In this opening chapter we have looked at some body language primers. Hopefully you have grabbed a hold of the frame of mind necessary to read body language. Not all reading comes naturally, but then again, reading people is not as difficult as it can be made out to be. We have looked at how to use this book; as not only a guide, but as a tool, an encyclopedia. It might not flow exactly in your ideal, but of which, can be used in varying sequences and be revisited from time to time as a refresher. In fact, this book should be revisited again and again. You will be surprised just how much you pick up the second and third time around!
We have learned that it is the first four minutes that often dictate life-long impression we have with others, how fortune tellers are like horses, how to read someone cold, how the mind mirrors through its neurons and the body and brain are linked, the vital importance of the limbic systems and how it is paramount in creating honest body language, and what it really means to read people. We also covered the difference between “OK” types and “Not OK” types as well as introverted versus extroverted, and how this can affect body language. From there it became more obvious to understand how to get the desired results with our new tools and how it can be difficult to fake body language due to microexpressions. Finally, we advanced a ‘fail safe’ technique which implied that looking at people as if they were nude can tell us a lot about body language and helps make reading a more common sense practice.
My final thought in this opening chapter should keep your imagination in full gear because I am about to recommend that you do something naughty to become more proficient at reading body language. I’m instructing you to picture your body language subjects as if they were totally nude! Body language cues came about over our evolutionary history, so it naturally follows that they developed without clothing or coverings. Imagine, for example, a full body steeple where the arms are placed behind the head and the body leans back with the legs spread wide open – a crotch display! It is the way a proud (or arrogant) man sits to put his full package on display. True, it is slightly less offensive with clothing on, but it still carries the exact same meaning since its true intentions were delivered as if the clothing were absent. Picturing people naked helps us to think about not just the message, but also the route behind the message. Men who hold their legs spread wide open are perceived as arrogant but women who hold the exact same posture will be thought of as sexually open or “easy.” While each party might not specifically intend to deliver this message, it matters little to how others subconsciously perceive them.
What is her body saying with it’s “openness.”
Arrogance and sexual openness are not the only gestures that are made more salient by picturing people naked but they are the most dramatic. We can also picture meek gestures in the same way. Women that place their hands over their laps are doing so for just the opposite reason as do women who spread their legs, they do so to hide or protect their genitals for view or from access. The same intention is obvious when women fold their arms over their chest. They are trying to hide and protect their breasts since someone or something has made them withdraw and has made them insecure. Naturally, their arms fold, one over the other, and they hide from view something important to them. There will be times though, when protection isn’t the reason, arm crossing due to being cold is one of them. We will discuss the importance of context in this regard in more detail later. There are other times still, when women put themselves on full display. Women do so by walking with their hips forward and chest back. This is called the parade and her intension is to have men and subordinate women take notice. If you have trouble visualizing this, put it in the context of the local nightclub. Suddenly you see that it follows naturally, and next time at a bar, you might actually notice it in an authentic context.
While we are on the subject of nudity, think about how and where we hold our possessions. A handbag can be held to our sides, but equally, it can be placed on our laps or held to our chest. Handbags therefore, can have a protective shielding purpose, as do other objects in our environment and some women will even admit this as fact by tell you that they feel naked without one! Desks can be used as barricades to block ourselves from view and chairs with backs can be used in full on assault by turning them backwards and straddling them, putting the “boys” or “girls”, on full display. Then from the security of our seated position we can toss verbal arrows and spears. People who sit in this way are obviously aware of being fully clothed and most certainly wouldn’t sit this way while naked, but that’s not the point. The point is that people continue to sit this way despite holding the evolutionary hardwiring telling them that the way they are sitting is offensive. Someone that is defensive, on the other hand, will use desks, walls, doors, or other barriers to protect and hide themselves rather than flaunt. You can think of shields such as handbags or jackets like towels, objects that we use fresh out of the shower to block our private areas from view and appropriately conceal our modesty. An excellent example of a real life “towel” and one that is very commonly used during presentations is the podium. Most would say that it is a great place to store our notes and an area to place the microphone, and nothing more, but in reality it’s a place of refuge that public speakers us to escape full view of the crowd. Only the most confident speakers who are accustomed to being exposed in front of large audiences will move about a stage for everyone to see.
