Introduction: Your New Super Power
1. Rod Scher, “Is This the Most Dangerous Man in America?,” Computer Power User, July 2011, https://www.social-engineer.org/content/CPU-MostDangerousMan.pdf.
2. Christopher Hadnagy, Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010).
3. Simon Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
4. See, for example, Shahirah Majumdar, “Why Empathy Is Bad,” Vice, December 21, 2016, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78bj8a/why-empathy-is-bad; Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (New York: HarperCollins, 2016).
Chapter 1: Know Yourself, so You Can Know Others
1. This is based on a true story: Jon Willing, “City Treasurer Was Victim of a ‘Whaling’ Scam, Transferred $100K to Phoney Supplier,” Ottawa Citizen, April 8, 2019, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/city-treasurer-was-victim-to-a-whaling-scam-transferred-100k-to-phoney-supplier.
2. Andrew Duffy, “Florida Man Named as Suspect in City of Ottawa Fraud Case Faces Trial in U.S. Email Scam,” Ottawa Citizen, April 10, 2019, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/florida-man-named-as-suspect-in-city-of-ottawa-fraud-case-faces-trial-in-u-s-email-scam/.
3. Dentists, for instance, might use DISC to motivate their patients to floss regularly and brush their teeth. See Mark Scarbecz, “Using the DISC System to Motivate Dental Patients,” Journal of the American Dental Association 138, no. 3 (March 2007): 381–85, doi:10.14219/jada.archive.2007.0171.
4. One study, for instance, found that using DISC when forming teams improved the creativity of teams and helped people work better together. See Ioanna Lykourentzou et al., “Personality Matters: Balancing for Personality Types Leads to Better Outcomes for Crowd Teams,” Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (February 2016): 260–73, https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819979. For what it’s worth, the commercial DISC testing service that my company uses has also provided me with their own research showing that DISC is reliable and beneficial.
5. “Everything DiSC: A Wiley Brand,” Everything DiSC, accessed April 3, 2020, https://www.everythingdisc.com/EverythingDiSC/media/SiteFiles/Assets/History/Everything-DiSC-resources-historyofdisc-timeline.pdf.
6. Stan Phelps, “Five Lessons on Delivering Breakaway CX from Forrester’s CXNYC Conference,” Forbes, July 19, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stanphelps/2017/07/19/five-lessons-on-delivering-breakaway-cx-from-forresters-cxnyc-conference/#63af4dce4f9d.
7. “Avista Warns of Scammers Continuing to Target Utility Customers,” KHQ-TV, June 18, 2019, https://www.khq.com/news/avista-warns-of-scammers-continuing-to-target-utility-customers/article_ed857844-91df-11e9-a6f2-2b08fc7d4d40.html.
Chapter 2: Become the Person You Need to Be
1. “100 Funny Jokes and Quotes about Love, Sex and Marriage,” Telegraph, December 14, 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/comedians/100-funny-jokes-quotes-love-sex-marriage/richard-jeni/.
2. Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know (New York: Little, Brown, 2019), 73.
3. Ibid.
4. Brittany Taylor, “Scam Caught on Camera: Man Accused of Impersonating West U. Public Works Employee,” KPRC-TV, January 22, 2019, https://www.click2houston.com/news/scam-caught-on-camera-man-accused-of-impersonating-west-u-public-works-employee.
5. Clifford Lo, “Scammers Swindle Hong Kong Man out of HK$430,000 in the Space of Four Hours on WhatsApp,” South China Morning Post, January 17, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/2182575/scammers-swindle-hong-kong-man-out-hk430000-space-four.
6. Kathy Bailes, “Two Parents Fall Prey to St. Lawrence College Fees Email Scam,” Isle of Thanet News, January 8, 2019, https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2019/01/08/two-parents-fall-prey-to-st-lawrence-college-fees-email-scam/.
