BODY LANGUAGE

How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures


ALLAN PEASE is the managing director of a
management consultancy company based in
Sydney, Australia. He produces books, films, and
cassettes that are used by numerous organisa-
tions around the world to train personnel in
communication skills. He did ten years’ study,
interviewing and research before writing BODY
LANGUAGE.



Overcoming Common Problems

BODY
LANGUAGE

How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures



Allan Pease















First published 1981 by Camel Publishing Company,
Box 1612, North Sydney, 2060, Australia

Copyright © Allan Pease 1981

First published March 1984 by Sheldon Press,
SPCK Building, Marylebone Road, London
NWl 4DU

Tenth impression 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.








British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Pease, Allan
Body language. – (Overcoming common problems)
1. Nonverbal communication
I. Title II. Series
001.56 P99.5

ISBN 0-85969-406-2

Printed in Great Britain
at the University Printing House, Oxford



Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A Framework for Understanding
Territories and Zones
Palm Gestures
Hand and Arm Gestures
Hand-to-Face Gestures
Arm Barriers
Leg Barriers
Other Popular Gestures and Actions
Eye Signals
Courtship Gestures and Signals
Cigars, Cigarettes, Pipes and Glasses
Territorial and Ownership Gestures
Carbon Copies and Mirror Images
Body Lowering and Status
Pointers
Desks, Tables and Seating Arrangements
Power Plays
Putting It All Together
References







Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the following people who have directly and indirectly contributed to
this book: Noel Bishop, Raoul Boielle, Ty Boyd, Sue Brannigan, Matthew Braund,
Doug Constable, John Cooke, Sharon Cooper, Chris Corck, Brett Davies, Dr Andre
Davril, George Deveraux, Rob Edmonds, Iven Frangi, Rex Gamble, Dave Goodwin,
Jan Goodwin, Paul Gresham, Gerry Hatton, John Hepworth, Bob Heussler, Gay Huber,
Professor Phillip Hunsaker, Dianne Joss, Jacqueline Kent, Ian McKillop, Delia Mills,
Desmond Morris, Virginia Moss, Wayne Mugridge, John Nevin, Peter Opie, Diana
O’Sullivan, Richard Otton, Ray Pease, David Plenderleith, David Rose, Richard
Salisbury, Kim Sheumack, Jan Smith, Tom Stratton, Ron Tacchi, Steve Tokoly, Keith
Weber, Alan White, Rob Winch and the Australian Jaycees.

Introduction
When I first heard about ‘body language’ at a seminar in 1971, I became so excited
about it that I wanted to learn more. The speaker told us about some of the research
done by Professor Ray Birdwhistell at the University of Louisville, which had shown
that more human communication took place by the use of gestures, postures, position
and distances than by any other method. At that time I had been a commission salesman
for several years and had undergone many long, intensive courses on selling techniques,
but none of these courses had ever mentioned anything about the non-verbal aspects or
implications of face-to-face encounters.
My own investigations showed that little useful information was available on body
language and, although libraries and universities had records of the studies done on it,
most of this information consisted of closely set manuscripts and theoretical
assumptions compiled in an objective manner by people who had little or no practical
experience in dealing with other human beings. This does not mean that their work was
not important; simply that most of it was too technical to have any practical application
or use by a layman like myself.
In writing this book, I have summarised many of the studies by the leading
behavioural scientists and have combined them with similar research done by people in
other professions - sociology, anthropology, zoology, education, psychiatry, family
counseling, professional negotiating and selling.
The book also includes many ‘how to’ features developed from the countless reels
of videotape and film made by myself and others throughout Australasia and overseas,
plus some of the experiences and encounters that I have had with the thousands of
people that I have interviewed, recruited, trained, managed and sold to over the past
fifteen years.
This book is by no means the last word on body language, nor does it contain any of
the magic formulae promised by some of the books in the bookstores. Its purpose is to
make the reader more aware of his own nonverbal cues and signals and to demonstrate
how people communicate with each other using this medium.
This book isolates and examines each component of body language and gesture,
though few gestures are made in isolation from others; I have at the same time tried to
avoid oversimplifying. Non-verbal communication is, however, a complex process
involving people, words, tone of voice and body movements.
There will always be those who throw up their hands in horror and claim that the
study of body language is just another means by which scientific knowledge can be
used to exploit or dominate others by reading their secrets or thoughts. This book seeks
to give the reader greater insight into communication with his fellow humans, so that he
may have a deeper understanding of other people and, therefore, of himself.
Understanding how something works makes living with it easier, whereas lack of
understanding and ignorance promote fear and superstition and make us more critical
of others. A birdwatcher does not study birds so that he can shoot them down and keep
them as trophies. In the same way, the acquisition of knowledge and skills in
non-verbal communication serves to make every encounter with another person an
exciting experience.
This book was originally intended as a working manual for sales people, sales
managers and executives and, in the ten years that it has taken to research and compile,
it has been expanded in such a way that any person, regardless of his or her vocation or
position in life, can use it to obtain a better understanding of life’s most complex event
– a face-to-face encounter with another person.
ALLAN PEASE