So in summary, do as any amateur public speaker is recommended to do, when in doubt, and to make the points expressed in this book more salient, picture your targets naked!
A confident posture includes having the shoulders back and upright, head up and level and a well balances body. Confident people move freely without hesitation, make appropriate gestures, and hold smiles often. People that lack confidence will walk with a hunched back, they will be careless with their arm gestures, will sulk and frown, and their head will droop. They often appear sad or tired and the frown lines in their face will depend with time producing permanent wrinkles. Often they aren’t much fun to be around and seem to be taking every chance to drag you others around them down. However, far from acting consciously, people who lack confidence are acting out of habit and routine.
Subconscious facial expressions can make people think you don’t like them which might be opposite to what you intend. In this case, we see ‘scorn.’
Part of the power behind body language stems from its direct connection to someone’s overall disposition, how life has treated them, and also how they treat life in return. Since all people face challenges confident body language tells others if a person actively takes control of their life or lets life push them around.
If you meet a “Not OK” person you will subconsciously feel uneasy or suspicious. Sometimes people put on a good temporary show but within a few minutes their bodies relax only to revert back to their natural dispositions. We instinctively know this and read it, but don’t always bring it to our active consciousness to process it. Have you ever asked others what your body language portrays? Do you hold certain gestures that make you look unapproachable or negative?
One of my wife’s friends consistently receives negative comments about her scowls despite being an extremely kind hearted person. However her natural face appears ‘bitchy’, so much so that it’s her defining feature and one that is joked about by those that really know her. This example raises an important point. Our bodies leak information without our consent and when we aren’t receiving the results we want, we should do something proactive about it. From an outside perspective, people think that her face really shows inner turmoil and then discount her kindheartedness even on a first impression. It is her facial expressions that set the tone with others, even before she has the chance to speak. She then must work extra diligently to reverse the first impression she creates. People naturally perceive those that hold negative facial expressions and body language to be holding a grudge. This story outlines the importance of monitoring our gestures and facial expressions to convey the types of feelings we wish to show the world and achieve the results we desire. Thus, while I don’t know this person well enough to explain this trait to her without offending her, others have, but with only mediocre results. At least now she is aware of what impression she makes, so she can resolve matters more quickly if she senses negativity from others. With just a modest change she could reap immense results.
The point here is that if you hold negative body language, it’s not yet too late to fix things so hold your head up high and watch people around you begin to treat you better. Sit more upright, swing your arms, smile more and despite inner feelings, start acting happy. Body language is a great way to ‘fake it until you make it’. Holding confident body language makes us feel confident so let’s use our bodies to change the patterns in our brains.
Dr. Eric Berne, the founder of the psychological school of Transactional Analysis (abbreviated TA) coined the terms “OK” and “Not OK” to describe two essential types of people. The “OK” types are secure and confident in who they are and carry little emotional “baggage” whereas the “Not OK” types are insecure about themselves and often feel inferior. Dr. Berne also helped to define certain terms that were important in studying social interaction. When two people meet eventually one of the persons will acknowledge the presence of the other person. He called this the “transactional stimulus” where a “transaction” refers to a conversation between people. When people interact to each other, they talk or express nonverbal body communication, they issue a “transactional response”. Those that are (obsessively) interested in social dynamics often begin to think of interactions down to the unit. These definitions, however, are merely presented for interest sake, since for our purpose they aren’t terribly important.
Berne’s approach was much different from that of Freud who though perhaps too simplistically, that he could learn everything about someone just by asking them, and then listening to their response. Berne felt that therapists could learn more about people by watching their body language and facial expressions instead of words by themselves.
Eric Berne published a very popular and interesting book called Games People Play in 1964. To date it has sold over five million copies. The book describes the function and dysfunction that happens in human interactions. Without getting into too much detail, let’s look at one example of a game.