7. I draw this account of Lustig from “The Most Notorious Financial Frauds in History,” Telegraph, June 6, 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/the-most-notorious-financial-frauds-in-history/victor-lustig/; and Jeff Maysh, “The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 9, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/man-who-sold-eiffel-tower-twice-180958370/.
8. This reported but unconfirmed quote appears in Maysh, “The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.”
9. David J. Dance, “Pretexting: A Necessary Means to a Necessary End?” Drake Law Review 56, no. 3 (Spring 2008): 807, https://lawreviewdrake.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/lrvol56-3_dance.pdf.
10. William Safire, “Pretexting,” New York Times, September 24, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/magazine/pretexting.html.
11. See Art Markman, “How Your Personality Shines Through,” Psychology Today, August 5, 2010, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201008/how-your-personality-shines-through. This article reports on Ryne A. Sherman, Christopher S. Nave, and David C. Funder, “Situational Similarity and Personality Predict Behavioral Consistency,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99, no. 2 (August 2010): 330–43.
12. Christopher Soto, “Personality Can Change Over a Lifetime, and Usually for the Better,” NPR, June 30, 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/30/484053435/personality-can-change-over-a-lifetime-and-usually-for-the-better.
13. I’ve changed certain details in this story to preserve confidentiality.
Chapter 3: Nail the Approach
1. Something that scholars refer to as “homophily.” For more, please see Alessandro Di Stefano et al., “Quantifying the Role of Homophily in Human Cooperation Using Multiplex Evolutionary Game Theory,” PLOS One 10, no. 10 (2015), doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140646.
2. Amos Nadler and Paul J. Zak, “Hormones and Economic Decisions,” in Neuroeconomics, ed. Martin Reuter and Christian Montag (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2016), 41–66. See also Jorge A. Barraza and Paul J. Zak, “Empathy toward Strangers Triggers Oxytocin Release and Subsequent Generosity,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1667, no. 1 (June 2009): 182–89, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04504.x.
3. See, for example, Clint Berge, “Barron Co. Residents Scammed out of $100K as Sheriff Gives Warning,” WQOW News 18, June 24, 2019, https://wqow.com/news/top-stories/2019/06/24/barron-co-residents-scammed-out-of-100k-as-sheriff-gives-warning/.
4. For social engineering’s code of ethics, please see “The Social Engineering Framework,” Security Through Education, accessed November 13, 2019, https://www.social-engineer.org/framework/general-discussion/code-of-ethics/.
5. Ewa Jacewicz et al., “Articulation Rate across Dialect, Age, and Gender,” Language Variation and Change 21, no. 2 (July 2009): 233–56, doi:10.1017/S0954394509990093.
6. Yanan Wang, “These Are the States with the Fastest Talkers (New York Isn’t One of Them),” Washington Post, February 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/04/these-are-the-states-with-the-fastest-talkers-new-york-isnt-one-of-them/; Marchex Marketing Team, “America’s Speech Patterns Uncovered,” Marchex (blog), February 2, 2016, https://www.marchex.com/blog/talkative.
7. David Cox, “Is Your Voice Trustworthy, Engaging or Soothing to Strangers?,” Guardian, April 16, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/apr/16/is-your-voice-trustworthy-engaging-or-soothing-to-strangers.
8. The literature on this topic is vast. See, for example, Will Storr, “The Metamorphosis of the Western Soul,” New York Times, August 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/the-metamorphosis-of-the-western-soul.html.
9. Sidney Kraus, Televised Presidential Debates and Public Policy (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 66.
10. Thomas R. Zentall, “Reciprocal Altruism in Rats: Why Does It Occur?,” Learning & Behavior 44 (March 2016): 7–8, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-015-0201-2.
11. Janelle Weaver, “Monkeys Go Out on a Limb to Show Gratitude,” Nature, January 12, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2010.9.
12. Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, “Enclothed Cognition,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48, no. 4 (July 2012): 918–25, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008.
Chapter 4: Make Them Want to Help You
1. Mathukutty M. Monippally, Business Communication: From Principles to Practice (New Delhi: McGraw Hill Education, 2013), 137.
2. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Melbourne: Business Library, 1984.).
3. Dave Kerpen, The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want (New York: Crown Business, 2016); Peter Economy, “How the Platinum Rule Trumps the Golden Rule Every Time,” Inc., March 17, 2016, https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/how-the-platinum-rule-trumps-the-golden-rule-every-time.html.
4. Mama Donna Henes, “The Universal Golden Rule,” Huffington Post, updated December 23, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/golden-rule_b_2002245; W. Patrick Cunningham, “The Golden Rule as Universal Ethical Norm,” Journal of Business Ethics 17, no. 1 (January 1998): 105–9.
5. Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser, “Compliance without Pressure: The Foot-in-the-Door Technique,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 4, no. 2 (1966): 195–202, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023552.
6. Michael Lynn, “Scarcity Effects on Value: A Quantitative Review of the Commodity Theory Literature,” Psychology & Marketing 8, no. 1 (1991), 43–57; Luigi Mittone and Lucia Savadori, “The Scarcity Bias,” Applied Psychology 58, no. 3 (July 2009): 453–68, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2009.00401.x.
7. Paul Dunn, “The Importance of Consistency in Establishing Cognitive-Based Trust: A Laboratory Experiment,” Teaching Business Ethics 4 (August 2000): 285–306, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009870417073.
8. Alfonso Pulido, Dorian Stone, and John Strevel, “The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction: Consistency, Consistency, Consistency,” McKinsey & Company, March 2014, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-three-cs-of-customer-satisfaction-consistency-consistency-consistency.
9. Robert B. Cialdini et al., “Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures: The Differential Influence of Social Proof and Commitment/Consistency on Collectivists and Individualists,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 10 (October 1999): 1242–53, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167299258006.
10. Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1963): 376, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525.
11. Brandi Vincent, “The Federal Trade Commission Warns That Criminals’ ‘Favorite Ruse’ Is Pretending to Be from a Government Agency,” Next Gov, July 2, 2019, https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/07/scammers-are-impersonating-government-agencies-more-ever/158165/.
12. Adam J. Hampton, Amanda N. Fisher Boyd, and Susan Sprecher, “You’re Like Me and I Like You: Mediators of the Similarity-Liking Link Assessed before and after a Getting-Acquainted Social Interaction,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36, no. 7 (July 2019): 2221–44, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518790411.
Chapter 5: Make Them Want to Tell You
1. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, professor emerita of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, describes the general landscape of self-disclosure in the following terms: “One theory of self-disclosure proposes that you tend to reciprocate because you assume that someone who discloses to you likes and trusts you. The more you self-disclose in turn, the more the partner likes and trusts you, and then self-discloses even more. This is the social attraction-trust hypothesis of self-disclosure reciprocity. The second hypothesis is based on social exchange theory, and proposes that we reciprocate self-disclosure in order to keep a balance in the relationship: You disclose, therefore I disclose” (Susan Krauss Whitbourne, “The Secret to Revealing Your Secrets,” Psychology Today, April 1, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201404/the-secret-revealing-your-secrets).
Even more fundamentally, scholars have argued that as social creatures, human beings naturally believe others (or “default to truth”). For more on the “truth-default theory” and the consequences of human gullibility, please see Timothy R. Levine Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020) and Gladwell, Talking to Strangers.
2. Jeff Stone, “LinkedIn Is Becoming China’s Go-to Platform for Recruiting Foreign Spies,” CyberScoop, March 26, 2019, https://www.cyberscoop.com/linkedin-china-spies-kevin-mallory-ron-hansen/; Anthony Cuthbertson, “China Is Spying on the West Using LinkedIn, Intelligence Agency Claims,” Newsweek, December 11, 2017, https://www.newsweek.com/china-spying-west-using-linkedin-743788.
3. This scenario is envisaged in “Elicitation,” National Counterintelligence and Security Center, accessed December 16, 2019, https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/campaign/Elicitation.pdf.
