READING BODY LANGUAGE FULL

It’s hard to get these timings right when lying. The hand movement starts just before the speech and then the meaningful part of the gesture coincides exactly with the relevant word. It’s much easier to lie effectively in speech than in the accompanying gesture because these movements have intricate timings linked to the speech itself. But you need to know what they’re talking about to read the gestural movements. I have argued in Rethinking Body Language that, in cases like this, the unconscious gesture is often the more reliable indicator of the underlying thought. Another person says “I have very high ambitions” but their hand doesn’t rise that far, which you would expect if a person really felt that way. A speaker might say “my partner and I are very close” but their hands indicate a significant gap, rather than closeness.

Sometimes the gestural movement and the speech do not match. My own research has shown that meanings are expressed in these movements – and when people can’t see these gestures they miss important information. There’s no dictionary for these movements but they’re generated alongside speech itself. When people talk they often make spontaneous and unconscious hand movements that illustrate the content of what they’re saying. ‘I’m happy, honest!’ Shutterstock/RomarioIen It’s very brief but it can be very revealing.Īnother problem with the static nature of these body language books is that speech and body language are intimately connected, as US psychologist and expert in psycholinguistics (the psychology of language), David McNeill argued in his 2000 book Language and Gesture.

So to decode facial expressions more accurately, you need to focus on what’s going on when the fake smile disappears. A fake masking smile leaves the face abruptly, as the US psychologist, Paul Ekman, has shown in his pioneering experiments linking emotions and facial expressions. So how can you tell a fake smile from a genuine smile? A genuine one involves the muscles around the eyes and fades slowly from the face. That is until the person starts to try to control it, for example, by masking emotions with a smile. There may not be 20,000 different facial expressions, but the face can still be very revealing of underlying emotional states. In my book Rethinking Body Language, I argue that to read body language accurately you need to know where to look. Its significance is immense, although it’s not 12 times more powerful than verbal communication – as some have claimed. You can’t stand in a crotch display or sit in the catapult all day.īut that’s not to say body language isn’t important.

READING BODY LANGUAGE FULL

These books are full of static images of the body language of effective “communicators” – and that’s one fundamental issue because body language is dynamic: the body is in motion. Is this the catapult or just a shoulder stretch? ViDI Studio/Shutterstock More recent scientific research suggests that the real number of facial expressions is actually closer to 21.

But in the Definitive Book of Body Language published in 2004 by Allan and Barbara Pease, that number suddenly increased to 250,000.Ī quarter of a million different facial expressions – no wonder you need to read a guide on body language to decode those. For example, in a book published in 1970, author Ray Birdwhistell claimed that humans have 20,000 different facial expressions.

Indeed, you can’t trust everything you read in body language guides. For example, eye contact in Japan can be considered an act of aggression or rudeness. But it’s important to remember that it’s not an exact science and there can be cultural or individual variations in how people express themselves through body language. Reading body language can be a useful skill in understanding how someone is feeling or what they might be thinking. Most of us have heard the one about if you cross your arms over your chest you’re feeling defensive or if you’re fiddling with your hair while talking you feel nervous – but is there really any truth to some of these body language stereotypes?