Tag Archive for Mouths

Comfort and Discomfort Body Language

by  • March 6, 2013 • 1 Comment

Comfort on the left side of the image, discomfort on the right.

Comfort on the left side of the image, discomfort on the right.

We have covered many signals of comfort and discomfort throughout the book and have even eluded to their use in lie detection. To simplify things, I wanted to take the time to cover the cues we can use to detect lying as it relates to comfort and discomfort. We have seen how open and closed language can signal a desire to allow access to the body. Ventral displays shows that a person is open and trusting of someone and this sort of response is difficult when we feel we are hiding emotions. Comfort is displayed through proximity and people do this by moving their torsos closer or leaning inward rather than away and will remove objects that impede their view so as to establish more intimacy.

Comfortable bodies open up and spread out.

Comfortable bodies open up and spread out.

Comfortable people will hold their bodies loose rather than rigid, and their body will move with fluidity. They will gesture with their speech instead of freezing instantly or awkwardly, called “flash frozen.” Sometimes people will slow to catch their thoughts, but this will be obvious to the body language reader and will come at appropriate times and in context when thought is actually required to produce accurate answers. Comfortable people mirror others around them instead of avoiding synchrony. Their breath rate will be similar and they will adopt like postures instead of showing differences.

Bodies show discomfort by increased heart rate, breath rate, sweating, a change in normal colour in the face or neck, trembling or shaking in the hands lips, or elsewhere, compressing the lips, fidgeting, drumming the fingers and other repetitive behaviours. Voices often crack when under stress, mouths might dry up producing noticeable swallowing, “hard swallows”, or frequent throat clearing. Liars might use objects as barriers. They might hold drinking glasses to hide parts of their face or use walls and chairs while standing to lean against to gain support. Liars might engage in eye blocking behaviours by covering their eyes with their hands or seem to talk through them or even squint so as to impede what is being said from entering their minds. The eyes might also begin to flutter or increase in overall blink rate showing an internal struggle.

Drumming fingers, fidgeting, kicking feet and so forth are burning off nervous energy - discomfort.

Drumming fingers, fidgeting, kicking feet and so forth are burning off nervous energy – discomfort.

We’ve hit on the fact that stress creates nonverbal language such as preening to show detachment from a conversation (picking lint), energy displacement gestures such as scratching the body or rubbing the neck or wiping the side of the nose. Palm up displays show that a person has some doubt, and indicates a desire for other to believe them while palm down displays show confidence and authority. Microexpressions can also be particularly revealing since they happen instantaneously and subconsciously. Watch for movements that happen first especially if they are negative in nature as these are more honest than positive body language. Positive language is used by people to appear more in control and polite instead of appearing vulnerable. Fake smiles are an excellent example of an expression that can sometimes be put on to appear to disguise stress. We know smiles are faked when they seem to last for much longer than what would be considered natural.

Lack of touching, or touch reduction also signals discomfort and a divergence of ideas. When people’s ideas differ they find it hard to come close to others as part of the natural fear response. Head movements that are inconsistent with speech such as slightly nodding affirmatively though making a denial or vice versa, or delaying head nodding until after speech is made such that speech and gestures lack synchrony can give liars away. When gestures are done out of sync they tell us that a person is adding the gesture on as support for their statement. The entire affair appears to be out of the normal order of flow in communication which liars can often do. When affirmative nodding happens during denial statements such as nodding “yes” while saying “I did not do it” usually happens very subtly, but is obvious to the conscious observer. Keep in mind while reading these cues that they do not indicate lying per se, but rather indicate discomfort and stress. The job of the body language reader is to decide why a person is stressed. Are they stressed because they are being put on the spot, because they fear being mislabeled, or because they are actually telling lies?

Hand To Mouth Gestures

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

When a child lies, she might bring her hand up quickly and slap her mouth closed, but when an adult lies, she holds back and might only lightly touch the side of the mouth.

When a child lies, she might bring her hand up quickly and slap her mouth closed, but when an adult lies, she holds back and might only lightly touch the side of the mouth.

Mouth covering is another way to reduce the pain of telling a lie. In this case, it is so as to “speak no evil.” Small children perform a full cover and even slap their mouths when they say something they shouldn’t. Grown adults will sometimes cup their hands to their mouths like children in effort to “jam the words back in their mouths” but usually use more subtle gestures such as talking through their hand or placing a finger softly over their lips. Talking with ones hand covering the mouth “talking through the hand” or resting the hand around the mouth by wrapping the fingers around the top, are significant clues indicating insecurity.

Subconsciously, hand-to-mouth gestures leads people to distrust others, and see them as less honest overall. The gesture can be done with a fist, a finger, or a ‘shushing’ motion with the index finger vertically placed over the lips. Other times the subconscious mind is so powerful that the hand comes up and slaps the mouth, but to cover this ‘tell’ up, a fake cough is added.