4. Sharon Stone, “Michigan State Police Tweet Warning Signs for Terrorism,” Tri-County Times, April 22, 2019, https://www.tctimes.com/news/michigan-state-police-tweet-warning-signs-for-terrorism/article_65d7c0fc-653c-11e9-904c-bb92d94c6056.html.
5. Sixty-eight percent is a made-up data point. I can’t recall the exact statistic here nor the newspaper, but we did use a real statistic we’d found in an actual newspaper article. In case you’re interested, in 2010 the Guardian reported that one in five people use a birthday for a PIN (Sceaf Berry, “One in Five Use Birthday as PIN Number,” Telegraph, October 27, 2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/creditcards/8089674/One-in-five-use-birthday-as-PIN-number.html), and in 2012 it reported that 10.7 percent of all people use 1234 (Nick Berry, “The Most Common Pin Numbers: Is Your Bank Account Vulnerable?” Guardian, September 28, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2012/sep/28/debit-cards-currentaccounts).
6. Discussing scholarship on the topic of clarity, correctness, and competition in persuading others, Art Markman, Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, says: “Putting this together, then, being certain of your attitude can affect whether you try to convince other people that you are right. In particular, the more strongly you believe that your attitude is the right one, the more you will focus on convincing others” (Art Markman, “Why We Need Everyone to Believe We’re Correct,” Psychology Today, July 14, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201407/why-we-need-everyone-believe-were-correct). Such a tendency is likely exacerbated by what scholars call the “illusion of explanatory depth” (that is, the human propensity to overestimate how much they actually understand): Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, “The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth,” Cognitive Science 26, no. 5 (September 2002): 521–62, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog2605_1.
7. One of the reasons studies and surveys employ range responses (for income, age, etc.) instead of asking for these figures specifically is that it increases response rates: Joachim K. Winter, “Bracketing Effects in Categorized Survey Questions and the Measurement of Economic Quantities,” Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Rationalitätskonzepte, Entscheidungsverhalten und Ökonomische Modellierung/Universität Mannheim, discussion paper, 2002, 35, https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19729/.
Chapter 6: Stop Deviousness in Its Tracks
1. Justin Bariso, “What Is an Emotional Hijack? How Learning the Answer Made Me a Better Husband, Father, and Worker,” Inc., July 11, 2018, accessed April 4, 2020, https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/what-is-an-emotional-hijack-how-emotional-intelligence-made-me-a-better-husband-father-worker.html.
2. And that’s just the beginning. For more on the many ways that casinos manipulate people to gamble more, see Mark Griffiths and Jonathan Parke, “The Environmental Psychology of Gambling,” in Gambling: Who Wins? Who Loses?, ed. Gerda Reith (New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), 277–92.
3. Humayun Khan, “How Retailers Manipulate Sight, Smell, and Sound to Trigger Purchase Behavior in Consumers,” Shopify Retail Marketing Blog, April 25, 2016, https://www.shopify.com/retail/119926083-how-retailers-manipulate-sight-smell-and-sound-to-trigger-purchase-behavior-in-consumers.
4. John Leyden, “Romanian ‘Ransomware Victim’ Hangs Self and 4-Year-Old Son—Report,” Register, March 18, 2014, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/18/romania_ransomware_murder_suicide/.
5. J. Stuart Ablon, Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2018), 119.
6. Stephen Little, “Beware Holiday Villa Scams That Could Cost You £5,000,” Moneywise, January 17, 2019, https://www.moneywise.co.uk/news/2019-01-17%E2%80%8C%E2%80%8C/beware-holiday-villa-scams-could-cost-you-ps5000.
7. For more on this scam, see “Virtual Kidnapping Ransom Scam,” National Institutes of Health Office of Management, accessed April 4, 2020, https://www.ors.od.nih.gov/News/Pages/Beware-of-Virtual-Kidnapping-Ransom-Scam.aspx.
