the other day my lovely girlfriend and i sat down to watch the new netflix documentary about
chris watts american murder as we watched i felt extremely frustrated about something that's been
bothering me for a long time what chris watts did was terrible and i'm glad he's spending the
rest of his life in prison each of us can think of a hundred thousand different ways
chris watts could have left his marriage without murdering his wife and two children
but the acts of chris watts aren't what i'm here to talk about today because many people
have already done that what's frustrated me for months now is the promotion of the pseudoscience
of body language reading that's exploded since the charges were brought against chris watts
much like the bad science around polygraph tests the pseudoscience around body language
has even less evidence with the millions of views that body language videos get
i'm sure many people will try to argue that body language reading actually works
but i ask you to wait until the end of this video to see if your opinion has changed
as a skeptic i've been annoyed that channels like derek van schaik received hundreds of thousands to
millions of views using this pseudoscience and now youtube is promoting a new quote unquote
body language expert called believing bruce for a long time i figured it wasn't a big deal if people
believe these so-called body language experts but now i've realized that there are real life
consequences to people not understanding that body language is a pseudoscience the derek van schaik
body language video about chris watts has over 31 million views and it's monetized so he's made a
pretty penny off of this video but him profiting off this pseudoscience isn't the main issue
what troubled me was when i found out that human resources personnel are being shown this video
as a form of training my friend's relative is the regional hr manager for a huge company for obvious
reasons i'm not going to disclose the company name but i promise that you know of this company
this company has over tens of thousands of employees across the country and hr is responsible
for investigating accusations of sexual assault racism and other situations in order to keep the
workplace safe and prevent massive lawsuits these are serious matters and entire hr departments are
being trained on body language via youtube from a guy with zero credentials then i started thinking
about how many other people watch these body language videos and think that they can detect
when a significant other a friend or a family member is lying to them how many interpersonal
conflicts are a result of people believing in this unscientific practice can you even imagine
a friendship or intimate relationship ending over the pseudoscience of body language although i
won't be able to convince all of you that body language is a pseudoscience i'm hoping that at
least a few of you realize that there is no strong evidence that body language reading works pulling
from books like not born yesterday by cognitive scientist hugo mercier how emotions are made by
neuroscientist lisa feldman barrett and everything is obvious once you know the answer by professor
duncan watts i'm going to teach you about the lack of scientific evidence around body language after
we analyze the bad science around body language i'll conclude with my theory as to why the idea of
body language reading is so appealing and what we can do as an alternative but before we get started
if you're new to the rewired soul make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell here we
practice critical thinking and skepticism to learn more about the world and if you're interested in
any of the books i reference in this video my affiliate links are down in the description below
who won the trump biden train wreck of a presidential debate we're gonna break
down their body language to find out that's next the science around body language is non-existent
but there's one peer-reviewed study that's often cited that proves how terrible we are at reading
body language and it was conducted by psychologist paul ekman in fact cognitive scientist hugo
mercier has a whole chapter about how we're awful at reading body language in his book
not born yesterday in his book mercier references the work of the famous psychologist paul ekman who
has done extensive research into expression and gesture and their role in emotion and deception
in the video that you see playing which is linked down in the description below ekman gives an
overview of his research into expression gesture emotion and deception what you'll find is that not
only is this subject much more nuanced than simply saying each movement or expression means something
what becomes obvious is that these youtubers have not done the proper research into the subject
in her book how emotions are made lisa feldman barrett explains all of the misconceptions
around emotions not only does she explain why body language doesn't work she explains the biological
and cultural factors that make it so difficult to read emotions for example some cultures are
taught to not show certain emotions and in some households we're raised to hide our emotions
and as anyone with depression can tell you some of us are even great at faking happiness meanwhile
nobody knows that we're actually suffering inside to date one of my favorite books is everything
is obvious once you know the answer by duncan watts hindsight bias is something that we all
fall victim to and it makes us believe that we knew what was going to happen all along even
though we didn't have nearly enough information when you watch videos from body language channels
like derek van sschaik you'll see these videos on chris watts are riddled with hindsight bias
chris watts was arrested on august 16 2018 and derek van shaik's video came out on december 15
2018. if you don't believe me about hindsight bias i want you to ask yourself why someone
like derek van schaik didn't know chris watts was guilty prior to when the arrest happened
derek is just a run-of-the-mill grifter on youtube but if body language was a legitimate
science you'd think each police department would be far more accurate with arrests and convictions
aside from hindsight bias body language channels like derek
manipulate their audience by using confirmation bias they find out what the popular narrative is
and then they point to the pseudoscience of body language to confirm what people already believe
