These days I've been doing an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, and one of the questions that popped
up, is "Can you tell if Harry and Meghan will divorce, by looking at their body language"
That is a great question!
and you're about to find out why the answer is so useful to upgrade your understanding
of toxic relationships.
Welcome back, my body language buddies!
my name is Jesús Enrique Rosas, I'm the Body Language Guy, and it would be great if you
join us by just liking this video, subscribing and hitting that bell! let's get down to it!
The science of predicting divorce using body language is really well documented, specially
if we talk about Dr. John Gottman.
In 1992, he conducted a study of couples in which he was able to predict which ones would
eventually divorce with 93.6 percent accuracy.
Now, you might think that such a discovery could have been made into a reality show and
Dr. Gottman would be, the Divorce Whisperer.
But nah, he used that power for good, to teach these signals to counselors so they could
prevent divorces in best case scenarios, or just confirm when relationships had actually
come to an end.
And a huge part of that assessment process was body language.
To the extent that Dr. Gottman published papers such as "Facial Expressions during Marital
Conflict", where he combined two systems of physiological responses.
But before we continue, I want to do a very interesting exercise with you.
It's more like a body language test.
I used to have tests and riddles on my videos, so this is a good moment to resume that.
Here it goes.
Take a good look at that image.
I wonder if you have seen it before.
If you haven't, then much better.
Alright!
That image is gonna sit quietly at the back of your mind.
That's part of the exercise.
Now, we were talking about two systems of physiological responses.
One that is internal, and mostly not visible, and one that is external, but a bit hard to
spot.
The best way to understand the internal system, is imagine THAT person that you just can't
stand around you.
The one that, when they are not around, you feel relieved.
Maybe it's a coworker, or a neighbor, or maybe a family member.
When they arrive, or are sitting next to you, or they speak, and specially speak to you,
you feel stress.
Maybe you feel even threatened.
You feel that every word that comes out of their mouth is a possible attack.
You can FEEL that reaction in your body because your blood pressure and heart rate rise, your
pupils constrict, maybe you can even feel a cold sweat, and your mouth goes dry.
That's how a stress response feels like.
This is one of the things that Gottman measured.
Internal, physiological responses when a couple was having a discussion about a topic.
And measuring this was especially important, in case one of them was a narcissist trying
to manipulate the perception of the researcher.
And you might be aware of how good narcisissts are at playing the victim AND triggering a
stress response in you.
But, at the same time, Gottman made sure to observe the EXTERNAL physiological response,
which was trasmitted by, you guessed it, body language and voice tone.
And this is where we hit a roadblock.
Because it's easy to measure a change in blood pressure, but it's really difficult to "measure"
body language changes.
So, do we have to rely exclusively on intuition?
Well, luckily no, and that's why we are doing this body language exercise, that is going
to include a second picture.
It's this picture.
I'm not going to say anything about it, besides take a good look, don't try to rationalize
it yet, and just let it sit at the back of your mind with the previous one.
You'll notice that this video is like a body language gym!
you're flexing your intuition muscles, and that's something we should do every time we
have the opportunity to watch people.
Anyway, Gottman managed to confirm that there was a direct connection between an internal
physiological response of stress, a external manifestation through body language, and increased
odds of getting divorced in the near future.
Just to have an idea of how close is that connection, is that there is already scientific
proof, that you can predict, with a 96 percent of certainty, how a conversation of a couple
will evolve, just listening to the first three minutes.
Now, Gottman's work is a bit more complex, and besides body language, there are four
ingredients that you must be aware of, to make this kind of assessments.
Gottman calls them "The Four Horsemen".
Those are Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling.
Let's play a game A la Blue's Clues, or Dora the Explorer.
Whatever floats your boat.
Which one of the Four Horsemen do you think you could spot with Body Language?
Yeah!
contempt!
If you remember the series Lie To Me, contempt is one of the basic expressions that are quite
easy to spot.
It's just a half smile.
But yes, defensiveness is another factor that you can spot with general body language.
There is no single gesture or "tell", but a defensive person crosses their legs, or
turns their body away, or crosses their arms or keeps them close to their bodies, or keep
their head straight.
Now, we are approaching a model that resembles how Dr. Gottman makes this kind of predictions.
But before we continue, let's see the third and final image of today's riddle with Harry
and Meghan.
And the third image is just the combination of the previous two, side by side.
And you have the opportunity to compare them, for reasons that you're about to understand.
Let's talk about Harry and Meghan's body language.
There was one video where I talked about how Meghan looked at Harry in certain situations,
especially if he was talking and she had two metaphorical knives coming out of her eyes.
Now, I bet that you're trying to put a label on that expression.
And that's the first trap that everyone falls into, when trying to read body language.
You go straight to compare the expressions you know, such as contempt, to whatever you
see in real life.
But the problem is that expressions in real life are always much more nuanced and complex.
This is the reason why I showed you these two pictures, to illustrate a better way to
approach body language reading in couples.
If I asked you, which one of these pictures looks natural, like a natural, honest expression,
and which one looks forced, you'll instantly notice that the one to the left, our first
image, is the natural one, and the one to the right is a forced smile.
Now you remember that at some point in this video I mentioned that stress is shown with
a straight neck.
Just as the photo on the right.
And if you see other photos of Meghan looking at Harry, such as this one, she's got her
neck relaxed, her head is tilting to one side and also, she's looking at his mouth.
She likes him.
That's what she's showing in this photo.
So far we have learned two things.
First, you cannot rely on standard facial expressions.
Like having a catalog of expressions and watching people.
Facial expression catalogs can help you expand your body language vocabulary.
But the best way to read a person is to compare them to themselves, which is exactly what
we did in this case.
But Dr. Gottman did this research on a controlled environment.
How can we aply his findings to assess not only Harry and Meghan's relationship, and
hypothetical divorce, but anyone's relationship?
Well, you begin to compare both Meghan and Harry's interactions to their previous record.
In other words, how many times have you seen Meghan looking at Harry like this, in the
last six months, for example?
Or, how many times have you seen Harry actually relaxed and happy with Meghan?
Like he was with Rihanna, with a relaxed posture, shoulders broad and genuine smile?
That's something that I've always noticed in the Cambridges.
There's a lot of chemistry between them, no matter the circumstances, and each with their
own personalities.
Sadly, some couples can drag these kind of body language signals for YEARS, and it will
be more evident when you listen to them talking to each other.
When was the last time we saw Harry and Meghan sit down for an interview?
Ugh!
wrong question!
But we can observe them, and how their body language evolves, because they are public
figures.
And that's something that they cannot escape, no matter how much Harry hates the camera
clicks.
What do you think will be the future for Meghan and Harry?
I'd love to read your opinion in the comments.
If you want to refine your observation skills, all you have to do is download my 100+ body
language tips, right in the description of this video.
My name is Jesús Enrique Rosas and it will always be a pleasure, my body language buddies!
Much Love, and Bliss.