Annie S e4rnblad
Appearances
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah. So in Swedish, we call it skadeglädje, which means injured cheerful or injured joy. Okay.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Basically, somebody is getting hurt and you're happy about it. And so that's a really good question. So the things that I will look for is whether or not the facial expression is particularly the microexpressions, knowing that the microexpressions leak people's true intentions. and they can't hide them. And most people can't make the microexpressions on demand.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
My kids can do a little bit of them, but like, you know, 20 years of practicing. Right. And so, first of all, if I'm saying something joyful, I should be, you know, maybe nodding, or I should be lifting my informal triangles and showing that. That said, I can hear something and think that like, that's great. I just, I've had such a hard day or I have a migraine and I can't quite muster the joy.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
That's also okay. You know, people sometimes have a hard time like reaching their joy, especially if they're, if they're struggling in their daily life or something, you know, if their house just burned down. I mean, seriously, it's, people are struggling today. Right. But we're not talking about that as much. Yeah. So what you're going to watch for in, so the smile is one piece of it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So does that, does that, do those words match that facial expression? But is somebody giving you a compliment while showing that disgust? That's a problem. If I say, Jen, I heard that you got a promotion. I'm so happy for you, Jen. And you can feel it, right? That feels almost predatory. It feels really creepy.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But if I say, I hate broccoli or I hate bacon, then you're like, okay, well, that's a weird thing to hate, but all right. Right, right, right. Exactly. It doesn't give you that same visceral response that you almost want to sit back and create more distance from that person. So we intuitively know it because that's our universal facial expressions, our universal nonverbal language.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But we don't always have the words to put it on. We don't even consciously always know what we've seen or observed. Observed. Sorry, my English.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I think they forget to dip their gaze. So, you know, we're so trained to be respectful. And this is this Asian culture and culture. But, you know, we're generally trained to look people in the eyes when we speak to them. And we're missing all of this information that's happening around their face. Like anger, for example, is just this tightening, clenching of the lips.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I'm clenching my hand as I'm doing that because... anger, it clenches everything. I mean, it even clenches our neck and our shoulders as we prepare to fight in our fists. But like, if you're trying to figure out if somebody's mad, the easiest way is just to look at their mouth and see if they, if there's a change from their baseline.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So it's just this, like, you see, I don't have particularly fleshy lips. My lips are fairly thin. So they almost disappear completely. The pigment is gone when I'm angry. Right. But that's obvious, I think, right? That's really obvious. Yeah. Yeah. But people still miss it if they're looking at their eyes.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yes. Not just looking at their eyes. Don't hold your gaze on their mouth for more than three seconds at a time. Do you know why? Why?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
It's the strangest, or if you do want somebody to kiss you, like look at their mouth. Well, how do you know? I literally had clients in Asia when I was working in Asia try to tilt their head, lean forward, and then catch themselves and be like... What am I doing? Because it's this sort of universal signal that I was signaling and they stopped themselves. They weren't going to do it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And there wasn't chemistry between us. But it was just almost like, you know, when a baby lifts their face to kiss you. I mean, even if it's a strange baby, you almost like you catch yourself and you're like, I can't kiss this stranger's baby in the grocery store. Oh my God. That's so funny.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Longer than three seconds at a time, but you can go up and down, up and down, up and down. At a time. Yes. You look away. It's almost like when somebody is making that sort of that clear eye contact and they're just staring you at like, for a long time and it's longer than your specific culture holds eye contact, it almost feels either like they're asking for something.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So it may be romance, it may be that they're angry, but something is going on with that length of eye contact that's deviating, that's sending out some really clear signal.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
That is really funny. Yeah, usually like with a head tilt first and then a lean. She don't want to bump noses.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Okay. So there's two main pieces of this and then I'll break them down. And the one piece is like whether or not somebody wants to sleep with you. That's like that is one of the big questions in life. Like, is this person attracted to me? That's huge. And I sometimes think people focus too much on that depending on what they want. Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But but a lot of people want something real and want something deep and want something that's going to last. If you're looking for something real, deep and, you know, possibly permanent or long lasting. you're going to want to see that there's emotional attachment. So let's go look at, let's look at the, we're going to look at attraction and then we're going to look at emotionally attached.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
