28
The Eighteen Traps
Run every observation through this list before you score. The first three traps on the list are made by you, and they cause more error than the other fifteen combined.
Group one — the three traps you make yourself
Trap 1 · Postural contagion
Description. Your defensive posture produces a defensive posture in them. Your tense face produces a tense face in them. Then you read it as data about them.
How to rule it out. Check your own posture before every session. Write it on the first line of the observation sheet. If your arms are folded, everything you read in the next ten minutes is suspect.
Trap 17 · Confirmation bias
Description. You find what you went looking for. This is the strongest trap on the list and the only one that can swallow the whole system — you still run every procedure correctly, but every procedure returns the result you had already settled on.
How to rule it out. Write the alternative hypothesis on paper BEFORE you observe. And keep the three columns fact / intelligence / inference separate, as in chapter 23. Both measures have to be taken beforehand; done afterwards they are useless.
Trap 18 · Reverse training
Description. This is the most uncomfortable trap: people trained in the common markers get worse. Students trained in the popular methods do worse than students given no training at all. The reason: training produces confidence without producing accuracy.
How to rule it out. Use only class S, A and B markers from the weight table. Class X is zero, absolutely, no exceptions, no “but in my case”.
Group two — the psychological trap
Trap 2 · The Othello error
Description. The innocent react exactly as the guilty do, because they are afraid of not being believed. The consequence comes from the verdict, not from the facts — so honest people are anxious too in situations that carry consequences.
How to rule it out — remember two numbers. 88% of dental patients lock their ankles. Three times is the rate for defendants compared with plaintiffs in the same courtroom. Performing this gesture may come from fear rather than from feeling guilty.
Group three — five cultural traps
| # | Trap | What it is | How to rule it out |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Distance | Southern Europe 20–30 cm against 46 cm or more in Northern Europe and Britain. In remote areas it can reach several metres | Establish the background before measuring anything in Zone 1 |
| 4 | Touch | Touches per hour in a café range from zero to several hundred depending on the place | Know whether the place belongs to the “touching” or the “non-touching” group |
| 5 | Eyes | In Japan, in many Asian countries and in South America, a long look reads as aggressive or disrespectful. The Japanese look at the throat area | Return the gaze for exactly as long as they hold yours — this principle holds everywhere |
| 6 | Nodding and shaking | In Japan a nod means “I hear you”, not “I agree”. In Bulgaria a nod means no. In India the head waggle means yes. In some Arab countries a single upward jerk of the head means “no” | Check with open questions, not with yes-or-no ones |
| 7 | Hand gestures | The ring made with thumb and index finger: in some countries it means “zero” or “worthless”, elsewhere “money”, elsewhere again an insult. The V sign with the palm turned inwards is an insult in some English-speaking countries. The thumbs-up is an insult in a few places. A figure-four leg cross that shows the sole of the shoe is an insult in the Middle East and in many Asian countries | Ask a local to give you the list of offensive signs before you travel. Five minutes of asking saves a great deal |
Group four — three medical traps
| # | Trap | Which zone it affects |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Joints and rheumatism | Arthritis weakens the handshake — easily misread as weakness. About one in twenty people have a condition causing chronic sweating, which voids a class S signal |
| 9 | Neurological difference | In people on the autism spectrum, the recognition of body language differs markedly, and mirroring may not occur at all → the whole of Zone 9 is void, along with many other signals that depart from the standard for neurological reasons rather than attitude |
| 10 | Eyesight | Long-sighted people lean back to see clearly — easily read as withdrawal. Glasses hide the pupil signal completely |
Group five — four situational traps
11 · Occupation
Painters, musicians and surgeons protect their hands — so they shake hands perfunctorily. People who carry a weapon for a living rarely fold their arms, out of the habit of keeping their hands free.
12 · Clothing
Obese people cannot cross their legs. A short skirt makes keeping the knees together a practical necessity. Tight clothing restricts the whole range of gesture.
