The Upper Hand: The Science of Trust, Influence, and Human Behavior
Summary
Your book challenges the idea that influence comes from power or leverage. What does it actually mean to have the “upper hand” in a conversation?
Dr. Abbie explains that having the “upper hand” is not about controlling other people—it’s about controlling yourself. Rather than focusing on short-term wins, manipulation, or dominance, true influence comes from emotional regulation, strategic thinking, and maintaining focus on long-term outcomes.
She describes the upper hand as the ability to stay grounded in your goals, even when emotions, pressure, or ego tempt you toward reactive decisions. Sometimes that means allowing someone else to “win” a moment in order to preserve trust, credibility, and long-term success. According to Dr. Abbie, sustainable influence is built through integrity, consistency, and self-awareness—not leverage or force.
What are the key psychological drivers that shape how people respond in conversations and negotiations?
One of the most important psychological drivers, according to Dr. Abbie, is humanity’s deeply evolved need for connection and cooperation. While people are naturally self-serving in the sense that they seek safety and survival, humans are also fundamentally social and collaborative by nature.
However, because trust can be broken, people develop skepticism and protective barriers over time. This means that conversations and negotiations are shaped not only by logic, but by emotional safety, perceived intent, and trustworthiness.
Dr. Abbie also highlights the impact of stress and survival states on communication. When people operate in fear, pressure, or constant comparison, cortisol levels rise, reducing clarity, emotional regulation, and decision-making quality. Building environments of trust and psychological safety allows people to think more strategically and respond more openly.
You emphasize trust over tactics—why is building trust actually the most effective way to influence outcomes?
Dr. Abbie argues that many traditional influence tactics focus too heavily on short-term wins at the expense of long-term relationships. While manipulative tactics may produce immediate results, they often damage credibility, trust, and future opportunities.
Instead, she believes the strongest influence comes from becoming someone people genuinely trust. This means demonstrating integrity, emotional control, consistency, and respect over time. Rather than asking, “How do I make someone trust me?” Dr. Abbie encourages people to ask, “How do I show others I am trustworthy?”
By building trust, leaders and communicators create stronger relationships, more honest conversations, and more sustainable influence over time.
What’s one practical shift people can make to influence conversations more effectively—at work or in leadership?
One of the most practical shifts Dr. Abbie recommends is moving attention away from decoding other people’s behavior and toward understanding your own impact on others.
Rather than obsessing over whether someone seems defensive, resistant, or disengaged, leaders should ask themselves how their own tone, body language, emotional state, and communication style may be shaping the interaction.
She emphasizes that influence begins with self-awareness. By becoming more intentional, emotionally regulated, and trustworthy in how we show up, we naturally create conversations that are more productive, collaborative, and effective.
Transcript
Rachel Cossar
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Conversations in the Future of Work. I am delighted today to have one of my dear friends and close advisors who’s been working with us at Virtual Sapiens since the beginning on the show for a second time today. And we’re gonna be digging into a lot of her recent work around trust and influence, especially as it comes to relationships and conversations and communication.
I would love to pass the mic over and welcome Dr. Abbey.
Dr. Abbie
Thank you, Rachel. It’s so good to be here. I’m Dr. Abbey. I’m a behavioral scientist. I specialize in nonverbal communication, trust, and human decision making. I train federal agents, including Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security. I am recognized by the US Department of State as having extraordinary abilities in the sciences, and I am a 40 under 40 honoree.
Rachel Cossar
Amazing. Will you tell us a little bit about the book that was just recently published?
Dr. Abbie
Yes, yes, so The Upper Hand — I say that I have my two books. I have Work in Progress and I have Upper Hand. The Upper Hand is my head and then Work in Progress is my heart. Work in Progress is all about emotions and dealing with the self. The Upper Hand is about thinking, communication, and how to get what you want.
This was almost like my baby that I curated for seven years. I started writing this when I was 19 or 20, and it came from the accumulation of all my research. I had seen so many things about nonverbal communication framed as “if you see this cue, it always means this thing” or “if you do this behavior, you’ll always get this result.”
And that was infuriating to me because that’s not how people work.
I wanted to understand why people behaved the way they did. So rather than giving people a rigid list of tactics, I wanted to create a framework that helped people understand how human behavior actually works so they could adapt intelligently to different situations.