In other words, I care about you. So I'm attracted to you versus I care about you. So attracted is above, in, and under the eyes. Okay? So above is that, it took me years to figure this out. I watched a lot of trashy TV. But this piece, because I didn't learn that in my coding. Right. That was not taught to me in facial expression.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
No. But I knew, like, I knew there were these bedroom eyes. I'm like, what is that? So I actually, I think it clicked mostly when I watched the OC. Did you ever watch that? Oh, my God. No, I know. I remember. Ryan Atwood, this character, like, just spends, like, half of his time showing off his eyelids. Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Right? And it's like this almost like I call it when I'm teaching, I say it's like pulling down the shades to make something romantic. You know, do you want to like make the room a little more dark and romantic? So, you know, they just kind of do this where they loosen their eyelids. And it's a very different look than somebody who's like really sleepy because that's kind of this unfocused.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
My eyelids are drooping and I'm just like checked out. This is often with like a little bit of a head tilt showing some vulnerability.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
there and softness and then you're just like almost showing off like look how much eyelid I have and that's how you can tell if someone's attracted to you okay right and so that's a that's a big piece and by the way we're looking for that that lowering so we're looking again for the difference in the baseline whether or not you have single folded eyelids or double folded eyelids I have family members that that are Chinese it doesn't matter you're looking for the movement
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Oh, all the time. And so just to clarify, like I can numerically code or anybody who is trained in facial action coding systems can take the 10,000 different muscle combinations. And it's not thousands of facial expressions, but it is a lot of muscle combinations and it's a lot of facial expressions.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Okay, so that's the eyelids. That's the bedroom eyes. You're looking for a dilation of the pupils. So not that pupils are big, but that they become bigger during the conversation or interaction. So you're looking for a change. So people can have bigger pupils depending on kind of their baseline or they can have bigger pupils one day because they're on certain medication.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Drugs can make pupils either bigger or smaller. And so we're looking for the swelling of the pupils in the moment. So not the initial size that day. And we know that pupils expand and contract if the room is darker or lighter.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
If we're sitting outside and having a picnic and it's really sunny and there's some clouds, we know that when the sky becomes dark, our pupils are going to swell to allow in more light. And I talk about that as almost like throwing the door open and saying, like, come in, come in, come in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're opening that aperture and saying, like, come on in.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Right. So that difference. So I'll finish this one. So above the eyes, in the eyes, and under. And under is those smile bags from the joy. You know, we tend to get a little happier and more cheerful when we're around somebody that we're attracted to. So that's the attraction. And then under.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
The achy, breaky heart, whether or not we empathize with somebody, whether or not we love them, whether or not we experience tenderness, that's right here on the chin. So if you tell me something hard or painful that you've experienced, I should be responding with a chin pucker if I care about you. Where I care about the thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And it's kind of that you can make yourself do it by just saying, aww, by looking like puppy videos or baby videos. Or if you look at pictures of your own children when they're really cute and chubby and little and you'll automatically pucker that chin. Mm-hmm.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And I usually include the caveat of like, again, if somebody's having a hard time, they don't need to pucker their chin every time because you may be going on and on and on about venting about something. But if they never, when you talk about something physically, emotionally, or financially painful to you or somebody else close to you, they should be puckering their chin in empathy.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And if they never do, that's an issue.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah, people don't know how to fake their micro expressions. At least I've never seen it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And yes, people get really nervous, but almost nobody gets as nervous as men who have some kind of shame in their lives. They get really, really wound up.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
