You can learn alot by paying attention

The man sat stoically at one end of the table, carefully crafting his replies to the FBI agent’s inquiries. He wasn’t considered a major suspect in the murder case. His alibi was believable and he sounded sincere, but the agent pressed on nevertheless. With the suspect’s consent, he was asked a series of questions about the murder weapon:

“If you had committed this crime, would you have used a gun?”

“If you had committed this crime, would you have used a knife?”

“If you had committed this crime, would you have used an ice pick?”

“If you had committed this crime, would you have used a hammer?”

One of the weapons, the ice pick, had actually been used in the commission of the crime, but that information had been kept from the public. Thus, only the killer would know which object was the real murder weapon. As the FBI agent went down the list of weapons, he observed the suspect carefully. When the ice pick was mentioned, the man’s eyelids came down hard and stayed down until the next weapon was named. The agent instantly understood the significance of the eyelid behavior he had witnessed, and from that moment forward the “minor” suspect became the primary person of interest in the investigation. He later confessed to the crime.

Non-verbal communication comprises ninety percent of what is communicated. We do well to pay attention to it. In this case, a criminal went to jail because Joe Navarro paid attention to facial expression.

The inability to register another person’s emotions is a major weakness in getting along. The key is to read the non-verbal channels—tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like. Goleman says:

In tests with over seven thousand people in the United States and eighteen other countries, the benefits of being able to read feelings from nonverbal cues included being better adjusted emotionally, more popular, more outgoing, and—perhaps not surprisingly—more sensitive. In general, women are better than men at this kind of empathy. And people whose performance improved over the course of the forty-five-minute test—a sign that they have a talent for picking up empathy skills—also had better relationships with the opposite sex. Empathy, it should be no surprise to learn, helps with romantic life.

In tests with 1,011 children, those who showed an aptitude for reading feelings nonverbally were among the most popular in their schools, the most emotionally stable.

They also did better in school, even though, on average, their IQs were not higher than those of children who were less skilled at reading nonverbal messages—suggesting that mastering this empathic ability smooths the way for classroom effectiveness (or simply makes teachers like them more).