MAM Body Language Analysis: Sandra Morris, Steven's Cousin
Chapter 1 / Episode 1 / Sandra Morris
Reminder–Purpose of Blog
When I write, for both this blog and my general body language blog, I aim to empower people to read and understand body language, so that they can spot the same behaviours within their daily lives and present the best versions of themselves to others.
Sandra Morris is Called to Testify
Distancing Behaviours
Dislike, Discomfort and Disrespect
Sandra Morris, Steven’s cousin, sits back in her chair, swivelled sideways against the bench, her head tilted slightly away as she waits to be sworn in to give her testimony at the trial. This is distancing behaviour. She is physically increasing the distance between the situation and herself.
We do this when confronted with an object, topic or person that we don’t like. In this case, we can assume that Morris views the topic and the fact that she’s been called to testify, as undesirable. But there could be more. Most likely this dislike extends to the people present—the prosecution. Perhaps even to objects, the video camera for example.
The direction of Morris’ chair forces her eye gaze to be projected from the corners of her eyes as she looks towards the direction of the court. She’s nonverbally indicating that she’s not interested. She doesn’t want to participate.
Reminiscent of the behaviour of a stroppy teenager, Morris is being dismissive and disrespectful. The extreme version of this would be to turn her back completely (she’s halfway there), which in this situation is out of the bounds of social noms.
If she was engaged, interested, willing to participate and being respectful, she would have swivelled her chair towards the court so that she could face them and look directly towards them.
Physiological Effects of Stress
As Morris waits, her chest rises and falls, she’s breathing fairly heavily under the stress of the trial. This is nothing to be concerned about, all it tells us is that she’s feeling the pressure, which, under the circumstances is normal behaviour.
Physiological changes in the functioning of our body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, sweating and blink rate, all increase when we are aroused, as with an increase of stress.
Polygraph (lie detector) testing measures and records all but the latter of these changes in the body. These changes are not indicative that lying is present, but they do typically increase when someone is lying. Because when we lie our brain doesn't like it, and so the pressure of the act of lying creates feelings of stress and subtle changes in the body occur.
Like with body language auditing, polygraph testing cannot directly detect deception. However, observing and decoding nonverbal behaviours including physiological changes can help us to understand the true feelings of others, pointing us in the direction of the truth.
It’s this understanding that allows us to formulate and adapt our own responses as we make these observations, which, with the right questioning and collection of evidence can lead to the truth. They can’t tell you what the truth is, but they can tell you where to look to find it.
Stress Behaviours
Self-Soothing Behaviours
Like with physiological changes there are other nonverbal cues that can indicate stress or discomfort. These are ‘self-soothing’, or ‘pacifying’ behaviours.
There are different kinds of self-soothing behaviours and we all have our favourites. Some we do occasionally, others we do often, potentially turning into habits. Often, they involve touching, scratching, squeezing, rubbing, stroking, biting or licking one part of the body with another part (typically the hand). For example, hair twirling, neck or face touching, arm scratching, lip licking and nail biting.
Other self-soothing behaviours involve movements of the body that are repetitive, such as rocking or swaying, finger or foot tapping, leg bouncing or swivelling on a chair. Sometimes we pacify with objects, for example, twiddling a pen or repetitively clicking the end of it, twanging an elastic band or playing with objects as you would with a stress ball. Occasionally we’ll even soothe ourselves by touching or stroking a loved one, for example a mother stroking her daughter’s hair.
Stress and Deception
These self-soothing behaviours tend to increase during stress and discomfort because we are trying to bring comfort to ourselves. When stress levels increase due to lying, so do these behaviours.
It’s therefore easy to see where certain body language myths come from; nose touching and ear pulling as signals of deception spring to mind. These are simply self-soothing behaviours and we can’t view them as lying behaviours, because they can be present when someone is telling the truth, just as much as when someone is telling a lie. Furthermore, they are not always present when someone is being deceptive.
Let’s throw in another caveat; we also indulge in these behaviours to bring more comfort to an already pleasant moment. Twirling one’s hair while reading a good book or watching television is a classic example of this.
Generally, when looking for indicators of deception, I disregard these physiological and behavioural indicators of stress. I do however observe and note them, using them to gain an understanding of the bigger picture of how the subject is feeling emotionally.
It’s fairly easy to decipher between someone self-soothing for stress or pleasure, once you get used to looking at other factors such as facial expressions. It’s possible that a subject may have a sudden and unusual spike of stress indicators in response to a specific stimulus (for example a question presented during a trial). This can serve as a red flag if it differs against the baseline (the usual behaviour) and emotional baseline of the person.
These red flags don’t necessarily indicate deception, but they do alert us to something being not quite right; an area that would require further questioning or investigation to be able to understand where this is coming from and what it means.