One
A Framework for Understanding
As we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are witnessing the emergence
of a new kind of social scientist-the non-verbalist. Just as the birdwatcher delights in
watching birds and their behaviour, so the non-verbalist delights in watching the
non-verbal cues and signals of human beings. He watches them at social functions, at
beaches, on television, at the office or anywhere that people interact. He is a student of
behaviour who wants to learn about the actions of his fellow humans so that he may
ultimately learn more about himself and how he can improve his relationships with
others.
It seems almost incredible that, over the million or more years of man’s evolution,
the non-verbal aspects of communication have been actively studied on any scale only
since the 1960s and that the public has become aware of their existence only since
Julius Fast published a book about body language in 1970. This was a summary of the
work done by behavioural scientists on nonverbal communication up until that time,
and even today, most people are still ignorant of the existence of body language, let
alone its importance in their lives.
Charlie Chaplin and many other silent movie actors were the pioneers of non-verbal
communication skills; they were the only means of communication available on the
screen. Each actor was classed as good or bad by the extent to which he could use
gestures and other body signals to communicate effectively. When talking films
became popular and less emphasis was placed on the non-verbal aspects of acting,
many silent movie actors faded into obscurity and those with good verbal skills
prevailed.
As far as the technical study of body language goes, perhaps the most influential
pre-twentieth-century work was Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals published in 1872. This spawned the modern studies of facial expres-
sions and body language and many of Darwin’s ideas and observations have since been
validated by modern researchers around the world. Since that time, researchers have
noted and recorded almost one million nonverbal cues and signals. Albert Mehrabian
found that the total impact of a message is about 7 per cent verbal (words only) and 38
per cent vocal (including tone of voice, inflection and other sounds) and 55 per cent
non-verbal. Professor Birdwhistell made some similar estimates of the amount of
non-verbal communication that takes place amongst humans. He estimated that the
average person actually speaks words for a total of about ten or eleven minutes a day
and that the average sentence takes only about 2.5 seconds. Like Mehrabian, he found
that the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35 per cent and that
over 65 per cent of communication is done non-verbally.
Most researchers generally agree that the verbal channel is used primarily for
conveying information, while the non-verbal channel is used for negotiating
interpersonal attitudes, and in some cases is used as a substitute for verbal messages.
For example, a woman can give a man a ‘look to kill’; she will convey a very clear
message to him without opening her mouth.
Regardless of culture, words and movements occur together with such
predictability that Birdwhistell says that a well-trained person should be able to tell
what movement a man is making by listening to his voice. In like manner, Birdwhistell
learned how to tell what language a person was speaking, simply by watching his
gestures.
Many people find difficulty in accepting that humans are still biologically animals.
Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a hairless ape that has learned to walk on two
limbs and has a clever, advanced brain. Like any other species, we are dominated by
biological rules that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. The
fascinating thing is that the human animal is rarely aware of his postures, movements
and gestures that can tell one story while his voice may be telling another.
PERCEPTIVENESS, INTUITION AND HUNCHES
From a technical point of view, whenever we call someone ‘perceptive’ or
‘intuitive’, we are referring to his or her ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues
and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we
have a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’ that someone has told us a lie, we really mean that their
body language and their spoken words do not agree. This is also what speakers call
audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if the audience were sitting
back in their seats with chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a ‘perceptive’
speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across. He would
become aware that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement.
Likewise, a speaker who was not ‘perceptive’ would blunder on regardless.
Women are generally more perceptive than men, and this fact has given rise to what
is commonly referred to as ‘women’s intuition’. Women have an innate ability to pick
up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details.
This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why,
conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man’s eyes without his realising it.
This female intuition is particularly evident in women who have brought up young
children. For the first few years, the mother relies solely on the non-verbal channel to
communicate with the child and this is believed to be the reason why women often
become more perceptive negotiators than men.
INBORN, GENETIC, LEARNED AND CULTURAL SIGNALS
Much research and debate has been done to discover whether non-verbal signals are
inborn, learned, genetically transferred or acquired in some other way. Evidence was
collected from observation of blind and/or deaf people who could not have learned non-
verbal signals through the auditory or visual channels, from observing the gestural be-
haviour of many different cultures around the world and from studying the behaviour of
our nearest anthropological relatives, the apes and monkeys.
The conclusions of this research indicate that some gestures fall into each category.
For example, most primate children are born with the immediate ability to suck,
indicating that this is either inborn or genetic. The German scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt
found that the smiling expressions of children born deaf and blind occur independently
of learning or copying, which means that these must also be inborn gestures. Ekman,
Friesen and Sorenson supported some of Darwin’s original beliefs about inborn
gestures when they studied the facial expressions of people from five widely different
cultures. They found that each culture used the same basic facial gestures to show
emotion, which led them to the conclusion that these gestures must be inborn.
When you cross your arms on your chest, do you cross left over right or right over
left? Most people cannot confidently describe which way they do this until they try it.
Where one way feels comfortable, the other feels completely wrong. Evidence suggests
that this may well be a genetic gesture that cannot be changed.
Debate still exists as to whether some gestures are culturally learned and become
habitual, or are genetic. For example, most men put on a coat right arm first; most
women put it on left arm first. When a man passes a woman in a crowded street, he
usually turns his body towards her as he passes; she usually turns her body away from
him. Does she instinctively do this to protect her breasts? Is this an inborn female
reaction or has she learned to do this by unconsciously watching other females?
Much of our basic non-verbal behaviour is learned and the meaning of many
movements and gestures is culturally determined. Let us now look at these aspects of
body language.
SOME BASICS AND THEIR ORIGINS
Most of the basic communication gestures are the same all over the world. When
people are happy they smile; when they are sad or angry they frown or scowl. Nodding
the head is almost universally used to indicate ‘yes’ or affirmation. It appears to be a
form of head lowering and is probably an inborn gesture, as it is also used by deaf and
blind people. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate ‘no’ or negation is also
universal and may well be a gesture that is learned in infancy. When a baby has had
enough milk, he turns his head from side to side to reject his mother’s breast. When the
young child has had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop his
parent’s attempt to spoon feed him and in this way he quickly learns to use the head
shaking gesture to show disagreement or a
negative attitude.
The evolutionary origin of some gestures
can be traced to our primitive animal past.
Baring the teeth is derived from the act of
attacking and is still used by modern man in
the form of a sneer and other such hostile
gestures, even though he will not attack with
his teeth. Smiling was originally a threat
gesture, but today it is done in conjunction
with non-threatening gestures
to
show
pleasure.
The shoulder shrug is also a good example
of a universal gesture that is used to show that
a person does not know or understand what
you are talking about. It is a multiple gesture
that has three main parts: exposed palms,
hunched shoulders and raised brow.
Just as verbal language differs from culture to culture, so the non-verbal language
may also differ. Whereas one gesture may be common in a particular culture and have a
clear interpretation, it may be meaningless in another culture or even have a completely
opposite meaning. Take, for example, the cultural interpretations and implications of
three common hand gestures, the ring gesture, the thumb-up and V sign.
The Ring or ‘OK’ Gesture
This gesture was popularised in the USA during the early nineteenth century,
apparently by the newspapers that, at the time, were starting a craze of using initials to
shorten common phrases. There’ are many different views about what the initials ‘OK’
stand for, some believing it stood for ‘all correct’ which may have been misspelled as
‘oll korrect’, while others say that it means the opposite of ‘knock-out’ that is, K.O.
Another popular theory is that it is an abbreviation of ‘Old Kinderhook’, from the
birthplace of a nineteenth century American president who used the initials as a
campaign slogan. Which theory is the correct one we may never know, but it seems that
the ring itself represents the letter ‘O’ in the ‘OK’ signal. The-,’OK’ meaning is
common to all English-speaking countries and, although its meaning is fast spreading
across Europe and Asia, it has other origins and meanings in certain places. For
example, in France it also means ‘zero’ or ‘nothing’; in Japan it can mean ‘money’; in
some Mediterranean countries it is an orifice signal, often used to infer that a man is
homosexual.
For overseas travellers, the safest rule to obey is, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans
do’. This can help avoid any possible embarrassing circumstances.


