Sympathy vs. Empathy

“Is the world being controlled by psychopaths, ego-maniacs, evil aliens or even non-human entities? Exactly who is pulling the strings?”

You won’t miss to ask the same (or similar or rather a shorter one) questions openly or in your own mind while looking at the current state of affairs in almost the entire world - by taking out some time from your busy routine and closely analyzing the level of "profitting over people", self-centeredness, irresponsibility, radicalization, carelessness, recklessness, manipulation, exploitation, narcissism or deception in the most critical areas or fields like international cooperation, resource sharing, (geo-)politics, technology, religion, ideology, economy and society. It could be the major reason why rush, panic, gloom, stress, hatred, apathy, anxiety, dullness, insomnia, addiction, escapism, pessimism, dejection, insecurity, depression, loneliness, distraction, disillusion, frustration, uncertainty, self-soothing, helplessness, hopelessness, disorientation, purposelessness, existential dread and/or above all - the EROSION OF TRUST is more prevalent among millions of people, at present than ever before. Aren't you among them? Really?

If you firmly believe that the psychopaths completely lack the human emotions then you're completely wrong (Sorry!). It’s not the so-called ‘lack of human emotions’ that makes a normal looking person immoral, careless, reckless, unethical, narcissistic, irresponsible, manipulative, deceptive, abusive, parasitic and exploitative towards others. Actually, psychopaths do have human emotions but they don't care about emotions, feelings and suffering of others. They've very low or complete lack of empathy for fellow human beings or even their closed ones. By the way, is this the first ever time you’re reading the word ‘Empathy’? It's could be the 'first time' for many people.

As of now, you surely might have read, heard or even used another word several times. The word is ‘Sympathy’. Along with the same word, ‘Sympathizing’ and ‘Sympathizer’ are the words that you might read, heard or even used many times, as of now. You might have expressed your sympathy towards or became sympathizer of others. However, most people simply confuse between sympathy and empathy. Although both words end with the exact same sound ‘m-pu-thee’, their meanings are totally different from each other. So, better understanding is necessary.

Sympathy is a conscious attempt of understanding what exactly other person may be going through, feeling or experiencing. However, empathy is a genuine subconscious experience of the same feeling inside oneself. Unlike sympathy, empathy is like putting your own foot inside the other person’s shoes and trying to experience how really it feels like. Body language (facial expressions and posture) and vocal tone of a one person instantly changes in the presence of another person in distress, danger or pain. Doesn’t it ever happen to you at all?

"Every psychopath is a (extreme) narcissist but not every (extreme) narcissist is a psychopath."
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula
(World leading expert on Narcissism)

Empathy is the critical pro-social quality.
(Image Courtesy: American Psychological Association)

On one hand, empathy is a genuine subconscious experience. We tend to experience happiness when others around us are happy and experience sadness when others are sad, down, crying, distressed or depressed. Similarly, we experience horrified when others are in danger and experience anger when others are getting abused, exploited or punished. The experience of empathy is entirely subconsciously. Also, it leads to instant physiological and hormonal changes. Hence, it’s physiological, behavioral and nonverbal.

On the other hand, sympathy is more of a conscious process of trying to visualize, imagine or understand what another person may be going through at present or might have gone through in the past. It’s expressed verbally, especially in the form of agreement, validation, recognition or support while not experiencing the exact same internal distress or uneasiness that is felt subconsciously. That’s why sympathy can be faked or copied but empathy can’t be!

Ability to control the impulses makes us civil but behaving empathetically makes us social. Whenever a person internally experiences what the other person is most likely feeling, is going through or might have gone through then those two persons virtually become ONE AND THE SAME. Moreover, the first person might nonverbally and physically help, soothe, rescue, protect or even fight for the second person who is in distress, danger or pain.

Please let me explain you with a real life example. An elderly frail man and his young son fail right in the middle of a road when their scooter's wheels slipped off on a greasy patch. An elderly man got slammed so hard on the surface of the road that he couldn't stand on his feet whereas his son got minor bruises. A young woman living in a nearby house immediately rushed to the spot with a bottle full of water in her hand.

Another commuting man who happened to watch the whole scene and suddenly stopped his motorcycle at the edge of the same road. He helped the son to lift his elderly father and take him to an empty place. Moreover, the commuting man ran his hands over the legs of the elderly to check the injuries if any. Behavior of the young woman and the commuting man wasn't sympathetic but empathetic.

The lone man crossing the railway tracks
(Note: An image generated by AI, exclusively for the book)

"Ability to control the impulses makes us civil but behaving empathetically makes us social."

Not Sympathy but Empathy is the necessary foundation for humanity, morality and ethics or in other words - compassionate, responsible, sensitive, ethical, caring and moral behavior. Today's global outcry about the degradation of humane, moral and ethical behavior towards each other strongly reflects the steady erosion of empathy. One of the mandatory qualities that helped us survive and thrive over millions of years is being compromised.

There’re certain primary and secondary co-existential benefits of an internally felt distress or uneasiness while watching each other in suffering, distress, danger or pain. A few critical insights flashed in my mind while walking through the memories of major distressing or discomforting experiences of my own, including watching a lone man crossing the railway tracks while an express train was rapidly moving towards him on the same.

The same insights have voluntarily been shared by an email in June 2024 with world’s some of the top behavioral researchers who’re working on empathy and a leading academic institute - Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) of University of California at Berkeley (UCB). The institute has formally acknowledged them. You can read the same insights in my upcoming book - Body Language Insights.