It doesn't mean you're in love with them, but it just means that you, that you like, it's sort of like the lowest bar is that they should at least care about you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But as you're becoming more intimate and vulnerable in your conversations with somebody, they should be caring about, they should be mirroring your facial expression, they should be participating, they should be leaning in, and they should be responding to you. And if they're not, that's an issue. I mean, I...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I've seen it all the time where somebody has the right words, but when you talk about something that's really meaningful to you, they'll be like, oh, that's wonderful. And again, they're growling. Right, right. They're growling. Right. If somebody's growling, that's not good. I mean, we know this stuff on some level, or at least a lot of us do.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah. Okay. So first, let's go back to the kids piece. I mean, that was my obsession. So my career was as a strategic advisor. So I lived in... in Asia and then Europe and then back in Asia again. For 25 years, I guess part of that time I was at university, but my focus was working with managing directors and coaching executives, usually CEOs at the top level, working with boards.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I never intended to use any of my microexpressions or to even go public about it. There were only four people in the world outside of my family that knew that I was trained and proficient in microexpressions. My obsession was to simplify the field of science so that I could teach my children to recognize predatory behavior. And in my...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
sort of weird and wacky brain, I was like, if this is something that babies know, there has to be some possibility of putting more simple words on it. There has to be a simplified vocabulary and a way of making it kind of shorthand so that we can talk about it without doing like a long numerical code of every different muscle group that's moving with the facial expression.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
flustered, but I think women innately, and not all of us, because we do, thank goodness, have different wiring in our brains. Every individual is slightly different. But I think we women are used to some other people around us being able to read us really well.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So my obsession was that, and I started off by just narrating it the way you narrate. Like, this is a banana. This is a spoon. This is a truck. This is the no face. This is the ew face. This is the yuck face. And then I would have them make it. You know how when you have a baby and you do this, somebody tells you you stick out your tongue? and they'll stick out their tongue.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So I would do that, but on steroids. And I learned through trying over and over again that I would make my kids and myself really crabby if I did too much holding of the negative expressions. I finally realized that my brain was reading that I was actually going through this trauma, that something was absolutely disgusting, or I was very angry, or I was terrified.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Like that felt traumatizing to all of us. Right, right, right. Yeah. And likewise, if you just do that happy expression over and over again, you just kind of fake it till you make it. The whole point of the facial expression is that it sends a message to the amygdala to process the emotion. And when there's too much facial paralysis, we're not able to process the emotion.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
The interpretation of processing gets stopped. So advanced stages of Parkinson's or Moebis where there's facial paralysis, That impedes our ability to fully empathize, to fully understand our own feelings and to fully understand other people's because we need the facial movement for that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And so for the kids, it was I became obsessed with getting them to tell me when someone's facial expressions didn't match their words or just quite simply. Tell me when anybody growls at you. I mean, that's just such a basic thing that every kid should know to report to whoever their caregiver is. This person is growling at me.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And in my case, it was this man shows contempt and disgust when he talks to me. And that's a problem. A grown man should not be showing contempt and disgust. to a little kid. That's something is very, very off. Now, the microexpression shows the feeling and not the thought process, but it does exactly what you just said. It shows us the red flags. We know something's off.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And my kids had the advantage or maybe sometimes the disadvantage because they kind of saw everything going on. But the advantage in terms of keeping them safe, of having a joint vocabulary with their mother,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
that they could say that man shows contempt and disgust and i would be so fast i like was so on it because i wasn't protected as a as a little kid and so i just it was my full-on obsession i never intended to teach it to a wider audience and part of what changed is i moved countries and i lost my professional network because i moved from singapore to the us and also what happened was
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
As my children got older and AI, I was scared of AI getting everything and using it for nefarious purposes. I just was terrified of AI. Really? And so I didn't want what I knew and what I had worked for years with my kids to be used properly. Thank you