The example I wanted to bring forward makes light of how we control our interactions with people by the tone and words we choose. As a boss, if we attack an employee by taking up a controlling “parental” role we will normally elicit a childish tantrum in return. The real way to deal with adult situations is to attack them from a constructive integrity based position where we act like “adults”. Adult actions normally yield adult responses, but as we see in Berne’s book, not everyone uses the best framework to work through life. As he sees it, some people get stuck between three ego states, the “Parent”, “Child” and “Adult”. Berne outlines well over ninety games that people play, some good, but mostly bad. He defines games as social interactions that are counterproductive. Today, there are few ardent followers that use the TA approach in any rigid way, even the ego states have been scrutinized, however, the principles of the method do help us look at how we run our lives and the ways we hold ourselves back through games we play with ourselves and others. He also ran a results-based framework which was new to psychiatry at the time and says that if it’s not working for you and you aren’t getting the results you want, change it!
There are essentially two types of personalities that exist in the world around us. They are introverted and extroverted each type have a subset called “OK” and “Not OK” (which is discussed next). Introverted describes a personality that is inward thinking, they recover from life by being with themselves and reflecting. The will normally enjoy nature or a good book, prefer quiet areas where not a lot of people distract them. These people will often be found alone and prefer jobs that don’t involve a lot of people and that they can do independently. Being introverted doesn’t mean that a person is antisocial and it’s not a personality deficiency, it only means that someone is more comfortable being alone with their own thoughts than being in the spotlight. Extroverted people are the very opposite. They find social situations necessary and stimulating and “recharge” by hanging out with friends or going out. The like being in busy places like malls or city cores, in acting outwardly and garnering attention through telling jokes or acting funny.
Physiologists now believe that there is an actual physical difference between the nervous system of introverts and extroverts. Introverts are more easily stimulated by social interactions and quickly become oversaturated to the point where they become agitated and feel a need to withdraw. Extroverts can’t find enough stimulation and constantly need to find people to be around, and socialize with, and use social contact to feel satisfied. How you use your time most often will tell you which of the two personality types you are. With every classification, there are variants however, and people can be a mix of the two or can fall in at the extremities.
The body language of introverts in public places will be rigid; they will zone out more quickly or find quiet places and park themselves. They are at ease being alone even when at parties and might even take breaks away from the noise to ‘chill out’. They’ll spend more time at home and less time in nightclubs. The nonverbal language of the introvert will show more closed body positions. Their shoulders will pull in, they will orient their bodies away from others, they might be less animated and they will often be the first to stop speaking and resort to listening or observing others instead. They might even keep their distance more frequently, be soft spoken, initiate touch on others less and avoid eye contact. Extroverts are the opposite and tend to spontaneously turn toward people, they will start up conversations with random people, they will touch more in conversation and talk more frequently to keep the conversation going. They’ll use more gestures in speech in attempts to draw attention to themselves and generally take up more space. They will also tend to move about a room more and jump from person to person trying to get as much stimulation from others as possible. A quick test to verify extroversion from introversion is to watch how people break gaze. Generally speaking an introvert will break their gaze by looking to the right whereas extroverts will break their gaze to the left. This fact alone suggests that the differences we see between these two personality types has less to do with environment and more to do with how the brains are hardwired.
To work productively with the introverted, formulate groups as small as possible. For the introverted one on one represents the best scenario. Set up meetings in quiet areas with little distraction. Maintain as much space as possible, talk quietly, reduce eye contact, use touch infrequently or not at all. To work with the extroverted do the exact opposite. Talk louder with more expressions, touch frequently, be dynamic, move in closer, and give plenty of eye contact. Extreme extroverts and extreme introverts will be happiest at the end of their respective spectrum.
Above: Susan Cain on the power of introverts in TED talks.