Related Articles:
1) Surprise vs. Startle Reflex 2) Your Confirmation Bias vs. Context 3) Body Language of Extreme Psychopath

Body Language and Lie Detection

Perhaps, the first ever and most interesting record of detecting lies or catching liars by checking the bodily or physiological cues or indicators goes back to 3,000 years ago. The process of lie detection inside the imperial courts of ancient China was entirely focused on salivation (secretion of saliva). What is the exact logic behind it? If a person produces less or no saliva inside her mouth then it's most likely that she is under stress while speaking with/to or answering the questions asked by another person.

Before starting to speak or to give answers, an accused person or a suspect was ordered to keep a lump of dry rice in her mouth. As speaking or answering come to an end, the person was ordered to take out or spit the rice from her mouth for visual inspection. If the rice was found to be moist or wet due to normal secretion of saliva during the question-answering session then it was assumed that the person was telling the truth because she wasn't speaking without any stress or fear. Wasn't it simplest and straightforward? Obviously, chewing rice was much better than getting tortured.

We do lie verbally but we've set out on the mission to check the nonverbal cues of lying. From indirectly checking the saliva inside the mouth to detecting the cues, signs or indicators in body language, we look for fear, guilt, stress, anxiety or nervousness. There are several other ancient methods of lie detection. Surprisingly, some of them are still used, such as licking a red hot spoon in Bedouin tribal members of Arabia. Truth teller wouldn't get a scar or burnt mark on tongue, due to the normal level of saliva keeping it enough wet.

Although tongue is solely responsible for generating the deceptive speech, we can't stop ourselves from looking at each other's faces or into eyes look even while we aren't talking. That's why we've developed different (mis)beliefs around the face about the (reliable) cues, signs or indicators of lying, over the thousands of years. Some of them are universal e. g. a person not looking into your eyes or looking away is lying to you. However, it's not at all necessary that people of every culture and/or ethnicity exactly do the same.

Most of us are naturally inclined to blindly believe in and follow the tips, tricks or techniques that are shown in or shared by commercial movies, online videos and TV serials to catch liars in the real-time. Lie to me was a famous TV serial in which the central character Dr. Cal Lightman was depicted as an expert that could catch liars by detecting their facial micro-expressions. However, they can't be detected in the real-time without a formal training and rigorous practice.

(Image Courtesy: Fox Broadcasting Company)

"So, Exactly how GOOD (%) we are in detecting lies? Certainly, we aren’t 100% good. Even our technological tools aren’t 100% good/accurate in catching lies."
One of the 55 slides from my recent presentation
(Note: Please read #Special Note (below) for more details.)

Whenever it comes to determining if a person is lying or telling the truth based on the nonverbal or body language cues, signs or indicators; there's a little disagreement among people, especially between two tentatively different groups. First group (A) is mostly made up of academic researchers and/or scientists. Second group (B) is largely made up of the professionals such as (counter-)intelligence officers/agents, lie detection professionals, law enforcement officers, lie detection experts, forensic interviewers, interrogators and investigators who do face people.

On one hand, if not all but most studies that have been conducted so far were by the academic researchers from western cultures, countries, universities and/or institutions. They mostly involved the subjects of very specific backgrounds e. g. university students. Also, most experiments have been conducted in controlled environments or inside labs. Of course, conducting elaborate experiments or studies by involving the real suspects, criminals or offenders might be posing some difficulties, challenges and/or limitations for researchers.

On the other hand, it's only the professionals who ask questions or interrogate to get confessions from the real suspects or criminals. Unlike a limited amount of, chosen or specific subjects participating in experiments conducted in controlled environments or labs; they do face the real people belonging to different ages and genders with diverse social, ethnic, genetic, physical, cultural, educational, developmental, psychological and economical backgrounds, conditions and/or histories. They do matter a lot.

Both groups or even the members of any single group among themselves don't completely agree with each other about (some) nonverbal or body language cues as reliable and/or strong indicators of lying. Indeed, members of any single or both groups have their own conclusions that have been entirely derived from their own studies, findings, observations, experiments and/or experiences originating from entirely different sets of people they faced so far.

After going through the above facts or bitter truth, I'm quite sure that you clearly realize a great gap between both groups or parties i. e. A) Academics/scientists and B) Professionals/practitioners. Of course, there's a great difference in operating conditions, inclinations, obligations, challenges, exposures, limitations, thoughts, resources and/or methods of both groups or even among the members of any single group.

Despite of disagreements between both groups or even among the members of any single group, they do honestly share the single-most common goal or the greater challenge of bringing the criminals and offenders to justice by analyzing the different kinds of cues that suspects or criminals do subconsciously give away while lying or deceiving verbally.

Method of lie detection by analyzing of body language is repeatedly criticized as 'pseudoscientific' by (some) academic researchers and/or scientists. Hence, I really wonder if a truly 'scientific' lie detection method is strictly supposed to be capable of predicting beforehand, with a mathematical accuracy. Can any lie detection expert, interrogator or professional can predict a nonverbal cue or cues of lying, well before facing the person to be interrogated, interviewed, questioned or scrutinized? Or Is it always possible to anybody? Being an independent researcher, I've to challenge you to think over this.

If predictability of nonverbal or body language cues of lying is the sole qualifying criteria then it'll be satisfied in an ideal world in which every person's neural wiring, perception, personality, experiences, motivations, anxieties, ambitions, intentions, character, thoughts, ideology, memories and needs are exactly the same. What about the differences in social, ethnic, genetic, physical, cultural, educational, developmental, psychological and economical backgrounds, conditions and/or histories that subtly or overtly influence, govern or shape them in this world?

