Book Review – Nonverbal Communication In Human Interaction

Of the “Must Read” books listed on the recommended reading list, Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction, 7^th Edition, by Mark Knapp and Judith Hall is at the bottom for a reason, but not because it is a bad read or without great information.  It is there for the exact opposite reason; it is absolutely full of incredibly well researched content that directly applies to Combat Profiling.

It is at the bottom of the list because when you read it, we want you to have already read What Every Body Is Saying, we want you to have read Lie Spotting, we want you to be comfortable with the content here on the site and we want you to have already gone out in town and observed all 6 domains of Combat Profiling in unscripted scenarios before you read it.

If you approach this book with that background, you will have the ability to apply the lessons and the content that the authors have collected in this book with the experiences you have gained through your initial learning.  The reason behind that is because this book is a little more like a “textbook” and not the sort of book you will lose yourself in as your frantically turn pages (unless you are like me and only read books related to human profiling).

As you initially expand your “profiling file folders” and become a more acute observer of your surroundings, you will eventually need to take a step back and re-evaluate the science behind your observations and your conclusions.  This book is an excellent resource for that.  Every chapter of this book has a multiple page bibliography that lets you become confident in the information that has preceded it.  Also, as you reach this book in your development, you are ready to make your own decisions on which areas you want to focus your study on, and the references listed here will help guide your next step.

Knapp and Hall’s book discusses the science behind 5 out of the 6 domains of Combat Profiling including: geographics, proxemics, iconography, kinesics and biometrics.  For every topic in the book, you will get the content itself, the history of the research as well as how to use this information in your daily life.  For some of the domains, the authors may use different terminology than what we refer to in the course, but if you have already become familiar with our topics, you will have no problem applying the lessons here to become a better profiler.

Finally, there is a lot of information that is involved in human profiling that does not get covered in our course because of time constraints and our focus on training you to identify threat behavior.  This book can also open up different perspectives on profiling as well as additional ways you can use this skill.  I acknowledge that this book is relatively expensive, with Amazon listing even used books at around $70, so we recommend that you wait to buy it until you are familiar with our concepts but also endorse the authors and feel confident stating that the material inside the book, is well worth the price.