In this Art of Charm podcast episode, Chase Hughes, creator of The Behavioral Table of the Elements and author of The Ellipsis Manual, explains how a cumulative read of nonverbal behavior can gauge the likelihood of deception, why he considers polygraphs about as accurate as a coin toss, and why observation should come before interpretation.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts
Key Takeaways
- The Behavioral Table of the Elements is a reference tool for behavior analysis in interrogations, built so that teams reading interrogations in the field have an easy reference.
- The table is used as a cumulative read, which means it does not automatically mean X, Y, and Z happened. It produces numbers associated with each gesture, and the combined result lets you gauge how much deception is likely taking place.
- Chase Hughes considers polygraph tests just about as accurate as a coin toss, and he says they are biased against people who are telling the truth.
- Beginning with observation instead of trying to make interpretations is the approach the episode recommends for learning nonverbal communication.
- Training yourself to be subconsciously aware of truth signals helps you notice when someone who is lying deviates from them, and the episode mentions watching Conan O'Brien interviews as something to learn from.
- The episode covers how to hack authority for influence and personal development, and lists the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures among its resources.
- Posture can influence physical and mental state, and the episode covers a posture exercise along with an x-ray vision exercise that identifies what really motivates someone.
- A useful way to influence people is to work out what they want to be seen as being good at, instead of only asking what they are good at.
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Who is Chase Hughes?
Chase Hughes created The Behavioral Table of the Elements for behavior analysis in interrogations and is the author of The Ellipsis Manual: Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior. He wrote the manual because everything he found on tactical interrogation and behavior science was fragmented over multiple sources. He works with his team at Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories, which is focused on developing programs that pull the curtain back on how vulnerable the human brain is to hacking and show, through profiling training, how vulnerable we, and the people around us, really are. Chase and his team spent seven years developing the Behavioral Table of the Elements as an easy reference for teams reading interrogations in the field. He has said he was not always a model student, and that he became hooked once he discovered nonverbal communication.
Episode Chapters
- Who Is Chase Hughes
- Why Write The Ellipsis Manual
- What The Behavioral Table Is
- Reading Behavior As A Cumulative Read
- Why Polygraphs Fall Short
- Observe First, Interpret Later
- Authority, Influence, And Behavior Hacking
- Posture And X-Ray Vision Exercises
- How Chase Got Hooked
Who is Chase Hughes and why does his work matter?
Chase Hughes is the creator of The Behavioral Table of the Elements and the author of The Ellipsis Manual: Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior. His work centers on analyzing behavior in interrogations and on how vulnerable people are to behavior hacking.
Chase Hughes joins The Art of Charm as someone who literally wrote the book on tactical interrogation and behavior science. That book is The Ellipsis Manual: Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior. He created The Behavioral Table of the Elements as a more accurate analysis of behavior than the much-used polygraph test.
His team works under the name Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories. They are currently focused on developing programs that pull the curtain back on how vulnerable the human brain is to hacking. The idea is to use profiling training to show how vulnerable all of us are, and how vulnerable the people around us are as well.
The framing of the conversation is that human beings lie. We lie to each other almost as much as we lie to ourselves. Sometimes we do not even mean to do it, and often we are deceptive without malice. But deception can also be used to hack human behavior, and we are all more susceptible to the process than we probably realize. That is why knowing when someone is being deceptive toward us could be to our advantage.
This chapter sets up the rest of the discussion. Chase is presented as someone who has built a structured, field-ready system out of a fragmented body of knowledge, and the rest of the episode explores how that system works and what listeners can take from it.
Why did Chase Hughes write The Ellipsis Manual?
He wrote it because everything he found on tactical interrogation and behavior science was fragmented over multiple sources, and there had been no full-scale manual for use in the field.
Chase wrote The Ellipsis Manual because the material on the subject was scattered over multiple sources. A full-scale manual for use in the field did not exist up to that point.
