Everything You Should Know About Body Language

Body language has been the subject of much study and also the origin of many myths such as the one that says that 93% of communication is non-verbal.

Although it has become popular because many people who have read it have dedicated themselves to repeating it, the real study that started this belief has too many deficiencies to be taken literally, as I already commented in the article on the words that sell and convince the most .

However, the influence of body language on our social skills is not negligible, in addition to being an excellent mirror of the real emotions of our interlocutors.

You probably know people who, despite not being especially unpleasant or unfriendly, generate distrust. You wouldn’t be able to say what it is specifically, but they give off an aura that makes you not feel like confessing your real emotions to them.

That’s because there is a contradiction between their verbal communication and their body language , as this study demonstrated at the time . It is even possible that you yourself are generating this contradiction without knowing it!

Other people, on the other hand, radiate great charisma without being especially talkative. Their body expression is aligned with their verbal language and they convey confidence and warmth.

With this article I hope you understand the main concepts of body language so that you can read others better and correct any possible mistakes that you may be making. Let’s go there!

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What is body language?

Body language is a form of communication that uses gestures, postures and movements of the body and face to transmit information about the sender’s emotions and thoughts.

It is usually carried out at an unconscious level, so it is usually a very clear indicator of people’s emotional state. Along with vocal intonation, it is part of non-verbal communication.

Body language should not be taken as an absolute truth because there are many environmental factors that can influence it. That is why you should never reach a conclusion by interpreting a single body sign; The key is to observe sets of signs that are congruent with each other and rule out possible external causes (temperature, noise, fatigue, etc.).

That said, let’s look at everything we are capable of communicating with our body and face.

The keys to body language

1. Meaning of facial gestures

The face is the magnifying glass of emotions, which is why it is said to be the reflection of the soul. But as in any interpretation of non-verbal language, you must be careful not to evaluate facial gestures separately since they are usually part of a global emotional state and can give rise to several interpretations.

Is it true that when a child sees something he doesn’t like, he covers his eyes in an attempt to make it disappear from his reality? Or does he run to cover his mouth after telling a lie?

Well, although in adults the magnitude is much smaller, to a certain extent we are still tied to this primitive behavior. And that gives many clues, because many unconscious attempts to block what we say, hear or see can still be detected on the face.

In general, when someone puts their hands on their face it is usually the product of some negative thought such as insecurity or distrust . Here you have several concrete examples.

• Covering or touching your mouth:if done while speaking, it may mean an attempt to hide something. If it is done while listening, it may be a sign that the person believes that something is being hidden from them.
• Touching your ear:it is the unconscious representation of the desire to block the words you hear. If your interlocutor does it while you are talking, it may mean that he wants you to stop talking.
• Touching your nose:can indicate that someone is lying. When you lie, catecholamines are released , substances that inflame the internal tissue of the nose and can cause itching. It also happens when someone gets angry or upset.
• Rubbing one eye:it is an attempt to block what you see so as not to have to look in the face of the person you are lying to. Be careful with people who touch their nose a lot and rub their eyes when talking to you 😉
• Scratching the neck:a sign of uncertainty or doubt about what one is saying.
• Putting a finger or something in your mouth:means insecurity or the need to calm down, in an unconscious expression of returning to the safety of the mother.

2. Head positions

Understanding the meaning of the different positions that someone can adopt with their head is very effective in understanding their real intentions, such as the desire to be liked, to cooperate, or to appear haughty.

Pay special attention to very exaggerated postures, because they mean that the person is doing it consciously to influence you.

• Raise your head and project your chin forward:a sign that is intended to expressly communicate aggressiveness and power.
• Nodding your head:this is a contagious gesture of submission that can transmit positive feelings. It communicates interest and agreement, but if done several times very quickly it can communicate that enough has been heard.
• Tilting the head:it is a sign of submission by exposing the throat. If you do it while nodding when you are listening to someone, you will increase your interlocutor’s trust in you. In the case of women, it has also been observed that it is used to show interest in a man.
• Resting the face on the hands:the face is usually exposed with the aim of “presenting it” to the interlocutor. Therefore, it shows attraction to the other person.
• Rest your chin on your hand:if the palm of your hand is closed, it is a sign of evaluation. If the palm of the hand is open it can mean boredom or loss of interest.

3. The look also speaks

Communication through gaze has a lot to do with the dilation or contraction of the pupil , which reacts to the internal states we experience.

