Classical body language

What does someone think when they say "Yes" and shake their head? How can you tell if someone is lying? How can you tell if a salesperson really doesn't want to give in anymore? How can you recognize blocking reactions of the conversation partner in time? How do you interpret contact signals? What is distance behavior? What is territorial behavior?

Recognizing and Utilizing Body Language

It's not just about what someone says, but how they say it. Unconscious signals from the body reveal more truth than words. Body signals are more honest. Often, we unconsciously trust these signals more than the words. Therefore, it is all the more important to interpret body language correctly.

When you engage with body language, you will observe many interesting and surprising things. Knowledge of this field is one of the key skills in negotiations of all kinds. For methodologists, it is a matter of highest priority.

What is body language?

Behavior, arm and leg posture, expression of the eyes, corners of the mouth or hands reveal our thoughts, our inner life, fears, and desires. Even characteristics such as body fullness, clothing, voice, hairstyle, and even some details of the face are sources of information from which one can infer character traits or moods to a certain extent. All of this is called body language.

Decisions and behavior are only consciously controlled to a small extent. The subconscious drives us – not reason or logic. It is small things that we cannot name and attribute to our feelings. Often, these are signals that we learned to interpret as early as childhood. The body language of our conversation partners guides us as well.

Body language is diverse

Work and success methods usually revolve around a few important basic rules. In contrast, the use of body language requires knowledge of many details. Those who dedicate themselves to body language will learn a lot about personality and communication – about behavior, aggressiveness, instinctual behavior, or affectivity.

Particularly interesting is the analysis of individual reactions and behaviors. Here, one will focus on individual body parts: the eyes, the head, mouth, nose, eyebrows, shoulder area, and upper body. The posture of legs and feet while sitting, the position of the hand and fingers, the so-called hand-face gestures, and the hand-hand gestures. Many details allow for interpretation.

The interpretable details of gestures and facial expressions are enormously diverse. In addition, there is the interpretation of reactions and behaviors in relation to social situations – during phone calls, at a presentation, and even while sleeping.

Is body language unambiguous?

When you show a child how Snow White begs for her life, the body language is unambiguous. But in real life? We do not know what the observed person really thinks. Therefore, a reliable interpretation of their unconscious signals is rarely possible.

We know too few details. People behave differently. There are cultural differences, differences between men and women, adults and children, differences that can be explained by a person's status and role.

Example: American men often sit with their legs crossed, with the ankle of one leg resting across the knee of the other. The sitting posture of European men with closed thighs is perceived by Americans as unmanly.

Language and its expression are also subject to natural limitations. A Russian "Nyet" can linguistically not sound as malicious as the "No!" from Margaret Thatcher. There are religiously influenced behaviors and significant differences depending on the social environment. Only a sharp look at the overall situation will prevent misinterpretations. Do not rely entirely on ready-made recipes.

Imitated Body Language

Occasionally, one observes that people involuntarily mimic the body language (and the language) of others. There are servants who become more and more similar to their masters over the course of their lives, backbenchers in parliament who unreflectively parrot the word creations and formulations of their role models. Of course, there are also children whose behaviors are modeled after their parents.

Sometimes, one can still observe behaviors in people that they copied from some role model decades ago and never shed. Therefore, it is always important to pay attention to such connections when trying to interpret body language.

You learn body language more easily and quickly if you first practice observing individual signal sources – such as the eye area, body posture, or the language of the hands.