Roger Clemens' Body Language and His Non-Use of Steroids
J. J. Tecce
Boston College
tecce@bc.edu
January 9, 2008
Introduction
Roger Clemens, all-star major league baseball pitcher, was named in a report by former Senator George Mitchell as having used performance-enhancing steroids. Brian McNamee, who was Clemens' trainer, is said to have injected the drugs. The report was dated December 13, 2007 and was released on January 3, 2008. On January 6, three days later, Clemens denied the allegations during a televised interview with Mike Wallace on the program "60 Minutes". This assessment of Clemens' body language and comments is based on the TV interview (see Endnote).
Headers
Roger Clemens' blink rate of 60 blinks per minute (bpm) puts him well above the 30 to 50 bpm range that is normal for being on camera and indicates that he was experiencing a high level of stress.
Frequent gaze-avoidance is psychologically significant, since it reveals emotional distress.
Three identical denials in rapid succession and stuttering during the third denial raise a red flag that Clemens' response was not wholly candid.
The poet Shakespeare implied that the words of an individual who "protests too much" are not to be taken at face value.
Background
Body language can reflect positive and negative emotional states. Frequency of blinking is a particularly sensitive measure of feelings. For example, increased blink frequency is associated with unpleasant feelings, such as pain, and decreased blink frequency is associated with pleasant feelings, such as contentment. Stress is one type of negative emotional experience that produces rapid blinking. Consequently, blink frequency can be useful in the detection of high levels of stress.
Results
Roger Clemens' blink rate of 60 blinks per minute (bpm) puts him well above the 30 to 50 bpm range that is normal for being on camera and indicates that he was experiencing a high level of stress. His highest blink rate to a specific question was 78 bpm, which occurred when he described taking pain medications. As expected, this topic was a particularly difficult one for him discuss.
Clemens also showed many instances of looking away--approximately 90 times in all. Frequent gaze-avoidance is psychologically significant, since it reveals emotional distress.
It is likely an attempt to avoid eye contact with the interviewer, who is a source of troublesome questions.
Other unusual behaviors included lip-licking approximately 20 times and non-speech mouth movements approximately 10 times. These signs of dry lips and muscle tension are further indications of high stress. His sipping water intermittently indicates a dry mouth, which is a particularly sensitive indicator of psychological tension.
This entire assemblage of body language--eye movements and mouth activity--portrays an exceptionally high stress state.
Aside from these nonverbal indicators of stress, there were two odd verbal responses.
One was in answer to the key accusation by Clemens' trainer, Brian McNamee, who reported having injected Clemens with steroids. Clemens' response was a combination of extreme redundancy and stumbling over a common word:
"It didn't happen. It didn't happen. It jus (sic) just didn't happen."
One denial would have been enough. Two might have been appropriate for emphasis. Three identical denials in rapid succession and stuttering during the third denial raise a red flag that Clemens' response was not wholly candid. This type of repetition has been interpreted as showing that the speaker is unsuccessfully trying to convince one as well as others that his statement is true. The Bard, Shakespeare, implied that the words of an individual who does "protest too much" by a repeated declaration are not to be taken at face value.
A second puzzling verbal response was Clemens' statement that the substances injected by McNamee were vitamin B12 and lidocaine. If he meant that the injection was administered in the buttocks, there is a medical issue. Lidocaine is a local anesthetic. As such, an injection of lidocaine in the buttocks would be helpful only for a pain in the ass. Any pain in the back or shoulders would not likely be directly affected by a shot in the buttocks.
The finding of so many indicators of stress is highly significant, since there were situational factors that should have lowered Clemens' stress level. First, here was an opportunity for him to pitch a perfect inning in an interview by utilizing his strong competitive nature to steel him against interview stress. Instead, his body language shows that he was considerably nettled. Second, he was able to select the interviewer, Mike Wallace, with whom he had been friendly. In fact, it has been suggested that Wallace came out of mothballs as a favor to Clemens to do this interview. And, clearly, Wallace was less than rigorous and probing in his method of questioning.
There is also a strong likelihood that Clemens rehearsed his answers--with his attorney and/or with Wallace himself. At one point in the interview, Wallace cues Clemens to complete a sentence with the name of his accuser, McNamee. At another point, Wallace cues Clemens to tell a story that makes McNamee appear to be a hypocrite for sending Clemens a friendly email a few days before the Mitchell report was released.
Again, given rehearsal as an effective stress reducer, the fact that Clemens was highly stressed during the interview is puzzling and raises a critical question. Why would Clemens experience such dis-ease with so much going for him in the interview?
Summary
An unusual pattern of eye and mouth movements suggests that Clemens was experiencing a high level of stress during his "60 Minutes" interview. Whether or not he was lying cannot be determined with complete confidence. Yet, there is a brightly colored red flag flapping high in the wind--body language that indicates an unusually high level of stress along with a strangely awkward verbal reaction to the key accusation that his trainer injected him with illegal steroids.
Conclusion
In my opinion, we don't have a smoking gun here, but the coupling of an unusual body language with a verbal over-response to the key issue of steroid use suggests a strong likelihood that Clemens was not telling the whole story about what transpired with McNamee.
Endnote
These comments about Clemens are based on material from the start of the interview, when he said, "I'm angry that that (sic) what I've done ..." up to his statement toward the end about Vioxx, "... tell me itÂ’s bad for my heart." These comments were written without access to the Clemens' phone conversation and videos that have surfaced since the Mitchell report was released and without access to the report itself.