Smiles

Real smiles force the corners of the mouth up toward the eyes and are hard to fake. Babies a few weeks old smile real smiles at their mother and polite smiles at strangers. Polite smiles don’t involve the eyes.

Lips

Under stress, lips compress until they seem to disappear. It’s a way of preventing anything threatening from entering the body. Most people can’t fake a hidden-lipped frown — they can only make their mouths go straight — so it’s a pretty good sign of grief or distress.

Feet

“Feet win the honesty award hands down,” says Joe Navarro, a retired FBI agent who has authored several books on nonverbal communication, such as, “What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People.” Describing his interrogation methods, Navarro says, “I concentrate on feet and legs first, moving upward in my observations until I read the face last. Truthfulness decreases as we move from feet to head.”

In his books, Navarro describes how loudly the body speaks, especially in stressful situations. You’ve heard that there’s a “fight or flight” response to danger, but there’s a stage before those. When facing a threat, the body consistently and uncontrollably first prepares to freeze, then flee; fighting is only a last resort. Here’s how that progression shows itself in the feet. When a foot that’s been jiggling suddenly stops, or someone locks their feet together, or wraps them around the chair’s legs to immobilize them — they’re freezing. When feet turn toward the exit, they’re showing their desire to flee. If foot jiggling turns to feet swinging back-and-forth, they’re ready to kick-start a fight.

Practical application: Two of your friends are standing together, talking. Should you join them, or would they rather be left alone? If you ask, they’ll say they want your company… but do they? Check their feet. If they only swivel toward you from the hips, go away — they don’t want you there. If they turn their feet toward you, they’re welcoming you. Feet point in the direction they want to go more reliably than the body does.

Legs

If someone is crossing their legs while standing — something that naturally leaves a person off-balance — you know they’re feeling relaxed. And if a person is crossing their legs and leaning closer to someone, it shows how much confidence and preference they have for that individual.

Torsos

Shielding the torso shows discomfort. So if you see someone playing with a tie or necklace, buttoning a sweater, or fiddling with a watch or cufflinks, it might be an excuse for protectively placing hands in front of the body. Leaning toward someone with your torso shows compatibility, but leaning away is a sign of dislike, and turning to someone with your head but not your torso shows you’re keeping your distance.

Arms

Pay close attention to crossed arms. Loosely crossing the arms is a comfortable stance, but a tight crossing shows uneasiness. Crossing arms is also a way to deal with cold, but if the person you’re observing is the only one who’s cold, it may be because of an internal temperature drop. When stressed, blood reroutes from the skin to the large muscles in preparation for flight or fight, and that can quickly cause a cooling of the arms.

“Gravity-defying” is another element of body language that’s worth watching for. When someone’s arm — or any body part — rises above its normal place, it’s showing positive feelings, even exuberance. Practical application: Watch who gets whole-arm hugs at a simchah and who just gets hugged from the elbows on down. The amount a hostess is willing to raise her arms in greeting shows who she’s most happy to see.

Hands and Fingers

We pay a great deal of attention to fingers and hands, something entertainers, magicians, and speakers capitalize on. Being able to see someone’s hands increases our trust in the quality and honesty of their information. That’s why jurors like to see lawyers’ and witnesses’ hands. Someone holding his hands immobile is in the first stage of his fear response — he’s freezing. Placing fingertips together to form a steeple shows high confidence, but hand-clenching shows concern or stress. Thumbs in clear view — giving a “thumbs up” or letting them stick out from behind suspenders — signal confidence and pride; dejected teens poke their thumbs into their pockets. When a child has his thumbs tucked away, assume that “thumb-thing” is wrong.

Pay attention to moving fingers — someone who’s uneasy self-pacifies. Gently stroking the face or neck, with their many nerve endings, releases stress-calming endorphins. Playing with a necklace or tie has the same effect as stroking the neck. Men usually touch their faces to calm themselves; women tend to touch their necks, jewelry, hair or arms.

CAN YOU SPOT A LIAR?