The original emoticon for happiness. It’s called a SMILE! 🙂
Dr. Yee and his colleagues conducted research out of Stanford University in 2007 into the online gaming industry. He revealed some interesting findings as they apply to massive role playing games such as “Second Life.” In these games, users create personalized characters and interact with other players in a rule-free environment. Characters are free to interact as they please, have houses, automobiles, jobs and attend social gatherings. There are no set parameters to these interactive games yet Dr. Yee found that users still followed set non-verbal rules. That is, male characters tended to hold larger distances between other males and females tended to hold less distance between themselves and other females. Male characters also maintained less eye contact with other males whereas females did not. His research also draws attention to other social norms such as avoiding interactions with more eccentric characters. In one case, it was a naked character in a city park setting.
It seems therefore that non-verbal body language norms are so engrained in us through our culture and genetics that we bring these into environments that aren’t even real showing that body language is potent and ubiquitous!
If you haven’t yawned yet, you’re active mind is working hard to suppress it!
The more attention we give to an action during observation, the more likely we are to copy the behaviour. Take traveling abroad, for example, where a constant exposure to accents eventually sees us adopting it presumably to fit in better. It’s been shown too, that the more we imitate other people, the more we tend to like them and presumably the more they like us. It works in reverse as well since the more we like them the more we imitate them. Mirroring and imitation therefore is a salient characteristic in our nonverbal communication and shows others that we like and are connecting with them.
In 2000 Swedish researcher Dr. Ulf Dimberg exposed volunteers to frowning, smiling and expressionless faces. They were then told to react to them in various ways. When they saw a smiling face, they were sometimes asked to smile back and other times to frown back. The researchers found that it was difficult for the subjects to remain expressionless to a face that appeared happy or angry and even more difficult to smile at sad faces or make sad faces at laughing faces. The theory was advanced that our unconscious minds exerts much more control over our faces then we think. While it was somewhat possible to control the subject’s reactions, it required a great deal of mental power to reverse their natural tendencies. The study showed that even when we could control our emotions, minute spontaneous twitches still revealed true responses, and in every case, mirroring was the natural tendency.
The research on the reasoning behind the mirror reflex remains obscure for the moment, but this doesn’t mean we should ignore it. In fact, we should be very careful about our facial expressions and gestures since they will necessarily have a profound effect on others. Our expressions and body gestures illicit similar responses from others, so if we want to make people happy, we should smile more and use more expressive body language. In turn, others around us will naturally mimic our gestures.
When people “jive,” they are in agreement, and this commonality leads to liking. In this photo we see a couple mirroring each other by drinking in unison.
The discovery of the mirror neuron happened by accident at the University of Parma in Italy by researchers Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese. They were studying the planning and movement activity in monkey brains and found that a specific set of neurons responded when monkeys grasped a peanut while other neurons altogether fired when they ate the peanut. When one of the researchers reached for a peanut to give to the monkey, they observed the monkey’s brain react as if it where the monkey who was reaching for it. They found that the same regions of the monkey’s brain activated whether the action was performed by the monkey or if the action was simply observed by the monkey. The mirror neuron was an important discovery, but one that happened completely by chance.
In follow up studies, the mirror neuron has been directly observed in other primates and even birds. Researchers conclude that it very likely exists in the minds of humans as well. However, the mirror neurons in the human brain are much more difficult to study because isolating single neurons is impossible. In animals, the neuron fires when an animal acts and also when they view another animal act. Studies show us that the neuron therefore fires as if the motion was actually performed, when in reality the movement was merely observed. Similarly, brain scans of human’s show that areas of the brain light up when they view others performing actions. These are the same areas that would light up had the action been performed. Today, it is generally agreed that there is no such single neuron at work, but rather a network of neurons working together making the “mirror neuron” a bit of a misnomer.