Still, most lie detection experts or professionals do agree that there's no single reliable, definite or universal cue of lying or verbal deception. Also, any single cue doesn't convey anything so multiple cues need to put in a cluster. However, a cluster of different cues doesn't help until it is timely and smartly capitalized by the investigator in search of the truth or reality. Actually, a suspect, a criminal or an offender needs to confess the crime or offense verbally or it needs to be proven in the court with evidences.

Hence, analysis of nonverbal or body language cues in the real-time is only a tool. It can and does help a questioner, an interviewer or an interrogator to dig deeper in the mind of the person under scrutiny. If the investigator is well trained and/or skilled in statement analysis and speech (para-language) analysis then it gives a huge advantage. Sometimes, mental smartness works much better or efficiently than pressure, confrontation, intimidation or physical torture.

Actually, determining if a person is telling a lie or a truth just by observing her body language with bare eyes is a little difficult and challenging for most of us, without a formal training. Also, some of the nonverbal or body language or cues are too small, swift or subtle, to be detected with bare eyes. For example, blinks can be detected with bare eyes but 4% to 8% pupil dilation can't be. That's why we need an electronic device or tracker for sure.

Apart of the skill, training, practice and sharp eyes required to detect the subtle nonverbal cues; the success of a (counter-)intelligence officer/agent, lie detection professional, law enforcement officer, lie detection expert, forensic interviewer, interrogator or investigator depends on the ability to stay mentally calm, curious, focused and balanced. Sometimes, indirect questions and/or eliciting statements works like magic.

A scene from movie "Liar Liar" (1997)
(Image Courtesy: Universal Pictures)

Starting from finding the cues of deception in nonverbal behavior or body language, we've gradually developed several methods of lie detection. According to a paper published in 2023 by Dr. Tim Brennen and Dr. Svein Magnussen (Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway), there're seven different (available) methods of lie detection at present that have been most likely adapted by law enforcement or investigative agencies across the globe. Perhaps, it's the first time that you're coming to know about them. I didn't know about some of them, before reading the paper.

Along with the analysis of 1) Nonverbal Cues (or body language), 2) Systematic Analysis of Verbal Cues, 3) Manipulation of Statement Production, 4) Polygraphic Analysis, 5) Brain-based (Neuroscientific) Analysis, 6) Strategic Interviewing and 7) Analysis using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool have been included in the same list. Currently, AI based cue analysis is a slowly evolving method. However, it can certainly find and reveal the (kinds of) patterns that haven't been identified yet by us humans with organic or biological brains or intelligence.

Ability of deceiving (nonverbally) is very common in many creatures, including human beings. However, ability of lying or deceiving verbally could be reserved to human beings because we're the only species on this planet that can produce pre-specified sounds through our mouths. However, further research needs to done if other creatures have developed an ability of lying while using their own languages. Although one person can lie to the other person, no human being can lie to or or deceive any other creature verbally. Can you?

One of the 55 slides from my recent presentation
(Note: Please read #Special Note (below) for more details.)

Today, majority of the current human population is living inside the modern techno-industrial world. However, there're a few percent of people who do still live their lives in small groups, just like our remote ancestors did, hundreds or thousands of years ago. So why don’t we study Exactly how today’s tribal-indigenous-aborigional people catch a person while lying? It'll be quite interesting to find if they still rely on the nonverbal cues of lying or verbal deceit, just like most of our own ancestors or forefathers did or used to do over last thousands of years. Perhaps, tribal-indigenous-aborigional people might be using other methods or ordeals for confession.

However, both frequency and severity of massively damaging or devastating lies in the tribal-indigenous-aborigional world could be way more less in comparison to the modern techno-industrial world. The exact reasons behind the same could be the ones that do reveal the darker reality of the 'brighter' world in which millions of people get hallucinated, brainwashed, manipulated, intoxicated, illusioned, tricked, fooled, robbed, hunted, addicted, hijacked, enslaved, devastated or destroyed by convincing truths, fancier fictions, false promises, elaborate myths, powerful propaganda and/or above all - the utopian dreams.

Minimal requirements for living the life, higher frequency of face-to-face interactions, lesser (or no) materialistic ambitions, lesser (or no) personal possessions, higher level of interdependence, higher level of cooperation, greater emphasize on relations, smaller geographical territories, harsher punishments upon lying, strict moral obligations, smaller group sizes and higher level of empathy might have conditioned the tribal-indigenous-aborigional people to be more honest, truthful, realistic, verifiable and transparent.

"Surprisingly, how easily, quickly or foolishly you get convinced by a lie is entirely dependent on YOU only. Yes! It’s you and nobody else i. e. your very own mental processing capacity, prior knowledge, awareness, perception, prejudices, urgencies, (mis)beliefs, biases and/or needs."
- Body Language Insights (Book)

[#Special Note: This entire article has been inspired by and is partially based on the overall content of the same PowerPoint presentation that was given by me to students pursuing bachelor, masters and doctoral (Ph. D.) degrees and faculty members of National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU).

The article related to the same lecture-cum-presentation can be read here - My lecture at an International university.]

Related Articles:
1) *From Common Signs to Spotting Lies 2) Entire body can’t lie 3) Nonverbal Advantage in Investigation 4) My career saving lie detection 5) Face of liar(?) 6) Truth about Lying 7) Inside Interrogation Room 8) THE END of OVER-Generalization

Are human emotions really universal?

Dongria tribal girl
(Odisha, India)

The English word 'emotion' was adapted from the French word 'émouvoir' (pronounced as 'é-mou-vwa(r)'), back in 1579. The literal meaning of the original French word is "to stir up" or "to move". Emotions have a great power to stir us or move us inside out instantly. Having different emotions is a universal or the single-most common human quality. Expressions of some emotions do magically bridge the huge gaps, cross the international boundaries and bring millions of people together. Hence, we believe that everybody in this world has the exact same emotions as ours. Don't we? Almost everybody does, until an unexpected truth is told.

