Understanding the Basics

Overview

Body language is the outward, largely involuntary reflection of a person's emotional state. The ability to read attitudes and thoughts from behavior predates spoken language — it was the original human communication system, and it still carries the bulk of the meaning in any face-to-face encounter. Although humans have actively studied body language only since the 1960s, the research is consistent: most of a message's impact travels through nonverbal channels, not words.

This topic establishes the foundations the rest of the book builds on. It quantifies how much of communication is nonverbal, explains why words are mainly for transmitting data while the body negotiates interpersonal attitudes, and shows why some readers — women in particular — are far more perceptive than others. It traces which gestures are inborn, genetic, or culturally learned, and surveys the universal signals that mean the same thing everywhere. Most importantly, it sets out the three rules for accurate reading — read gestures in clusters, look for congruence, and read gestures in context — along with the common traps that cause misreadings and the question of whether body language can be faked.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Why words are not the message

The nonverbal share of communication

Speech is recent in evolutionary terms — it probably first developed between two million and five hundred thousand years ago, during which time the brain tripled in size — and it is used mainly to convey facts and data. Before then, body language and sounds made in the throat were the primary means of conveying emotions and feelings, and that is still the case today. Because we focus on the words people speak, most people are largely uninformed about how much weight the body carries. Even our spoken language quietly acknowledges the body's centrality, embedding it in everyday phrases: get it off your chest, keep a stiff upper lip, keep your chin up, shoulder a burden, face up to it, put your best foot forward, stay at arm's length.

Body language was actively studied on any scale only from the 1960s onward, and most of the public became aware of it only after the Peases' first book in 1978. The pioneers of the skill itself were earlier: silent-movie actors such as Charlie Chaplin, for whom gesture was the only means of communication on screen, and — academically — Charles Darwin, whose 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals spawned the modern study of facial expression. Since then researchers have catalogued close to a million nonverbal cues and signals.

The foundational research is consistent:

| Researcher / source | Finding | | --- | --- | | Albert Mehrabian (1950s) | Total impact of a message ≈ 7% verbal (words only), 38% vocal (tone, inflection, sounds), 55% nonverbal. | | Ray Birdwhistell (kinesics) | The verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is under 35%; over 65% of communication is nonverbal. | | Pease analysis of sales/negotiation recordings | In business encounters, body language accounts for 60–80% of the impact at the negotiating table. | | Initial-impression studies | People form 60–80% of their first opinion of a new person in under four minutes. |

A telling contrast: when negotiating over the telephone, the person with the stronger argument usually wins. Face-to-face, that advantage shrinks — because overall we make our final decisions more on what we see than on what we hear.

What words do versus what the body does

Most researchers agree that words are used primarily for conveying information, while body language is used for negotiating interpersonal attitudes — and sometimes as a direct substitute for a verbal message (a "look to kill" needs no words). Words and movements occur together so predictably that Birdwhistell claimed a well-trained person could tell what movement someone was making merely by listening to their voice, and could even identify the language being spoken just by watching the gestures.

We are still animals

Humans are a species of primate — Homo sapiens, a hairless ape that walks on two limbs and has an advanced brain — and we remain dominated by biological rules that govern our reactions and gestures. The striking feature is that a person is rarely aware that their postures and movements can tell one story while their voice tells another.

How the body reveals emotions and thoughts

Each gesture or movement is a key to an emotion the person is feeling at that moment. A man self-conscious about weight may tug at the fold of skin under his chin; a woman aware of extra pounds on her thighs may smooth her dress down; a fearful or defensive person folds their arms or crosses their legs.

The key to reading body language is to understand a person's emotional condition while listening to what they say and noting the circumstances under which they say it — this lets you separate fact from fiction. People also unconsciously use their hands to reveal the relative size of issues in their mind: a speaker holding his hands a yard apart for one figure and only a foot apart for another is signaling which he privately considers larger, regardless of the words.

Why women are more perceptive

Intuition is signal-reading

Calling someone "perceptive" or "intuitive" is really describing their ability to read another person's body language and compare it against the verbal signals. A "hunch" or "gut feeling" that someone is lying usually means their body language and spoken words don't agree. The "perceptive" speaker who senses an audience sitting back with chins down and arms crossed knows to change approach; the unperceptive one blunders on.