Context is important too. Imagine a sudden spike in stress indicators, timed perfectly with a potentially awkward question and somebody the subject feels intimidated by walking into the room. We can never say for certain which of those factors caused the spike in stress indicators, but the observation itself is powerful, giving us insight into how the subject is feeling emotionally.
If we are the ones present and in control of the investigation, then we can adapt our own responses accordingly, to nudge a little closer to the truth. Contrast that against how most people go through life, not noticing such behaviours and certainly not understanding their meaning.
Stress Behaviours, Morris Feels the Pressure
Morris’s breathing rate and self-soothing behaviours indicate she’s feeling the stress—she licks her lips as she raises her right hand to be sworn in. The lips contain a large number of nerve endings that are stimulated as we try to soothe ourselves by licking them or touching them. But there’s also another reason that increases the likelihood of lip-licking during discomfort. An increase in stress causes a decrease in the amount of saliva that our salivary glands produce. The mouth becomes dry, sometimes referred to as cottonmouth, therefore we lick our lips as a response to this sensation.
Morris’ lips tighten after replying, “Yes”, to the declaration. Tightening of the lips is another negative behaviour. Lips tighten for different reasons, for example, the universal expressions of fear, anger and contempt all involve a tightening of the lips. On its own, this gesture can show dislike, distress or disapproval.
We can observe this as a subtle tightening of the lips through to a hard lip compression. Sometimes lips disappear altogether, either pulled inwards or completely compressed, indicating a higher level of distress or discomfort. When we see compressed lips with the outer corners pulled downwards, distress or disapproval are severe.
Sandra Morris Feels the Burden of the Trial
Morris’ right arm thuds as it slumps onto the bench. The lack of enthusiasm displayed reminds me of an insolent child in a classroom. The burden of the trail is evidently heavy. Contrast this with the gravity-defying behaviours we saw when Rita, Steven’s aunt, welcomed him home. Elevation of mood and comfort levels can usually be seen in the body and its motion, making it easy to assess unless deliberate concealment of emotion is present.
Centerstage, Morris distances from the circumstance as she waits to be questioned. The slight tilt away of her head, now more pronounced and her compressed lips turned downwards.
Eye Blocking Behaviour
Walter Kelly
“Ma’am, I’m gonna show you a report about Steven Avery, indecent exposure.”
Morris ‘eye blocks’ as she reaches for her glasses and nods her head. Her lips remain tightly compressed. We eye block when faced with something (object, topic or person) we don’t like. It looks like a long blink. In a way, this is a form of distancing where we attempt to momentarily remove ourselves from the undesired stimulus.
In children, we typically see an eye blocking behaviour with the physical covering of the eyes with the hands, one hand over each eye. This is an innate gesture displayed by children that are congenitally blind (blind since birth), a gesture that couldn’t have been learned.
As we grow up, we learn to adapt our behaviours so they are less pronounced to conceal our true emotions and/or to fit in with social norms. Though occasionally, as adults we do eye block with our hand/s. Picture someone receiving bad news or under immense stress at work. We typically see this with one or two hands, index finger and thumb spread across the eyebrows or pinched across the bridge of the nose, as if to support the head, the rest of the hand shielding the eyes.
Imagine seeing Morris place her hands over her eyes, as we see in a child, in response to the prospect of seeing the report. It’s unlikely that she’d be so blatant with exposing her true feelings. I’m sure we would all raise an eyebrow. Instead, her dislike is observed in the blocking of her eyes with her eyelids. To most people, this would go unnoticed.
There is a difference though when people eye block as they talk when trying to compose and articulate more complex thoughts or recall from memory. When we see this the subject is attempting to suppress external sensory stimulation so that they can focus their cognitive effort on their thoughts, words or memory.
Some people do this more than others and I find this tends to be displayed more by introverts, as introverts, typically speaking, are more sensitive to external sensory stimulation than extraverts. This can be mistaken for avoidance of eye contact, whereas it is simply a mechanism to strive to say the right thing. Similarly, we often see people eye block when singing—shutting out external stimulus to focus on and feel the emotion of the song.
Tongue Jut
Walter Kelly
“It indicates that there was a complaint received September 20th, 1984.”
Morris’ tongue juts out as she puts on her glasses and turns her chair to face forward. This orientation doesn’t last. As she picks up the report to take a look, a swing of the chair once again deflects her body away, this time just slightly. Her right-hand raises as if to prop up her head, creating a barrier between herself and the court. A moment later, she scans over the report, held in both hands.
It’s often difficult to tell a tongue jut and a lip lick apart. They can look very similar, yet they have very different meanings. The tongue jut is significant in that its meaning is more specific. We slightly jut out our tongue when we feel like we've got away with something, we’ve just been caught or we’ve made a mistake.