The Thumb-Up Gesture
In Britain, Australia and New Zealand the thumb-up gesture has three meanings; it
is commonly used by hitch-hikers who are thumbing a lift, it is an OK signal, and when
the thumb is jerked sharply upwards it becomes an insult signal, meaning ‘up yours’ or
‘sit on this’. In some countries, such as Greece, its main meaning is ‘get stuffed’, so you
can imagine the dilemma of the Australian hitch-hiker using this gesture in that country!
When Italians count from one to five, they use this gesture to mean ‘one’ and the index
finger then becomes ‘two’, whereas most Australians, Americans and English people
count ‘one’ on the index finger and two on the middle finger. In this case the thumb will
represent the number ‘five’.
The thumb is also used, in combination with other gestures, as a power and
superiority signal or in situations where people try to get us ‘under their thumb’. A later
chapter takes a closer look at the use of the thumb in these particular contexts.
The V Sign
This
sign
is
popular
throughout
Australia,
New
Zealand and Great Britain and
carries
an
‘up
yours’
interpretation. Winston Churchill
popularised the V for victory sign
during World War II, but his
two-fingered version was done
with the palm facing out, whereas
the palm faces towards the
speaker for the obscene insult
version. In most parts of Europe,
however, the palm facing in
version still means ‘victory’ so
that an Englishman who uses it to
tell a European to ‘get stuffed’
could leave the European wondering about what victory the Englishman meant. This
signal also means the number two in many parts of Europe, and if the insulted European
were a bartender, his response could be to give an Englishman or an Australian two
mugs of beer.
These examples show that cultural misinterpretation of gestures can produce
embarrassing results and that a person’s cultural background should always be
considered before jumping to conclusions about his or her body language or gestures.
Therefore, unless otherwise specified, our discussion should be considered culturally
specific, that is, generally pertaining to adult, white middle class people raised in
Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, North America and other places where English
is the primary language.
GESTURE CLUSTERS
One of the most serious mistakes a novice in body language can make is to interpret
a solitary gesture in isolation of other gestures or other circumstances. For example,
scratching the head can mean a number of things -dandruff, fleas, sweating, uncertainty,
forgetfulness or lying, depending on the other gestures that occur at the same time, so
we must always look at gesture clusters for a correct reading.
Like any other language, body language consists of words, sentences and
punctuation. Each gesture is like a single word and a word may have several different
meanings. It is only when you put the word into a sentence with other words that you
can fully understand its meaning. Gestures come in ‘sentences’ and invariably tell the
truth about a person’s feelings or attitudes. The ‘perceptive’ person is one who can read
the non-verbal sentences and accurately match them against the person’s verbal
sentences.
Figure 5 shows a common critical evaluation gesture cluster. The main one is the
hand-to-face gesture, with the index finger pointing up the cheek while another finger
covers the mouth and the thumb supports the chin. Further evidence that this listener is
critical of the speaker is seen by the fact that the legs are tightly crossed and the arm
crosses the body (defensive) while the head and chin are down (hostility). This
non-verbal ‘sentence’ says something like, ‘I don’t like what you are saying and I
disagree with you.’
Congruence
If you, as the speaker, were to ask the listener shown in Figure 5 to give his opinion
of what you have just said and he said that he disagreed with you, his non-verbal signals
would be congruent with his verbal sentences, that is, they would match or be
consistent. If, however, he said he was enjoying what you had to say, he would be lying
because his words and gestures would be incongruent. Research shows that non-verbal
signals carry about five times as much impact as the verbal channel and that, when the
two are incongruent, people rely on the non-verbal message; the verbal content may be
disregarded.
We often see a high ranking politician standing behind a lectern with his arms
tightly folded across his chest (defensive) and chin down (critical or hostile), while
telling his audience how receptive and open he is to the ideas of young people. He may
attempt to convince the audience of his warm, humane approach while giving short,
sharp karate chops to the lectern. Sigmund Freud once noted that while a patient was
verbally expressing happiness with her marriage, she was unconsciously slipping her
wedding ring on and off her finger. Freud was aware of the significance of this
unconscious gesture and was not surprised when marriage problems began to surface.


