Have you ever been told that to help a witness understand how to make a better impression, you should videotape her and have her watch the tape? Has that technique worked for you?
It hasn't worked all that well for me. For every witness who has been helped by watching herself on tape, I've seen several more who frankly admit they're not seeing what I'm seeing, or worse, pretend they do when it's clear they don't. Now a new study suggests my witnesses aren't the only ones with this problem. We're simply not able, this study suggests, to accurately assess our own body language.
To see ourselves as others see us
BPS Research Digest did a great write-up on the study today. Read the whole thing, but here's the key part. Subjects were asked to rate their own levels of introversion or extroversion. Then they were asked to tape a video commercial -- for another purpose, they thought. But then the researchers told them the truth, taught them some tools to interpret body language cues to introversion and extroversion, and asked them to rate themselves again after watching themselves on tape. They couldn't do it:
Long story short - they weren't able to. The participants' extraversion scores on the implicit test showed no association with their subsequent explicit ratings of themselves, and there was no evidence either that they'd used their non-verbal behaviours (such as amount of eye contact with the camera) to inform their self-ratings.
And it wasn't that the body language cues were too subtle to catch. The researchers showed the same tapes to other subjects, giving them the same little course on how to interpret body language. The outside observers did a far better job of interpreting the tapes.
Better ways to use video
This is one of those emperor's-new-clothes moments in science. I've heard so many times that witnesses will magically see their faults on video that I sometimes wondered whether I was doing it right. Now, though, I can confidently pass on the ways I've become comfortable using video in witness preparation. What it boils down to is know your witness:
- It's a rare witness who can learn anything from video alone. If you're asking someone to watch herself on video, you also need to be very specific verbally about what you're noticing in the video, what you think it conveys, and exactly how to change it. (The terrific consultant Katherine James took one look at the tape of my television interview in March and said, "See how your forehead keeps wrinkling? You're trying too hard. Relax and slow down next time." She was absolutely right.)
- Some witnesses should never see tape of themselves. Some are intimidated by the sight of themselves on a television screen, at the very time when you're trying to instill confidence. Others like their taped presentation so much it reinforces their weaknesses.
- The main person who's going to be helped by videotape is usually you, so if you're using it, take the time to learn how to use it well. New research on "microexpressions" by Paul Ekman and his colleagues is fascinating, for example. (The presentation by Ekman trainer and researcher David Matsumoto was the talk of the American Society of Trial Consultants' annual meeting last week.)
- Try different things with the tape; turn the sound down, watch it fast. Watching a videotaped deposition awhile back, I fast-forwarded through a repetitious portion -- and realized that the witness was breathing in such huge gulps that her shoulders moved at least three inches up and down over each ten- or fifteen-second cycle. I hadn't seen it at regular speed.
- When teaching any skill, it's usually more effective to show what to do than what not to do. Instead of focusing on taped faults, think about demonstrating yourself what does work. Be your own tape.
(Photo by Sam Greenhalgh at http://www.flickr.com/photos/zapthedingbat/3028956788/; license details there.)
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