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The most honest part of the human body are the feet. Why?
Because we've practiced lying with our words and faces since pre-school.
In this summary, we'll cover the top signals and signs explained by FBI body language expert Joe Navarro in his best-seller What Every Body is Saying.
Once you start to pay attention and put some labels on common behaviors, you'll start to notice them everywhere. But first...
Body language is based in the limbic brain. This part of the brain controls our reflexes and immediate reactions to the world around us.
The limbic brain is not 'rational' in the sense that it's under full control of the conscious mind. Under certain conditions, the limbic brain betrays true feelings and thoughts through body language.
All body language is based on the three F's of prehistoric man: freeze, flight, and fight. When faced with danger, prehistoric man could rely on these three categories of action.
Obviously, modern interactions rarely ask us to flee the room or fight with one another. But that doesn't mean the three F's have disappeared. Stressful situations still draw out our three f's. And ancient behaviors manifest in everyday body language.
Freeze behaviors include holding your breath or suddenly clutching your seat. Flight behaviors are distancing, like leaning away from a conversation partner, putting objects between a person and their interrogator, turning feet toward the nearest exit, or eye-blocking (more on that below). Perhaps easiest to imagine are fight behaviors: puffing out your chest, or flaring your nostrils.
Body language is not specific enough to map cleanly to complex human emotions. There's obviously no precise body language for 'upset with your cheating ex-boyfriend' or 'nihilistic despair after Netflix binge'.
So when reading body language, you should imagine a spectrum that runs from comfort to discomfort. Comfort and discomfort are the compass. A person's limbic system leaks information about their (dis)comfort level.
As a person becomes less comfortable, they'll begin to engage in pacifying behaviors. Pay attention to this idea. A pacifying behavior is the limbic system trying to push a body back towards the comfort end of the comfort-discomfort spectrum.
When reading someone's body language, you're not going to see some tell-tale sign that someone is lying. Instead, when a person is faced with a stressful situation or question, you'll see an increase or decrease in pacifying behaviors. And, yes, people often find lying quite stressful and pacify when do it.
Remember that pacifying behaviors are contextual. For example, excessive yawning is a signal of intense anxiety. But if someone is yawning a lot at 3:00am after a long night of partying, this is probably just someone who's tired. But if it's 11:00 am and a few minutes ago they seemed fully alert until you asked them what their glove was doing at the scene of the crime, this could a pacifier.
In general, pacifying behaviors follow the stressor that caused them. This can help you pinpoint the source of a pacifying behavior. Navarro details elaborate FBI interrogations in his book, where he'll ask the same question multiple times and, amazingly, people will often do the exact same pacifying behavior every time they answer the question.
Let's look at some of these signs across the body.
Stroking or covering the neck is one of the most frequently seen pacifying behaviors. According to Navarro, women in particular will cover the suprasternal notch (the little dimple on the bottom of your neck) when doubtful, insecure, or fearful. If someone does this after you've asked a question, they were uncomfortable with what you asked.
Massaging the earlobes with index and forefinger, stroking a beard, playing with your hair, or touching and licking lips are all pacifying behaviors of the face.
When under intense anxiety, people can appear to yawn over and over again. This actually puts pressure on salivary glands to bring moisture into the dry mouth of the anxious person. In practice, it just looks like too much yawning.
Like neck stroking, this suggests a person struggling with something and experiencing discomfort.
Touching the face or cheek occurs when a person is nervous, irritated, or concerned.
Right after something bad happens, people will often take a big breath, puff out their cheeks, and exhale slowly. This behavior suggests: "Whew... that was close" and releases stress after something bad almost happened. Imagine someone letting out an enormous sigh of relief.
People will also sometimes fondle their jewelry or clothes when they are uncomfortable with a question.
When lips and pressed together and seem to disappear. Suggests stress.
When someone pulls their shirt collar away from the skin of their neck. Suggests discomfort.
Obviously when it comes to freezing, fleeing, or fighting, the feet matter a lot. For this reason, the feet and legs have evolved as the site for highly effective tells for human behavior. According to Navarro:
When it comes to honesty, truthfulness decreases as we move from the feet to the head.
Generally, we can interpret feet, legs, (as well as arms and hand) body language as either 'gravity defying' or not.
Navarro calls behaviors that raise the feet or angle them upward gravity-defying. These behaviors, like rocking back on your heel and pointing a toe to the sky, or rising up on your tip-toes suddenly, suggest happiness, confidence, or that the person has heard or thought of something positive.
