Body Language of The Ear Grab
Synonym(s): Ear Rub, Ear Rubbing, Grabbing The Ear, Touching The Ear, Pulling At The Ear, Ear Pull, Ear Touch, Hand To Ear.
Description: The hand reaches up and grabs, scratches, tugs, or lightly touches or partially covers the ear. If an earring is being worn, a person might roll or tug it instead. In more overt ear language, a person might cover their ears completely, which is usual in children who haven’t yet learned to how to minimize the gesture.
In One Sentence: Grabbing the ear is attributed to those experiencing visceral stress but usually simply serves to alleviate an itch.
How To Use it: Touching parts of the face is not advisable as it generally comes across as negative. Do avoid touching the face as much as possible including the ears when trying to appear open and honest.
Context: a), b), c) General.
Verbal Translation: a) “I’m touching my ear because what I’m hearing is causing me stress and touching my ear helps to relieve it.” b) “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” c) “This is causing me emotional discomfort and which is making my ears flush. To fix the discomfort, I feel like tugging at my ear.”
Variant: See Hand To Nose, Neck Rubbing (back of neck) or Holding The Back Of The Neck.
Cue In Action: a) During court proceedings, a witness began to delve deeper into the case. The defendant didn’t like what she was hearing and she began to flush in the ears causing her to tug at her ears. A used car salesman might talk about the quality of a certain car, then pull on his ear lobe, or more subtly, he might be found rubbing the edge of the ear, indicating that what he has just said is untrue.
Meaning and/or Motivation: The ear grab refers to a subconscious desire to “hear no evil” and is done by reaching up and pulling the ear in response to hearing or saying discomforting things. It also sometimes represents anxiety and nervousness.
Think of the ear grab like rubbing sore muscles or massaging a stiff back, except in this case the damage done is internal and it’s due to something that has been heard, which “hurts” the ears. Anytime someone shows the desire to touch their ear means that they are thinking about hearing, and it will be up to you to tie them to context and decide what it is they are really saying. Other times, the ear is scratched because it really is itchy and has no meaning at all (an adaptor).
The ear grab can be use not only at the conclusion of the lies of others, but also at the conclusion of our own lies as well. The gesture used at the conclusion of our own lies serves to reduce what is called “cognitive dissonance” which is the uncomfortable feeling that comes from holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.
Cue Cluster: In order for the ear tug to have any true meaning of discomfort other cues must be present such as blushing, touching the face or neck, submissive cues, eye aversion or eyes shifting, head lowered, feet turning away, hands and feet freezing, rubbing the hands on the thighs, rubbing the back of the head or neck, massaging the throat or covering the neck dimple and so forth.
Body Language Category: Adaptors, Auto contact or self touching, Defensive, Displacement behaviour, Doubt or disbelief body language, Embarrassment (nonverbal), Pacifying, Lying or deceptive body language, Negative body language, Shy nonverbal.
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