Body Language Analysis: Dan Andrews' alleged fall
Dan Andrews—Alleged Fall and Potential Deception
Yesterday, Colin Ector, our Statement Analyst shared his fascinating analysis on Dan Andrews’ statement surrounding his alleged fall. Dan Andrews, Premier of Victoria, Australia, allegedly slipped and fell on wet stairs while holidaying. However, there are reports that he was involved in an incident at a high-flyer’s party with a seventeen-year-old girl and then beaten up by the father of the girl’s friend.
I hadn’t heard the rumours and was surprised to learn about them when I read Ector’s article. I was also intrigued to read Ector’s findings. Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued, which brings me here today with my body language analysis of the same statement.
Dan Andrews—Nonverbal Behaviour and Body Language Analysis
The first thing I noticed was Andrews’ facial expression at the very start of his statement. It’s between surprise and fear, two expressions that share similar characteristics. In Andrews’ expression, we see the emotion of surprise in the eyes and fear in the eyes and mouth.
The second thing I noticed was a remarkable resemblance to Wallace, from Wallace and Gromit.
And the third thing I noticed was the way Andrews’ wife, Catherine, looked at him—and the similarity with the famous image of Wallace and Gromit.
Humour aside, let’s get on with the behaviour analysis. I’m looking for facial expressions of emotion, mismatches between words and behaviour and anything else I find notable. Mismatches with emotional state and words, or body language and words are the closest we can get to potential deception. Let’s see what Andrews behaviour is telling us.
Dan Andrews’ Statement
Dan Andrews:
“As I'm coming back to work ahh I thought it was appropriate to update you on where things are at but also to tell you a bit more about, my story, our story of these last few months. We’d been down the Beach ah having a family weekend.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
Andrews draws attention to his words, “As I’m coming back to work”, with a raising of the eyebrows, a behaviour which acts as a nonverbal punctuation mark. It’s interesting to note that Ector picked up that starting with this comment shows it is sensitive to him and likely shows awareness that he has not spoken for a considerable amount of time and that many are wondering why, and what happened.
As Andrews says, “ahh”, we see the facial expression of contempt, with a one-sided, outward stretch of the mouth (Andrews’ left side).
We see the same emotion of contempt on Catherine Andrews’ face as Dan Andrews says, “where things are at”. While we know this is a reliable account of her emotional state, we can only speculate why.
Ector noted that Andrews changes, “my story”, to “our story”, explaining it’s about him, with his wife as an afterthought or potentially not being present. Andrews’ behaviour backs this up with a hand gesture towards his wife. There is no hand gesture towards himself, only towards his wife. We have to ask why it’s so important for Andrews to correct himself to include his wife. Is it to score political points and/or to show he and his wife are together.
What’s interesting is Catherine Andrews’ expression at this point (“my story, our story”), where she quickly looks downwards, usually seen in the expression of sadness and shame. Then we see movement in her lips. It’s hard to see what exactly this is, as we only see one side of her face as she loyally faces towards her husband (for almost the entire statement). It appears to be a quivering of the lips (sometimes seen with or before the expression of sadness). Then we see a definite stretching of the lips, which if one-sided, is another expression of contempt.
We see another eyebrow punctuator on, “my story, our story” and again on, “we’d been down the beach”. These parts of ‘the story’ are worthy or drawing our attention to. Why?
There’s a notable vocal inflexion on the word beach. Typically, when we ask a question, inflexion occurs at the end of the question. In other words, our pitch raises. There’s a problem here because “we’d been down the beach” is not a question it’s a statement. People speak with an inflexion at the end of statements when being deceptive, when they aren’t confident and it can also be a habit. In Australia, it’s not part of the accent, but it is fairly common as a habit. In Andrews’ case, it probably is a habit—he does it a lot. Is it just a habit though, or is he always being deceptive?
It surprises me when people in powerful positions speak with an inflexion because the speaker can be perceived as not confident, competent or credible. When this happens, likeability drops. Why a politician doesn’t implement a simple change like this is beyond me 🤷🏻♀️. Dan, if you’re reading this, you can learn more about it here: Is Up-Speak Killing your Credibility?
Dan Andrews:
“ It was a bit of a bit of a chance to have some time together and to make up for the fact that summer had been really busy and a holiday that had been planned hadn't happened.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
As Andrews says, “had been planned” and “hadn’t happened”, we see another eyebrow punctuator, drawing our attention to his words. Why are these important in this story?
At the end of the statement, Andrews looks downwards, usually seen in the emotion of sadness or shame. The video editing immediately cuts to the next clip, leaving us with little opportunity to observe other behaviours.
What’s interesting is that Ector, in his statement analysis, noted Andrews might have a reason to persuade us that this is why he was there, possibly indicating another reason for being away.
At the end of the statement, Catherine Andrews gives a visible gulp. We all have to swallow and this could be a reflection of the stress she is facing, but since behaviours happen in real-time, we have to question whether there is/was animosity surrounding the holiday that didn’t happen?
