Body Language | Head Hacker

Body Talk… Arms out rah rah rah

Hope everyone is off to a good week, what with Defcon, Blackhat etc I am sure many of you are travelling. I personally had a weekend break in Cardiff and enjoyed doing a little grey matter manipulation, as well as talking about social engineering, mentalism, body language and more.

So with body language on my mind, its time to get into it again, this time we are going to look at the arms. Before anyone asks, yes they are my biceps…… honest.

So why bother with the arms you might be thinking? Well they are a good transmitter when someone is expressing themselves, and they are a good area to observe to pick up on signs of both confidence and discomfort as well as other emotional experiences.

We also rely a great deal on our arms, not only for the obvious things, but for the subconscious actions that occur. Our arms automatically reach out to grab a dropping item, raise to protect us from danger in swinging and blocking motions, even when it may not make sense. This is again the limbic systems carrying out basic primitive survival actions.

So onto the observational stuff. Have you noticed how when we are happy and content our arms move more freely, moving around on the wave of enjoyment, sometimes raising over our heads in excitement, exchanging high fives and cheering. When people are having a good time, content and energised you will really notice an increase in arm movement. When the opposite experiences and emotions are going on, there is a droopy sulky nature to the arms. Hanging down, more rigid and withdrawn. A key observation here is the arms forming very closely to our sides, or closing across our chest in a protective manner. This motions can be observed in relation to both physical and emotional pain or distress, its a guarded and protective reaction.

Another interesting observation, is the statue / frozen type of stance in the arms. This is common reaction that stems back to animalistic survival techniques, we freeze to attempt to remain unnoticed. If you observe someone become statue like / arms fixed to the side in the presence or approach of an individual this is usually a sign that there are bad feelings, or a history of discomfort in the relationship.

The arms also have a story to tell when you are approaching them. If you are approached arms stretched out, in a come here type of look, its pretty clear they are happy to see you. If the upper arms remain rigid in a vertical manner and just the lower arms are extended from below the elbow, then this communicates that you are kinda welcome, but the greeting is more that of a political correctness. Arms placed behind the back locked out of sight, is a clear signal of not being interested, wanting to be left alone, and not to be interacted with. This is somewhat similar to when people have their hands in their pockets, and it a world of there own. If you see these later signs when you approach someone, it is a clear signal of they do not want to interact with your, or depending on the situation have something to hide. Another common display, and I am sure many of us are familiar with the saying “keeping you at arms length”. Well this is true, we will extend an arm to keep people at a distance, that we feel keeps them out of our personal space. You often see this in crowded places, and situations of conflict.

Finally we shall quickly look at the arms language regarding dominance. We have spoken about this a little before, in how humans spread their legs to take up more room, in a sign of territorial stance. The arms can also play a similar role. People spread out there elbows, place them on there hips to take up more space, and show they are dominant in that space. The more or less territory someone takes up is a good sign of how confident they are feeling at that time, in the situation they are in. Another sign of dominance with the arms is when people put there hands behind their head, with elbows pointing out. The is a very confident, laid back approach, signifying authority and that your in charge and mean business. Similar to this is having arms spread out spanning multiple chairs, or a bench. As well as planting your hands with arm splayed out on a desk, in an authoritarian manner.

Hopefully you found this information interesting and insightful. As per usual be mindful, keep your eyes open and watch for what’s happening around you.

Setting your motivation… Mind Scripts

Getting into character is an important part of being successful on a social engineering engagement. You may be physically impersonating a sales guy, engineer, employee, or you may be carrying out your fiendish work remotely gathering data, and setting up meetings. Either way you should be clear in your mind who you are, who you are engaging with, and what you want out of the activity, you need to be clear on your motivation.

When I think of this, my immature side (say nothing) hears a rather camp actor shouting at the director asking, “what’s my motivation darling”. OK so I am odd, lets use the above imagery to demonstrate the motivation to run through the opposition to score

So with this in mind I wanted to quickly talk about something a little NLP’esk that I think you will find helpful, and if full embraced will really help with your attitude, approach, body language, facial expression, tonality and more when carrying out an engagement. This little something is called Mind Scripts, and is something I first heard about when studying cold reading and hypnosis, but have also heard similar approaches from an NLP context, and in sales type books on engaging and building rapport with people. (I am not 100% sure who coined this term, I think it may have been Ian Rowland, but please don’t hold me to that).

