Guide to Body Language and Human Behavior Part 3:
I will put some pictures at the end and analyze them
2.1 Kinesics:
Common movements would be crossing the legs, the arms, leaning back and forth.
2.2 Haptics:
Touching the neck, mouth, throat, rubbing the leg, touching the ear and eye.
2.3 Proxemics:
The further away the less the person has a connection to you. If a person is near and touching another then there is a romantic relationship likly.
2.4 Vocalics:
The voice changes with emotions. The higher the voice the more the emotion is involved.
2.5 Chronemics:
The shorter the movement, expression will last the more genuine it is (around 1/5 of a second for expressions). Exceptions are anger, sadness and happiness.
Tips to consider:
Context: In body language the key is to see the difference in it in time. If someone suddenly changes their body language, there was something important, which lead to this change. Also the context of the other tells is important.
Every body language tell has a good and bad meaning. The key is to know both of them and get the context right.
According to Jo Navarro the feet are the most honest part. Feet will always pointing in the direction which is most important, e.g. the door for leaving, the person they like …
Everyone tries to fake their emotions. As a little child, your parents say to you that you should make a sad face when something unpleasant happend. For example make a happy face even when you dont like the present for christmas.
If you wanna see the real emotion then you need to increase the “stress”. Making the women on a date a compliment. Increasing the stress in a interrogation.
There are 7 Universal Emotions (Paul Ekman): Happiness, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, Surprise, Fear, Contempt.
learn-to-read-emotions.com
You can break down almost every tell into comfort / discomfort. Also a key is to see that, if the person makes comfortable or uncomfortable gestures.
Gravity will help you. Every tell that acts against gravity will be important because it uses energy of the body, so the body thinks the motion is important. e.g. standing up, raising the hand / arm …
Palms up means trust. Palm down means dominance.
Blocking the upper body means discomfort because the person tries to protect themselves from damage to the organs.
Genital Framing: Usage of the hands to form a frame around the genitals often with the hands in the pockets or on the belt and then the thumbs to form a frame. Often seen by man but also sometimes by woman
Here you can see on the left side tells of discomfort. She is looking away. Gripping tightly her arm. Crossing the legs. Putting the body into a different directions. Covering her upper body. Making herself small -> submissive body language, she feels uncomfortable.
On the right side you can see the same woman making herself big. Raising her arms against gravity. Crossing her legs to form a barrier. Body to the camera. Looking straight with the head straight up -> She is dominant, superior mindset, but doesnt let the person hurt her.
Here is also a picture. She is touching her head with the hand and looking upward. She has the mouth slightly open and the body slightly turned away. She thinking about something she forgot.
The baseline is formed by watching the person a certain time mostly in a comfortable state. If you now see a change happen from that baseline, then you know somethings changed. If you have limited time then use the context based method of just seeing the change instead of seeing the change from the baseline.
Training Exercise:
Try to observe others and identify their body language tells with these tips I gave you. If there are any questions, please ask them all, I will answer them.
thebodylangueproject.com is not my website. I just used their pictures. So please check them out. They explain also stuff well.
-SoL