Sometimes we tongue jut to deliberately signal its meaning to others, often in a jovial way. For example, if we publicly drop something but then catch it before impact, we may signal to others, ‘I got away with that’, with an overt tongue jut. In this case, the tongue jut is usually accompanied by an eyebrow raise (punctuator) which draws attention (to the face or words), a nonverbal exclamation mark. The observer would clearly see the tongue jut out between the teeth, with lips drawn slightly back. The tongue may remain out for a second or two.
On the other hand, when we conceal a tongue jut or the meaning behind it, it would be a lot more subtle, as observed in Morris. There is no eyebrow punctuator, the teeth aren’t visible, the lips are closed and the tongue quickly juts out and retracts. I’m not fully convinced that Morris’ gesture is a tongue jut and not a lip lick and in context both gestures make sense. She is in a stressful situation and likely to lick her lips. And, given that she’s being questioned about a complaint that she herself had put together over 18 years ago, she could feel like she got away with something, she's just been caught or she made a mistake.
Walter Kelly
“It says that, ‘he has been known to masturbate on the hood of the car as she is driving past.’ Do you see that?”
Sandra Morris
“Yes”
Walter Kelly
“Did you tell that to the police?”
Sandra Morris
“Um… I didn’t put it in that many words. I didn’t… he didn’t masturbate on the hood of my car, but he did come out in front of my car and he was…”
Morris shakes her head as she negates the specific wording both nonverbally and verbally, confirming Steven didn’t masturbate on the front of her car as such. She then pauses her speech while repetitively raising and lowering her arm, gesticulating masturbational motion.
It’s a little awkward to articulate this in court, instead, she replaces words with purposeful hand gestures, gestures that explain a specific concept. At the same time, her head nods slightly corroborating her statement—her words and actions are aligned. Her lips remain tight, her eyebrows raised as she looks towards Walter, curious to judge his reaction. She continues.
Sandra Morris
“…doing his thing”
Morris cracks a smile and her hand raises with an upward-facing palm as if to say, ‘that’s all I have’, or ‘that’s the best I can do’. She’s managed to convey an awkward description via words and actions.
Walter Kelly
“This is why you’re driving 40 miles an hour, by his house?”
Sandra Morris
“He did… he did run out towards the road”
Morris nods in corroboration with her words, then purposely gestures with a sweeping of her arms to describe Steven running out towards the road, before continuing.
Sandra Morris
“He was prepared, he had it all ready”
Again Morris’s right-hand raises with an upward-facing palm, appealing to Walter to believe her statement before it drops back to the table with a thud.
Hand Gestures and Lying
When we gesture with open palms, we’re typically being submissive and seeking cooperation, indicating honesty and openness. We’re also perceived as such. If we think of this from an evolutionary perspective, we’re demonstrating that we can be trusted, we’re sincere—our hands are out in the open showing that we aren’t carrying a weapon.
When palms are downturned, typically speaking, we’re being definitive in the statement that we deliver, we’re being absolute and showing dominance. For example, when delivering an order or an urgent warning. Picture the difference between telling someone to ‘stop’ with palm-up gestures, and telling them to ‘stop’ with palm-down gestures. One comes across as a plea, whereas the other comes across as an order. There’s a difference in power between them. Though open palm gestures typically signify honesty, palm down gestures don’t necessarily signify dishonesty.
On the other hand (no pun intended), the sudden withdrawal or disappearance of hands into pockets, beneath the table, behind our backs, up our sleeves, etc, can be a red flag in terms of deception detection.
Hands often disappear when people are being dishonest, but not always. Sometimes they disappear when someone is being truthful, since there are other reasons for disappearing hands, for example warming cold hands in pockets. Therefore, we can never use these gestures to conclude honesty or dishonesty. Instead, we can add them to the cache that helps us to form the bigger picture and rely on more specific and reliable cues, such as the one-sided shoulder shrug and the tongue jut, to assist us further in seeking the truth.
Walter Kelly
“Okay. It then says ‘he has had sexual relations with his wife on the lawn’
Sandra Morris
“…That, I have nothing”
Walter Kelly
“…Let me just finish the question. While all the neighbours are home in the daytime and able to watch.”
Sandra Morris
“That, I didn’t say at all.”
Morris shakes her head in corroboration with her words. At this point, we see what looks like a tongue jut, on the word ‘all’. However, I’m going to dismiss this as a nonverbal signal, as it seems to be part of her baseline behaviour during speech, jutting out quite often as she talks.
Walter Kelly
“Okay. Do you have any explanation for why whoever is writing this might say that you said that?”
Sandra Morris
“I don’t know.”
Again Morris shakes her head in alignment with her words.
Walter Kelly
“Okay. Was there a period where you were spending time in a nearby tavern and talking about Steven Avery?”
