize far too much for use of the technique by the general public -for example, I frequently have my legs and arms crossed when I am fully interested in what is being said OR when I am not because I find many chairs uncomfortable (particularly auditorium and school desks) and the position slightly increases comfort for me)

[Alan Heap]

i'd probably say about 65-80% accurate if it's proper tested body language. like just because someone scratches their head, doesn't mean their confused, they could have an itch or body language bluffing you :)

[Dave1001]

i'd probably say about 65-80% accurate if it's proper tested body language. like just because someone scratches their head, doesn't mean their confused, they could have an itch or body language bluffing you :)

ah yes, the problem of bluffing.

[politas]

That's pretty much it ... do you think it has significant merit? ... can it be used in a court of law to support one side's arguments? Is it mostly woo, partially woo or something else?

Opinions?
It's a way that humans communicate to each other, and like any form of communication, it can be used to lie.

[firecoins]

ah yes, the problem of bluffing.

I bluff all the time.

[Dave1001]

I bluff all the time.

That makes you a

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/entertainment/0510/gallery.alan.alda/images/gal.mash.jpg

[Soapy Sam]

I think there are regional dialects of body language and even quite local "accents". Go to a supermarket in a new town and observe how clumsy everybody else in the store is with the trolleys. You are failing to pick up body language cues, because they differ subtly from the ones you are used to.
Personally, my opinion is that individual, local, regional etc variation is so great there is little consistent pattern left beyond the banal. Someone crouching with his arms over his head is either frightened, or pretending to be frightened. Useless in court.

[Victor Meldrew]

We all use basic body language that can generally be relied on - however that varies from culture to culture - i.e we shake our heads to signify NO, in some cultures a shake of the head means YES.

So, to be used with any accuracy, you first need to calibrate the culture (easy if it's yours) then calibrate the person.

You then move into the sphere of NLP - which is in itself a very interesting subject, but more complicated that it first appears (and how some people like to make it sound). e.g eye accessing cues - which you can use by looking at someones eye movements to work out whether they are lying or not. Again the person needs to be calibrated, because although most right handed people do THIS, some do THAT! And as for left handed people, 60% of them do THIS, 30% do THAT, and 10% are just like right handed people.

Body language is a fascinating subject - for more info read Desmond Morris's book Man Watching, or a new book that I am just starting on - (to calibrate my own culture!) Watching the English by Kate Fox. (If you are not English, you will find this book fascinating - find out why we REALLY talk about the weather all the time!)

But you can see why it cannot be relied on in court situations - there are too many variables, without even bringing in the fact that the person may be bluffing!

[Alan Heap]

You then move into the sphere of NLP - which is in itself a very interesting subject, but more complicated that it first appears (and how some people like to make it sound). e.g eye accessing cues - which you can use by looking at someones eye movements to work out whether they are lying or not. Again the person needs to be calibrated, because although most right handed people do THIS, some do THAT! And as for left handed people, 60% of them do THIS, 30% do THAT, and 10% are just like right handed people.arg not nlp. it's such rubbish and that which has some grounding in nlp can be found in psychology already. i really dislike nlp as it verges on cult a lot of the time. i've watched and read nlp for hours to find out what it actually was and after all that time i'm left thinking 'what the hell is nlp?!?!'. thank the skeptic god i didn't pay for any of it, not that i was interested in learning it, i just wanted to see what the fuss was. nlp gives psychology a bad name in my opinion along with hypnosis. see the skepdic reference for more info.

also i'd like to add, i'm very skeptical about most body language claims, as they never reference any experiments or statistics. plus most of it is really obvious when you stop to think about it.

[Dave1001]

arg not nlp. it's such rubbish and that which has some grounding in nlp can be found in psychology already. i really dislike nlp as it verges on cult a lot of the time. i've watched and read nlp for hours to find out what it actually was and after all that time i'm left thinking 'what the hell is nlp?!?!'. thank the skeptic god i didn't pay for any of it, not that i was interested in learning it, i just wanted to see what the fuss was. nlp gives psychology a bad name in my opinion along with hypnosis. see the skepdic reference for more info.

also i'd like to add, i'm very skeptical about most body language claims, as they never reference any experiments or statistics. plus most of it is really obvious when you stop to think about it.