Interestingly, people with clinical depression show almost no signs of gravity-defying leg movements.
Happy feet are when a person's feet suddenly begin bouncing and wiggling up and down. They signal high confidence. You can read happy feet without seeing their legs directly by watching how a person's shirt and shoulders move.
We turn our feet towards things and people that we like and away from things and people that we don't. Often the upper body will be positioned towards someone, but the feet will point towards the exit. This betrays dislike or lack of comfort for the other person.
When someone clutches their leg (thigh) and pushes down towards their knee. You probably do this unthinkingly if you have sweaty palms. The leg cleanser indicates stress.
Placing both hands on the knees and leaning forward or shifting towards the front edge of a chair. This suggests the person is ready to conclude the interaction.
Spreading your legs wide is a territorial display. There's actually a whole class of territorial display body language like this, which we'll mention later. Leg splay suggests dominance, but also confrontation. If a person moves from legs together to legs widely splayed, this suggests they're probably growing unhappy.
People don't cross their legs if they feel uncomfortable (it's hard to flee from danger on one foot!). Suggests confidence and comfort.
If two people have their legs crossed while interacting, they're comfortable with each other. When legs are crossed, people will often lean towards the person they favor as well.
When seated next to each other, people will cross their legs toward a person that they like and away from a person they dislike. If a person changes from the top, crossed-over leg pointing toward someone to away from someone, it suggest a decline in comfort or agreement.
Look at the knee. Is the knee being moved further away (removing a barrier between the two) or inserted between them, creating distance and blocking?
If a person's feet don't mirror your own while you're interacting with them, something is wrong. Either they want to leave (their feet indicate the direction they want to go), or they don't want to interact with you for some other reason.
A sudden increase in the kicking of feet or movement of legs suggests discomfort. Similarly, the sudden freezing of foot or leg movement in response to a question suggests the person is stressed or threatened in some way. This is the freeze mode kicking in.
The torso holds critical organs. Our limbic system fires up in moments of stress to protect this region of the body. By reading the openness and directionality of the upper body, we can learn a lot about someone's state of mind.
Simply put, people lean away from things they don't like and towards things they do. The same is true with people.
We expose our ventral (front) sides towards things we like. And we turn away from things we dislike. Think of how it looks (and feels) when you approach someone at a party and they angle themselves slightly away.
If you want to use your body to signal agreement, face the person and lean towards them with rapt attention.
Crossing your arms, reaching across to play with cufflinks or a watch, or putting an object like a notebook in front of your torso suggests a lack of comfort with another person.
Standing with arms crossed is not itself a tell. The key is to look for crossing to occur suddenly, in response to a question or other interaction.
Splaying with the torso (sprawling out with arms/legs outstretched) is a territorial, dominance display. Think of the slouchy guy in class with no respect for the teacher.
We're pretty far into ape land with these two. People puff out their chest and it looks ridiculous. But beware, because it often indicates a fight.
Baring the torso is an even more absurd dominance display: before fighting, people will take off a hat or shirt.
When under stress, the chest may heave rapidly. The body is trying to get as much oxygen as it can in advance of a potential conflict.
High, even shrugs (with both shoulders) suggest confidence and commitment to what is being said. A low, half-shrug suggests a lack of commitment and possibly dishonesty.
When a person slowly lifts their shoulders, as if making their neck disappear. Suggests: weakness and insecurity.
Arms are similar to feet in that you can often infer a person's emotional state by whether arms are defying gravity.
In general, arms uplifted, open, and high suggest confidence, happiness and positive. Arms low, still, or held close suggest fear or anxiety.
Crossing arms and rubbing the opposite shoulder, as if cold. If done with a defiant look and while leaning forward, suggests aggression, not pacifying.
Arms straight to the sides or held across the chest suggests a person feels threatened. If a person's arms suddenly freeze with someone draws near, it may suggest fear of that person.
Arms held behind the back suggest, "Don't touch me". This can be because a person feels threatened, or because they are high status. Navarro uses the example of royalty, who often walk with their arms held behind their back.
Arms spread wide claim more territory and suggest dominance. Think of the guy who puts his arm along the back of his date's chair.
Compare this display to someone who sits down elbows tucked into their sides and hands in their lap (low-status, low confidence, low dominance). People also do this with objects, like an intimidating lean across a counter with arms spread wide.