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I mean, a lot of us have good friends and family members that have kind of been able to read us or even hear that kind of hitch in our voice or tightness in our vocal cords. And they'll kind of turn around quickly and say, well, what's wrong? When we, you know, what do you mean what's wrong? I didn't say anything. No, I can hear it or I can feel it or I can sense it. I can see it on you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So I think we're just used to reading others or focusing on those skills, and we're used to being read more often or sometimes more hyper-aware of it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Thank you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Well, we're certainly, you know, socialized for it to be okay to show emotion. It's expected from an earlier age. I mean, I had to catch myself a couple of times with my son. I was more stern with him when he was crying once he got to a certain age than I was with my daughter. And I had to catch myself because I didn't want him not to show his emotion.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Thank you. Thank you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Thank you. Thank you. And it was the first time we'd had a real conversation in over 30 years. And I was talking to him and I had, well, that's so funny that you just put three fingers up. I had three fingers on my face and I looked at him and he had, that's just like telepathy. Seriously, this is crazy. That's true. I did the same thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But it was so hardwired into me to kind of be like, why are you whining?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But it's because we're aligned. It's because you're getting what I'm saying and I'm getting what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, yeah, this is interesting. So I had three figures on my face. Yeah. And I looked at him and I noticed he had three fingers on his face. And I went like this.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
The piece that really is absent for me Is that pucker of the chin. The narcissist that I know, and I'm not an expert per se in narcissism. I talk about it constantly and partly because my absolute best friend, what my middle child is named after her, is a clinical psychologist. We talk every single day. And we discuss all of our work and all of these things.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And we talk about narcissism all the time because it comes up in her work and in my work. The piece that I look for with the facial expressions is that lack of puckering. The empathy is absent. The genuine deep care. The words are the right words. The facial expressions, there's all these red flags with the facial expressions. They don't match. There's a growling with...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
the, you know, when something good happens to the other person because the narcissist is looking for supply, right? They're looking Usually, my understanding, at least, and in my life experience, is that they tend to go after fairly powerful, confident people a lot of the time because that's much more interesting to take down somebody.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
It's much more of a challenge to take down somebody powerful than it is to take somebody weak and sort of socially isolate and control them. That's not always the case, but I found that in my life with a narcissist that I tend to to have attracted in my past. And then there's this piece of going, moving away from the facial expression.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Okay, so I do read body language. I just don't teach it very often. So I spent 25 years of my life living abroad, and I studied eight languages through immersion. So I've spent, in addition to doing this facial action coding certification, I have spent years and years of my life not understanding what people are saying. So that's how I got so good at it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
There's this initial stage of love bombing where it's like too good to be true. And they're parroting and mirroring everything back to both in it with the body language, but they're so into it. And I actually believe that
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
The narcissist that I've been involved with romantically, which by the way, just to be clear, not my ex-husband, have experienced some of that love bombing phrase together with me, especially when I was in my early 20s, that there was a moment of a really feeling that
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
infatuation i don't think it's you know just that they're made of stone i think that there's sometimes moments of that really deep connection and i always look for the intermittent reinforcement right that there's this amazing period where everything's almost like heightened and magical and then you're forever trying to get back to those moments but but the behavior gets more and more abusive
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
over time. Narcissists don't like it when you are thriving, whether that's financially, whether that's other men are attracted to you if it's a male narcissist. There's lots of female narcissists as well, but it's all like head games and it all has to do with control.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Well, yeah. It's almost a done deal. The whole scenario, the whole game is already completed. It's easy. If the person is too weak and submissive.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Well, and some of them are like these pillars of community outwardly and in their familial relationships and their romantic relationships and with their children are awful. And like I said, I am not a clinical psychologist. I am an expert in facial expressions. That I know upside down, in the dark, 24-7. multiple decades. That's my full-on obsession. I am very, very educated.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I have a master's degree in anthropology. Yes, I've lived in nine countries, as I said. I've been all over the world. I've tested this. And people will say, well, you know, I had somebody the other day that I was talking to, and they said, well, not in Asia. And I was like, honey, I've lived in three different countries in Asia for almost 12 years. Wow. I have practices.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
