TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

25 Jul 2011 · 1 min

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Excerpt from a TJ Walker live-stream ("The Habit Influencer", July 25, 2011) in which Walker discusses how body language—specifically animation versus freezing—affects perceived credibility. He notes that an animated speaker can appear more believable to jurors, contrasts this with the typical frozen/fidgety behavior of nervous speakers, and argues this pattern holds across cultures.

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To this story. And as prosecutors are still weighing whether or not to proceed with. You saw right there, she's very animated. She's moving her head, she's moving her hands. Most people who are really nervous, especially if they're telling a lie, they tend to freeze up. They tend to stiffen up. They're thinking, let me get the words just right. The fact that she's so animated makes her come across as more believable. Doesn't mean she's not lying, but to the average person watching the average jury member, it makes her more believable. Does her animation, could her animation just be part of her culture? Well, I work with people from six continents, and what I found around the world is when people are nervous, they tend to freeze up across the board. So it doesn't matter if you're from Africa, from Italy, when you're nervous. When you're scared, you tend to freeze more. And the movement tends to be more fidgety. Your eyes dart back and forth. Hands do unnatural things. Her movement there comes across as natural.