Observation of gesture clusters and congruence of the verbal and non-verbal
channels are the keys to accurate interpretation of body language.
Gestures in Context
In addition to looking for gesture clusters and congruence of speech and body
movement, all gestures should be considered in the context in which they occur. If, for
example, someone was sitting at a bus terminal with arms and legs tightly crossed and
chin down and it was a chilly winter’s day, it would most likely mean that he or she was
cold, not defensive. If, however, the person used the same gestures while you were
sitting across a table from him trying to sell him an idea, product or service, they could
be correctly interpreted as meaning that the person was negative or defensive about the
situation.
Throughout this book all gestures will be considered in context and, where possible,
gesture clusters will be examined.
Other Factors Affecting Interpretation
A man who has a ‘dead fish’ hand shake is likely to be accused of having a weak
character and the chapter on hand shake techniques will explore the reason for this
popular theory. But if a man has arthritis in his hands, it is likely that he will use a ‘dead
fish’ hand shake to avoid the pain of a strong one. Similarly, artists, musicians,
surgeons and those in vocations whose work is delicate and involves use of their hands
generally prefer not to shake hands, but, if they are forced to do so, they may use a
‘dead fish’ to protect them.
Someone who wears ill-fitting or tight clothing may be unable to use certain
gestures, and this can affect use of body language. This applies to a minority of people,
but it is important to consider what effect a person’s physical restrictions or disabilities
may have on his or her body movement.
Status and Power
Research in the field of linguistics has shown that there is a direct relationship
between the amount of status, power or prestige a person commands and that person’s
range of vocabulary. In other words, the higher up the social or management ladder a
person is, the better able he is to communicate in words and phrases. Non-verbal
research has revealed a correlation between a person’s command of the spoken word
and the amount of gesticulation that that person uses to communicate his or her
message. This means that a person’s status, power or prestige is also directly related to
the number of gestures or body movements he uses. The person at the top end of the
social or management scale can use his range of words to communicate his meaning,
whereas the less educated or unskilled person will rely more on gestures than words to
communicate.
Throughout this book, most of the examples given refer to white, middle-class
people but, as a general rule the higher the person on the socio-economic scale, the less
gesticulation and body movement he uses.
The speed of some gestures and how obvious they look to others is also related to
the age of the individual. For example, if a five-year-old child tells a lie to his or her
parent, the mouth will be deliberately covered with one or both hands immediately
afterwards (Figure 6). The gesture of covering the mouth alerts the parent to the lie and
this gesture continues to be used throughout the individual’s lifetime, usually varying
only in the speed at which it is done. When the teenager tells a lie, the hand is brought to
the mouth like that of a five-year-old, but instead of the obvious hand slapping gesture
over the mouth, the fingers rub lightly around it (Figure 7).
This mouth-covering gesture becomes even more refined in adulthood. When the
adult tells a lie, his brain instructs his hand to cover his mouth in an attempt to block the
deceitful words, just as it does for the five-year-old and the teenager, but at the last
moment the hand is pulled away from the face and a nose touch gesture results (Figure
8). This gesture is nothing more than the adult’s sophisticated version of the
mouth-covering gesture that was used in childhood. This is an example of the fact that,
as an individual gets older, many of his gestures become sophisticated and less obvious,
which is why it is often more difficult to read the gestures of a fifty year-old than those
of a much younger person.

FAKING BODY LANGUAGE
A commonly asked question is, ‘Is it possible to fake your own body language?’
The general answer to this question is ‘no’ because of the lack of congruence that is
likely to occur in the use of the main gestures, the body’s microsignals and the spoken
words. For example, open palms are associated with honesty but when the faker holds
his palms out and smiles at you as he tells a lie, his microgestures give him away. His
pupils may contract, one eyebrow may lift or the comer of his mouth may twitch, and
these signals contradict the open palm gesture and the sincere smile. The result is that
the receiver tends not to believe what he hears.
The human mind seems to possess a fail-safe mechanism that registers ‘tilt’ when it
receives a series of incongruent non-verbal messages. There are, however, some cases
in which body language is deliberately faked to gain certain advantages. Take, for
example, the Miss World or Miss Universe contest, in which each contestant uses
studiously learned body movements to give the impression of warmth and sincerity. To
the extent that each contestant can convey these signals, she will score points from the
judges, but even the experts can only fake body language for a short period of time and
eventually the body will emit signals that are independent of conscious actions. Many
politicians are experts in faking body language in order to get the voters to believe what
they are saying and the politician who can successfully do this is said to have
‘charisma’.
The face is used more often than any other part of the body to cover up lies. We use
smiles, nods and winks in an attempt to cover up, but unfortunately for us, our body
signals tell the truth and there is a lack of congruence between our body gestures and
facial signals. The study of facial signals is an art in itself. Little space is devoted to it in
this book and for more information about it I recommend Face Language by Robert L.
Whiteside.
In summary, it is difficult to fake body language for a long period of time but, as we
shall discuss, it is good to learn and to use positive open gestures to communicate with
others and to eliminate gestures that may give negative signals. This can make it more
comfortable to be with people and can make you more acceptable to them.
How To Tell Lies Successfully
The difficulty with lying is that the subconscious mind acts automatically and
independently of our verbal lie, so our body language gives us away. This is why
people who rarely tell lies are easily caught, regardless of how convincing they may
sound. The moment they begin to lie, the body sends out contradictory signals, and
these give us our feeling that they are not telling the truth. During the lie, the
subconscious mind sends out nervous energy that appears as a gesture that can
contradict what the person said. Some people whose jobs involve lying, such as
politicians, lawyers, actors and television announcers, have refined their body gestures
to the point where it is difficult to ‘see’ the lie, and people fall for it, hook, line and
sinker.
They refine their gestures in one of two ways. First, they practise what ‘feel’ like the
right gestures when they tell the lie, but this is only successful when they have practised
telling numerous lies over long periods of time. Second, they can eliminate most
gestures so that they do’ not use any positive or negative gestures while lying, but this is
also very difficult to do.
Try this simple test when an occasion presents itself. Tell a deliberate lie to an
acquaintance and make a conscious effort to suppress all body gestures while your body
is in full view of the other person. Even when your major body gestures are consciously
suppressed, numerous microgestures will still be transmitted. These include facial
muscular twitching, expansion and contraction of pupils, sweating at the brow, flushing
of the cheeks, increased rate of eye blinking and numerous other minute gestures that
signal deceit. Research using slow motion cameras shows that these microgestures can
occur within a split second and it is only people such as professional interviewers, sales
people and those whom we call perceptive who can consciously see them during a
conversation or negotiation. The best interviewers and sales people are those who have
developed the unconscious ability to read the microgestures during face-to-face
encounters.
It is obvious, then, that to be able to lie successfully, you must have your body
hidden or out of sight. This is why police interrogation involves placing the suspect on
a chair in the open or placing him under lights with his body in full view of the
interrogators; his lies are much easier to see under those circumstances. Naturally,
telling lies is easier if you are sitting behind a desk where your body is partially hidden,
or while peering over a fence or behind a closed door. The best way to lie is over the
telephone!
HOW TO LEARN BODY LANGUAGE
Set aside at least fifteen minutes a day to study and read the gestures of other people,
as well as acquiring a conscious awareness of your own gestures. A good reading
ground is anywhere that people meet and interact. An airport is a particularly good
place for observing the entire spectrum of human gestures, aspeople openly express
eagerness, anger, sorrow, happiness, impatience and many other emotions through
gestures. Social functions, business meetings and parties are also excellent. Having
studied the art of body language, you can go to a party, sit alone in a corner all evening
like a wallflower and have an exciting time just watching other people’s body language
rituals! Television also offers an excellent way of learning nonverbal communication.
Turn down the sound and try to understand what is happening by first watching the
picture. By turning the sound up every five minutes, you will be able to check how
accurate your non-verbal readings are and before long it will be possible to watch an
entire program without any sound and understand what is happening, just as deaf
people do.