A few days ago, I watched a presentation on Big Think about human emotions. Among several insights shared by the presenting researcher, three were utterly shocking - 1) (All) Emotions aren't universal i. e. they aren't common across cultures. 2) Facial expressions of emotions aren't universal i. e. they aren't common across cultures. 3) There are no synonymous words for some emotions in the vocabularies of some languages e. g. 'fear'. Indeed, these are entirely upsetting or shocking facts for almost everybody of us who ardently believe in universality, enough to change facial expressions for a long time.

Dr. Paul Ekman (American psychologist) established universality of six basic emotional expressions through his observations with different groups of people, including members of Fore tribe located deep inside the forest of Papua New Guinea. After the same, training programs and tools have been developed on the basis of the same. Especially, those who have built their whole careers, courses, software applications and/or smartphone apps around it would find them very upsetting. Much to their surprise, Dr. Ekman himself agreed about cultural-specific emotions.

Dr. Paul Ekman walking along with
smiling tribal children (1967 - 1968)

These three facts totally disturb what has been taught over the last few decades to millions of people, including law enforcement, intelligence and security professionals around the world. While mentally adjusting with these scientifically proven facts, we need to investigate this deeply 'emotional' subject seriously. Are billions of people really divided into many groups that do experience emotions differently from each other? Or Is it only about the differences in labeling or describing emotions? Or Is it only a translation issue?

After watching the presentation, I started to think really harder over a few days about the three facts. Through this short article, I'm trying to share with you what I've come up with after brainstorming. Especially, if you're a researcher (independent or academic) then I'd kindly suggest to consider the key inputs while conducting further research about this most critical yet complicated subject having global consequences.

Currently, a massive amount of facial data might be getting fed to many Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for enabling them to recognize different emotions by reading facial expressions. If the same data has been selected by, for and of the members of a specific culture then Emotional AI (EAI) systems might misread the emotions of the members of other cultures by facial expressions. Isn't it totally wrong?

If you could just try to imagine this techno-tragic outcome personally affecting you in the near future then you'd realize exactly how serious are the implications of the belief in 'universality of human emotions (and their facial expressions)'. Actually, the dark rabbit hole goes much farther and deeper inside the ground. Perhaps, only neuroscientists might understand what I'm trying to say.

Facial Expressions of six basic emotions
identified by Dr. Paul Ekman

While trying to swallow the three utterly bitter facts very slowly and painfully, we simply can't deny the following possibilities (or realities?):

1) Some commonly shared experiences or inherited memories of some groups or communities have conditioned their members to experience some emotions more profoundly and frequently, in comparison to other emotions.

2) The neural connections and activation inside brains are slightly different in the people following different cultures, who don't experience, express and/or label the exact same emotional experiences.

3) Members of two entirely different types of cultures (e. g. collectivist vs. individualist) don't share the exact same reasons to invoke the exact same emotion e. g. anger (fight).

4) Some physical environments don't leave any reason to invoke some emotions in those who commonly share them e. g. an abundance doesn't lead to greed, envy or jealousy.

5) Some cultures have gradually succeeded in converting some emotional experiences into nonverbal expressions that don't involve facial muscle movements.

6) Some cultures systematically do encourage or educate their members to express some emotions through facial muscle movements, right from early childhood.

7) Some cultures systematically do train their members to completely suppress the nonverbal expressions of some emotions, right from early childhood.

8) Different cultural groups of people do use slightly different facial expressions to convey the exact same emotion e. g. happiness.

9) Some cultures systematically train their members to express some emotions in certain ways, right from early childhood.

For the languages that don't have the words synonymous to 'fear' in their vocabularies, a further investigation is required to prove or confirm if speakers of those languages really don't at all withdraw themselves nonverbally in the presence of a genuinely fearful stimulus e. g. a male tribal hunter accidentally confronting a tiger, a lion or a leopard in the close proximity while hunting wild animals for food.

Also, there's a great possibility that speakers of such languages have been describing the nonverbal expressions of fear graphically, in greater detail to help everybody in understanding the whole scene. How a person expressed nonverbally while experiencing fear might be worth describing for them than just saying "He was in great fear while encountering a tiger at a close distance".

Actually, it's almost impossible that fear (flight response) isn't a single-most universal or a commonly shared emotion. Hence, they might be expressing fear nonverbally and do recognize it as a genuine emotional response. However, they might not be labeling the same experience as 'fear' just like the speakers of other languages having the words synonymous to 'fear'.

An old shaman (spirit-man) from Waura tribe
living in Amazonian rainforest of Brazil

Try to imagine about people living deep inside a large tropical forest. They strictly follow an ancestral culture that greatly respects the territorial rights of the wild animals living in the same forest. How they do react upon sighting a tiger in a close proximity is labeled as 'a display of respect to the protector of forest'. However, the observers not following the same culture might simply label it as 'freezing in fear'.

Actually, screaming, making rapid body movements and running away does provoke some wild animals (big cats and bears) to chase and kill the runner. Hence, everybody is strictly trained by tribal elders to keep both hands steady, maintain total silence, hide weapons, stand still, keep looking ahead with wide open eyes while bending forward. Tigers don't attack them and just pass them by after doing so.

Some emotions could definitely be common across all cultures. However, other emotions or at least the triggering causes of emotional experiences aren't universal. Differences in cultures, conditioning, local environments and/or shared experiences might have led to shaping, modifying, recognizing, categorizing and/or labeling various emotional experiences slightly differently.

