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By Root 9999 0

hand. He would gesture a lot and notice whether the person followed the pen with her eyes; if she did slightly Tony would continually make the gestures bigger to see whether her eyes followed. If that didn’t seem to work in the first few seconds he would click the pen open and closed. It wasn’t a loud noise, but loud enough to disrupt a thought and draw someone’s attention if she were an auditory. If he thought that was working he would click it with every important thought, causing the target to have a psychological reaction to the sound and what was being said. If that didn’t seem to work he would reach out over the table and tap her wrist or forearm, or if he was close enough touch her shoulder. He didn’t touch excessively, but enough to see whether she would shy away or seemed overly happy or disturbed by the touch.

With these subtle methods he could quickly discern what the person’s dominant sense most likely was. This whole act would take under 60 seconds. After he found the information he was looking for, he would then start to move his conversation to that dominant sense, even taking on the traits of that sense in the words he spoke and way he acted and reacted to the conversation. One thing about Tony is that he outsold any person I have ever met. People would often say about him, “It is like he knew exactly what I needed.”

Tony would talk to the person and treat the person the way they wanted to be talked to. If the person was a visual thinker, Tony would use phrases like “Can you see what I am saying?” or “How does this look to you?” He would use illustrations that involved “seeing” things or visualizing scenarios. He would put people in their comfort zone.

People feel at ease when they are in their comfort zone. The more you can do as a social engineer to put people in their comfort zone, the better chance you have at success. People gravitate towards those with whom they are comfortable; it is human nature. For example, if someone makes you feel “warm and fuzzy,” or seems to understand what you are saying, or seems to see where you are coming from, you easily open up to, trust, and let that person in your circle.

I want to reiterate this point: finding and using someone’s dominant sense is not an exact science. A social engineer should use it as a tool in the arsenal and not rely on it as something magical or scientific. Certain psychological aspects of human nature are based on proven science and can be relied upon. As a matter of fact, some of these aspects are so impressive that they can make you seem like a mind reader. Some of them have been a topic of serious debate and some accepted by psychologists, law enforcement, and social engineers for years. The next section of this chapter discusses these, starting with microexpressions.

Microexpressions

You are probably familiar with the idea of reading facial expressions. When someone is happy, sad, angry, or whatever, when someone feels it you can look at his or her face and see that emotion. What if someone tries to fake that expression, like a fake smile? We have all done it, walking through the market and bumping into someone we just don’t like that much—we put on a “smile” and say, “Hey John, nice to see you. Say hi to Sally.”

We may act very pleasant and cordial, but inside we are feeling nothing but irritation. The expressions that we show for longer periods of time on our face are called macroexpressions and are generally easier for people to see the emotion that is being conveyed. Similar to microexpressions, macroexpressions are controlled by our emotions, but are not involuntary and often can be faked.

A certain few pioneers into the study of human behavior have spent decades researching something, coined microexpressions, to understand how humans relay emotions.

Microexpressions are expressions that are not easily controllable and occur in reaction to emotions. An emotion triggers certain muscular reactions in a face and those reactions cause certain expressions to appear. Many times these expressions last for as short as one-twenty-fifth