Dan Andrews:
“And I'm making my way to the car to head off to work and ahh it had been raining not sure it was raining at the time, but it had been raining.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
As Ector noted, if Andrews was on holiday, as he says, why was he going to work? There is missing information. What’s notable here, in terms of behaviour is a movement in the eyebrows, scientifically referred to as action unit 4 (AU 4 / Brow Lowerer). AU 4 is seen in several negative emotions, but here, in the absence of other action units of the eyebrows, it relates to the expression of anger or shows focus (visual or mental). The mechanism of this facial movement allows us to physically focus on something, which is why we see it when people attempt to visually see something more clearly. It's also the reason why this movement happens during the emotion of anger, because focus during anger helps to respond to the source of the anger. If this isn’t a suppressed emotion/expression of anger, it shows Andrews is making a specific attempt at mental focus. Is he focusing on what comes next or was there animosity about him having to go to work? Or something else? We can be certain about the meaning of behaviour, but not about where the behaviours stem from mentally.
Dan Andrews:
“As I put my foot onto the first step, I knew I was in trouble. I didn't really connect with the step. It just slid straight off. I became airborne almost. So I'm hor, horizontal with the step. And then all I could hear was just this Almighty crunch. And that's when I knew. I knew that when I heard the crunch, I thought that’s This is serious. We're in trouble here.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
In Ector’s article, he made reference to Andrews punching his fist on the word crunch. This happened twice. Ector’s expertise is in statement analysis and mine in nonverbal behaviour. As a non-specialist in the area, Ector noted the behaviour as interesting, wondering what my thoughts were. It's not an innate gesture so we can’t tie it to an emotion or feeling, making it less reliable. It’s an illustrator used to deliberately communicate additional meaning to his words to help us to interpret them. Still, I agree it’s interesting because the sound and action are not reflective of a crunch. They are reflective of a punch or a hit. Perhaps this gesture was used to illustrate Andrews landing or being hit.
Dan Andrews:
“Cath must have heard me groaning in pain. I couldn't yell out she comes and finds me. A few moments later. It felt like an eternity because I sort of couldn't breathe I could only the most shallow breaths in and out.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
Here we see a misalignment between words and behaviour. As Andrews says, “Cath must have heard me groaning in pain”, he shakes his head. There’s some evidence that a headshake is innate, with footage of bonobos, our close relatives, head-shaking while communicating to their young not to do something. When we see a misalignment and especially a misalignment with universal behaviours, it’s a red flag. However, I have to add that a misaligned headshake is often observed in truthful accounts too. I see this a lot as people are explaining something where there is disbelief. For example, when recounting a traumatic experience. The headshake in these instances appears to stem from the thought of the negative experience as a whole. This could be happening here. However, like Ector said, surely Andrews would know whether his wife heard him groaning or not. This is an odd thing to add into his statement.
Cath Andrews:
“It was awful cause you were going blue and we were looking at each other and I was thinking, you're gonna die, here in Sorento at this holiday house and you were looking at me and you felt the same.”
Dan Andrews:
“Ahh Cath called the ambulance ahh and she called my close personal protection detail er the Victoria police detail the two guys that are with me 24/7, they were parked just a few houses down the Street waiting for me to drive out. Ahh I can remember the Ambos getting there and they gave me one of those green whistles, but because I had broken ribs, they knew I had broken ribs. They said, don't breathe on that too hard or it'll make you cough. But it wasn't until I got the line into my arm and into my hand and gave me ahh some pretty significant pain relief that things kind of settled.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
We see another headshake and Andrews says, “with me 24/7”. This misalignment makes sense because obviously, the two guys from Victoria police are not actually with him 24/7. Do they not sleep? Do they toilet together? They obviously weren’t with him at the time if his wife needed to call them. This is a misalignment between words and behaviour, however, it isn’t significant. It’s not irrelevant though, because it shows Andrews does shake his head while saying something affirmative and while not telling the truth.
We see another misalignment between words and actions as Andrews says “they knew I had broken ribs”. Again this isn’t significant within context. The behaviour we see is a one-sided shoulder shrug, a fragment of a full shrug (both shoulders). A full shrug shows somebody is confident in the words they speak, while a fragment of it, a shrug with just one shoulder, shows a lack of confidence in the words they speak. Andrews’ left shoulder rises and falls as he says, “they knew I had broken ribs”. Of course they didn't ‘know’. Yes, they probably suspected, but didn’t have the evidence to be certain.
Dan Andrews:
“Look, the ambos did a fantastic job and I'm proud of them and I'm grateful to them. Ahh But I've never experienced anything like this. I've never really been injured. I've never been admitted to hospital in all my life. I've never broken a bone.”
Behaviour and Body Language Analysis:
Dan Andrews makes an attempt to conceal his emotion. He’s trying hard to hold it together.
As Andrews says, “the ambos did a fantastic job”, he shakes his head. This piqued my interest as a red flag, however, it was teamed with tight lips (an indicator of distress) and a forced controlling of his expression. His eyes look like they are going to pop out of his head. Andrews is emotional at this point, making an attempt to conceal it. It's likely this is the mental source of his headshake. His voice quivers. He’s trying hard to hold it together. I wonder if he had been ‘man enough’ to show his emotion, whether we would have different perceptions of him. I’m sure some would perceive that as ‘wussy’ (as they say in Australia) and others would perceive it as authentic and strong.
As always, my drive for writing articles is to educate people to give them a greater understanding of the true feelings of others, as well as to improve the way they communicate. I hope you find the explanations and meanings of body language and other nonverbal behaviour useful. And that you can use the information to improve interactions and relationships.
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If you haven’t already watched Andrews giving his statement, you can watch it below and be sure to check out Ector’s article which focuses on Andrews words.
