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1-Page Summary of What Every Body Is Saying

Introduction

Nonverbal communication makes up about 60% of all communication. Few people truly understand this, but it includes facial expressions, gestures, touches and physical movements. Even seemingly fleeting gestures can reveal a person’s true thoughts.

It’s hard to interact with people without knowing a little about body language. If you learn more about it, you’ll be able to better yourself.

Remember the 10 commandments of nonverbal communication: Observe, Understand context, Recognize universal behaviors, Recognize idiosyncratic behaviors, Establish a baseline, Identify clusters of behavior changes in your subject(s), Look for changes in their behavior (both subtle and obvious), Detect misleading signals from your subjects’ nonverbals (e.g., if they’re fidgeting with something or wearing an uncomfortable expression on their face) and Be subtle when observing them.

Living Our Limbic Legacy

We have three brains: the reptilian (stem), mammalian (limbic), and human (neocortex). The limbic brain is responsible for nonverbal behavior, while our neocortex helps us think critically about what that means.

It is important to remember that your brain controls all your behaviors and reactions. Your limbic brain reacts quickly, which makes it hard for you to suppress or hide these responses. On the other hand, the neocortex can deceive others by giving off false information. In other words, what you do is more reliable than what you say because of the limbic reaction (the fight-or-flight response). The freeze response comes first when someone feels threatened in a situation; it gives them time to think about their next move so they can respond accordingly. Since this response is so strong, sometimes even people who are not being threatened will react similarly because of evolution’s influence on human behavior.

If the threat is not dealt with, then people will either run away or turn aggressive. They might also try to distance themselves from the source of fear by leaning back or holding it at arm’s length.

Comfort and discomfort will affect your behaviors. For example, people who are uncomfortable with themselves often use pacifying behaviors to make themselves feel better. One of these is skin picking (dermatillomania). People develop a reward response when they engage in this behavior, especially if it makes them feel good about themselves. Other pacifying behaviors include rubbing the neck, playing with the hair, stroking the face, smoking more quickly or chewing gum faster than normal.

We can generally identify pacifying behaviors with touching the head, face, neck, shoulders, arms and legs. These areas are rich with nerve endings and this is why they’re so popular for pacifying behaviors. You can use these as an indicator that a person may be feeling stressed out by identifying when they do it and what caused them to feel that way.

Getting a Leg Up on Body Language: Nonverbals of the Feet and Legs

The most honest part of the body is the legs. This is because they’re a response to environmental threats. The feet make you freeze when you’re in motion, and enable you to either run from a threat or fight it. Your parents probably taught you not to make faces, but they probably didn’t teach you how to suppress leg movements. Therefore, it’s best if we read people from their feet up instead of head down.

When you are happy, your feet may wiggle or bounce with excitement. This can also indicate nervousness or impatience. Additionally, when you’re excited about something, gravity-defying behaviors of the feet like jumping for joy or a swing in one’s step are common. The courting displays of the feet like playing footsie and dangling one’s shoe off their toes is associated with high comfort levels with another person. Leg crossing is also a sign of comfort; it decreases balance which means that you feel comfortable being vulnerable at that moment.