Feeling the pressure with lips firmly compressed, her chest rising and falling as she breathes, Morris momentarily glances downwards before blinking. Eyes avert downwards during shame or regret. This is usually accompanied by a pronounced or subtle, drop of the head. In this case, it isn’t, she suppresses the behaviour to conceal it.
Sandra Morris
“I might’ve, I might’ve went [sic] to several taverns.”
Morris laughs off her response.
Walter Kelly
“In 1985, were you personally friendly with Steven Avery?”
Morris looks down, before shaking her head and answering, “No”. Her right eye tightens momentarily, revealing her dislike. But there’s more to be observed in her facial expression, we also see a microexpression of disgust flashing across her face in a fraction of a second.
Only a trained eye can spot microexpressions—a fleeting glimpse into the true emotions of others. A microexpression is a concealed or suppressed true emotion. Oftentimes, we conceal our emotions as part of an attempt to remain within social norms, refraining from being too emotional or to appear more appealing to others, a likely reason for Morris’s microexpression of disgust.
Although Morris seems okay with nonverbally communicating her lack of enthusiasm and dislike for the situation through behaviours such as distancing, blatantly demonstrating a lingering expression of disgust towards Steven would likely tip perceptions too far. Enough to potentially negatively impact the consequences of the situation. She disguises her true emotion to be perceived in a (slightly) more positive light. As we all do. Those who have studied and practised observing microexpressions can see through this, observing her concealed emotion of disgust.
Universal Expressions of Emotion and Microexpressions
Almost a hundred years after Darwin theorised that some ‘facial expressions of emotion are universal, not learned differently in each culture’, in his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Paul Ekman discovered that he was right. Ekman studied emotional expression for over 50 years, concluding that there are seven universal expressions, they are disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, fear, sadness and contempt. There are thousands of facial expressions, but only these seven are universal.
These emotions are expressed on our faces by the activation of specific muscle movements working in unison. A microexpression is an involuntary fleeting expression of one of these emotions—a ‘leakage’ of a true emotional state.
As well as being a means to deliberately conceal emotions from others (albeit on a subconscious level), microexpressions also happen when people repress their own emotions from themselves. There is no way of deciphering why the microexpression occurs, whether it’s concealment of emotions to others, to oneself, or both. But observing the ‘true’ emotion can be very revealing.
In a way microexpressions do indicate deception, in that, concealment of emotion is being deceptive—a cover-up. However, microexpressions aren’t deceptive cues as such as they don’t signal a lie, or at least not in most cases.
The best we can do in terms of microexpressions and detecting deception is to note incongruences between the hidden emotional state and the words spoken. It’s the significance and specifics of the words that accompany the microexpression that makes the difference. For example, if Morris had displayed the microexpression of disgust while saying, “I don’t find Steven disgusting”, then we can decipher, most likely, that she is lying.
Whereas, if instead, she said, “I like Steven”, whilst still displaying a microexpression of disgust, we can’t definitively say that’s a lie. Because it’s possible that she does like him in general, but finds something he has done, or something about him disgusting. On the other hand, it’s also possible that it is a lie. It doesn’t tell us the truth, but it does reveal that something is amiss and there’s an element of disgust involved.
In the case of Morris’ actual microexpression of disgust, all we can do is speculate that she is/was disgusted by Steven. This is congruent with her words since she answered “no”, in response to “In 1985, were you personally friendly with Steven Avery?”.
Walter Kelly
“In fact, you actively disliked him. Is that right? At that time.”
Hesitating her speech, Morris replies nonverbally with ‘the not face’, which communicates negative moral judgement, hence its name. This is a recently discovered expression, perhaps the eighth universal expression since it has been observed across several cultures. It consists of a furrowed brow, compressed lips and a raised chin and is said to be a combination of three of the universal expressions: disgust, anger and contempt. Researchers from Ohio University found evidence to suggest that this expression is used as a ‘grammatical marker’ of negation, that is, it serves the same purpose of grammatical function in a sentence. Sometimes even being used instead of language.
Simultaneously, Morris’s right arm raises, palm upwards as her head tilts towards it. Her lips compress, corners pointing downwards forcing her chin to raise, while her right cheek tightens and raises towards her nose (the disgust component of the expression). All the while, the muscles around the eyes are slightly constricted. She expresses her active dislike of Steven via her expression, ‘the not face’, then answers the question affirmatively.
Sandra Morris
“Yes”
Morris returns to her usual distanced stance, her head leaning backwards and tilted slightly away.
Walter Kelly
“In 1985, do you remember the morning in January when you were forced off the road by Steven?
Morris rocks back and forth in her chair, pacifying with motion and licking her lips as she anticipates the question.
Sandra Morris
“Yes”
Morris’ eyebrows raise and her eyes roll in contempt at the thought.
