Body language is extremely useful in your day to day life, apart from being more successful at life in general (since the whole world is run by people all with hidden thoughts and agendas), it can help you at socializing such as making better impressions to appear likable or friendly, when dating to learn love interest signs and flirtations, in your career, job applications and interactions, to win at a game of poker or chess, finding out if someone is lying to you, at changing your emotional state by using the law of cause and effect, but most important of all, to read in between the lines of any given situation and have a more in-depth awareness of what is happening around you.
Introduction To Body Language
They say people who are good at chess, suck at life (this comic strip is pretty much my life story), theoretically I should be good at chess with my analytical abilities though I’m not, guess that’s why I only theoretically suck at life and learned Body Language to compensate giving me an extra edge instead.After discussing about it with Robbie, we realized there’s no in-depth internet articles on the subject so thanks for pushing me to do it =).
We are all conscious of the words we use, we can control and arrange them in whatever way we want to portray our thoughts or emotions in any given moment even though they may not be true.
The purpose of body language is to simply have a better understanding of social interactions of yourself and others, to understand exactly your surroundings and what is going on in the minds of the ones around you to then approach the situation or person in the right way instead of merely assuming which leads to many misunderstandings, e.g, thinking somebody doesn’t like you when in fact they are just shy.
According to Albert Mehrabian a pioneer in body language research from the University of Pennsylvania, when communicating with others, 7% is verbal (words), 38% is vocal (sounds & tones) and 55% is physical, slowly as we have evolved over time, we’ve become more distracted with words and lost our awareness of the physical aspects our non-verbal ancestors used to communicate missing out on that 55% of body signals.Many have claimed our physical gestures are learned through environment mimicking while others say we are inborn with it, an example of this being the ‘No’ side-to-side head movement used by babies when they are full and don’t want to continue breast feeding or eating their pudding.Through the observation of different cultures from around the world (sharing identical non-verbal communication), blind people (they can’t see therefore cannot imitate others) and our closest anthropological relatives, apes and monkeys, they have come to the conclusion that both play a role in our unconscious physical gestures.
Body Language is the unconscious physical way of revealing our true conscious hidden thoughts.
The Fundamental Rules
There are certain rules you have to follow in order to understand what is being said properly, the three main ones you should remember are these:
- Contextual Reading: When reading someones body language, it’s easy to confuse gestures…someone your talking to while sitting outside in a winters night who is crossing their arms and legs could be a sign of defensiveness (crossing our arms/legs was a way to protect our vital organs against threats) or it’s probably a sign that they are cold (observe if they have raised shoulders), if that gesture however occurred in a different environment then it would change the meaning completely.Scratching our necks could mean we are indecisive or uncertain or it could mean we forgot to shower, a gentle handshake in between men could mean one of them has a weak character or maybe he suffers from arthritis, women with short miniskirts will most likely have their legs crossed all the time while sitting…it doesn’t mean they are defensive though, while fat people can’t cross them at all.
- Cultural Reading: As part of our body language is learned through environment, you can imagine what applies to some cultures wont apply to others, the biggest cultural differences exist mainly in relation to personal space, eye contact, touch frequency and insult gestures.Italians and Spaniards for example kiss on the cheek instead of handshakes, in Bulgaria the head nodding for ‘Yes’ actually means ‘No’, the Japanese facial gestures of surprise are what we use to express fear, Japanese also politely smile and nod a lot in conversations while speaking to them…it doesn’t mean they agree with you, it’s just a way of encouraging you to continue by stating “I heard what you said”, men holding hands in Saudi Arabia is a sign of mutual respect, thumbs up is commonly used as OK/Good but in Greece it means ‘Up Yours’ while in Japan it can mean five or man.If you caught a woman naked, depending where she was from…a Middle Eastern would cover her face, an American/Australian/British would cover her boobs with one hand and her genitals with the other, a Swedish would cover her genitals only, a Sumatran her knees and a Samoan her belly button.
- Cluster Reading: This is the most important rule out of the three as it will assist you in the above two problems of context or cultural mistakes.In the same way every language has it’s words and sentences, so does body language, every gesture is a word and to understand the whole meaning of what is being said…you have to read it in a group (aka clusters) of words/gestures to create a sentence.We all have our little ticks that we do out of boredom or habit so reading them in isolation won’t do you much good, say a women is playing with her hair, twirling it ect., that could be a tick, but if she played with her hair (a self-comforting gesture to resemble our mums rubbing our heads after getting hurt) and then proceeded to cross her arms and legs (both defensive)…it is interpreted as though the woman would be feeling anxious, nervous or under pressure.