In Singapore, I was in Singapore for a little over nine years. And, you know, it's this beautiful melting pot of people from all over the world. I mean, that is where I trained my children. So it is a universal thing. I do think that my experience with narcissists, I consider myself a fairly strong woman. I was abused as a child. So I do...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Fight the instinct to hide still in my life, to make myself small and to blending with the woodwork and to be a people pleaser. That said, as I've grown older and older, like I've had to learn to fight and I've had to learn to create a life that was very, very different from the life that I was born into. That's why your word at 50 was bold. Yes. Yeah, it was. I like that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah, I was given a necklace in silver that said bold for my 50th, for my best friend. And I used to hide it under my clothes because I wasn't that bold.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
At reading body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, choice of words, you know, that's what made me this sort of human lie detector combined with the science of facial expressions. But the question is excellent. So I usually define it in the simplest terms that body language varies from person to person. Even two siblings within the same family can have wildly different body language.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I was working on it. You were wearing it, though. I was getting ready to publish my book, and I was... I knew I had to go out on social media. I was absolutely terrified of taking up space in the world just because I know as a woman, you take up any kind of space and you become a target. I mean, I don't answer telephone calls from anybody that's not on my contact list. I get crazy, like really...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
terrible emails. Sometimes I get some lovely ones too. Um, my email address is no longer public and my, I mean, you know what it's like.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Right. So lie detection, the people that I love listening to about lie detection, the people that I... Joe Navarro, I love him. FBI agent. He just wrote a book about body... He's written a couple books, but he's... You want to get your information from people who have been in life or death scenarios if you're looking for lie detection.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I want somebody who's been in the military or somebody that's been... Where it's really been high stakes and not just somebody who says like, I'm an expert about...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
on body language because I just you know everybody's always told me I'm good at it like I want somebody who's really been trained you know give me a hostage negotiator give me boss like give me give me somebody who's been through it I totally agree I like this guy I've had on the pod just not to interrupt you yeah no tell me Joe Navarro I just wrote him down I'm gonna I'm gonna reach out to him every I've never met him and everywhere I go to speak somebody's like we had Joe Navarro last year
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yes. Yeah. I do a lot of places where he's, yeah. Yeah. And in fact, there was one guy that I don't think the podcast was ever published. And he said in the pre-interview, he was like, I don't like Chris. I didn't like him. I interviewed him and I didn't like him. And I was like, oh shit, you're not going to like me either. And he didn't.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
He did not like somebody getting insight into what was going on. And I was like, dude, I'm not analyzing you. We're just having a conversation. I know.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yes. So we'll talk about that sometime offline because it was, I'll tell you the whole story. It was really, really interesting. And I just like, I sat there in that chair and I was like, this is not going to ever go up. Oh, wow. Because you've got some stuff that you are hiding, sir. And it's none of my business. And like, can we please get back to talking about my book?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Back to me. Exactly.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So the piece that is really interesting because people who are experts in lie detection will tell you they look for three things. The general idea is like three hot spots. You're looking for three clues because lie detection is really, really hard as it turns out. So there are all sorts of, you know, if somebody is using a qualifier, the one I like.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
This little guy, the guy who told me he was a mostly good guy, wanted to date me.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I was like, ooh. Turned out, yeah, he was married. That's so great. That was like a red flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, hell no. But that was a red flag. And when you know those red flags so clearly, it's really, you don't, I mean, you don't want to ignore them. But it's nice to like not do the six months and then find out you're being betrayed. Yeah. Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So so there's there's I think you had a guest. I can't remember what her name was. I listened to her the other day. You had such a good conversation. It was such great chemistry. She wrote cues.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yes, yes, yes. She's actually, I had not read her work, but I'm going to now because I thought that interview was excellent. Thank you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But she talks about like going up, like raising your voice as a question. That's one of the things I look for. Nodding, and this is not universal, but it is practically universal in North America, U.S., Canada, Mexico. You know, this means yes, this means no, Western Europe. Not the same in Asia and cases in Asia or, you know, India, Sri Lanka. They do a bunch of different head movements.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