Indeed, emotion triggering causes, intensities of emotional experiences, physiological effects of emotional experiences and nonverbal expressions of emotions may not be commonly shared across cultures. Also, they may not evenly be shared, by all member of a family, a group, a culture, a society or a community. They're entirely context dependent or contextual.

Face masks showing different emotional expressions

As a human being, one of the greatest challenge for you is to recognize the different emotions of the people who matter you the most in your life. If you're doing it accurately and timely then you're a good 'mind reader' already. However, your attention to details, contextual awareness and level of empathy are the factors that determine the accuracy.

[#GLOBAL APPEAL: Irrespective of the slighter differences in our intelligence, perception, emotions, thoughts, priorities, motivations, perspectives and experiences; Compassion is the single greatest and universal human quality. It can ensure the continuation of our species while preventing the disastrous outcomes of our ruthless actions, decisions and creations. However, our passive optimism isn't doing anything for us and it never did. We need an active optimism.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are still growing, learning and developing within human control (hopefully!), it's a greatest moral responsibility of all whistle-blowers, organizations, governments, politicians, institutions, journalists, philosophers, agencies, academics, researchers, scientists, developers, futurists, influencers, thinkers, leaders and experts to unite for creating boundaries, regulations, rail-guards, brakes, limits, ethics, rules and/or laws.

We won't get a second chance to do the same in future. That's why we all need focused, resolute, unanimous, consistent, collective, committed, coordinated, transparent and accountable efforts taken at a global scale.

Are we not at all answerable to our own children and next generations?]

Related Articles:
1) Chicken and Egg Paradox 2) Basic Emotional Expressions 3) Would aliens have emotions? 4) Can body language reveal thoughts? 5) Is Human Communication 93% Nonverbal? 6) Artificial Intelligence and Body Language 7) Human Interactions in AI Era 8) THE END of OVER-Generalization

Body Language under Stress

The Stress Meter

You’re sitting alone inside your car. You’re driving it back to your home. The long main road of your city is totally empty at midnight. You don’t at all need to need to stop at red light, shift gears and apply breaks frequently. Hence, you’re taking the liberty to drive faster than normal. To fully and freely enjoy this small trip back to your home, you’re playing a nice song inside your car.

Perhaps, this is the first time you’re enjoying the emptiness of the road after years. Without any cars, motorcycles and public transport vehicles moving on the roads, you’re feeling as if you’re the king or the queen of the road. Your whole body is relaxed and posture is slumped. You’re breathing at a normal rate. You’re tapping fingers to the musical bits on the soft steering wheel.

After driving a few kilometers, you arrive a few meters before a spot where a narrow road joins to the main road. As you're certain that the narrow road is hardly used by drivers and riders, you just keep on driving carelessly. Without blowing the horn, a motorcyclist starts approaching towards you rapidly on the same narrow road. For now, you can see only the bright headlights of the vehicle.

The motorcyclist suddenly comes very close to your car before taking a sharp turn on the main road. To avoid an accident, you quickly turn the car in the opposite direction and apply breaks. The motorcycle simply disappears in darkness and you feel trapped inside your own car with boiling blood. You’re no longer the same person as you were, just a very few moments ago. Aren’t you?

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) instantly prepares your whole body for handling the emergency with physical force. Your breathing rate touches the ceiling. Your heart starts beating faster than it normally does. Your eyes almost fall out of their sockets. Muscles of your hands and legs get tighter. Your belly gets pulled inside. Overall, you become very tense and disturbed.

You just can’t rapidly chase the motorcyclist, stop him in the road and punish for his great mistake. However, you loose your composure and start cursing the motorcyclist who simply took off like a bullet without an apology. You’re extremely angry at the moment and it’s totally valid. By upsetting you, the frightening uncertainty has just swiftly passed you by. Didn’t it?

After a few minutes, you start calming down slowly with your mouth running tirelessly against the reckless motorcyclist. You reach home and go asleep. An episode of extreme anger ends within hours. You’re totally normal at the next morning. Thank a lot to your Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) that works for calming you down and relaxing your entire body.

Our brain partly works as a pattern finding machine that looks for certainty or predictability. Along with the same, it tries to find, devise or create solutions for different issues, problems and challenges to stay in control, as much as possible. Unlike short lasting episodes of anger or fear, stress is a subconscious response against the feeling or perception of both uncertainty and unpredictability or lack of control.

If you simply assume that any kind of stress is bad but you’re totally wrong. Actually, mild stress or a short lasting episode of stress is good for performance. We become stimulated or alert and our senses become hyper receptive to get as much as information from surrounding. The mild or short lasting episode of stress silently motivates and prepares us to perform better. Such stress is good!

Matter of fact is that a normal level of the stress inducing hormone called as cortisol helps us in staying alert and focused in the morning after walking away from bed. On the contrary, secretion of cortisol gets lower to allow the whole body to relax, repair and rejuvenate during the night. Our body silently follows a routine cycle of both low and normal levels of cortisol secretion.

Stress: Severity or long duration is problematic.

The problem caused by stress is due to its severity or long duration. It changes the chemistry of blood with higher levels of cortisol and glucose. Brain prepares the whole body for either fighting with or running away from the issue, problem and challenge. However, it remains unused due to not working on or acting upon in absence of a solution, strategy or plan.

It’s almost certain or predictable that if you see a lion approaching you on a grassy plain then you start running away from it in fear to save your life. You simply can’t control the lion but you can definitely act upon a survival solution. You know or you’ve learned how to save your precious life with certainty and running away is in your total control at the moment. Isn’t it?