13 · Temperature
Use the distinguishing table in chapter 05: cold means hands pushed under the armpits and legs held out stiff and pressed together; defensiveness means hands tucked in at the elbows and legs relaxed.
14 · Substances
Alcohol, coffee, nicotine, prescription drugs and narcotics all distort Zone 8 and the pupil signals. One more detail: a drunk person cannot mirror, so their gestures do not match their words — a form of desynchrony that is diagnostically meaningless.
Group six — two demographic traps
Trap 16 · Sex — the correction table
| Women tilt the head | 3 times as often as men |
| Women smiling in conversation | 87% of the time, men 67% |
| Women mirroring their own sex | 4 times as often as men |
| Women's field of view | wider by at least 45° on each side |
| Facial expressions men produce while listening | under 1/3 of the number women produce |
If you use the same standard table for both sexes, you will systematically read men as less interested and women as more agreeable than they are. This is not random error — it is a directional bias.
The one-page checklist
Print it out and stick it inside the cover of your notebook. Run it before every scoring, thirty seconds.
Before you score anything, ask
- What is my posture right now? (trap 1)
- Have I written the alternative hypothesis down? (trap 17)
- Does this signal belong to class X? (trap 18)
- Could they be afraid of not being believed, rather than hiding something? (trap 2)
- Do I know their cultural background? (traps 3–7)
- Is there a medical reason I have not ruled out? (traps 8–10)
- Is the room cold? What is the chair like? What are they wearing? (traps 11–13)
- Are they on any substance? (trap 14)
- Have I corrected for age and sex? (traps 15–16)
Chapter exercises
One. Take three conclusions you once drew about other people. Run them through the eighteen traps. How many survive?
Two. For one week, write the alternative hypothesis on paper before every important meeting. One sentence only. At the end of the week, see how many times the alternative hypothesis turned out to be right.
Three. Pick the signal you trust most and look up which class it belongs to in chapter 27. If it is class C or D and you still use it as a class A, you have just found a case of class drift.
Chapter summary
- Run every observation through this list before you score, not after.
- The first three traps are made by you, and they cause more error than the other fifteen combined. That group is also the only one you control completely.
- Postural contagion. Your defensive posture produces a defensive posture in them, and then you read it as data about them. If your arms are folded, everything you read in the next ten minutes is suspect.
- Confirmation bias is the only trap that can swallow the whole system — you still run every procedure correctly, but every procedure returns the result you had already settled on. Write the alternative hypothesis on paper before you observe; done afterwards it is useless.
- Reverse training: people trained in the common markers get worse. Students trained in the popular methods do worse than students given no training at all, because training produces confidence without producing accuracy.
- The Othello error: the innocent react exactly as the guilty do because they are afraid of not being believed. 88% of dental patients lock their ankles, and the rate among defendants is three times that of plaintiffs in the same courtroom.
- Culture: Southern Europe stands at 20–30 cm against 46 cm or more in Northern Europe and Britain. In Bulgaria a nod means no; in Japan a nod means “I hear you”. Check with open questions, not with yes-or-no ones.
- Medical reasons void even the heaviest signals: about one in twenty people have a condition causing chronic sweating, which ruins a class S signal; in people on the autism spectrum the whole of Zone 9 is void; glasses hide the pupil signal completely.
- A drunk person cannot mirror, so gestures that do not match words in them are a form of desynchrony that is diagnostically meaningless.
- Gesture grows more refined with age — a five-year-old claps the whole hand over the mouth, an adult pulls it back at the last moment into a touch of the nose. A “weak” signal in an adult can be the equivalent of a “strong” signal in a child.
- Sex: women tilt the head 3 times as often as men, smile 87% of the time against 67%, and mirror their own sex 4 times as often; men produce under 1/3 as many facial expressions while listening. Use one standard table for both and you will read men as less interested and women as more agreeable than they are — a directional bias, not random error.