Women are, overall, far more perceptive than men — the basis of "women's intuition." A Harvard study showed short silent films of a man and woman communicating and asked viewers to decode the situation from expressions: women read it accurately 87% of the time; men only 42%. Men in nurturing occupations (artistic, acting, nursing) and gay men scored nearly as well as women. Mothers, who rely almost solely on the nonverbal channel to communicate with an infant for the first years, sharpen this skill early — which is why women are often more perceptive negotiators.

What brain scans show

MRI scans indicate women have 14–16 brain areas to evaluate others' behavior versus a man's 4–6. This explains how a woman can quickly map the state of relationships at a dinner party. The female brain is also organized for multi-tracking — juggling two to four unrelated topics at once and using up to five vocal tones to change subject or emphasize a point, of which most men identify only three.

A person who relies on hard visual evidence about another's behavior makes more accurate judgments than someone relying on gut feeling alone. Women do this subconsciously, but anyone can learn to read the signals consciously.

Cold reading

Fortune-tellers exploit the same skill. "Cold reading" can reach about 80% accuracy on a stranger — not ESP, but careful observation of body-language signals plus an understanding of human nature and probability statistics. Generic statements that apply to almost anyone ("at times you are outgoing, at other times withdrawn and cautious") feel personal because the reader is also decoding the client's reactions to each statement. Most "psychics" are female for the same brain-wiring reason discussed above.

Inborn, genetic, or culturally learned?

Evidence from three sources

Research into the origin of nonverbal signals draws on three populations: blind people (who could not have learned signals visually), many different cultures, and our nearest relatives, the apes and monkeys. The conclusion is that gestures fall into each category — some inborn, some genetic, some learned.

• Inborn / genetic. Primate babies are born able to suck. Eibl-Eibesfeldt found that children born deaf and blind still produce smiling expressions, independent of learning or copying. Ekman, Friesen, and Sorenson found that five widely different cultures use the same basic facial gestures to show emotion — so those must be inborn.
• A possible genetic gesture. When you cross your arms, one way feels natural and the reverse feels completely wrong; seven out of ten people cross the left arm over the right. This consistency suggests a genetic component that cannot easily be changed.
• Still debated. Most men put on a coat right-arm-first (left brain hemisphere); most women left-arm-first (right hemisphere). When a man passes a woman in a crowded street he tends to turn his body toward her; she instinctively turns hers away to protect her breasts — inborn, or learned by watching other women?

Some basic origins

Most basic communication signals are the same worldwide. People smile when happy and frown or scowl when sad or angry.

• Nodding to mean "yes" is almost universal; it appears to be a form of head-lowering and is probably inborn, since people born blind also use it.
• Head-shaking to mean "no" is also universal and appears to be learned in infancy: a baby that has had enough milk turns its head side to side to reject the breast, and the gesture carries into life as a sign of disagreement.
• Smiling is a threat gesture for most carnivores, but among primates it is paired with non-threatening gestures to show submission.
• Baring the teeth and nostril flaring derive from the act of attacking. Sneering warns others that teeth may be used; nostril flaring oxygenates the body for fight-or-flight. In humans, sneering surfaces under anger, irritation, or a sense that something is wrong.

Universal gestures

The Shoulder Shrug is a clear universal gesture meaning "I don't know" or "I don't understand." It is a multiple gesture with three parts:

1. Exposed palms — to show nothing is concealed in the hands.
2. Hunched shoulders — to protect the throat from attack.
3. Raised brow — a universal, submissive greeting.

Just as spoken language differs by culture, some body-language signals differ too: a gesture that is common and clear in one culture may be meaningless or carry a completely different meaning in another.

The three rules for accurate reading

What you see and hear does not necessarily reflect a person's real attitude. Three rules keep your interpretation honest.

Rule 1 — Read gestures in clusters

The most serious novice error is interpreting a solitary gesture in isolation. Scratching the head can mean sweating, uncertainty, dandruff, forgetfulness, or lying — depending on what else occurs at the same time. Body language has words, sentences, and punctuation: each gesture is a single word, and one word may carry several meanings. As with speech, a body-language "sentence" — a cluster — needs at least three signals before you can define each one reliably.