You know, crossing your arms, for example, may mean that you're belligerent or you're angry or defensive. Certainly, if it comes into the context of having an argument or if you see a little kid go, you know, and cross their arms. But it can also mean that you're Finnish or you're German or that's how you self-soothe or you're cold. Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But but, you know, when Hillary Clinton says, I knew my husband was a good man and she's you know, she should be doing this. And instead she goes, and my husband's a good man.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah. In one of her episodes of Grit that I believe is on Apple TV. And I thought about I thought about using it as like a clip for my Microsoft and I thought I'm going to get in so much trouble. But though she was allowing one of the women that she interviewed to actually ask her why she stayed with Bill. And she said, because I knew my husband was a good man.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah. So I look for that like that that like really clear disconnect. Yeah. But with the facial expressions, the thing that I love, and I think the reason that I'm so obsessed with this science, and by the way, I've worked with clients like the Museum of Science in Boston. This is scientific stuff. I teach it in a very pragmatic way.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I'm not sure all the people in my field that are really good at the laboratory research would agree. My tendency to advance my ability and my children's tendency is to go out and kind of provoke people and see if we can get the same facial expression for the complex facial expressions over and over and over again in similar situations. Do we get the same response?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Is that what the facial expression of hurt looks like? Or is this what the knowing smile looks like? How do we play? How do we test? I'm an anthropologist. All my stuff is like field work where I'm like digging in the dirt myself. But I look for that facial expression not matching the words, like I said. Is somebody saying, nice to meet you, and they're showing disgust.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Or I really want to do this, and they're showing disgust. Now, really important to remember that I can see exactly what you're feeling. I know the feeling for sure with the facial movement in microexpressions. I do not know what somebody's thinking. So if you ask me to come back on your podcast next week and I do that, it may just be like next week I'm traveling. I'm with a client all next week.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
That's going to be hard for me. Doesn't mean I don't want to come back. But if every time you mention ever doing anything with me, you know, it's the cue to repeat the experiment. Does somebody do that multiple times? Is every time we talk about, you know, Annie and Jen doing something, I kind of go like this. Then that's an issue that you're going to want to find out.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But again, it only shows the feeling. But if someone's saying like really positive words and showing negative facial expressions, that's a problem. That's a red flag.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So the biggest I do a lot of training for people in investment situations. I started I actually started I talked about managing consulting, but my first my first job was 20 months as an analyst in private equity. I was terrible at it. I was terrible at it. But I do a lot of training for mergers and acquisitions.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
or you're just a little uncomfortable thinking about something else. The facial expressions, the piece that I love and the reason that I've gotten so into teaching facial expressions is that they are biological responses. They are the same. The micro expressions are the same regardless of culture.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And I do a lot of training these days for legal teams and people that are in just high, any kind of really high stakes negotiation. And I teach them to figure out like which are the parts of their pitch that are really high stakes. Like when you're presenting a price for something, when you're doing valuation and you're discussing that, you're going to want to say like, Does the person do this?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
That's fear. That's a problem. Do they clench their lips in anger? That's also a problem. Do they raise their informal triangles in pleasure? That's meaning that are they nodding a lot and their cheeks are popping up? That means they like it. Do their pupils start to swell? That means they like it. And again...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
When you start the meeting, you're going to gauge how big, if this is really high stakes, you're looking at the person across the table and you're going to tell yourself, I have to use words in my brain. I have to literally say, okay, their pupils are medium sized.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So that if I'm looking away, because I'm not staring at them, especially if it's a team the entire time, I need to remember what size the pupils were at the beginning. So if I look away and then look back and the pupils are doubled in size, my brain will register that. If that's something that's a little bit fiddly, it takes a lot of effort. It's like going to the gym.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