Two
Territories and Zones
Thousands of books and articles have been written about the staking out and
guarding of territories by animals, birds, fish and primates, but only in recent years has
it been discovered that man also has territories. When this is learned and the
implications understood, not only can enormous insights into one’s own behaviour and
that of others be gained but the face-to-face reactions of others can be predicted.
American anthropologist Edward T. Hall was one of the pioneers in the study of man’s
spatial needs and in the early 1960s he coined the word ‘proxemics’ (from ‘proximity’
or nearness). His research into this field has led to new understanding about our
relationships with our fellow humans.
Every country is a territory staked out by clearly defined boundaries and sometimes
protected by armed guards. Within each country are usually smaller territories in the
form of states and counties. Within these are even smaller territories called cities,
within which are suburbs, containing many streets that, in themselves, represent a
closed territory to those who live there. The inhabitants of each territory share an
intangible allegiance to it and have been known to turn to savagery and killing in order
to protect it.
A territory is also an area or space that a person claims as his own, as if it were an
extension of his body. Each person has his own personal territory which includes the
area that exists around his possessions, such as his home which is bounded by fences,
the inside of his motor vehicle, his own bedroom or personal chair and, as Dr Hall
discovered, a defined air space around his body.
This chapter will deal mainly with the implications of this air space and how people
react when it is invaded.
PERSONAL SPACE
Most animals have a certain air space around their bodies that they claim as their
personal space. How far the space extends is mainly dependent on how crowded were
the conditions in which the animal was raised. A lion raised in the remote regions of
Africa may have a territorial air space with a radius of fifty kilometres or more,
depending on the density of the lion population in that area, and it marks its territorial
boundaries by urinating or defecating around them. On the other hand, a lion raised in
captivity with other lions may have a personal space of only several metres, the direct
result of crowded conditions.
Like the other animals, man has his own personal portable ‘air bubble’ that he
carries around with him and its size is dependent on the density of the population in the
place where he grew up. This personal zone distance is therefore culturally determined.
Where some cultures, such as the Japanese, are accustomed to crowding, others prefer
the ‘wide open spaces’ and like to keep their distance. However, we are mainly
concerned with the territorial behaviour of people raised in Western cultures.
Status can also have an effect on the distance at which a person stands in relation to
others and this will be discussed in a later chapter.
Zone Distances
The radius of the air bubble around suburban middle class white people living in
Australia, New Zealand, England, North America and Canada is generally the same. It
can be broken down into four distinct zone distances.
1. Intimate Zone (between 15 and 45 centimetres or 6 to 18 inches)
Of all the zone distances, this is by far the most important as it is this zone that a
person guards as if it were his own property. Only those who are emotionally close to
that person are permitted to enter it. This includes lovers, parents, spouse, children,
close friends and relatives. There is a sub-zone that extends up to 15 centimetres (6
inches) from the body that can be entered only during physical contact. This is the close
intimate zone.
2. Personal Zone (between 46 centimetres and 1.22 metres or 18 to 48 inches)
This is the distance that we stand from others at cocktail parties, office parties,
social functions and friendly gatherings.
3. Social Zone (between 1.22 and 3.6 metres or 4 to 12 feet)
We stand at this distance from strangers, the plumber or carpenter doing repairs
around our home, the postman, the local shopkeeper, the new employee at work and
people whom we do not know very well.
4. Public Zone (over 3.6 metres or 12 feet)
Whenever we address a large group of people, this is the comfortable distance at
which we choose to stand.
Practical Applications of Zone Distances
Our intimate zone is normally entered by another person for one of two reasons.
First, the intruder is a close relative or friend, or he or she may be making sexual
advances. Second, the intruder is hostile and may be about to attack. While we will
tolerate strangers moving within our personal and social zones, the intrusion of a
stranger into our intimate zone causes physiological changes to take place within our
bodies. The heart pumps faster, adrenalin pours into the bloodstream and blood is
pumped to the brain and the muscles as physical preparations for a possible fight or
flight situation are made.
This means that putting your arm in a friendly way on or around someone you have
just met may result in that person’s feeling negative towards you, even though he or she
may smile and appear to enjoy it so as not to offend you. If you want people to feel
comfortable in your company, the golden rule is ‘keep your distance’. The more
intimate our relationship is with other people, the closer we are permitted to move
within their zones. For example, a new employee may initially feel that the other staff
members are cold towards him, but they are only keeping him at the social zone
distance until they know him better. As he becomes better known to the other
employees, the territorial distance between him and them decreases until eventually he
is permitted to move within their personal zones and, in some cases, their intimate
zones.