For this reason, light eyes are usually more attractive than dark ones: because they allow pupil dilation to be more evidently displayed, a response associated with positive emotions.

When you speak, you usually maintain eye contact between 40 and 60% of the time. That’s because your brain is busy trying to access the information (NLP postulates that depending on the type of information you’re trying to retrieve, you’ll look to one side, but it’s already been scientifically proven that that’s not true).

In certain social situations, a lack of eye contact can be interpreted as nervousness or shyness, so simply pausing before responding will save you the time necessary to access the information without having to look away.

Looking directly in the eyes when making a request is also useful for increasing your persuasiveness (you can read the full study here ). But there are also other functions of the gaze:

• Vary the size of the pupils:It cannot be controlled, but the presence of dilated pupils usually means that you are seeing something pleasant, while contracted pupils express hostility.

In any case, they are very subtle variations that are often masked by environmental changes in light intensity. It has also been discovered that mirror neurons are responsible for adjusting the size of our pupils to that of our interlocutor, in an attempt to synchronize body language to generate greater connection.

• Raising your eyebrows:it is a social greeting that implies the absence of fear and pleasure. Do it in front of people you want to like.
• Lowering your head and raising your eyes:in the female sex it is considered a posture that transmits sensuality to attract men. In fact, many profile photos of women on online dating sites are taken precisely from above (sometimes with the additional intention of showing cleavage). In men it is the other way around: lower shots to appear taller and more dominant.
• Maintaining your gaze:For women, establishing eye contact for 2 or 3 seconds and then looking down can be an indicator of sexual interest.
• Repetitive blinking:This is another way of trying to block the vision of the person in front of you, either out of boredom or mistrust.
• Looking to the sides:another way of expressing boredom, because you are unconsciously looking for escape routes.

4. Types of smile

The smile is an inexhaustible source of meanings and emotions. You have an entire article about all the benefits of smiling as well as what it is possible to communicate with it. Furthermore, thanks to mirror neurons, smiling is a tremendously contagious act capable of provoking very positive emotions in others.

But there is not just one, it is actually possible to distinguish several types of smiles depending on what they communicate:

• In a fake smile,the left side of the mouth usually rises higher because the part of the brain most specialized in emotions is in the right hemisphere, which mainly controls the left part of the body.
• The natural smile(or Duchenne smile ) is one that produces wrinkles next to the eyes, raises the cheeks and slightly lowers the eyebrows.
• A tense smile, with tight lips, denotes that the person does not want to share their emotions with you and is a clear sign of rejection.

The biological function of the smile is to create a social bond, promoting trust and eliminating any feeling of threat. It has been proven that it also conveys submission, which is why people who want to appear powerful and women who want to maintain their authority in typically masculine professional environments avoid smiling ( Welpe I. et al. ).

5. Position of the arms

The arms, along with the hands, serve as support for most of the movements you make. They also allow you to defend the most vulnerable areas of your body in situations of perceived insecurity.

proprioception​ has taught us that the communication path between the body and the mind is reciprocalWhen you experience an emotion your body will unconsciously reflect it, but the opposite also happens: if you voluntarily adopt a position, your mind will begin to experience the associated emotion. This becomes especially evident when you cross your arms.

There are many people who believe that they cross their arms because they feel more comfortable. But gestures are perceived as natural when they are aligned with the person’s attitude, and science has already shown that crossing them predisposes one to a critical attitude, no matter how comfortable the gesture may seem. Notice that when you are having a good time with friends you don’t cross your arms!

This is what you communicate when you take a certain posture with your arms:

• Crossing your arms:shows disagreement and rejection. Avoid doing this unless you specifically want to send this message to others. In a sensual context, women usually do this when they are in the presence of men who seem too aggressive or unattractive to them.
• Crossing one arm in front of you to hold the other arm:denotes lack of self-confidence as you need to feel hugged.
• Arms crossed with thumbs up:a defensive posture but at the same time wants to convey pride.
• Joining the hands in front of the genitals:in men it provides a feeling of security in situations where vulnerability is experienced.
• Joining your hands behind your back:shows confidence and lack of fear by exposing weak points such as the stomach, throat and crotch. It can be useful to adopt this posture in insecure situations to try to gain confidence.

In general, crossing your arms implies that you are experiencing insecurity. Hence the need to protect the body. There are many variations such as adjusting your watch, placing your briefcase in front of your body, or holding a bag with both hands in front of your chest, but they all mean the same thing.