You have to learn the movement and the muscle movement. But that piece, if I see pupil dilation, I'm done. I'm not going to keep selling. I'm done with the selling. Now we just talk about whatever they want to talk about because you know if you've ever, you know, you've done sales, right? You know that there's a risk of overselling and losing them. So you don't want to go past that point. Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yeah. I mean, that's exactly right. And I – You know, my goal, I do coaching in my life. I work mostly with CEOs and boards and managing directors and teach them how to navigate really difficult relationships. And then I do a lot of microexpressions training and corporate training. But on the side, I feel like it's extremely important to get this knowledge out into the world.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And that's why I do the social media. And I have online courses that are expensive and kind of corporate. But the thing that I'm going to launch now, hopefully within about four weeks, is a subscription service so people can pay, you know, $8 or so a month and get these in bite-sized chunks. chunks because that was about the best synopsis I've ever heard.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
ethnicity, age, gender, socialization, no matter who raised us, even people who are born blind make the same facial expressions, the same basic facial expressions. There are some cultural expressions, but I don't teach those. I don't focus on those. So the facial expression says exactly what someone is feeling in the exact moment they're feeling it. The micro expression doesn't.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And I learned this and I learned this and I learned this and I learned this. Most people's brains can't absorb as much as you did that quickly. Thank you. Most people just need it really broken down and like piece by piece. And then you just practice repetition, repetition and see it on a lot of different faces. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I just saw it clear as day.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And once it clicks in your brain, You're done. For the rest of your life, you will see this everywhere. And you'll not understand why you didn't see it before.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Yes. I mean, you can combine and combine and combine, but my obsession with the kids was trying to figure out how to teach this in a simplified way. So the obsession was, and I don't believe anybody had ever done it before. If they have, I have not seen it, was to identify one piece of the face that was unique to only that feeling, that emotion, that expression.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So for example, disgust is always going to have a movement right here. Anger is always going to have tight lips. Now anger also has a furrowing of the brows, but the problem is we furrow our brow in concentration as well. So maybe just problem solving. So that piece and the idea that I think my brain is similar to yours in that
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
you want that, not the shortcut, because it's not that you're trying to skip the hard work or the challenging pieces, but you're like, give me what I want to focus on. And let me start there.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
You said? Probably about, well, we're aiming to have it out in about four weeks, but yeah, you can check my Instagram or my website, AnnieSarrenblood.com and it will be It will be. Perfect. There you go, guys.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
does because the microexpression precedes the thought process and is involuntary. So unless I change my thoughts, I can't stop myself, even me, from making the microexpression. So I have three grown children. Wow.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Oh, my pleasure, Jen.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Because it's biologically hardwired into us. So I'll give you an example that when human beings are afraid, we do this. We pull our upper eyelids back, and that's so that we can widen our field of vision so we can gauge, like, how do I get out of this situation? Where can I escape? I mean, it's a physiological response. Right. So you see the tendons of my neck jump? Yeah, yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And that's because fear opens our mouths. If you look at pictures of people in haunted houses, you know how sometimes you go through those haunted houses and you're doing, like, a Disney World, or they snap the picture at the moment where your mouth, like,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And if you look at those pictures, everybody across ethnicities, ages, genders, like everybody makes the same exact facial expression when they're absolutely terrified. And we open our mouths. That's the only expression that really rectangularizes the entire mouth. And that's so we can scream bloody murder so we can get help.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So there's a physical, physiological reason that there's a change in blood flow and muscle movement for each facial expression. And so the micro expression of fear is just, see how that does the neck tendon? And it's just this pull of like, it's just like that little itching to come out. And it can also be this pull back.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Now, there are other facial expressions that widen our eye aperture, like excitement, but then we're opening the lower lid and the upper lid, and it gives you a different vibe. So me going, oh, just a little bit for a hot second, that's very different than this, which communicates danger, danger, danger.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
The muscle movement precedes the moment of cognition.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
