Although people sometimes do blurt out their true feelings, especially in the heat of anger, deducing someone’s true feelings can be tricky because most people either hesitate to express their genuine emotions, are themselves unsure of exactly how they feel, or else make a concerted effort to hide their feelings (sometimes for nefarious reasons). This ambiguity in oral communication is why it’s important to be able to interpret “the silent language of nonverbal behavior.” (Brehm, Kassin & Fein, 2002, p. 97)
Interestingly, as noted by Julius Fast, author of The Body Language of Sex, Power, and Aggression (1987), humankind’s ability to understand and interpret bodily gestures and facial expressions undoubtedly began long before humans developed the ability to express themselves in words. Moreover, Fast says that Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, a Roman rhetorician of the first century A.D., maintained that body language added to the impact of orations, a belief obviously shared by skilled public speakers today because not only do they know how to use gestures and expressions to empower their speeches, they also know how to interpret the body language of their listeners and then use this knowledge to their advantage.
The reality, however, is that although many people are aware that body language literally speaks volumes about someone’s true opinions, reactions, and feelings, most people don’t know how to read and interpret bodily gestures and facial expressions accurately, nor do they realize that the ability to understand nonverbal cues can give them a decided edge in business dealings and in personal relationships.
What Body Language Says about People
According to Dr. David J. Lieberman, recognized authority on human behavior and author of You Can Read Anyone: Never Be Fooled, Lied to, or Taken Advantage of Again (2007), by learning how to read body language, you can know “what anyone is thinking and feeling in any situation or circumstance” because you will be able to answer these seven basic questions:
- Is this person hiding something?
- Doe this person like the idea, object, gift, etc. that I’m presenting?
- Is this person really confident or only pretending?
- How are things, really, for this person?
- Is this person interested in me, or am I wasting my time?
- Whose side is this person really on?
- How safe, stable, and sane is this person?
The Skill of Reading a Person’s Body Language
Gerald I. Nierenberg and Henry H. Calero, coauthors of How to Read a Person like a Book (1993), maintain that by merely noting people’s gestures, you can make surprisingly accurate deductions about their attitudes, personalities, relationships, and situations.
However, in order to interpret gestures correctly, you must understand that “each gesture is like a word in a language” (Nierenberg & Calero, p. 7), but no one isolated gesture is by itself indicative of a person’s feelings, motives, etc. What you must observe, instead, is the “congruence of gestures in harmony with one another” because “a static gesture lasting several seconds might be contradicted by a prior body movement (congruent), which in turn might be further repudiated by a subsequent gesture (Nierenberg & Calero, p. 8).
In closing, the nonverbal cues that people send, otherwise known as body language, influence our perceptions, oftentimes subliminally, but these cues enable us to make astoundingly accurate judgments if we know how to read and interpret them correctly.
Sources:
Brehm, S., Kassin, S. & Fein, S. (2002) Social Psychology: Fifth Edition; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Fast, J. (1987) The Body Language of Sex, Power, and Aggression; Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company.
Lieberman, D. J. (2007) You Can Read Anyone: Never Be Fooled, Lied to, or Taken Advantage of Again; New York: MJF Books.
Nierenberg, I. N. & Calero, H. H. (1993) How to Read a Person like a Book; New York: Fall River Press.
Carol Rzadkiewicz - Carol Rzadkiewicz has taught college English for over 14 years and is the author of three published novels and numerous short stories.