this is the second biggest problem with people believing in this pseudoscience because they
accuse innocent people of lying when it fits the narrative what do i mean recently derrick's made
two videos about ellen degeneres which have gained a total of over 700 000 views and of course the
body language fits the popular narrative while in my opinion ellen isn't that great of a person
right now i'm simply pointing out a pattern of behavior the real issue is when you look
at derek's video on james charles that has over 1 million views in this video he used body language
to quote unquote prove james charles was lying after tati westbrook's original video came out
for anyone who remembers this massive story from 2019 the video derek used to call james a liar was
a quick video james did while out of the country when everything blew up later when he returned
home james made a more thorough video proving without a doubt that he was telling the truth
one year later tati even made a video apologizing to james for these false accusations unfortunately
not only has derek not apologized for accusing james of lying by using this pseudoscience
but nobody is holding him accountable either i know the word witch hunt gets thrown around
loosely these days but how is this pseudoscience any different people like derek have convinced
other people that the way a person's hands or eyes move proves their guilt or innocence and
when we find out they were wrong these channels still continue these unscientific practices
okay very interesting body language joe biden did right there first let's talk about his outfit but
look at joe biden's necktie notice there's no new additional colors in the necktie matching
his shirt and his jackets which actually matches what joe biden wants to do in the debate yes
channels like derek van shake and believing bruce are promoting a pseudoscience that can
have real world consequences but i think it's more important to discuss why we fall for it
my theory is that we fall for body language channels for the same reason that we fall
for all sorts of other forms of pseudoscience we want control which world would you rather live in
one where we could tell if someone's lying based on their body language or one where chris watts
almost got away with murdering his children and wife we want to believe that liars will get caught
and we want to believe there are skills that we can use to catch liars while this would be a great
world to live in believing in this pseudoscience leads to the indictment of many innocent people
think about the regional hr manager i told you about earlier
what if they thought a black man was lying about workplace racism based on his body language
or what if a woman was falsely accused of stealing from her job and was fired due to her body
language in an interview with hr a more serious example is the work of the innocence project
which is a non-profit that was created to reverse the charges of those who were wrongly convicted
since it began the innocence project has helped 375 people be exonerated by dna testing and 21
of those people were on death row think about how many of these people were wrongly convicted
because of how a jury read their body language i'm sure some of you feel that watching these
body language videos is just a fun hobby and that might be true for you if these videos are just a
source of entertainment for you do your thing but for those who take this pseudoscience seriously
i hope i've convinced you to do some more research and become more skeptical about the
subject personally i find it extremely unethical for these channels to get hundreds of thousands
if not millions of views while accusing people of lying with this pseudo-scientific technique
all right everybody thank you for making it all the way through another video essay
so check it out i'm just gonna level with you real quick i could make a 30 minute hour to an hour
long video all about the pseudoscience my own body language i was debating on whether or not i should
take one of their videos and break it down piece by piece and point out all the absurdity
and the pseudoscience and what the real science says and all those other things
but this was like this has been on my mind for months i'm like you know what i just want to get
a video out there i need to get it out of my brain some of you creatives know what i'm talking about
i just need to get it out there so i did this but if you guys enjoy it or let me know down in
the comments like i'm more than happy to go deeper into this stuff like those books that i reference
feel free to check them out all right emotions uh body language lying all these things are
very complex and like i said i know we want to believe that we live in a world where we can just
detect liars and justice is going to be served but it's a little bit more difficult than that
and these random people on youtube are not going to tell us who is or isn't lying but like i said
nobody's holding them accountable nobody is holding them accountable when they falsely accuse
somebody of lying and my concern is not only are businesses using this to teach people
about body language reading but we have normal people thinking that they can spot people lying
in their lives based on what these people are saying like oh i saw your eyes dark this way oh
your feet are pointed this way and this and this you know what i mean so there are some uh body
language signals that we can infer some things from but they are nowhere near nowhere near 100
accurate and chances are if you're subscribed to my channel you're a critical thinker you try to
be skeptical and all those other things so we got to think through these things we got to be aware
of our own biases the fallacies that we fall into and all that other kind of stuff all right
but anyways if you want me to dive deeper into this if this is something that you would like me
to break down even further uh let me know down in the comments below but anyways that's all i
got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you
subscribe and bring that notification bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody who supports the
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below for the books that i recommend or you know uh getting merch from the rewiredsoul.com shop
any of that stuff you're all awesome all right thanks again for watching i'll see you next time