The origins of the “mirror neuron” might stem from imitative learning. By observing people performing actions we could pick up skills instead of having to learn the actions all on our own. In other words, mirroring allowed us to learn vicariously which is a much quicker way to learn and also less dangerous. Just imagine having to learn to use a sharp knife or chainsaw having never seen one used, nor what either is capable of doing, either to a tomato or tree trunk. Another possible reason for these class of neurons might be related to empathy and emotion since the neurons might help us connect with others. For example, when we view pictures of people who display happiness, disgust, fear or pain, we react to them as if we had felt it ourselves. This ability to connect with people, even strangers, has an important function in our daily lives since it allows us to build and hold relationships, creates sympathy, and inhibit fighting.
Is body language a “learnable skill” and can it therefore be faked? The answer is yes and no. The vast majority of the more prevalent body language can be learned. For example, keeping your hands out of your pockets or using the hands expressively to remain honest and open, or keeping the hands away from the face to come off as more confident as easily learned through conscious thought and repetition. However, a new area of study reveals that there is a whole new set of cues that are much more difficult to control, if not impossible.
A furrowed forehead can happen in a split second and reveal negative emotions.
These are called microexpressions or microsignals. These signals can be used to decipher liars from truth tellers. Microexpressions appear as furrows, smirks, frowns, smiles and wrinkles and can offer an accurate, though fleeting, window into emotions. These microexpressions are controlled by muscles such as the fontalis, corregator and risorius and they are provoked by underlying emotions that are nearly impossible to control consciously. One of these emotions is the fake smile to show appeasement in lieu of genuine joy or happiness. The fake smile is obvious, as will see later, because the lips are pulled across the mouth, but the muscles controlling the eyes, play no part.
With specialized computer software, researchers have been able to detect these signals. Computers were employed because the signals flash across the face in fractions of seconds making it hard for humans to pick the signals up consciously. Slowing down video on high speed video cameras and playing it back repeatedly to observers can also be used to detect the expressions. So part of the story is that microexpressions are difficult to detect and control but the rest of the story tells us that if they exist (and they do), that we must at some level have evolved the ability to read and detect them. Therefore, we must be cautious about assuming that just because they happen so fast, that they can’t be picked up and conversely that we can easily fake our way through the nonverbal channel. It just might be that the subconscious intuition is hard at work giving us that sixth sense feeling that can’t trust someone despite not quite being able to put to words. The reason, it seems, is a combination of microexpressions and our intuition.
Some researchers will tell us that the face is the easiest part of our bodies to control, but this isn’t entirely true and is a poor excuse for the full story. If our faces were so easily controlled, why have botox treatments to freeze up our faces with low level toxins in order to erase wrinkles? Why not just stop using the muscles altogether and therefore avoid suffering from facial wrinkles during the aging process? The simple answer is that it’s not the simple. While our faces are in fact under a large part under our control, we can’t always be focused on it, lest we not be able to focus on anything else. Not the least of which is controlling our speech. Can you imagine what it would be like to construct sentences free-form while trying to remain expressive but at the same time avoid contracting “inappropriate” facial muscles (whatever they might be)? When we talk or see, or do, our faces naturally respond to what is going on around us because they are closely tied to our mind and our emotions. It is a cause and effect relationship, or even an arms race, and it precisely because the face provides such a vast amount of information, that we are so tuned into reading it.
Other ways to spot a fake is with regards to incongruent body language. That is, language that is inconsistent with either, the words being spoken, and the nonverbal language that accompanies it. Women are particularly adept at reading the whole picture since they are naturally more perceptive, can usually pick up on the subtleties in others more quickly then men and have been shown by research to be able to perform multiples tasks at once. To women, something just won’t seem right, their sense will “tingle.” We call this the “female intuition”, but thankfully, with practice men can develop their skills just as readily and that is what this book is all about.