You can fake the macros. Like I can pretend to be happier. I can like do a big expression. But the tiny flicker of microexpression leaks out of us before we can stop it. It's like when, you know, up until the age of about two, we make these big facial expressions. And we human beings scan the entire face.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And once our parents start really socializing us as human beings and they start saying, look me in the eyes when you speak to me, we start forgetting that sort of innate human species thing where we looked all over the face to gauge the expression and the emotion. It's like that was how we read people when we didn't have any access to words or socialization. It's hardwired into us.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And so people who maintain their hypervigilance, in other words, grow up in abusive situations or war zones, they tend to be really, really good at reading facial expressions. because they don't lose that ability. So it's almost like it's there before we're verbal and we lose it. It's almost like I think of it as baby language or that it's our universal nonverbal language.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And when people get in romantic situations and they're going to kiss somebody for the first time, that's when they start tracking again because they sort of revert into that primitive brain. I want to know if you're going to reject me. So I start like tracking, you know, looking all over the face. Is there any clue? And people are not, we're not even aware we're doing it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Okay. The macro expression is the full expression. It's the expression we would kind of make if we weren't socialized. So the macro expression of disgust, which I call the no face, is this. It's that face of like, you know, you come with the peas or the mushed up like gross food that you have to eat. You see, I already do that like innately thinking about the growth.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
It shuts off our nasal passages. So it's three main pieces, wrinkles the skin next to our nose, deepens our nasolabial furrow. I sometimes call this the nostril shadow because I find that's easier for people to remember. And it pulls up our upper lips, right? It's that L, L. And it shuts off our nasal passages, our sense of smell up to about 80%. That's the macro.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But we learn don't make that face at grandma or like don't make that face at your sister. It's rude to be like, I don't like you or I don't want to eat this. The micro expression is the piece. So that's the macro. I see it as the whole puzzle. And for each expression, when I'm teaching, I teach you what the whole puzzle looks like.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So if you just get one or two puzzle pieces from that specific puzzle, you recognize it. So remember I talked about wrinkling next to the nose and the deepening of the nasolabial furrow. Disgust is just this. But because it happens so fast, up to about a 25th of a second, just that little flicker, you almost have to prepare your gaze and look at this part of the face or you'll miss it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So if I'm asking you if you want to eat...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
I call it the nostril shadow because it's the shadow. It's like where people tend to get some fillers in there because they think it makes them look a little old. But it's this wrinkle that is just right next to the nostrils. Usually when I make them micro myself, unless I'm really upset by something, then both sides jump.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
But usually it's just my left side and everybody's got a side that they favor. And it's almost like, you know, when you get that tick on your eye sometimes when you're really tired or struts and your eye, like right underneath your eye just jumps. That's what it feels like. And people often don't notice it when it's next to the nose, but it's just that little jump.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And I sometimes call it like the bad bunny rabbit twitch.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Okay, so the easiest thing is that the smile has nothing to do with the mouth. Nothing at all, really. Nothing to do with what the lips are doing. When we experience joy, our cheeks pop up. They lose gravity. These are called our infraorbital triangles. And you can see it. It actually makes you happy because it's contagious, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So when I actually look at you and smile because I'm happy to see you, my cheeks actually make more of a ball and they rise. And depending on your baseline, the formation of your, you know, the angle of your face, but you're still going to see those cheeks pop up. And what happens is you get these beautiful smile bags. So this skin right under my lower eyelid gets fat and puffs out. See that?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
Right. And it's easy peasy. And my little one, Emma, who's now almost 21, she used to say when the skin here gets fat, that means they're happy, mama. Because I trained them since they were itty bitty since they were babies. And she was like so uninterested at whether or not there were crow's feet or whether or not like what was happening with it. with the muscles in the informal triangle.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And she was just like, if it's fat and you get this, you get this, this skin that sticks out. And it's, you can see on my face, as I get older, it's gonna be a little bit more puffy and it's gonna hang a little bit. So you're looking for the change in that person's face. whatever their sort of normal neutral facial expression is.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
So my, you know, depending on the day of my eye, the skin underneath my eyelids is a little bit puffy. You'll see, but you'll see it'll bulge out to two or three times or four times its natural size. You'll see this huge change. So if you're trying to see if somebody's happy and you know what they generally look like, All you have to do is see, is the skin here fat?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 437: Annie Särnblad: How to Spot Lies and Detect True Emotions in Seconds
And it's the same exact area that we sometimes talk about. We get increased pigmentation depending on the natural pigment of our skin. It might be brown or it might be purple. But it's a darker shade when we're not getting enough sleep. And that's exactly that area that we're looking for that to bulge.