A worked example is the Critical Evaluation cluster, used by someone unimpressed with what they hear:

• The hand-to-face gesture, index finger pointing up the cheek.
• Another finger covering the mouth.
• The thumb supporting the chin.
• Reinforcing signals: legs tightly crossed, the arm crossing the body (defensive), head and chin down (negative/hostile).

Read together, this cluster says: "I don't like what you're saying," "I disagree," or "I'm holding back negative feelings."

Rule 2 — Look for congruence

Nonverbal signals carry about five times as much impact as the verbal channel. When the two are incongruent, people — especially women — rely on the nonverbal message and disregard the words. If a listener says he disagrees while showing disagreement signals, his words and gestures are congruent. If he says he agrees while showing those same defensive signals, he is more likely lying, because the channels conflict.

The classic illustration: a politician speaking confidently from a lectern about how "open and receptive" he is to young people's ideas — while his arms are tightly folded (defensive) and his chin is down (critical/hostile) — is not convincing. Freud once observed a patient verbally praising her marriage while unconsciously slipping her wedding ring on and off; he correctly anticipated marriage trouble.

Rule 3 — Read gestures in context

Every gesture must be read in the circumstances in which it occurs. A man sitting at a bus terminal with arms and legs tightly crossed and chin down on a cold winter's day is most likely cold, not defensive. The identical posture across a table while you pitch him an idea or product would correctly read as negative or rejecting. Context decides which interpretation applies.

Why misreadings happen

Physical confounders

A soft or limp handshake is often read as weak character — but a person with arthritis will also use a soft handshake to avoid pain, and artists, musicians, and surgeons may use a "dead fish" handshake to protect their hands. Ill-fitting or tight clothing can prevent certain gestures: obese people cannot cross their legs, and a woman in a short skirt sits with legs tightly crossed for protection (which can make her look less approachable). Always weigh a person's physical restrictions before reading their movements.

Age changes how obvious gestures are

Gestures become subtler with age because older faces have less muscle tone. The lifelong Mouth-Covering gesture illustrates this clearly:

| Age | Form of the lie-related gesture | | --- | --- | | Five-year-old | Immediately covers the mouth with one or both hands — obvious. | | Teenager | Brings the hand toward the mouth, but the fingers only rub lightly around it. | | Adult | The brain still sends the hand toward the mouth, but at the last moment it diverts into a Nose-Touch — a subtle adult version of the same childhood gesture. |

This is why a fifty-year-old is harder to read than a five-year-old.

Can body language be faked?

Generally no — for any length of time — because of the lack of congruence that arises between the main gestures, the body's micro-signals, and the spoken words. A faker may hold his palms out (associated with honesty) and smile while lying, but his micro-gestures give him away: pupils may contract, an eyebrow may lift, or a mouth-corner may twitch, contradicting the open palms and the sincere smile.

Signals that cannot be consciously faked include pupil dilation, sweating, and blushing. Signals that can be learned include exposing the palms to appear honest. Some people do fake deliberately for advantage — beauty-pageant contestants use studiously learned movements to project warmth and sincerity, and politicians who fake convincingly (the book cites historical figures such as Kennedy) are said to have "charisma" — but even experts hold it only briefly before contradictory signals leak.

The practical aim is twofold: learn to use positive body language and eliminate negative signals that send the wrong message — which makes you more comfortable to be around and more acceptable to others.

How to become a great reader

• Practice fifteen minutes a day. Study other people's body language and build conscious awareness of your own. Airports, social functions, business meetings, and parties are excellent observation grounds because people openly express the full spectrum of emotion.
• Use television with the sound off. Try to follow what is happening from the picture alone, then turn the sound up every few minutes to check your accuracy. With practice you can follow an entire program without sound — as deaf viewers do.
• Expect a wider awareness. Reading signals reveals how others try to dominate and manipulate, makes you notice that others read you the same way, and — most importantly — trains you to be more sensitive to other people's feelings.

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