The Man in the Street 231
C H A P T E R 9
231
The Man in
the Street
Up to now, most examples I have given you have been
passive. Or have they? Unless you observed strangers with
absolutely no interaction in the review stage, you affected
your subjects in ways you may or may not have realized.
Simply because you share a microculture or culture with those
people, your approval or disapproval impacts their behavior
and body language. Though you may not think of it as such,
conversation is a form of approval or disapproval. If you
didn’t hide behind plants similar to some distant anthropolo-
gist during your reviews—if you behaved normally and en-
tered into some level of discourse with those you
studied—then you affected them.
Gifted conversationalists such as Bill Clinton keep the
flow of discussion going naturally by picking up tidbits that
the other person leaks. In the world of interrogation, we call