The limbic system is a set of brain centers including the amygdale, hippocampus, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex. These structures in collection handle emotion, behavior, long term memory and olfaction or the sense of smell. In 1952 researcher Paul MacLean started using terms to divide the brain by function and what he thought was their origin. He called collections of the brain the “reptilian brain” which included the base of the brain and brain stem, the “mammalian brain” or the limbic brain and the “neocortex” or human brain. Scientists have proposed that the brain has evolved from a primitive reptilian brain to the more complex neocortex. By examining images of the brain, it become apparent to scientists that the brain has “stacked” specialized structure upon specialized structure in what seems like a progress through time. Think of how rocks form through sedimentation over time, and you have a rough idea of how brains have evolved. By moving inwards from the outer layers of the brain to the center it has been theorizes that one is moving back in time to the original “primitive” brain. This is why the center brain is called the reptilian (original, less complex) brain whereas the neocortex (“neo” meaning new, more complex) which the mammalian brain, is located on the outside.
As it applies to nonverbal behaviour, it is the limbic brain that is responsible because it reacts naturally to the world around us, and the stimulus it contains. Behaviours produced by the limbic brain, over say behaviours that are controlled by the neocortex, are a true honest response. In other words, the limbic brain controls emotional body language so it’s our best gauge to indicate what the body is really feeling. It is the limbic brain that controls the arms, feet, hands, heads, and torsos when someone is feeling embarrassed or ashamed, sad, fearful, excited or happy. The limbic brain is hardwired into our nervous system and goes back in time with us through our evolution.
While our neocortex can at times suppress the limbic brain, it can only do so when it is no occupied doing other things. The neocortex is in charge of doing complex conscious tasks (like calculus, engineering, and so forth), so when it is overwhelmed or turned off entirely, the body accidentally leaks emotional body language for others to read. The neocortex, because it is under conscious control, is the least reliable and least honest part of the brain. Research shows that the neocortex is the most active part of the brain during deception which is why it has been called the “lying brain.” Cheats might be able to control the words they use to describe their thoughts, but they can’t control their visceral reactions to these words, nor can they control their expressions stemming from this motivation. This is exactly how and why we can catch liars, read fear, stress, sadness, anger and so on.
Turtling is a limbic response to confrontation. The head sinks, shoulders shrug, and the body takes on a smaller form to avoid being seen as a threat.
When you think of the limbic brain imagine the autonomic response that happens when we are startled by a loud bang. Naturally our bodies tense up, our heads duck into our torsos and our hands are pulled inward while our nervous system puts our heart into high gear through a dose of adrenaline. It is the same part of the brain that makes the feet fidget or hands shake when excited, or makes our hands sweat when under pressure. Our limbic brain also goes into hyper-drive when we see a distant relative after years apart, or when someone wins the lottery or gets a strong hand in poker. No matter what we do, we can’t stop this from happening. I will add too, that with some practice we can learn to hide, or minimize even these reptilian behaviours such as clasping the hands together to reduce shaking when excited, or tucking the legs in behind a chair to lock them in place when someone really wants to flee. However, even this body language shows the neocortex trying to override the reptilian brain and in so doing producing yet another stream of body language for us to read. At the scene of an accident we fully expect to see the limbic system take over producing trembling, nervousness, and discomfort. What would First Responders be left thinking if they showed up at an “accident” where the caller was relaxed and calm, yet the victim lay strewn about, dying and bloodied? Naturally, the police would think something was amiss and would pull the witness aside as a prime suspect for a crime. Therefore, we should always look for limbic responses and tie them to context so we know when something is not right. When limbic responses stop, we know that the stimulus for their creation has also stopped, so we must then find out the reason.
The limbic brain is the part of the brain that controls our root processes. To put this into perspective, imagine the activities in the repertoire of a lizard. Being cold blooded, he seeks sun when possible to speed up his metabolism, eats when hungry, drinks when thirsty, either freezes, flees, or fights when scared, and has sex when horny. He does not do calculus or engineer tall skyscrapers because he does not have the capacity, but this notwithstanding; he survives, because his limbic mind tells him everything necessary to do so. In evolutionary terms, so too does our limbic mind. It tells us when to be scared and what to do about it, be it freeze and reduce movement so as to get under the radar of assailants, to run and so get our feet pointed in the right direction, to get our hearts pumping to run and so on. It also controls root emotions – it tells our feet to move and jump with joy, and fidget in preparation to leave when bored.