So what is a Mind Script? Well a mind script is just a simple, short,concise and positive statement about the activity or interaction you are about to engage in. This statement you repeat to yourself mentally before and during the engagement.

Don’t reject this concept just yet please, as some pointless simplistic activity. You will actually find that you make a huge difference as to how you come across to the person(s) you are interacting with when you you run an appropriate mind script. If you think about it we are unconsciously running a mind script of some kind all of the time, simply waking up and telling yourself its going to be a crappy day, then becomes a script you will be running. This then effects how you interact, attitude and the effect you have on others unknowingly.

Here are a couple of example of a mind script to give you an idea of how simple they are. I then encourage you to try running appropriate scripts before going into meeting, interacting with people one to one as a form of practice. If you think about it, it really does make sense, but I would like to hear from people with their thoughts, comments, success and failures. Obviously remember there is NO FAIL

I know you, you know me, I belong here

I like you, you like me, this will go well

I respect you, you respect me, and we will have a good discussion

I am an expert, you know I am an expert, there will be confidence in my recommendations

Hopefully you get the general idea from these brief examples, think positive, be positive. A positive mental attitude, positive things happen to positive people, that’s what I tell myself anyway

Body Talk.. Its torsotastic

This week we are going to look at body language again. In a previous post we looked at how the legs and feet have a lot to tell us, in this post we are going to uncover what the upper body can reveal to us.

The torso is made up of the shoulders, chest, abdomen and hips. The torso is capable of giving us some clear limbic responses, due to what is housed inside, we subconsciously look to protect what matters most. A perfect example of this is when an individual crosses their arms, or holds an object in front of them. This is a clear sign of protection and or comfort, which will often signify discomfort with a topic of discussion, or the presence of someone who makes them uncomfortable. Its also important to be aware of the subtle forms of this which may appear in the prolonged adjustment of a tie, cuff links, breast buttons, etc.

People pivoting, leaning and moving there torso away from an individual is also an interesting tell of disgust. This may be to the individual themselves, the opinions they share, or the activities they have done. This can sometimes be coupled with arm crossing for even more impact. On the other hand, someone who is leaning in and open shows interest, admiration and a strong focus of interest. A middle ground can often be peoples stiffness and a form of rigidity. This can be an opinionated position, standing tall and snooty, as well possibly a freeze type of approach, trapped in the head lights. Another sign is when someone is bowing at the waist, leaning over a little with head looking at the floor is another gesture of shame.

We have spoken before about looking to acquire more territory, this can also be seen from how people are seated, all splayed out, torso laid back in an effort to take up more space, and be perceived as more dominant. This can also be a clear signal of lacking of interest, and disregard for an authoritative figure. They are clearly playing their game, you need to make swift adjustments to get them playing your game. Another form of being territorial is the puffing out of the chest. This is done by all animals, including humans and is an initial sign of trying to be more dominant, looking to be bigger and stronger than your opponent, this is a clear sign of challengement.

On the flip side, shrugged shoulder with someone’s head lowering is a clear sign of heavy burden and shame. These tells give a good indication when challenging in a group of someone who is ashamed or disappointed, or in regret. Shoulders can tell you more also, especially in a shrugging situation under questioning. A clear high shrugging of the shoulders is a sign of a confident response, a lower half level shrug, or perhaps only one shoulder moving should be considered dubious, and demonstrates a lack of commitment in the response being given. Something in-between where the shoulders rise and fall slowly shows signs of discomfort, they are perhaps uncomfortable and are not feeling confident.

Some people say the torso is the billboard of the human body, and this is very true. We reveal and hide alot of information in the torso area. This is where we have our badges, wear jewellery on show, may have shirts buttoned up or down. This is another example of really being what we wear, and this also sends a message in conjunction with the other tells we observe.

