The video of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak (DSN) walks out of Al Jazeera interview became viral and became the concern of many readers.
If we analyse the walking style of DSN as compared to previous years, he reduces the swing of his hands when he was walking into the hall. This indicated that he has a lack of confidence or he feels uncomfortable when he is entering the room. Even if he seemed stable emotionally, the stress level can be identified from the speed of him sitting down after the handshake with the interviewer.
Initially, the interviewer (Mary Ann Jolley – 101 East Reporter) was holding hands as a polite gesture to welcome the guest.
Through the image above, she applied an extended handshake. She is trying to keep a distance with the person. By using this gesture, the lady can have a professional handshake and keep a distance between them.
At 0:23, DSN was being asked about his reaction after the election. Before answering the question, he gave a contemptuous smile to express his inner emotion. At 0:28, he mentioned that the loss was due to two main reasons. He shook his head during that time. It indicated that up to the time of the interview, he could not accept the loss of his party.
In the beginning of the conversation for several minutes, DSN sat with his left hand holding the right-hand posture. Here, he was trying to freeze his upper body during the conversation. He still didn’t feel comfortable of the conversation and he was holding back from the conversation. The indication is congruent with the gesture of laying back tightly in his seat.
At 0:44, DSN felt angry when he talked about the promises of the current government. This can be observed through his eyes wide open and his eyebrows are being pulled down close together and the inner corners going down towards the nose, causing the forehead to furrow.
At 1:03 after nodding his head, you can observe the licking the lips gesture. It showed the nervousness or element of deception. When a person gets nervous, his or her mouth becomes dry easily. Unconsciously, the person would start to lick the lips as a mean to create saliva.
At 01:11:47, he was being asked for the propaganda claim that was mentioned by DSN. When listening to the questions, he was looking to the left. This showed that he was trying to recall and remember some scenarios. However, before answering the questions at 01:29:37 – 1:30:30: (for 0.1 seconds), he felt extremely tense. Hence, he moved his body forward and backwards. The movement of forward and backwards become more significant when he started to answer the questions at 1:31:08 – 1:31:37 (less than a second). In addition, his gesture is also shown at 1:17 where he licked his lips one more time.
When he answered the statement, it is not true (during 1:33), DSN was trying to nod his head. However, the inconsistency in the timing of verbal and nonverbal created a gap for us to investigate the truthfulness of the statement. However, during 1:51 he even shook his head to give us a hint that he himself also cannot accept the fact of the statement he had given before and after the head shake.
After justifying the source of the fund and returning of the fund, at 2:02:10, you could observe a slight contempt smile and the muscle contraction of the contempt smile remained clear (indicated with an arrow). This is a sign of deception that the person felt happy that the interviewer somehow believed what he said. At the same time, psychologically DSN thought that “why the person is so “stupid to believe his statement”.
Comparable changes in his eye expressions between 2:02 and 2:03
Immediately, he was confronted by the interviewer. As a result, his facial expression changed to anger in less than 1 second. DSN became angry because he found out that the answer that was given was not accepted by the interviewer.
At 2:31, DSN sat in the stable hand gesture. This gesture showed that he is analytical in general. However, the body language slip we could observe between 2:26:00 and 2:26:83, he tapped his finger 2 times in less than 1 second. This indicated that he felt nervous and not confident when he gave the answer to the sources of the money. The gesture to have a small tap of his finger is observed again between 2:27:80 and 2:28:27 and he gave the same nervous signal. The level of nervousness increased by observing the fast speed of finger rubbing between 2:32:27 and 2:33:40.
Between 2:43:80 – 2:47:77, when DSN was confronted with the statement the source of money is from Jho Low, his rate of eye blink increased. This could be an indication of lying as the liar had to keep thinking about what they were going to say because the person needed to think more and thus cognitive load increase.
During 3:03, DSN was trying to have a little tap of fingers at fast speed. This is a negative nonverbal cue to show frustration and nervousness when he answered the questions. The more interesting nonverbal inconsistency is observed during 3:34 when he answered, “Sure, I wanted to know…” DSN shook his head during this statement. This gave another deception indication of his statement.
Before answering the questions about the authenticity of the letter from the Saudi Prince and the associate of Jho Low, at 4:50 – 4:52, DSN moved forward and backwards again. He was trying to move his body as a substation and a replacement of the stress level. Again, between 5:11:90 to 5:11:57 (0.7seconds), he tapped his finger 2 times again. This is a small gesture of clapping hands as if it looks like the expression of “Hurray and Success” gesture.
When he was asked about his relationship with Jho Low, the first 7:31:00 he looked to the left trying to recall. However, his eyes betrayed him again during 7:32:80 when he was trying to use his imagination to create an answer. This is a clear sign of deception. In addition, he applied parroting techniques of deception by repeating the statement, “My relationship with Jho Low…..”. He repeated the statement of the interviewer because he was trying to buy time for him to come up with the best answer. At the same time, DSN was also comfortable with his own answer that he leaned forward and backwards again during 7: 47.
During 8:05, the stress level of DSN continued to increase. You could observe that DSN rubbed his fingers. DSN applied finger rubbing to substitute his level of stress with a gesture that was not easy to be detected.
Stay tune with Humanology for you to know the real story of the pink diamond, the gifts and analysis of other parts of the video.
Source: Al Jazeera
by
Datuk Dr. Leow Chee Seng