Knowing what we now do about body language, can we figure out if someone is fibbing? “Unfortunately, there is no ‘Pinocchio effect’ when it comes to deception,” says FBI interrogator Joe Navarro. “Lie detectors only work 60 to 80 percent of the time. Even the best experts are only a blink away from chance, with a 50–50 probability of identifying liars.”

Still, truth-tellers are more at ease; lying is stressful. The freeze response makes them limit activity, so there’ll be less than average movement of the head, neck, arms, and legs. One hand may clasp the other to keep both immobilized.

A liar’s lack of confidence means there’ll be no gravity-defying behaviors — raised hands, raised eyebrows, or bouncing on the balls of the feet — and no space domination, such as standing with elbows out.

“I have never seen a person who is lying yell, ‘I didn’t do it!’ while pounding his fist on table,” Navarro says. A liar doesn’t have much confidence in what he’s saying, because the parts of his body over which he has no control are projecting his nervousness. Shaking the head while saying yes, or nodding while saying no, are signs that something is off-kilter. Nervousness causes self-pacifying activities to appear, such as stroking the face or neck.

If the person you’re observing is standing, check to see if his feet are aimed at the door, and if he’s leaning away from the conversation that he finds uncomfortable.

It’s hard to lie at full speed. While honest people speak at their normal speed and emphasize their points, liars slow down so they can evaluate what they’re saying and how it’s being received. Liars also make too much eye contact, perhaps because they think it indicates honesty. Smiles that seem to last too long are a sign of discomfort; someone who’s been caught red-handed will smile for an unnaturally long time. Liars will also hold an expression of surprise for longer than normal.

MIT professor Alex Pentland, in his book Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World, offers a few questions to help you ascertain if your conversation-mate is telling the truth: “Are they using the same words you use? Speaking at a similar speed and tone? Are they sitting the way you sit? Is a subtle, unconscious game of follow-the-leader going on? This is a sign the other person feels emotionally in sync with you. It can be faked but that’s rare and difficult to pull off consistently across a conversation.”

And that’s the truth.

WHAT COPYING DOES FOR COMMUNICATION

Rav Shlomo Kory is a Jerusalem-based NLP therapist who gives workshops on interpersonal communication. A seminary for American girls — that hotbed of late-night DMCs — asked him to teach a workshop for their students and staff because they needed help with face-to-face interactions. Rav Kory points to social media and texting to explain the deterioration of real communication.

“The overuse of social media means that much of our communication is lacking a dimension that it used to have. It’s become only words — emails and text messages,” he says. Even phone calls, where visuals are missing, are better than texts. “During a phone call, I at least get some hint of how you’re feeling from your voice. We’re paying a price for the reliance on texting,” says Rav Kory.

Research shows that words only account for a mere seven percent of what you learn from talking to a friend. Thirty-eight percent comes from her tone of voice and fifty-five percent from her body language.

True communication means that everyone involved gives full consideration to what’s being said. “Even if they disagree, they need to hear each other,” Rav Kory says. That level of communication is infinitely easier when you’re face-to-face because you can engage in a type of body language called “matching,” a term that means mirroring — but not mimicking — behavior.

If a conversation is going well, matching happens by itself. Look around at a simchah and you can see who’s getting along by watching their unconscious mirroring. Or observe a crowd listening to a lecture — the audience tends to divide itself into small groups of five to seven, and each group will have a leader, whose behavior is mirrored by those around her. The speaker can address those leaders and, by creating a rapport with them, get the whole group more involved in the lecture.

When you’re talking to someone in person, eye contact is the most important visual to match. A short gaze is fine, but staring gets uncomfortable. If you watch two people interact, you’ll see that they’ll look away from each other after ten or twenty seconds (although some people almost never make eye contact and others can hold it for much longer).

Arm and leg position and gestures can be mirrored, but not exactly and not too soon. If you stroke your lip right after the other person does, he’ll feel mocked. Try doing it a few moments later. And mix it up — if the other guy raises his hand, raise your head. Move around about as much as he does.

When someone needs help opening up, mirror their gestures. Matching tells someone, “I’m with you.” It makes them feel heard and understood. (The opposite is just as true: To disrupt rapport with, say, a pesky telemarketer or a guest who stays too long, mismatch them. If your guest is sitting, stand up, so heights and postures are mismatched.)