As before this information should be a guide, and built from a persons baseline of how they move and operate. I know you will have seen these body signals before, and perhaps have been unaware what’s going on. Have fun and watch people, and look for the other information people are dishing out in this area. Body language is relatively easy to understand as you look at it over time, and listen to the associated discussions to build up a frame, and remember to use this information to adjust what body signals you are giving off.

Body Talk.. Kick off your dancing shoes

The human body is a wonderful thing, I admit some more wonderful than others, but I digress.

We all give of subtle signals, cues and tells. These are subconsciously taken in, but consciously we are not always aware of what is happening. We can make our selves more aware of how our body is communicating by becoming masters of observation, and learning someone’s baseline, and then looking for movements outside of the norm.

Wikipedia Definition – Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals subconsciously.

Of course most of our subconscious movements are generic to everyone, with only slight changes due to cultural changes. It was my initial plan to consolidate the whole body into a single post, however I think it would be better to do a series covering the different parts of the body. So this post focuses on possibly the most revealing part of the body, that is often not considered… The legs and feet. In the future we will look at the torso, hips, chest and shoulders, the arms, hands and fingers, and lastly the face.

The Feet and Legs

If you were to ask most people the question “what part of the body gives the most away, if you were looking for information from body language?” I think most would say the face. Although this is true, and we do give alot away with facial expressions, eye movements, and touching of the face, the legs and feet have alot to say also.

So why is this so? Most of our movements from a body language perspective happen subconsciously, so we are not really sure what is happening, its our limbic system doing what it does best, controlling emotions, behaviour and more. Our legs and feet particular are often hidden out of sight, so out of sight, literally out of mind. Due to this fact, this is why the lower part of our body can give alot away, and ensuring we pay close attention can tell us alot.

What to look for, and what does it mean

Wiggling and bouncing feet is something people would normally relate to a child, but its something we don’t forget as we get older, we just take it for granted. However if you observe someone, and after they receive good news, you will see them demonstrate the high confidence tell that is wiggling of the feet. Obviously looking directly at the feet will make viewing very easy, but looking for bobbing shoulders is also a good sign of what is happening down below. It is important to realise there are subtle differences between this, and moving legs and feet, that signifies impatience. Such as a tapping foot when you are waiting for a late bus.

Feet can also non verbally signify when we find a situation, or individual agreeable. We turn to things we like, and away with what we do not, the important thing here though is how much we turn. If we turn our whole body, we are showing 100% commitment to how we are feeling, however if we just turn our upper torso, then if we look at the feet, they are normally communicating the truth. When you greet someone if they turn around to face you, they are welcoming you, if they just turn their upper body, they are probably not so keen, and their feet demonstrate they would like to continue as they were. You may also notice how the feet change during an interaction, moving from facing you, to one or both feet pointing in another direction. This is a signal that they would like to conclude the interaction and head in the direction their feet are heading. Another example is when someone is being questioned, or interviewed. They may be sat facing you, but as difficult questions occur, you may notice the feet pointing towards the door. This is a signal they would rather not be there, this may be double up with clutching or rubbing of the knees, giving the intention wanting to get up and leave.

So how about the legs. Legs can tell us alot about how someone is feeling. If someone is relaxed and standing or sitting cross legged, they are comfortable with the situation. The reason for this is they are unbalanced, and not in a position to make a quick get away. If this changes to both feet firmly on the floor, then this is a more of an assertive stance, and a position you can make a prompt get away.

The legs also can show you when someone is looking to be assertive, this is a territorial stance and you will see that people open their legs wider to take up more and more space. When two people are challenging each other you can see each other stance slowly widening. This is something you see even more commonly with military and law enforcement individuals.

Another example of where the legs and feet tell us what we are thinking is when we are sitting with our legs crossed. If we are sat with our legs are crossed with our leg facing away, this is a form of protection and creating a barrier. Leg crossed facing towards removes the barrier, and shows comfort. Interestingly in this position we can see that some people will also giggle their leg naturally. This is not necessarily a sign of nerves, infact it may be comfort. However you may notice this giggle change to the more kicking motion when questioned and a topic of discomfort occurs.

