Page 116 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

The Human Mind 57

In the olden days, great store was put in physiognomy and the supposed relationship be-
tween a person’s looks and his character. To an extent, we all still react to a person’s physical
appearance and form conclusions based upon it.

Emblems are selected both consciously and unconsciously to represent the way the person
feels about himself and how he would like others to perceive him.

The trouble with emblems is that we tend to accept them without thinking. This is a big
mistake because the impression we form may permanently influence our transactional rela-
tionships.

THE TRAMP not want to be bothered. The next day, in
exactly the same spot, the actor was dressed
An actor dressed as a tramp stopped people in as a top businessman and asked the same
Victoria Street in London and asked them for question. The responses were fast and friendly.
directions to the Houses of Parliament. Some
people avoided him; most were curt and did

We are also subliminally influenced by a person’s accent and we all tend to work on stereo-
types.

BRUMMIES ARE NOT TO BE BELIEVED?

A report from Doctor Mahoney and Brummie, ‘standard’ and other regional
colleagues from the Worcester College of accents before a panel of 119 students from
Further Education was presented to the the college. The results showed a dreadful
British Psychological Society in the autumn bias against Brummies, who were seen
of 1997 and concluded that people speaking as ‘less intelligent’, ‘working class’ and
with a Birmingham (or ‘Brummie’) accent ‘socially incompetent’. This is extremely
are twice as likely to be convicted or, if not interesting, as many of the students on the
convicted, disbelieved in court. The doctor panel were from the Birmingham area and
and his team hired male actors to reproduce the city produces many highly intelligent
interviews with suspected armed robbers people including, even, some lawyers and
and cheque fraudsters. The actors used investigators.

Thus the rule is to be very careful with emblems, both your own and your interpretation of
others. Look, listen and smell carefully and consciously determine what the person is telling
you about himself. Pay particular attention to incongruencies between a person’s emblems
and his communications through other channels.

JOB CANDIDATE type, with a visual channel of primary
communication. He may, of course, be
If the job candidate turns up for interview simply an investigator, but only if he keeps
in a pink suit, flowery shirt, yellow Hush rearranging his genitalia.
Puppy shoes and long, frizzy hair dyed pink,
he is more likely to be a right hemisphere