The episode treats that gap as symptomatic of a larger negligence in the academic world. There have been numerous studies proving that the majority of information we convey to one another is done nonverbally, yet the importance of this revelation seems largely ignored by that world.
Chase gives a pointed example. He says he thinks the average psychotherapist or social worker goes through years and years of training, and out of all of that gets maybe a half hour on body language, and that this is true even for a psychotherapist with a graduate degree. He adds that these same people go on to produce studies saying nonverbal communication makes up two thirds or some odd number of communication, and then nothing changes in the academic perspective.
Chase and his team at Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories are trying to pick up the slack and expand that perspective.
What is the Behavioral Table of the Elements?
It is a reference tool Chase Hughes created for behavior analysis in interrogations, designed as an easy reference for teams reading interrogations in the field. It can also be applied to any conversation.
The Behavioral Table of the Elements is the centerpiece of the episode. Chase created it for behavior analysis in interrogations, and he and his team spent seven years developing it as an easy reference for teams reading interrogations in the field. The goal is to be the guy people call first.
The table can be downloaded, and Chase encourages listeners to use it and share it with the world.
Although it was built for interrogation work, the episode makes clear that, for those of us who do not regularly interrogate people, the table can be applied to any conversation.
One of the questions the episode asks is how the table can be used to determine the likelihood that someone is telling us the truth. The key word is likelihood: the table is used to gauge the amount of deception that is likely taking place.
How does a cumulative read help gauge deception?
A cumulative read adds up numbers associated with each gesture instead of treating any one gesture as proof. It lets you gauge how much deception is likely to be taking place.
Chase explains that the way the table is used is as a cumulative read. It does not automatically mean that X, Y, and Z happened. Instead, it produces a certain amount of numbers associated with each gesture.
As he describes it, seven interrogators can read a situation in different ways, but there is still a common interpretation.
From that, you can gauge the amount of deception that is likely taking place in an interrogation. The emphasis is on a degree of likelihood, not on a yes or no answer.
For listeners, the lesson is that a single gesture does not settle the question, and that the table is built around combining observations.
How accurate are polygraph tests according to Chase Hughes?
Chase considers polygraph tests just about as accurate as a coin toss, and he says they are biased against people who tell the truth. He created the Behavioral Table as a more accurate analysis of behavior.
One of the boldest claims in the episode is Chase's view of the polygraph. He considers polygraph tests just about as accurate as a coin toss. He also says they are actually biased against people who tell the truth.
This criticism is part of why The Behavioral Table of the Elements exists. Chase created it as a more accurate analysis of behavior than the much-used polygraph, and the episode covers why the table is more accurate than the infamous test.
The table relies on a cumulative read built from many observed gestures and expressed as a likelihood of deception, which is a different approach from a single test.
Why should you observe before interpreting body language?
The episode discusses the benefit of beginning with observation and not trying to make interpretations, and how to avoid being overwhelmed by everything there is to understand about nonverbal communication.
Nonverbal communication can feel enormous. The episode discusses how to avoid being overwhelmed by everything there is to understand about it, and covers the benefit of beginning with observation and not trying to make interpretations.
The episode also covers how training ourselves to be subconsciously aware of truth signals clues us in when someone who is lying deviates from them.
As a practice suggestion, the episode mentions what someone training to spot deception indicators and stress might learn from watching Conan O'Brien interviews.
The episode also covers how observation of what makes other people tick levels our own playing field.
How does authority influence behavior and how can you defend against being hacked?
The episode discusses how to hack authority for influence and personal development, and what to do if you sense you are being behavior hacked by people who mean you harm.
The episode covers how to hack authority for influence and personal development. The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures is listed among the resources for the episode.
The other side of this topic is defense. The episode asks what to do if we sense ourselves being behavior hacked by people who mean us harm.
This connects to the mission of Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories, which is to pull the curtain back on how vulnerable the human brain is to hacking and show, through profiling training, how vulnerable we and the people around us really are.
