The Ultimate Body Language Book

fraud to expose. The ‘Hans Commission’ was assembled including zoologists, psychologist, a horse
trainer, several school teachers and a circus manger. After extensive testing, however, they concluded
that there was no trickery involved and that Hans’ responses where genuine.
Having found no trickery the Commission passed the investigation onto Oskar Pfungst, a psychologist.
He had some unique ideas on how to get to the bottom of things. As usual, Hans answered all the
questions posed by Von Osten well under normal conditions but when asked to step further away
however, Hans’s success rate dropped inexplicably. The success rate also dropped to close to zero when
the questioner wasn’t himself aware of the answer. The same result came when the questioner was
hidden from view. Hans’ success therefore, was severely tied to his ability to see the person who knew
the correct answer.
Pfungst continued the research but turned his focus onto the people that were interacting with Hans. He
noticed that there were differences in breathing, posture and facial expressions as Hans tapped out his
answer. As Hans neared to correct answer, the handlers would increase the tension they held in their
body language which would tip off Hans. Once the final tap had been made, the tension suddenly
disappeared from the person and so Hans took this cue to mean it was time to stop tapping.
While Hans was discredited from being able to do math, he was very learned at reading human body
language. It revealed that horses had a keen ability to read non verbal cues perhaps as part of their
social interactions with other horses throughout their evolution. Hans’ ability to read body language
might also help explain why horse whisperers are able to “talk” to horses. Von Osten never fully
accepted this explanation and continued to tour Germany with his show and remained quite successful
even though Hans never really had any comprehension of math.
What fortune tellers do isn’t much different from what Hans’ the horse did. Tellers are able to pick up
on subtle body language clues and navigate these cues throughout a reading. They pick up on small
gestures that indicate they are on the right track which further fuels them and induces the person being
read to loosen up. They also rely on probability statistics to make educated guesses and knowledge of
human nature and psychology. What makes them even more believable is the fact that some aren’t even
consciously aware of their ability to read body language which helps them keep their techniques a
secret. This gives them an advantage in fooling the gullible since it’s much easier to deceive others
when you first have yourself convinced. People being read also have a positive expectation that they
will be read correctly and play into readers more readily often being quite charitable even when their
predictions are only remotely accurate. It would be much harder for a reader to accurately read a
skeptic, but any good teller will avoid reading these people. Fortune tellers have also been accused of
being vague and general which could be accurate for just about anyone. Fortune tellers hit on many
different subjects often contradicting themselves until they hit on information that sticks.
So before you get taken by a fortune teller remember how Hans and his owner where able to amaze so
many. Even after the tests showed that Hans was reading his master’s body language his show
continued to go on for years un-deterred and even grew more in popularity as time passed.