Unlike an actual physical situation that activates either fight or flight reaction, we’ve not yet perfectly evolved or developed in handling non-physical or psychological issues, problems and challenges due to uncertainty and unpredictability or lack of control. Even just thinking about such tricky or complicated situation can lead to stress.

Today's world presents a lot of such issues, problems and challenges that induce the feeling of uncertainty and unpredictability (of an outcome) and lack of control over life. Long traffic jams, inability to pay mortgage (loan) on time, threatened employment/job, crisis in relations, unhealthy competition or work pressure are some of them.

Being under mental stress for over a long time makes you feel as if a long and strong python has tightly wrapped itself around your whole body. The presence of higher level of cortisol and glucose in blood makes it thicker and blood pressure is increased above the normal level. Lungs and heart start working above their normal levels.

Identifying the signs or symptoms of a severe or a prolonged episode of stress can be done by not only observing, analyzing or reading the body language but also carefully studying the social, emotional and cognitive behaviors of a person. The insights given below will definitely help you in doing the same.

1) Basically, any kind of stress makes posture stiff or tense. Hyper vigilance and restlessness can be observed in body movements. However, posture of a severely stressed person can appear saggy and/or closed due to utter helplessness or despair. Due to a severe or a prolonged episode of stress, some people go into depression due to inability to manage it effectively.

2) A stressed person can be seen breathing uncomfortably, exhaling breath rapidly or blowing air through mouth. Also, the location of breathing changes from belly to chest to pump in as much as oxygen from the air. Additionally, such person can be seen engaged in excessive and prolonged self-comforting, self-soothing or pacifying touches.

3) Severe, extreme or sustained stress negatively affects logical reasoning or rational thinking. A stressed person shows a greater amount of sensitivity to emotional cues in words, pictures or images and reacts to them emotionally or impatiently than responding thoughtfully or patiently. Such person gets irritated or hurt easily.

4) A stressed person shows inaccuracy while rapidly accessing or evaluating emotional cues on faces on other people. Surprisingly, such person can inaccurately evaluate a two year old child making a direct eye contact with her with downward face as ‘Anger’ although it’s a baseline or normal eye contact, look or gaze of the child.

5) Letting frustration out or being aggressive can be seen at a greater frequency (or more than normal) in the person who’re already aggressive or dominating in nature. In general, the level of empathy, kindness or compassion gets decreased in the person who is going through a severe or a prolonged episode of stress.

6) A stressed person feels a great amount of difficulty in learning new things or lessons (from others or from her own experiences). Such person can’t shift to new strategies or think differently. Also, such person starts behaving as if what was taught or learned has been partially or completely forgotten.

7) When it comes to working, a severely stressed person can neither stay focused on the tasks in her hands at present nor switch between them as easily or effortlessly as it normal does. Also, such person makes unusual mistakes while talking, working, performing and delivering tasks.

8) Of course, a stressed person can’t sleep calmly at night due to abnormally high levels of cortisol and glucose in her blood. The lack of sleep and mental relaxation makes the person to act, move, work, behave and express abnormally. Stress feeds to foolishness!

9) A severe or chronically stressed individual doesn't seem to enjoy what she is doing, eating, working on or having in her life. Such person appears to lack her normal level of energy or enthusiasm. The person appears fatigued or exhausted.

10) A severe or chronically stressed individual can't judge, access or evaluate risks more accurately or efficiently that ultimately leads to recklessness or rashness. Also, such person behaves more selfishly.

Did you have a good sleep last night?

In today's complex, connected and dynamic world, chronic or severe mental stress is the enemy number one of the social health. I've personally seen that how otherwise normal, empathetic, compassinate and pro-social persons under chronic or severe mental stress start reacting to other people, evaluating the challenging situations or thinking about the life.

[#MENTAL Climate Crisis: Not just a person issue, problem or challenge but the physical environment can also be the source of stress, anxiety, distress and depression. No matter how harder we try to ignore it, it leaves a deeper and far fetching impact on our subconscious mind.

This is clearly evident and prevalent in today's world in which entire global population is experiencing the climate change, witnessing terrifying natural disasters and facing the severe changes in climatic conditions in every part of the planet.

Morover, severe and frequent heat waves due to global warming alone can greatly affect the normal functioning of the whole brain, only for the worst. It can lead to aggression, impulsiveness, strokes or dullness.]

Related Articles:
1) Body Language in Depression 2) Basic body responses in stressful situations 3) Turtle Effect: Body response under threat 4) Fear Factor 5) Surprise vs. Startle Reflex 6) Amygdala Hijack: Irrational Physical Reactions 7) Chicken and Egg Paradox 8) The Body Seeking Comfort

Body Language of Extreme Psychopath

Just a 'bad child' or
A Psychopath?

Can you tell that Who is a Successful Predator? A successful predator is the not just the one who kills for living but the one who knows very well that who its preys are and where they are found in the first place. To succeed in hunting, a successful predator detects the weakness in its prey quickly, alienates the prey from others tactically, kills it mercilessly, satisfies its hunger peacefully and leaves behind the carcass calmly.

We can easily and quickly identify the wild predators just by looking at their physical features, traits and characteristics like extremely acute sensory organs, muscular limbs, wider jaws, sharper teeth, retractable claws and camouflage. By knowing their characteristics and key behavioral patterns, we can manage to stay away from them and save our lives. Our remote ancestors achieved the same and that’s why we are here.

What if you face a predator putting on a mask of a human? What if an ordinary looking individual turns out to be an abuser or a criminal? Can you identify such individual who might be moving around you in the same room at present? How quickly and accurately you can identify such social predators? Until you don’t know what kind of the person is exactly, these questions cannot be answered at all.