- Congruent Reading: Congruence is the observation if their body language matches what they are saying, someone for example who is crossing their arms, legs and making worried faces then when you ask them if their okay, they answer; “I’m fine” would definitely be withholding something, it doesn’t only have to be word and gestures though also be the tone of voice used to answer like an angry pitched tone while saying their fine would imply they’re not.The thing always to remember with body language is to take it with a grain of salt, it’s not an exact science, we are human beings after all and very unpredictable so it does work most of the time but for it to work best, just as we are unpredictable so is life so there is a lot of contradiction in body language…some people will look at you more than usual when lying (because they know people who like look away so they try the opposite) while others will avoid eye contact, you should have some sort of relationship with a person to know them for a long time and have a baseline of what their normal gestures, moods, emotions and habits are.
4,000 years ago ancient Egyptians believed womens facial lips developed proportionately to their outer genital lips (vulva) during puberty…when women are sexually aroused their genital lips flush with the blood going to that area turning red, so the Egyptian women invented lipstick as a form of alerting men when an adolescent female was sexually mature.In the year 423 B.C, Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote a play called “The Clouds” in which Socrates and Strepsiades had roles, Strepsiades had to show Socrates his “middle finger” which was a direct symbolism of a penis and testicles used as an insult of sexual inferiority in an attempt to say “My weiner is much bigger than yours…”, this is where the “flipping the bird” gesture originated.I hope the learning of these two trivial pieces of knowledge ruin your life the same way it has mine…I will never look at a women with lip stick or one flipping me the bird the same way ever again.And you thought body language was boring…!
Body Language
I have broken down the different types of gestures and categorized them by parts, areas and specific subjects of the body to make it easier;
- Personal Space
- Signs of Attraction
- Eyes
- Head
- Smiles
- Arms
- Palms & Thumbs
- Hands
- Hand Shakes
- Legs
- Mirroring
- Signs of Lying
You will notice that many people claim to do such gestures because they find it comfortable, any physical gesture that matches our mental attitude in that specific moment will feel comfortable. Here is a fun experiment you can try, as I mention in the arm gestures article, crossing your arms is a sign of a defensive or negative emotion…whenever you are having a lot of fun by yourself or with your friends and feel happy and excited, try crossing your arms and see how comfortable that feels.
Law of Cause and Effect
There is also the Law of Cause and Effect that states if your body has the symptoms of a specific emotion, our minds will follow it because our gestures and emotions are directly connected to each other.Take the Laughter Therapy groups around the world who force laughter and as a result feel happier afterwards, thats another great thing about body language, adopting the physical position of a specific attitude will make you start feeling and thinking that way…try crossing your arms and legs while looking downwards to become more negative, start jumping up and down while nodding your head (doing the “Yes” head movement) to feel more positive, hold your hands behind your back and expose your chest or sit down with your legs spread wide to feel more confident…in this case, “Fake it till you make it!” is a reality.
Final Thoughts
In future articles I will go into more advanced things like brain cortex, where the right hemisphere of the brain controls the visual memories, spatial abilities and emotions while the left hemisphere is specialized in analyzing information, logic and language.When you observe someone talking over the phone…depending on who they are talking to, they will hold the phone on their right or left ear, if it’s a family member, partner or close friend they will hold it on their left ear while for speaking to their boss, telemarketer or stranger they will hold it on the right one (due to the right hemisphere controlling the left side of the body and vice versa).Based on the brain hemispheres, you can also appeal to a persons emotional, humorous or serious side depending on where you stand in contrast to them and what direction their eyes are facing…standing to their left affects their sensitive side for example to tell a sad story while standing to their right will appeal to their humorous side which is why all late night talk show host always position their tables on the right side of the studio and the guests to their left while serious shows like Larry King position the host on the left.
Now that you know the basics of body language and how it reveals our emotional state, try sitting down at a cafe or CBD (Central Business District) and observe people interact, watch politicians on the news or analyze actors playing roles…you’ll notice the most successful actors are the ones who use the right body language to express the emotion presented in that scene of the film, or why not simply be aware of yourself? and see how your body gestures will match your attitude at any given moment of the day.
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