I spent years building this framework — literally sticky notes on walls, papers pinned everywhere, strings connecting ideas. My office looked like a crazy professor’s office.
Eventually, I realized one of the missing principles was the mind-body connection — how our thoughts, emotions, physiology, and behaviors are influenced by the outside world: body language, time of day, sound, smell, environment, all of it.
That became part of the framework that eventually evolved into The Upper Hand.
Rachel Cossar
Amazing. And that’s all in The Upper Hand.
Dr. Abbie
That’s all in The Upper Hand. It’s about influence and persuasion, but not at the expense of other people.
It’s not about manipulating people into giving you what you want. It’s about mastering long-term influence through trust, credibility, and relationships.
I don’t just want a quick win. I want sustainable influence.
Rachel Cossar
Your book challenges the idea that influence comes from power or leverage. What does it actually mean to have the “upper hand” in a conversation?
Dr. Abbie
Having the upper hand isn’t about controlling other people. It’s about being in control of yourself.
It means understanding that while you can’t control someone else’s reactions, you can control your own behavior, your emotional responses, and the decisions you make in the moment.
Sometimes having the upper hand means letting someone else “win” a moment because you’re focused on the long-term goal rather than the short-term emotional satisfaction.
I call it taking the long road rather than the short road.
There were people in my career who got faster wins by telling people what they wanted to hear, taking credit for ideas, or prioritizing visibility over integrity. They appeared successful quickly.
But over time, their reputation limited them.
I chose the slower path because my goal was long-term credibility and trustworthiness. And eventually, those qualities became the reason opportunities came my way.
To me, that’s the real upper hand.
Rachel Cossar
What are the key psychological drivers that shape how people respond in conversations and negotiations?
Dr. Abbie
One of the biggest is that humans evolved to connect and cooperate.
People often think humans are naturally selfish, but we’re actually deeply social and collaborative by nature. We had to cooperate to survive and evolve.
The challenge is that people have also learned skepticism because trust can be abused.
So instead of asking, “How do I make someone trust me?” we should ask, “How do I show someone that I am trustworthy?”
That’s a completely different mindset.
Another major factor is stress. When people operate in fear, comparison, or survival mode, cortisol rises. And cortisol impacts decision-making, memory retrieval, emotional regulation — all of it.
People communicate and negotiate very differently when they feel psychologically safe versus threatened.
Rachel Cossar
You emphasize trust over tactics. Why is building trust actually the most effective way to influence outcomes?
Dr. Abbie
Because manipulation creates short-term gains and long-term losses.
You can force quick compliance through pressure or tactics, but that doesn’t create loyalty, trust, or sustainable relationships.
Trust creates openness. It creates honesty. It creates long-term collaboration.
And trust is built through consistency, integrity, emotional regulation, and genuinely caring about the relationship — not just the outcome.
People can feel when you’re trying to “use” them.
If you want influence that lasts, you have to become someone people genuinely feel safe with.
Rachel Cossar
What’s one practical shift people can make to influence conversations more effectively — at work or in leadership?
Dr. Abbie
Stop obsessing over decoding everyone else’s behavior and start paying attention to your own impact on people.
People spend so much time asking, “What does their body language mean?” instead of asking, “What is my body language communicating?”
I worked with an agent once who described a suspect as defensive, reactive, and closed off. Then I watched the recording and realized the agent himself was aggressive, cold, and confrontational.
The suspect wasn’t necessarily reacting to guilt — he was reacting to the environment being created around him.
So one of the biggest shifts people can make is becoming more aware of how their own tone, energy, emotional state, and communication style influence the interaction.
Influence begins with self-awareness.
Rachel Cossar
Fascinating. So we’re coming to the end of our conversation. If people want to engage with more of your work or follow your thought leadership, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Dr. Abbie
My website is abbymarono.com, and I’m very active on LinkedIn and Instagram under DrAbbieOfficial.
And I also want to say something about Virtual Sapiens. AI was very new and honestly very intimidating to me at first. It’s rare to find an AI company that truly embodies values around trust, integrity, and long-term human development.
Working with Virtual Sapiens has been amazing because the company genuinely operates from those values.
Rachel Cossar
Well, thank you so much for saying that. We’re incredibly honored to have you as an advisor and partner.
Dr. Abbie, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing all this critical insight on human behavior and relationships.
And thanks as always to our community for joining us. We’ll see you next time.