Like cruel, cunning and calculative predators; a very few of us are quite untruthful, unethical, deceptive, careless, cruel, irresponsible, impulsive, emotionally detached and also lacking remorse, guilt or empathy. An individual having this serious anti-social personality disorder (ASPD) is called as a Psychopath (Psycho). Fundamentally, the extreme psychopaths view other individuals as their preys, pawns, puppets or slaves.

Empathy is the critical pro-social quality.
(Image Courtesy: American Psychological Association)

Basically, what makes an individual an extreme psychopath is higher sensitivity towards rewards and lesser or complete lack of sensitivity towards pains, sufferings and distress in others which include both humans and non-humans. Deep inside their brains, Amygdala (emotional center) shows lesser or no electrical activities when psychopaths are exposed to emotional stimulus especially the fearful ones.

Although only 1 individual out of every 100 person is a psychopath, psychopaths make upto 25% of prison population in North America. Thus every psychopath isn't always a murderer or a serial killer but all psychopaths are involved in anti-social activities, actions and decisions which pose serious threats to individuals, groups, families or communities they belong to or they stare at as predators.

Following are the body language clues given by extreme psychopaths:

1) They don't give emotional/affective reactions to situations, scenes and also the words which induce emotions in others.

2) They keep on adding up anger inside themselves for many days and suddenly break down into abuse and violence.

3) They are very bad or worst in mimicking the emotional facial expressions that are seen on faces of other individuals.

4) They try to find a weakness or a vulnerability in other individuals, by carefully watching them for several days.

5) They act to express one emotion on behalf of the other i. e. a smile or a scorn on behalf of a sad face.

6) They express no timidity, fear, shame, shyness, stress and nervousness through their body language.

7) They touch to dominate, control or hurt others than empathizing them in stress, pain or suffering.

8) They are highly accurate and quick in picking fear on the faces of other individuals.

9) They appear very charming, confident, bold, attractive and persuasive publicly.

10) They are very poor and sloppy in picking negative emotion like sadness.

11) They stare for a very long time without any emotions on their faces.

12) They appear very calm and cool while facing stressful situations.

13) They don't feel the emotions but they do try to act like they do.

14) They make no or a very few head movements while talking.

15) They appear bored in absence of any arousing activities.

16) They mostly speak very smoothly and in neutral tone.

17) They tactically separate their preys from the others.

18) They flirt with the individuals of opposite genders.

19) They express no anxiety for the sad individuals.

20) They do make a very good first impression.

Although both narcissist and psychopath share some common behavioral traits, a psychopath is mostly born but a narcissist and a sociopath is mostly made. While narcissists demand a great amount of attention and special treatment due extremely higher sense of self-worth, psychopaths seek enormous amount of power, control and prestige. They also have the 'Final Solutions' for serious social issues due to over-generalization of people.

Predatory Stare is common among psychopathic killers.

Although psychopaths feel the physical pain themselves, they don't express emotions even while watching a scene which normally causes the distress in all other individuals at varying levels or upsets their stomachs at worst. Laws, morals values, rules, regulations and rights of others are barriers on the path of achieving success, dominance, power and wealth for psychopaths in the first place so they disregard them.

Following are the overall behavioral characteristics, patterns and clues of extremely psychopathic individuals:

1) They are involved in promiscuous sexual relations or have multiple sex partners (outside marital/committed relation).

2) They have the egocentricity or the extremely higher sense of self-worth in comparison to all other individuals.

3) They have very poor or lack of control over their behaviors due to absence of fear about the consequences.

4) They are very glib individuals who have a shallow or superficial charm. They are highly intelligent.

5) They lack the kind of emotional intensity, depth and vividity which most of us experience.

6) They are naturally prone to boredom. Also, they can’t hold frustration for a long time.

7) They are the pathological liars and they possess mastery in deceiving the others.

8) They have a parasitic lifestyle i. e. they do keep on sucking others for living.

9) They are the con-artists, irregular, insincere and unproductive in work lives.

10) They are very irresponsible so they easily get away with wrongdoings.

11) They have a history of theft, bullying or setting fire in early childhood.

12) They have a poor sense about What is wrong and What is right.

13) They take credit for the work that others have done for them.

14) They are very careless about the well-being about of others.

15) Their behavior changes drastically after establishing rapport.

16) They dump individuals after their need(s) is (not) fulfilled.

17) They lack realistic and long-term plans in their own lives.

18) They inflict pain and harm to animals in early childhood.

19) They manipulate others into fulfilling their own desires.

20) They fail to establish strong and long-lasting relations.

21) They are extremely bold and risk-taking individuals.

22) They over-admire somebody in very first meeting.

23) They put blame on others for their own failures.

24) They lack intellectual depth in their thoughts.

25) They like to see other individuals in trouble.

Generally, males are known to be extremely psychopathic by most, due to high levels of testosterone. However, a very few percentage of females or women too are extremely psychopathic. Female psychopaths are mostly involved in love bombing, gaslighting, pretending, playing victim card, developing relationship with victims, deceiving, insulting and abusing their partners, gossiping excessively and excluding or forming alliances against their victims.

All extreme psychopaths always don’t end up behind the bars but they have a greatest potential of devising, planning for and inflicting serious and permanent damages to individuals, families, groups, communities, entire humanity and also its overall future if they are allowed to behave, operate, manipulate and make decisions as they like to with lack of conscience, morality, responsibility, empathy and remorse.

"Every psychopath is a (extreme) narcissist but not every (extreme) narcissist is a psychopath."
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula
(World leading expert on Narcissism)

Ted Bundy (Psychopath)
Charming Serial Killer

What sets apart an empathetic and pro-social person from a psychopathic one is the great sense of consequences if another person is hurt or if a rule is broken etc. The psychopaths have poor or lack of connectivity between Amygdala (emotional center for fear and anxiety) and Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) which is responsible for social and emotional/affective decision-making (executive) functions such as inducing empathy and guilt.