I hope this was of some interest, and there is obviously alot more to it, and it all seems very obvious once you become familiar. I recommend reading the papers and books of Joe Navarro if you want to learn and study more. So next time you are speaking with people, see what their feet and legs are doing, and next time you experience this yourself, adjust your body language, can you send a mixed signal?

Influence.. Decision and Deception

Influence, this is a term we are all familiar with, and influencing skills are something many of us use everyday. This post is going to look at the benefit and utilisation skills that can be used day to day, and in the context of social engineering and the other skills we have already discussed, and will continue to touch on moving forward.

Wikipedia Definition – Social influence occurs when an individuals thoughts or actions are affected by other people. Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.

Compliance is when people appear to agree with others, but actually keep their dissenting opinions private.

Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity or a favorite uncle.

Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.

Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard described two psychological needs that lead humans to conform to the expectations of others. These include our need to be right (informational social influence), and our need to be liked (normative social influence).Informational influence is an influence to accept information from another as evidence about reality. Informational influence comes into play when people are uncertain, either because stimuli are intrinsically ambiguous or because there is social disagreement. Normative influence is an influence to conform to the positive expectations of others. In terms of Kelman’s typology, normative influence leads to public compliance, whereas informational influence leads to private acceptance.

Influence can take many forms. Someone can be considered influential based on their position, their perception of knowledge, people they know and are associated with, how they behave, what they say and do, as well as how they present themselves.

I will start with presentation. This is probably obvious, but we immediately judge people by their appearance. First impressions are important, so we need to be mindful of wearing appropriate clothing for the environment we are in, or looking to infiltrate. If a company has people casually dressed, and you turn up in a suit, you will stand out like a sore thumb, and will attract attention. There is a balance to be had here, as someone smartly dressed can also represent a position of authority, so it is key to do your homework. There are subtleties when dressing that can also contribute influence. Interesting research has shown that smartness and colour of shoes, as well as tie colour can make a large difference in the perception of influence. We are are familiar with the joke of power suit, power tie, but it really is true. On the opposite side, a female could wear smart clothing, but is slightly revealing, or particularly flattering. This may attract attention (which has its place in certain circumstances), however the focus will be on attractiveness of the individual, not on the quality and value of the information being communicated, and essentially the patterns being used to facilitate influence will be ignored and go unoticed.

Communicating influence is something that is very common as it can be done on the phone and in person. Being familiar with a companies lingo, and key industry terms will resonate with the individual you are communicating with. They will believe / assume you are a person with knowledge and know how, this will lead to a position of influence. NLP patterns can be utilised when communicating to create focus on a sentence, ensure notice is taken of positives and not negatives, and bring someone around to your way of speaking. We will look at NLP patterns in the future. A hypnotist also uses influence both in body language and communication to facilitate buy in, and bring someone around to facilitate hypnotic experiences. Research has shown positioning can also have an impact on having what you say accepted and actioned upon. The left side of the brain is used for making decisions, and research has shown that speaking on the right side of an individual (so audio is received via the right ear) can lead to an increased chance in your communication being fully received and processed, and a decision being made in your favour.

Influence by association is something that can be of great use when a social engineer. When communicating dropping a name in can result in people not wanting to question your activities, as they do not want to trouble or disturb the individual of importance, and perhaps you are important and influential also as there is some association. This can also be achieved just by tail gating people of importance. I am sure if you give this some thought, you can think of the obvious scenarios where this will work, perhaps you would introduce yourself and create rapport outside of the office your looking to infiltrate, perhaps you can do it rapidly on the bus, train or elevator.

I have tried not to ramble to much in this post, but hopefully you get the idea. Having influential skills can obviously help influence people, but also build rapport, meet more people, and more valuable friends and associates. These are skills essential to a social engineer, as fitting in, getting people to do things for you, and help and facilitate are essential, and can make your life easier, and increase chances of success.

In my experience successful social engineers, come across as friendly, and confident people. This may or not be the reality, but its what is communicated that is essential for building a perception, and elevating from there. Consider what the individual you are looking to influence are interested in, dangle the appropriate worm to meet your objective. The point here is, to influence others we need to focus on their desires, to meet / get ours. Its all about perception.