8. “Terrifying Kidnapping Scam Targets Families with Hoax Calls from Loved Ones’ Phones,” NBC Chicago 5, March 18, 2019, https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/virtual-kidnapping-scam-reported-in-indiana/162372/.
9. “‘Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective,’ said researcher Tom Reichert, professor and head of the department of advertising and public relations in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.” But he warned: “Sex is not as effective when selling high-risk, informational products such as banking services, appliances and utility trucks” (April Reese Sorrow, “Magazine Trends Study Finds Increase in Advertisements Using Sex,” University of Georgia Today, June 5, 2012, https://news.uga.edu/magazine-trends-study-finds-increase-in-advertisements-using-sex/).
10. After years of tawdry advertisements, CKE Restaurants, which controls fast-food chain Carl’s Jr., decided in late 2019 to substitute substance (in their case food) for sex in the burger chain’s ads: Tiffany Hsu, “Carl’s Jr.’s Marketing Plan: Pitch Burgers, Not Sex,” New York Times, November 13, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/business/media/new-carls-jr-ads.html.
11. Linda Raftree, cofounder of Regarding Humanity, coined the term “poverty porn” and strongly believes it undermines rather than helps bolster the aims of most charities: Aimee Meade, “Emotive Charity Advertising—Has the Public Had Enough?,” Guardian, September 29, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2014/sep/29/poverty-porn-charity-adverts-emotional-fundraising.
12. Meade, “Emotive Charity Advertising.”
13. For this profile, I am indebted to Bruce Grierson, “What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?,” New York Times Magazine, October 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html.
14. Ellen J. Langer, Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009)
15. Carol Rosenberg, “What the C.I.A.’s Torture Program Looked Like to the Tortured,” New York Times, December 4, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html.
16. Editorial Board, “Don’t Look Away,” New York Times, December 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/cia-torture-drawings.html; James Risen and Sheri Fink, “Trump Said ‘Torture Works.’ An Echo Is Feared Worldwide,” New York Times, January 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/trump-torture-guantanamo.html.
17. Though anxiety was much more strongly associated than depression and eating disorders: Julie Beck, “How Uncertainty Fuels Anxiety,” Atlantic, March 18, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/how-uncertainty-fuels-anxiety/388066/.
18. Archy O. de Berker et al., “Computations of Uncertainty Mediate Acute Stress Responses in Humans,” Nature Communications 7 (March 2016), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10996. I take my evaluation of this research from neuroscientist Marc Lewis, who suggested this study represented “the most sophisticated experiment ever conceived on the relationship between uncertainty and stress” (Marc Lewis, “Why We’re Hardwired to Hate Uncertainty,” Guardian, April 4, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/uncertainty-stressful-research-neuroscience).
19. Lewis, “Why We’re Hardwired.”
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Lewis offers a similar hypothetical about the anxiety an employee feels when driving to work and faced with the possibility of arriving late. Ibid.
23. Susan Weinschenk, “Why Having Choices Makes Us Feel Powerful,” Psychology Today, January 24, 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201301/why-having-choices-makes-us-feel-powerful.
24. Lauren A. Leotti, Sheena S. Iyengar, and Kevin N. Ochsner, “Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 10 (October 2010): 457–63, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.08.001.
25. Ibid.
26. Diane Hoskins, “Employees Perform Better When They Can Control Their Space,” Harvard Business Review, January 16, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/01/employees-perform-better-when-they-can-control-their-space.
27. Ranjay Gulati, “Structure That’s Not Stifling,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/05/structure-thats-not-stifling.
28. For this entire profile on Seligman I am indebted to Maria Konnikova, “Trying to Cure Depression, but Inspiring Torture,” New Yorker, January 14, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/theory-psychology-justified-torture.
29. Michael Shermer, “We’ve Known for 400 Years That Torture Doesn’t Work,” Scientific American, May 1, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-rsquo-ve-known-for-400-years-that-torture-doesn-rsquo-t-work/.
30. Ibid. For an alternate perspective on the efficacy of judiciously applied torture (or “torture light”), please see Mark Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” Atlantic, October 2003, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/302791/.