Unlike the wild yet easily identifiable predators from a distance, the looks, appearance and impression can be deceptive in human world. There are quite chances that you face a psychopath in your entire life at least once or multiple times. Perhaps, you might end up falling into a trap set by a psychopath.

Psychopathy in children can be detected at an early age, as early as 3rd year of age. So if you are a parent, a custodian and a caretaker then you must pay very close attention to your own children's social behavior, actions and activities around other children. Also, children born to the narcissistic parents can turn into psychopaths.

Almost everybody of us share at least one or multiple behavioral traits out of above 25 behavioral traits/clues of the extreme psychopaths so the next great questions are How one can find if a person you think is a psychopath (psycho)? and How psychopathic the person is exactly?

Is Dexter Morgan a typical serial-killing psychopath? Most of the audience conviniently believe he is the one. However, Dr. Todd Grande has analyzed him or profiled his fictional character thoroughly. Just patiently watch what exactly he has found about him.

If you are really interested, curious or even anxious to know the same then you can use this online tool to find if an individual you think is psychopathic and how much psychopathic he/she is exactly. If the score goes above 30 then it's a truly danger sign and a wakeup call.

By the way, there are some common or shared behavioral and psychological traits among Narcissists, Sociopaths and Psychopaths. Also, sociopaths are often called as 'angry psychopaths'.

[Special Note: World's renowned expert in Psychopathy, Canadian forensic psychologist and professor emeritus of University of British Columbia Dr. Robert D. Hare created the checklist (PCL-R) with 20 different traits put under the same to decide the total psychopathic score.]

Related Articles:
1) Body Language of Extreme Narcissist 2) The Face of Liar(?) 3) Confident Body Language 4) Truth about Lying 5) Are you a 'flying' terrorist? 6) Fear Factor 7) Body Image and Social Communication 8) Body Language of James Bond 9) Amygdala Hijack: Irrational Physical Reactions 10) Sympathy vs. Empathy

Reading Body Language - Baseline

Many body language experts, behavioral analysts or social readers confidently claim of being able to read any individual quickly by assuming that a particular behavior has a fixed meaning universally e. g. crossing hands over chest is a defensive stance. Additionally, there are thousands of books, presentations, articles and videos which are filled with many of such quick body language reading tips that can instantaneously turn an ordinary individual into a so-called 'master people reader'. However, the great question is that Has it really helped many of us in becoming a real expert?

We tend to conveniently ignore that every individual isn’t exactly identical to other even in a small group of closely related people. Although there are a lot of fundamental similarities among all of us, everybody isn’t exactly the same while perceiving, moving, behaving, speaking, expressing, reacting and interacting with others. Therefore, it’s really important to know how an individual normally moves, behaves, speaks, expresses, reacts and interacts in normal, routine, comfortable and stress-free situations, conditions and circumstances.

This detailed and attentive process is called as establishing the Baseline of an individual’s behaviors. Once we establish the baseline of an individual, we can easily detect changes happening in real time when the same individual is experiencing stress and discomfort. Being able to establish the accurate baseline is the key to detect deviations, anomalies or nuances in the same because they silently convey that something is off e. g. an outgoing, talkative and socially interacting young man suddenly starts staying all alone, silent and secretive.

Developing a good rapport with an individual within a less amount of time to establish its baseline is what highly successful interrogators, lie detectors, undercover agents and intelligence officers do before they start asking serious questions. Once the (sufficient) baseline is established, they can detect subtle changes is body movements, postures, gestures, facial expressions and speech quite easily and accurately. By doing the same, they can quickly pick (level of) stress and discomfort in responses from the individual.

Although Polygraph machine isn’t unanimously and universally considered as a reliable tool for detecting deception, establishing the baseline is the starting point of polygraph tests. The individual who is subjected to the polygraph test is asked a few normal questions like name, gender, birth date, birth place, color of dress, today’s date etc. which don’t induce stress and discomfort. It’s done to establish the baseline of physiological responses so that deviations, anomalies or nuances in them can be accurately detected later.

Establishing the baseline isn’t only game changing in interpreting an individual’s body language in motion but also still images especially portrait photographs. Recently, while looking at Miss Universe 2021 Harnaaz Sandhu’s portrait photo on cover page of Vogue magazine’s Indian edition, I really wondered if she was showing an expression of contempt on her face or not. Did Winning the Miss Universe title for India after 21 years turn her into a contemptuous lady?

Miss Universe 2021 Harnaaz Sandhu (India)

Understanding the great importance of establishing baseline before arriving to wrong conclusion, I checked a few of solo photographs from her earlier life. This confirmed that asymmetrical smile on her face was not about winning the crown but it's the way she has been portraying smile on her face from her childhood. I guess that she might have undergone a rigorous and prolonged training to break her smile baseline especially in front of people.

Establishing baseline is at the core of accurately detecting changes with their severity in real time. It's also very important to keep in mind that Behavioral Baseline can and does change with and/or due to (change in) age, occupation, experience, influence, training, conditioning and learning.

Related Articles:
1) Hand Gestures 2) Facial Expressions 3) Postures 4) Para Language 5) Micro Expressions 6) Context 7) Proxemics 8) Congruence 9) Clusters 10) Challenges 11) Interpretation 12) Asymmetrical Smile but not Contempt 13) Face of liar(?) 14) Inside Interrogation Room 15) Truth about Lying 16) Artificial Intelligence and Body Language