The distance that two people who are kissing keep their hips apart can tell you
something about the relationship that exists between them. Lovers press their torsos
hard against each other and move within each other’s close intimate zones. This differs
from the kiss received from a stranger on New Year’s Eve or from your best friend’s
spouse, both of whom keep their pelvic area at least 15 centimetres away from yours.
One of the exceptions to the distance/ intimacy rule occurs where the spatial
distance is based on the person’s social standing. For example, the managing director of
a company may be the weekend fishing buddy of one of his subordinates and when they
go fishing each may move within the other’s personal or intimate zone. At the office,
however, the managing director keeps his fishing buddy at the social distance to
maintain the unwritten social strata rules.
Crowding at concerts, cinemas, in elevators, trains or buses results in unavoidable
intrusion into other people’s intimate zones, and reactions to this invasion are
interesting to observe. There is a list of unwritten rules that people in Western cultures
follow rigidly when faced with a crowded situation such as a packed lift or public
transport. These rules include:
1. You are not permitted to speak to anyone, including a person you know.
2. You must avoid eye contact with others at all times.
3. You are to maintain a ‘poker face’ - no emotion is permitted to be displayed.
4. If you have a book or newspaper, you must appear to be deeply engrossed in it.
5. The bigger the crowd, the less the body movement you are permitted to make.
6. In elevators, you are compelled to watch the floor numbers above your head.
We often hear words like ‘miserable’, ‘unhappy’ and ‘despondent’ used to describe
people who travel to work in the rush hour on public transport. These labels are used
because of the blank, expressionless look on the faces of the travellers, but they are mis-
judgments on the part of the observer. What the observer sees, in fact, is a group of
people adhering to the rules that apply to the unavoidable invasion of their intimate
zones in a crowded public place.
If you doubt this, notice how you behave next time you go alone to a crowded
cinema. As the usher directs you to your seat which is surrounded by a sea of unknown
faces, notice how you will, like a pre-programmed robot, begin to obey the unwritten
rules of behaviour in crowded public places. As you begin to compete for territorial
rights to the armrest with the unknown person beside you, you will begin to realise why
those who go to a crowded cinema alone often do not take their seats until the cinema
lights are extinguished and the movie actually begins. Whether we are in a crowded
elevator, cinema or bus, people around us become non-persons - that is, they do not
exist, as far as we are concerned and so we do not respond as if we were being attacked
should someone inadvertently encroach upon our intimate territory.
An angry mob or group of protesters fighting for a mutual purpose does not react in
the same way as do individuals when their territory is invaded; in fact, something quite
different occurs. As the density of the crowd increases, each individual has less
personal space and takes a hostile stand, which is why, as the size of the mob increases,
it becomes angrier and uglier and fighting may begin to take place. This information is
used by the police, who will try to break up the crowd so that each person can regain his
own personal space and so become calmer.
Only in recent years have governments and town planners given any credence to the
effect that high-density housing projects have in depriving individuals of their personal
territory. The consequences of high-density living and overcrowding were seen in a
recent study of the deer population on James Island, an island about two kilometres off
the coast of Maryland in Chesapeake Bay in the United States. Many of the deer were
dying in large numbers, despite the fact that at the time there was plenty of food,
predators were not in evidence and infection was not present. Similar studies in earlier
years with rats and rabbits revealed the same trend and further investigation showed
that the deer had died as a result of overactive adrenal glands, resulting from the stress
caused by the deprivation of each deer’s personal territory as the population increased.
The adrenal glands play an important part in the regulation of growth, reproduction and
the level of the body’s defences. Thus overpopulation caused a physiological reaction
to the stress; not other factors such as starvation, infection or aggression from others.
In view of this it is easy to see why areas that have the highest density of human
population also have the highest crime and violence rates.
Police interrogators use territorial invasion techniques to break down the resistance
of criminals being questioned. They seat the criminal on an armless, fixed chair in an
open area of the room and encroach into his intimate and close intimate zones when
asking questions, remaining there until he answers. It often takes only a short while for
this territorial harassment to break down the criminal’s resistance.
Management people can use this same approach to extract information from sub-
ordinates who may be withholding it, but a sales person would be foolish to use this
type of approach when dealing with customers.
Spacing Rituals
When a person claims a space or an area among strangers, such as a seat at the
cinema, a place at the conference table or a towel hook at the squash court, he does it in
a very predictable manner. He usually looks for the widest space available between two
others and claims the area in the centre. At the cinema he will choose a seat that is
halfway between the end of a row and where the nearest person is sitting. At the squash
courts, he chooses the towel hook that is in the largest available space, midway between
two other towels or midway between the nearest towel and the end of the towel rack.
The purpose of this ritual is not to offend the other people by being either too close or
too far away from them.
At the cinema, if you choose a seat more than halfway between the end of the row
and the nearest other person, that other person may feel offended if you are too far away
from him or he may feel intimidated if you sit too close, so the main purpose of this
spacing ritual is to maintain harmony.
An exception to this rule is the spacing that occurs in public toilet blocks. Research
shows that people choose the end toilets about 90 per cent of the time and, if they are
occupied, the midway principle is used.
Cultural Factors Affecting Zone Distances
A young couple who recently migrated from Denmark to live in Sydney were
invited to join the local branch of the Jaycees. Some weeks after their admission to the
club, several female members complained that the Danish man was making advances
towards them, so that they felt uncomfortable in his presence and the male members of
the club felt that the Danish woman had been indicating non-verbally that she would be
sexually available to them.
This situation illustrates the fact that many Europeans have an intimate distance of
only 20 to 30 centimetres (9 or 10 inches) and in some cultures it is even less. The
Danish couple felt quite at ease and relaxed when standing at a distance of 25
centimetres from the Australians, being totally unaware of their intrusion into the
46-centimetre intimate zone. The Danes also used eye gaze more frequently than the
Australians, which gave rise to further misjudgments against them.


Moving into the intimate territory of someone of the opposite sex is a method that
people use to show interest in that person and is commonly called an ‘advance’. If the
advance into the intimate zone is rejected, the other person will step backwards to
maintain the zone distance. If the advance is accepted, the other person holds his or her
ground and allows the intruder to remain within the intimate zone. What seemed to the
Danish couple to be a normal social encounter was being interpreted by the Australians
as a sexual advance. The Danes thought the Australians were cold and unfriendly
because they kept moving away to maintain the distance at which they felt comfortable.
At a recent conference in the USA, I noticed that when the American attendees met
and conversed, they stood at an acceptable 46 to 122 centimetres from each other and
remained standing in the same place while talking. However, when a Japanese attendee
spoke with an American, the two slowly began to move around the room, the American
moving backwards away from the Japanese and the Japanese gradually moving towards
the American. This was an attempt by both the American and Japanese to adjust to a
culturally comfortable distance from each other. The Japanese, with his smaller 25-
centimetre intimate zone, continually stepped forward to adjust to his spatial need, but
by doing so he invaded the American’s intimate space; causing him to step backwards
to make his own spatial adjustment. Video recordings of this phenomenon replayed at
high speed give the impression that both men are dancing around the conference room
with the Japanese leading. It is therefore obvious why, when negotiating business,
Asians and Europeans or Americans look upon each other with some suspicion, the
Europeans or Americans referring to the Asians as ‘pushy’ and ‘familiar’ and Asians
referring to the Europeans or Americans as ‘cold’, ‘stand-offish’ and ‘cool’. The lack of
awareness of the distance variation of the intimate zones in different cultures can easily
lead to misconceptions and inaccurate assumptions about one culture by another.
Country v City Spatial Zones
As previously mentioned, the amount of personal space required by an individual is
related to the population density of the area in which he was brought up. Those who
were brought up in sparsely populated rural areas require more personal space than
those raised in densely populated capital cities. Watching how fax a person extends his
arm to shake hands can give a clue to whether he is from a major city or from a remote
country area. City dwellers have their private 46-centimetre bubble’; this is also the
measured distance between wrist and torso when they reach to shake hands (Figure 12).
This allows the hand to meet the other person’s on neutral territory. People brought up
in a country town, where the population is far less dense, may have a territorial ‘bubble’
of up to 100 centimetres or more and this is the average measured distance from the
wrist to the body when the person from the country is shaking hands (Figure 13).