Take note of peoples behaviour you consider to be influential. Examine how they carry themselves, mannerisms, vocabulary used, and the general presence. Different things work for different people, so you need to try things out for yourself. We will look at patterns, and mirroring in the future that can assist with getting people onside, and leading to influence.

Bullying, pushing, sarcastic complimanty comments may facilitate results, however I dont believe they will give long term results, this is something to be mindful of.

As ever I welcome feedback, and suggestions for content you would like to see, and information you would like to share.

Mentalism…. Psychic or Straight Jacket

Mentalism. I am sure you will have heard the term mentalism, or someone telling you they are a mentalist, and I am sure you probably agreed. Thought they are a nut case, and should be put into a straight jacket and wheeled off to the funny farm. Mentalism in this context is not quite the same.

Wikipedia Definition – In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on mental perception and thought processes, like cognitive psychology. This is in opposition to disciplines, such as behaviorism, that see psychology as a structure of causal relationships to conditioned responses and seek to prove this hypothesis through scientific methods and experimentation.

Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, provide their audiences with a theatrical experience of witnessing or participating in demonstrations that appear to utilize highly developed mental or intuitive ability. These demonstrations may include telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memorization, and rapid mathematics.

When I am thinking of mentalism I am thinking of a combination of perception, performance, and direction. To categorise yourself as a mentalist is something I am sure many people would not consider doing, but many most likely fit the bill. If you are using skills to build rapport, influence behaviour, mimic and read body language, read facial expressions and other such skills, this is essentially what a mentalist performer is doing.

We will cover different levels of skills, and what forms them in later posts, but skills such as cold reading, behavioural analysis and more, can help us all day to day, and especially when we consider social engineering.

A quick example is facial expressions, eye movement that we can use to our advantage. We can use these skills when in general discussion, persuasion, questioning and more. Some of the following is also discussed in regards to NLP, but this is just a simple example to show some commonalities in people when monitoring eye movement.

The face below represents that of an individual we are looking at them straight on. When you ask someone a question you will see eye movement towards a zone that represents their representational system. Remember everyone is different so we need to build up rapport, and monitor, measure and test for accuracy.

Zone 1 represents Visualistic, Zone 2 Auditory, and Zone 3 Kinaesthetic.

When you ask someone a question that requires them to access buried information in their memory, you will notice their eyes look towards their most dominant zone. Some people remember images better (Zone 1), some people remember how something sounded (Zone 2), and others with feeling and emotion (Zone 3).

To start of you need to ask a question that will trigger old memories, and that will get an honest response. A simple example here could be what was your first pet, or who was your best friend at primary school. Someone who visualises this memory will look up, and picture an image. Those who word better off sounds will look to the side, and hear a persons voice, or associated sound. An individual who feels and experience will tend to look down, recalling the great times experienced and the emotions associated. So this demonstrates we are all different, and that the key is asking the right trigger questions to build up a baseline, before probing further. Its abit like a visual lie detector.

If we look to get a better understanding we can go abit deeper. We can look to identify if a memory is actually being recalled, or if someone is making something up.

So you have determined the predominant zone, and we now use this information to gain extra information. Most people are visualistic people, so if you do struggle to identify it clearly, zone 1 is often a safe bet, just be aware.

If we look at the diagram above, if someone is looking towards area 4 they are most likely accessing a memory, if area 1 they are making something up. Similarly if they look to area 6, this may demonstrate a conflicting issue, perhaps touching on a difficult subject. However area 3 would demonstrate a more emotional response. When we see eyes moving between areas 2 and 5, this will verify the auditory nature, and lingering in area 2 it may signal a lie is being thought up.

The key here is to experiment, identify normal behaviour, measure it against normal questioning, and then under interrogation. Obviously there are many books on this, and this is just a brief overview.

So why did I discuss all this. Well one its interesting, but two it is to demonstrate how this information can be utilised, and one of the tools a mentalist may use to convince someone of their psychic abilities.

With this information we can not only use it to spot who is cheating, we can use this information for other benefits. So when we are explaining something, trying to get someone to buy in. We can focus our language according to the visualisitic, auditory and kinaesthetic representations to improve our chances of success.