Speech is an overlooked opportunity for matching — or mismatching, if you prefer. To disrupt a conversation with a fast talker, speak s-l-o-w-l-y. If they sound bright and chirpy, speak in a monotone. We naturally speak in a high pitch to small children, but not to a police officer writing a ticket. How loud and how often words are emphasized are also qualities that can create rapport when matched. “How IS your MOTHER? I HOPE she’s WELL,” can’t be answered with an unemphatic, hurried sentence without creating dissonance.

Even breathing can be mirrored to good effect. Breathing can be both seen and heard — watch the shoulders rise and fall to gauge the speed. Once you’re both breathing at similar speeds, you’ll start to talk alike. Hypnotists time their speech to their client’s exhale, which creates a deep rapport.

Touch is usually a less-important element of body language, although a touch on the upper arm is a quick bridge-builder. Still, a handshake is part of first impressions, and often last impressions, too, so Rav Kory suggests trying to match them on four fronts — pressure, length, the amount of hand that’s involved, and how much the arm moves.

Without Saying a Word authors Patryk and Kasia Wezowski also suggest keeping your chin down to establish rapport, so no one thinks you’re looking down on them, and so your eyes stay wide open. Gravity-defying gestures, like high eyebrows and palms up, show openness and are comforting.

The feeling that “something’s wrong with me” haunts those who have trouble developing friendships. Loneliness and self-doubt may trouble someone whose body language is off. But it can be improved. “Those who found it challenging — and in some cases, almost impossible — to connect with others discover they can do it,” says Rav Kory. “One woman who called to sign up for a workshop mentioned that ‘People avoid me and I don’t know why.’ Once we met, it was obvious that it was because of her strong nonverbal mismatching. I’ve noticed that quite often when I people-watch. We’re not usually aware of it, but if we pay attention, we can figure out what we’re doing that turns off others.”

Creating rapport through body language isn’t always instinctive. But it can be practiced until it becomes natural. “It’s a new language for some,” Rav Kory says. “At first it feels awkward to speak a foreign language. You have to search for words, and you’re self-conscious about your accent. But with practice it becomes second-nature and begins to flow. Some come to it more naturally than others, but almost everyone can improve.” Self-consciousness breeds awareness, and awareness leads to greater skill.

One benefit of improved communication, Rav Kory points out, is that it gets easier to handle difficult people. “It helps us identify sources of conflict and resolve them.” And improving rapport means less arguments and more cooperation. Becoming better listeners makes us more desirable friends, deepens our relationships, and gives us more insight. We can believe him when he says, “It’s worth the effort.”

CLUSTERING and CONTEXT:

In The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help — Or Hurt — How You Lead, author Dr. Carol Goman says clusters of behaviors are a more reliable guide than individual indicators can be. For instance, nervousness is undeniable when sweating, neck stroking, and stuttering all appear together.

Don’t ignore context, either. If the room is cold, or there’s no armrests, crossed arms can be expected — they don’t necessarily show defiance or a need for self-protection. If the woman you’re watching always bounces her leg, then bouncing doesn’t reveal anything. It’s when she stops bouncing that you’ll want to ask, “Is she freezing in response to a stressor?”

CHANGE YOUR BODY LANGUAGE, CHANGE YOUR MOOD

“We smile when we feel happy, but when we’re forced to smile by holding a pen in our teeth, it makes us feel happy. So it goes both ways,” says psychologist Amy Cuddy.

Looking for body language that would empower people, Cuddy noticed that “people who were born with sight and people who were born blind both do the same thing when they win a race — they raise their arms in a V and lift their chins.” Winners and CEOs both stand with arms akimbo, too.

Taking up space is the hallmark of a champion. The aura of superiority it projects affects others and it also affects the winner. “Our bodies change our minds, our minds change our behavior, and our behavior changes our outcomes,” Cuddy says.

Pretending to be powerful makes us feel powerful, competent, and successful, which can actually make us powerful, competent, and successful. Leaning forward with shoulders back and steepling fingers are other shows of confidence that will reflect back and infuse you with confidence.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 633)