'Talking through the mouth' is seen as dishonest.

‘Talking through the mouth’ is seen as dishonest.

Kiss Test And Stages In Intimacy

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Puckered lips means a woman is thinking about her lips - this might mean that she's interested in a kiss.

Puckered lips means a woman is thinking about her lips – this might mean that she’s interested in a kiss.

All nonverbal signals begin from the same origin; thoughts. The kiss is no different since it begins with a desire to take a very intimate and important step in a relationship. As arousal occurs, women will begin to draw attention to their mouths, but not just to deliver a message, it is to alleviate tension that is building. Women interested in kissing will release this energy by touching their mouth more frequently, say with a finger or by mouthing an object. They might pout by compressing their lips or they will apply lip gloss or lip stick. Escalation of these signals includes direct eye contact or glances toward the man’s mouth. Remember that looking in the direction of interest is difficult to resist and when a kiss is envisioned, it is the mouth that gets the looks. While holding hands, a quick kiss-test happens by measured response of a hand-squeeze; if he squeezes and she squeezes back, there is a good chance a kiss would be well received.

Introduction – Chapter 8

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Dominant and submissive gestures are polar opposites, both by definition, and in terms of the body language that is used to indicate it. For example, appearing larger by throwing an arm over the back of the chair and spreading the legs opened is dominant whereas appearing smaller by pulling the limbs inward or hunching the back is submissive. This phenomenon is a good rule of thumb so keep it in mind while reading this chapter and the people around you.

In this chapter we will cover an encyclopedia of signs and signals that display status. By the end you will see how dominance and submissiveness are a common theme in people. So much of what people do is as a direct consequence of an unevenly divided resource base and how we all fit into society’s hierarchy. Dominance and the body language that showcases it, is how we decide who has rights over whom without resorting to physical conflict. Naturally, this chapter also provides methods by which status can be artificially raised simply by employing suitable body language.

In this chapter we will cover, amongst many others, how our environment can be manipulated to gain the advantage such as the status achieved by the judge in his highchair, how relaxed body postures can show dominance, how the head talks even when our mouths are not moving, how the chair straddler is a coward, how women will appear easy if they spread their legs whereas men will appear more masculine, how tilting far back in the chair is dangerous and not just because you might fall, how having the hands on the hips means more than disapproval and how military men leave their bodies exposed to attack on purpose.

Body Language Of Children

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

BodyLanguageProjectCom - NeotenyBabies are almost entirely dependant on nonverbal communication in their first few months, that is, if we discount crying! As children age, they still rely, as adults do, on nonverbal language such as pointing at a toy rather then asking for it, pushing other children aside when it suites them, or even hugs to show affection and exaggerated pouting to garner sympathy. Babies as young as nine month’s old, who lack verbal language, can even begin using sign language to convey desires showing just how rooted non-verbal communication is all of us.

When young children lie they often have troubles making eye contact or they might hang their head, appear tense or they might even quickly pull both hands up and cover their mouths as if to shove the lie back in from where it came from. Even some adults will perform these gestures if they let slip a secret or particularly juicy piece of gossip in the wrong circle. However, at other times, both children and adults are not as obvious. A 2002 study by Victor Talwar and Kang Lee out of the University of Queens, Canada, however, showed that children as young as three are naturally adept at controlling their nonverbal language as it applies to deception. In the study, children were able to fool most of the evaluators of their deception as a videotape showing the lie was replayed. Children are not particularly skilled at lying through verbal channels though, and they slip up easily revealing inconsistencies in their stories, so this is where you can really catch them. We will cover deceptive body language at lengths later on.

Other emotional body language emitted by children is much more prevalent. For example, children use slouching and pouting to show that they are upset and disappointed but as we age, we drop our nonverbal cues in favour of verbal expression. We naturally become more adept at repressing what our bodies do and tend to use more conscious thought and spoken words since it is more direct and less easily misinterpreted. What starts off as a quick mouth slap movement to the mouth when lying (or swearing) in children, slowly becomes a touch to the corner of the mouth. Later, restraint forces the finger to the side even further and then instead of touching the mouth it touches the side of the nose instead. As people age, they become much more difficult to read. By logical progression, the hardest to read of all are sixty-year-old politicians!

As an interesting aside, dedicated parents even claim to be able to sense when a baby is about to relieve themselves and so avoid messy diapers. This technique is referred to as elimination communication. By reading gestures such as frowning, squirming, fussing or tensing, mother’s (or fathers!) in combination with baby’s particular rhythms, can detect when potty time is immanent. Once the baby’s cues have been deciphered the mother can anticipate potty time by holding baby over the toilet and cuing with “hiss-hiss” or “wiss-wiss” sounds. To associate the hissing sounds with urination, this process must be repeated ten to twenty times each day!