Think of how an intimidating police officer or soldier might stand with hands on their hips, arms spread wide. Suggest authority and dominance by claiming a lot of territory on both sides.
Linking fingers together and leaning the head back into the cup formed by the hands. Dominance and power.
The human brain pays close attention to the hands of others. We evolved to watch for weapons and danger coming from others' hands.
Persuasive and powerful speakers always communicate with their hands. Never hide your hands. It suggests a lack of confidence or deceit. Generally, highly expressive hands are trusted more.
Navarro is clear: yes, handshakes do create a strong first impression. But, no, you shouldn't try to establish dominance with a handshake. Most people just have a negative impression of someone who yanks them around or crushes their fingers on first interaction.
Also don't do the politician's handshake, where you wrap your second hand over top of the hand in the shake.
Here's how Navarro explains steeply:
It involves touching the spread fingertips of both hands, in a gesture similar to “praying hands,” but the fingers are not interlocked and the palms may not be touching. It is called steepling because the hands look like the pointed top of a church steeple.
This is the most powerful gesture that someone can make to suggest confidence and in themselves and their ideas. I can't help but think of a clichéd portrait photo of a "thought leader" on stage.
By contrast, hand-wringing (like steepling but with fingers interlaced) shows stress and concern.
The easiest way to think about the body language of thumbs is to remember the phrase 'thumbs up'.
If thumbs are up and out, it suggests confidence. Thumbs that point down or disappear suggest low confidence.
Think of someone who walks into a room with their thumbs hidden in their pockets like a hook and their fingers dangling down. Not exactly self-assured.
This predominantly male dominance display occurs when men hook their thumbs in their belt or pants and use outstretched fingers to frame their genitals.
Think John Wayne or Han Solo on the prowl. It suggests exactly what you think it does.
Rubbing or stroking of the hand during conversation suggests anxiety.
Squinting or furrowing the forehead suggests stress and discomfort.
A tilted head, often accompanied by a smile, suggests confidence and openness to the other person.
We eye block when we don't like what we see. People may squint, or cover their eyes with hands. Think of how people look away from a gruesome accident scene or a violent movie.
Eye-blocking suggests something has made a person feel threatened.
Eye blocking can happen via the eyebrows: low eyebrows suggests disagreement or something negative and high, while arched eyebrows suggest confidence and positivity. Eye blocking can also occur by squinting or blocking the eyes with the hands.
Like arched eyebrows, flashbulb eyes (big round eyes like an anime character) suggest a person is overflowing with positivity. Watch eyes for emphasis in a story. Important moments should be punctuated with wide-eyes, which signal commitment to what is being said.
When people look away in conversation, it does not indicate deception. It's actually a display of comfort. The person is not intensely looking at you, so they don't consider you a threat.
Looking directly at someone for long periods sends strong signals of attraction or rejection. A steady gaze with a relaxed face suggests liking. But if it includes a tight jaw or compressed lips, it's probably more threatening.
Creepy people, like serial killers and predators, often use eye gaze to threaten and paralyze their victims.
People blink more when they're nervous or concerned. If someone flutters their eyelids, they probably didn't like what you just said.
Fake smiles occur only in the mouth. Real smiles occurs all the way up in the eyes. When lips disappear into the mouth, it suggests stress. Lips pursed in conversation suggests disagreement. Lip licking is pacifying, meant to calm us down.
Tucking the chin down suggests low confidence. A raised chin suggests comfort and confidence. Here we see the gravity-defying principle at work again
It's important to remember that reading body language is not like a detective movie. If your partner blinks a few too many times while telling you what they did last night, it doesn't mean that they're cheating. Body language hints at something beneath the surface. This doesn't mean it's deception or guilt.
To effectively read body language, you must always compare signals to a baseline. Some people have tics and other behaviors that look like tells, but are just habits that form part of the person's normal personality.
Context also matters. A job interview is inherently stressful, so you can expect some stress signals.
Overall, Navarro recommends looking for mismatch between statement and action. "Then I turned to the left, away from the alley", the criminal said while pointing to the right. The body is out of alignment with the statement. This may suggest something deeper.
In addition to mismatches, you want to look for relative changes to the baseline and clustering. Be on the lookout for sudden increases in pacifying behaviors and especially a cluster with a similar emotional direction e.g. wringing hands nervously and then stroking the back of the neck.
If you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend Navarro's book, What Every Body is Saying.