Chapter 7: Let Your Body Do the Talking
1. Charles Darwin’s 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was one of the first to explore nonverbal communication.
2. Works to consult include Paul Ekman, Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage, (New York and London: Norton, 2009); Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions (Los Altos, CA: Malor Books, 2003); David Matsumoto, Mark G. Frank, and Hyi Sung Hwang, eds., Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013); Joe Navarro, What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2008); Joe Navarro, The Dictionary of Body Language: A Field Guide to Human Behavior (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2018); Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam, 2006); Paul J. Zak, The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity (New York: Dutton, 2012); and Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2015). You might also consult my own title Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2014).
3. Navarro, What Every Body Is Saying, 88.
4. In addition to macro- and micro-expressions, human beings also mobilize so-called conversational signals, facial expressions and other bodily movements that don’t express emotions per se but rather ideas. If you tell me about the mating rituals of your pet African ringneck parakeet, I might signal the idea “I am interested in this” by raising my eyebrows and nodding my head.
5. For studies documenting the mirroring effect, please see Costanza Navarretta, “Mirroring Facial Expressions and Emotions in Dyadic Conversations,” conference paper, Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2016), Portoroz, Slovenia, vol. 10, 469–74, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311588919_Mirroring_Facial_Expressions_and_Emotions_in_Dyadic_Conversations; and Robert W. Levenson, Paul Ekman, and Wallace V. Friesen, “Voluntary Facial Action Generates Emotion-Specific Autonomic Nervous System Activity, Psychophysiology 27, no. 4 (1990): 363–84, https://bpl.berkeley.edu/docs/36-Voluntary%20Facial%20Action90.pdf.
6. Sourya Acharya and Samarth Shukla, “Mirror Neurons: Enigma of the Metaphysical Modular Brain,” Journal of Natural Science, Biology, and Medicine 3, no. 2 (July–December 2012): 118–24, https://doi.org/10.4103/0976-9668.101878.
7. Daniele Marzoli et al., “Sun-Induced Frowning Fosters Aggressive Feelings,” Cognition and Emotion 27, no. 8 (May 2013): 1513–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.801338.
8. Jessica Bennett, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF,” New York Times, August 1, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/fashion/im-not-mad-thats-just-my-resting-b-face.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Fashion%20%26%20Style&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article.
9. Merriam-Webster, s.v. “contempt.”
10. “Throwing Shade: The Science of Resting Bitch Face,” Test Your RBF, accessed April 4, 2020, https://www.testrbf.com/content/throwing-shade-science-resting-bitch-face.
11. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, “The Upside to Being Angry at Work,” Fast Company, February 25, 2020, https://www.fastcompany.com/90467448/the-upside-to-being-angry-at-work.
12. Preston Ni, “4 Types of Anger and Their Destructive Impact,” Psychology Today, May 19, 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201905/4-types-anger-and-their-destructive-impact.
13. L. R. Mujica-Parodi, H. H. Strey, B. Frederick, R. Savoy, D. Cox, et al., “Chemosensory Cues to Conspecific Emotional Stress Activate Amygdala in Humans,” PLoS ONE 4, no. 7 (2009): e6415. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006415.
14. Ellie Lisitsa, “The Four Horsemen: Contempt,” Gottman Institute, May 13, 2013, https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-contempt/?rq=contempt.
Chapter 8: Polish Your Presentation
1. George Lakoff, The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2014), xi–xii.
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Quoted in Oliver Burkeman, “This Column Will Change Your Life: The Beauty in Imperfection,” Guardian, April 23, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/24/change-your-life-beauty-imperfection.
4. Sarah Todd, Hanna Kozlowska, and Marc Bain, “‘Aspirational Realness,’ the Instagram Cool-Girl Look, Disguises Advertising as Authenticity,” Quartz, October 12, 2019, https://qz.com/quartzy/1722511/how-brands-like-glossier-sell-aspirational-realness-on-instagram/.