Country people have a tendency to stand with their feet firmly planted on the
ground and to lean forward as far as they can to meet your handshake, whereas a city
dweller will step forward to greet you. People raised in remote or sparsely populated
areas usually have a large personal space requirement which may be as wide as 6 metres.
These people prefer not to shake hands but would rather stand at a distance and wave
(Figure 14).

City sales people find this sort of information particularly useful for calling on
farmers in sparse rural areas to sell farming equipment. Considering that the farmer
may have a ‘bubble’ of 100 to 200 centimetres or more, a handshake could be a
territorial intrusion, causing the farmer to react negatively and be on the defensive.
Successful country sales people state almost unanimously that the best negotiating
conditions exist when they greet the country town dweller with an extended handshake
and the farmer in an isolated area with a distant wave.
TERRITORY AND OWNERSHIP
Property owned by a person or a place regularly used by him constitutes a private
territory and, like personal air space, he will fight to protect it. Such things as a person’s
home, office and motor car represent a territory, each having clearly marked boundaries
in the form of walls, gates, fences and doors. Each territory may have several sub-
territories. For example, in a home a woman’s private territory may be her kitchen and
laundry and she objects to anyone invading that space when she is using it, a
businessman has his favourite place at the conference table, diners have their favourite
seat in the canteen and father has his favourite chair at home. These areas are usually
marked either by leaving personal possessions on or around the area, or by frequent use
of it. The canteen diner may even go so far as to carve his initials into ‘his’ place at the
table and the businessman marks his -territory at the conference table with such items
as an ashtray, pens, books and clothing spread around his 46centimetre intimate zone
border. Dr Desmond Morris noted that studies carried out into seating positions in
libraries show that leaving a book or personal object on a library desk reserved that
place for an average of seventy-seven minutes; leaving a jacket over a chair reserved it
for two hours. At home a family member might mark his or her favourite chair by
leaving a personal object, such as a pipe or magazine, on or near it to show his or her
claim and ownership of the space.
If the head of the house asks a sales person to be seated and the sales person quite
innocently sits in ‘his’ chair, the prospective buyer can become inadvertently agitated
about this invasion of his territory and thus be put on the defensive. A simple question
such as, ‘Which chair is yours?’, can avoid the negative results of making such a
territorial error.
Motor Vehicles
Psychologists have noted that people driving a motor car react in a manner that is
often completely unlike their normal social behaviour as regards their territories. It
seems that a motor vehicle sometimes has a magnifying effect on the size of a person’s
personal space. In some cases, their territory is magnified by up to ten times the normal
size, so the driver feels that he has a claim to an area of 9 to 10 metres in front of and
behind his motor car. When another driver cuts in front of him, even if no danger is
involved, the driver may go through a physiological change, becoming angry and even
attacking the other driver. Compare this to the situation that occurs when the same man
is stepping into a lift and another person steps in front of him, invading his personal
territory. His reaction in those circumstances is normally apologetic and he allows the
other man to go first; remarkably different from what happens when another driver cuts
in front of him on the open road.
For some people, the car becomes a protective cocoon in which they can hide from
the outside world. As they drive slowly beside the kerb, almost in the gutter, they can be
as big a hazard on the road as the driver with the expanded personal space.
In summary, others will invite or
reject you, depending on the respect
that you have for their personal space.
This is why the happy-go-lucky person
who slaps everyone he meets on the
back or continually touches people
during a conversation is secretly
disliked by everyone. As a number of
factors can affect the spatial distance a
person takes in relation to others, it is
wise to consider every criterion before
making a judgment about why a person
is keeping a certain distance.
From Figure 15, it is now possible
to make any one of the following
assumptions.
1. Both the man and woman are city
dwellers and the man is making an intimate approach to the woman.
2. The man has a narrower intimate zone than the woman and is innocently invading
hers.
3. The man is from a culture with a narrow intimate zone and the woman was
brought up in a rural area.
A few simple questions and further observation of the couple can reveal the correct
answer and can help you avoid an embarrassing situation by making incorrect
assumptions.



Three
Palm Gestures

OPENNESS AND HONESTY
Throughout history, the open palm has been associated with truth, honesty,
allegiance and submission. Many oaths are taken with the palm of the hand over the
heart, and the palm is held in the air when somebody is giving evidence in a court of law;
the Bible is held in the left hand and the right palm held up for the members of the court
to view.
In day-to-day encounters, people use two basic palm positions. The first has the
palm facing upwards and is characteristic of the beggar asking for money or food. The
second has the palm facing down as if it is holding down or restraining.
One of the most valuable ways of discovering whether someone is being open and
honest or not is to look for palm displays. Just as a dog will expose its throat to show
submission or surrender to the victor, so the human animal uses his or her palms to
display the same attitude or emotion. For example, when people wish to be totally open
or honest they will hold one or both palms out to the other person and say something
like, ‘Let me be completely open with you’ (Figure 16). When someone begins to open
up or be truthful, he will expose all or part of his palms to another person. Like most
body language, this is a completely unconscious gesture, one that gives you a feeling or
hunch that the other person is telling the truth. When a child is lying or concealing
something, his palms are hidden behind his back. Similarly, a husband who wants to
conceal his whereabouts after a night out with the boys will often hide his palms in his
pockets or in an arm fold position when he tries to explain where he was. Thus the
hidden palms may give his wife a hunch that he is holding back the truth.

