The tricks to get a profile of a jury can help pick the best employees

Carol Forsloff - Research on forensics has shown that it isn't easy to make the right judgment about people ,  but body language, non verbal clues combined with verbal ones, has a better chance for picking juries and for finding people for  jobs.

During investigations of high profile cases like those of Casey Anthony, O.J. Simpson, or Phil Spector, there are those who are called into to examine them to determine whether they are lying or not.

College students, trained as judges, can’t tell who is lying any better than chance, it has been found. The difference found is less than 1%.

There are those people, however, who are exceptional in being able to detect lies. For example, professionals who have high stakes in the outcome of detecting lies, can do better than those who don’t. They do better than college students.

But its the combination of language usage combined with non verbal cues that been shown to be helpful in detecting deception and also to assess personalities.

Some people who are experts in making judgments about personalities look at such non verbal characteristics as the actual body language.  Others do it from examination of movements, even those made with a pen, such as handwriting analysis.  There are people who use this skill for jury selection, while others find it useful for picking the right employee.

Here's what one of those experts says about these issues:

Body Language is clearly the most powerful and significant of the 3 you’ve mentioned but here are some examples of how it can differ:

• If you’re on a date and you’re sitting there ‘googley-eyed’ at your new lover, body language can be 98% or even more of what you’re saying


• Political Events, whether debates or press events or even just stump speeches are often scripted and very orchestrated.  Even with this, very few people ever remember what someone said during the debate or speech.  Yet, if I simply asked you if you remembered “The Wink” most people will immediately remember Sarah Palin.


• If someone you’re talking with is describing something technical or mathematical, body language accounts for very little of what they’re saying.

So the way to improve accuracy is said by experts to use that combination of body language and words used, in combination or isolation depending upon the event, whether that's for jury selection or finding the right person for a job.  Add to that a solid interview, and the chances improve the right decision will be made about those hunches people make at the outset of a meeting, found useful in the initial stages, but needing a fuller evaluation made with other tools.