6. Hand gestures

The hands, along with the arms, are one of the most mobile parts of the body and therefore offer an enormous range of non-verbal communication possibilities. The most common thing is to use them to point out certain parts of the body with the aim of showing authority or sexuality.

They also serve to support verbal messages and give them greater strength:

• There is a part of the brain called Broca’s area that is involved in the speech process. But it has been proven that it is also activated by moving your hands. This implies that gesturing is directly linked to speech, so doing it while expressing yourself can even improve your verbal ability. Very useful for people who get blocked when speaking in public!
• It has also been shown in a study that reinforcing a phrase with gestures makes the words to use come to mind sooner, and also makes your message much more persuasive and understandable. In this research, it was found that the most persuasive gestures are those that are aligned with the verbal meaning, such as pointing backwards when referring to the past.

Below you will find everything we know about the meaning of hand gestures:

• Showing an open palm:expresses sincerity and honesty, while making a fist shows the opposite.
• Hands in pockets:denotes inaction and lack of involvement in the conversation or situation.
• Emphasize something with your hand:When someone offers two points of view with their hands, usually the one they like the most reinforces it with their dominant hand and palm up.
• Interlace the fingers of both hands:conveys a repressed, anxious or negative attitude. If your interlocutor adopts this posture, break it by giving him something to hold.
• Joined fingertips:expresses confidence and security, but can be confused with arrogance. Very useful to detect if rivals have good hands when playing poker.
• Holding the other hand behind the back:it is an attempt to control oneself, therefore it expresses frustration or an attempt to hide nervousness.
• Showing your thumbs outside your pockets:in men it represents an attempt to demonstrate confidence and authority in front of women they are attracted to, although in a conflict situation it can also be a way of transmitting aggression.
• Hiding only the thumbs inside the pockets:it is a position that frames and highlights the genital area, therefore it is a sexually open attitude that men perform to show the absence of fear or sexual interest in a woman.
• Putting your hands on your hips:indicates a subtly aggressive attitude, since you want to increase your physical presence. Many men use it both to establish superiority in their social circle and to appear more masculinity in the presence of those women they are attracted to. The more the chest is exposed, the more aggression will be subcommunicated.

7. Leg position

Legs play a very interesting role in body language. Being further away from the central nervous system (the brain), our rational mind has less control over them and allows them to express internal feelings more freely.

The further away a body part is from the brain, the less control you have over what it is doing.

In general, human beings are programmed to get closer to what they want and get away from what they don’t want. The way someone places their legs can give you some of the most valuable clues about non-verbal communication since they will be pointing you where they really want to go.

• Front Foot:The front foot is almost always pointing where you would like to go. In a social situation with several people, also point towards the person you consider most interesting or attractive.

If you want someone to emotionally feel like you’re giving them your undivided attention, make sure your feet are facing them. In the same way, when your interlocutor points his feet towards the door instead of towards you, it is a fairly obvious sign that he wants to end the conversation.

• Crossed legs:it is a defensive and closed attitude that protects the genitals. In the context of courtship, it can communicate sexual rejection by the woman towards the man.

In a social situation, a person sitting with their arms and legs crossed probably means that they have withdrawn from the conversation. In fact, researchers Allan and Barbara Pease conducted an experiment that showed that people remembered fewer details of a lecture if they listened to it with their arms and legs crossed.

• Sitting with one leg raised supported by the other:typically masculine, revealing a competitive attitude or prepared to argue; it would be the seated version of crotch display.
• Legs wide apart:another basically masculine gesture that wants to convey dominance and territoriality.
• Sitting with legs curled:in women, it usually means a certain shyness and introversion.
• Sitting with one leg on top of the other in parallel:several authors recognize that in women it can be interpreted as courtship when trying to draw attention to the legs, since in this position they are more pressed and offer a more youthful and sensual appearance.

Learning to detect inconsistencies between verbal and body language can be very useful. What the body indicates is usually very reliable, since humans are incapable of controlling all the signals it is emitting.

Remember that you must interpret all these body signals within a global context and with certain limitations. Don’t draw conclusions from a single gesture. Someone might cross their arms because they are simply cold, or because it is a movement that they have mechanized and taken away some of its real meaning.

I advise you to practice the positive and open gestures that I have described here to improve your self-confidence. And if you want more information about body language, I recommend that you take a look at the book from which most of the research that has led to these conclusions is based, Body Language .