What are the posture and x-ray vision exercises?
The episode covers a posture exercise that influences physical and mental state, and an x-ray vision exercise that identifies what really motivates someone.
The episode covers two exercises. The first is the posture exercise, which the episode describes as a way we can influence physical and mental state.
The second is the x-ray vision exercise, described as one that identifies what really motivates someone.
Chase is quoted as saying that instead of trying to figure out what a person is good at, you should try to figure out what they want to be seen as being good at, and you will get ten times the results.
The details of how each exercise is performed are best heard in the episode itself.
Instead of trying to figure out what a person's good at, try to figure out what they want to be seen as being good at and you'll get ten times the results.
How did Chase Hughes get into nonverbal communication?
Chase says he was not always a model student, but once he found out about nonverbal communication he was hooked.
Chase tells the audience that he has not always been a model student. He says his parents would take him out to dinner when he passed a class with a C grade.
Once he found out about nonverbal communication, a whole fascinating world he had not known opened up to him. He says he was hooked, and that it seemed there was something that had been there all his life. All of this nonverbal communication had been hidden and nobody talked about it, and he never knew it was important.
As he got good at it, he came to feel that you really can see behind people's masks just by reading body language.
Becoming someone who can read body language within a slim margin of error takes hours of training and discipline, the kind that might only seem reasonable to the parents of an aspiring concert pianist.
Once I started getting good at it, I realized you really can kind of see behind people's masks just by reading body language.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Chase Hughes?
Chase Hughes is the creator of The Behavioral Table of the Elements, a tool for behavior analysis in interrogations, and the author of The Ellipsis Manual: Analysis and Engineering of Human Behavior. He works with his team at Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories on programs that show how vulnerable the human brain is to hacking.
What did Chase Hughes say about the Behavioral Table of the Elements on The Art of Charm podcast?
He explained that the table is used as a cumulative read. It does not automatically mean X, Y, and Z happened. It produces numbers associated with each gesture so that seven interrogators can read a situation different ways but reach a common interpretation, and you can gauge how much deception is likely taking place. It can be applied to any conversation, not only interrogations.
What is the Behavioral Table of the Elements?
It is a reference tool created by Chase Hughes and his team over seven years for behavior analysis in interrogations, built as an easy reference for teams reading interrogations in the field. It can be downloaded, and Chase encourages people to share it with the world.
Are polygraph tests accurate according to Chase Hughes?
Chase considers polygraph tests just about as accurate as a coin toss, and says they are biased against people who tell the truth. He created the Behavioral Table of the Elements as a more accurate analysis of behavior.
How can you start learning to detect deception?
The episode covers the benefit of beginning with observation and not trying to make interpretations, and training yourself to be subconsciously aware of truth signals so you notice when someone who is lying deviates from them. It also mentions what someone might learn from watching Conan O'Brien interviews.
What does the episode say about authority and influence?
The episode covers how to hack authority for influence and personal development, and lists the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures among its resources. It also asks what to do if you sense you are being behavior hacked by people who mean you harm.
Why did Chase Hughes write The Ellipsis Manual?
He wrote it because everything he found on tactical interrogation and behavior science was fragmented over multiple sources. There had been no full-scale manual for use in the field, which the episode describes as symptomatic of a larger negligence in the academic world, which has largely ignored the importance of nonverbal communication.
Resources Mentioned
- The Behavioral Table of the Elements
- Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories
- The Milgram Experiment on Obedience to Authority Figures
- Chase Hughes at Twitter
- Elite Human Dynamics
- Share your number one takeaway from this episode
More Episodes Like This
- Adam Nesrallah | What Spies Teach Us About Reading People (Episode 405)
- The Definitive Guide to Reading Body Language | Allan Pease
- Vanessa Van Edwards | How to Read People Like a Book (Episode 281)
- Robert Cialdini | Pre-suasion (Episode 543)
- Patrick Van Horne | Left of Bang (Episode 432)