Well that's a good question. What's the state of empirical research on body language? I'd think it's been pretty well researched by now. Including cultural variations of it by anthropologists.

[RSLancastr]

I've actually been thinking about this quite a bit lately, in regards to Sylvia Browne.

To me, her whole body language while she gives "readings" on the Montel Williams show screams "liar!", but I could just be reading into it what I already believe.

I've received a few emails from people who read the same thing into her body language, however.

[Kage]

"Valid" is a difficult word to use here. Rules such as "crossed arms mean that the person feels closed off" are of limited use. However, a large amount of information is conveyed in a person's body language. I've spent a lot of time on body language, and you have to look at it as another bit of information that is part of the picture.

[digithead]

When evaluating accuracy of a test, don't forget that the base rate of what you're trying to detect affects the predictive validity of the test...

Even if body language analysis turns out to truly be 60-70% accurate, it would be essentially worthless if the base rate of what it's trying to detect is low or high because if you have a low base rate of what you're trying to detect, you'll get a high number of false positives. Conversely, if you have a high base rate of what you're trying to detect, you'll get a high number of false negatives...

[Tiktaalik]

Actually, body language CAN be used in court, to a certain degree.

Law enforcement officers are taught to articulate what they saw that caused them to react the way they did. For example, an officer who pepper sprayed someone might state that the person balled up his fists, lowered his chin, raised his arm, and advanced on the officer. That's body language, and it can be used to justify levels of use of force in court and in written reports.

NLP is much more difficult to interpret than someone trying to punch you, though. So it depends on your definition of "body language" - I'd suggest that we all depend on interpretations of body language to a much greater degree than we realize.

[Kage]

arg not nlp. it's such rubbish and that which has some grounding in nlp can be found in psychology already. i really dislike nlp as it verges on cult a lot of the time. i've watched and read nlp for hours to find out what it actually was and after all that time i'm left thinking 'what the hell is nlp?!?!'. thank the skeptic god i didn't pay for any of it, not that i was interested in learning it, i just wanted to see what the fuss was. nlp gives psychology a bad name in my opinion along with hypnosis. see the skepdic reference for more info.

also i'd like to add, i'm very skeptical about most body language claims, as they never reference any experiments or statistics. plus most of it is really obvious when you stop to think about it.

Bandler is insufferable. I too spent time listening to him and got little out of it. Other people out there explain it better. NLP is interesting but again is a grey area since my experience of it is very subjective. I haven't seen any scientific analysis of it the way I have seen basic studies of hypnosis (FMRIs and ECG readings). Fun to play with though.

[pyewhackett]

Kinesics is a valid study in linguistics and communications. This study involves non-verbal behaviour such as gestures, facial expressions and other body movements. Kinesics accounts for about 90% of all communication. The range of meaning is huge though, across individuals and cultures (some acts common in a society can be described as Kinesic Codes). In a court of law it could be used to analyse a specific incident, this would depend on the kind of incident you're referring to, or thinking of. Basically, it is a legitimate study. Some 'pop' experts might be a bit questionable, but Kinesics and related branches are proper fields of study.


www.bad-language.com

[pyewhackett]

btw - regarding NLP there are two of them - Natural Language Processing is artificial intelligence in computational linguistics and comp. science. The other is Neuro-Linguistic Programming - this one is a pseudoscientific blend of amateur psychology, hypnotherapy and new age analysis.

[Alan Heap]

Bandler is insufferable. I too spent time listening to him and got little out of it. Other people out there explain it better. NLP is interesting but again is a grey area since my experience of it is very subjective. I haven't seen any scientific analysis of it the way I have seen basic studies of hypnosis (FMRIs and ECG readings). Fun to play with though.

just gave my thoughts about hypnosis and nlp on the a derren brown thread. i think it sums it up very nicely. here it is (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=74997).