Sales people are often taught to look for the customer’s exposed palms when he
gives reasons why he cannot buy the product, because only valid reasons are given with
exposed palms.
INTENTIONAL USE OF PALMS TO DECEIVE
The reader may ask, ‘Do you mean that if I tell lies with my palms visible, people
will believe me?’ The answer to this is yes - and no. If you tell an outright lie with your
palms exposed, you may still appear insincere to your listeners because many of the
other gestures that should also be visible when displaying honesty will be absent and
the negative gestures used when lying will be visible and therefore inconsistent with the
open palms. As already noted, con men and professional liars are people who have
developed the special art of making their nonverbal signals complement their verbal
lies. The more effectively the professional con man can use the non-verbal gestures of
honesty when telling a lie, the better he is at his vocation.
It is possible, however, to make yourself appear more credible by practising open
palm gestures when communicating with others; conversely, as the open palm gestures
become habitual, the tendency to tell untruths lessens. Interestingly, most people find it
difficult to lie with their palms exposed and the use of palm signals can in fact help to
suppress some of the false information others may give. It also encourages them to be
open with you.
Palm Power
One of the least noticed but most powerful non-verbal signals is given by the human
palm. When used correctly, palm power invests its user with a degree of authority and
the power of silent command over others.
There are three main palm command gestures: the palm-up position, the palm-down
position and the palm-closed-finger-pointed position. The differences of the three
positions are shown in this example: let’s say that you ask someone to pick up a box and
carry it to another location in the same room. We assume that you use the same tone of
voice, the same words and facial expressions, and change only the position of your
palm.


The palm facing up is used as a submissive, non-threatening gesture, reminiscent of
the pleading gesture of a street beggar. The person being asked to move the box will not
feel that the request is given with pressure and, in a normal superior/subordinate
situation, will not feel threatened by the request.
When the palm is turned to face downwards, you will have immediate authority.
The person to whom you have directed the request feels that he has been given an order
to remove the box and may feel antagonistic towards you, depending on your
relationship with him. For example, if the person to whom you gave the request was a
co-worker of equal status, he could reject your palm-down request and would be more
likely to carry out your wish if you had used the palm-up position. If the person to
whom you give the request is your subordinate, the palm-down gesture is acceptable, as
you have the authority to use it.
In Figure 19, the palm is closed into a fist and the pointed finger becomes a
symbolic club with which the speaker figuratively beats his listener into submission.
The pointed finger is one of the most irritating gestures that a person can use while
speaking, particularly when it beats time to the speaker’s words. If you are an habitual
finger-pointer, try practising the palm-up and palm-down positions and you will find
that you create a more relaxed attitude and have a more positive effect on other people.

SHAKING HANDS
Shaking hands is a relic of the caveman era. Whenever cavemen met, they would
hold their arms in the air with their palms exposed to show that no weapons were being
held or concealed. This palms-in-air gesture became modified over the centuries and
such gestures as the palm raised in the air, the palm over the heart and numerous other
variations developed. The modern form of this ancient greeting ritual is the interlocking
and shaking of the palms which, in most English-speaking countries, is performed both
on initial greeting and on departure. The hands are normally pumped five to seven
times.
Dominant and Submissive Handshakes
Considering what has already been said about the impact of a command given in
both the palm-up and palm-down positions, let us explore the relevance of these two
palm positions in hand shaking.
Assume that you have just met someone for the first time and you greet each other
with a customary handshake. One of three basic attitudes is transmitted through the
handshake. These are dominance: ‘This person is trying to dominate me. I’d better be
cautious’, submission: ‘I can dominate this person. He will do as I wish’, and equality:
‘I like this person. We will get on well together’.
These attitudes are transmitted unconsciously and, with practice and conscious
application, the following hand shaking techniques can have an immediate effect on the
outcome of a face-to-face encounter with another person. The information in this
chapter represents one of the few documented studies of handshake control techniques.
Dominance is transmitted by turning your hand (dark shirt sleeve) so that your palm
faces down in the handshake (Figure 20). Your palm need not be facing the floor
directly, but should be facing downwards in relation to the other person’s palm and this
tells him that you wish to take control in the encounter that follows. Studies of fifty-four
successful senior management people have revealed that not only did forty-two initiate
the handshake, but they also used dominant handshake control.
Just as the dog shows submission by rolling on its back and exposing its throat to
the victor, so the human uses the palm-up gesture to show submission to others. The
reverse of the dominant handshake is to offer your hand with your palm facing upwards
(Figure 21). This is particularly effective when you want to give the other person
control or allow him to feel that he is in command of the situation.
However, though the palm-up handshake can show a submissive attitude, there may
be mitigating circumstances to consider. For example, a person who has arthritis in the
hands will be forced to give you a limp handshake because of his condition and this
makes it easy to turn his palm into, the submissive position. People who use their hands
in their profession, such as surgeons, artists and musicians, may also give a limp
handshake purely to protect their hands. The gestures that follow the handshake will
give further clues for your assessment of that person – the submissive person will use
submissive gestures and the dominant person will use more aggressive gestures.
When two dominant people shake hands, a symbolic struggle takes place as each
person tries to turn the other’s palm into the submissive position. The result is a
vice-like hand shake with both palms remaining in the vertical position as each person
transmits a feeling of respect and rapport to the other (Figure 22). This vice-like vertical
palm grip is the handshake that a father teaches his son when he shows him how to
‘shake hands like a man’.

When you receive a dominant handshake
from another person, it is not only difficult to
force his palm back over into the submissive
position, but it becomes very obvious when you
do it. There is a simple technique for disarming
the dominant hand shaker that, in addition to
giving you back the control, can enable you to
intimidate the other person by invading his
personal space. To perfect this disarmament
technique you need to practise stepping forward
with your left foot as you reach to shake hands
(Figure 24). Next, bring your right leg forward,
moving left in front of the person and into his
personal space (Figure 25). Now bring your left
leg across to your right leg to complete the
manoeuvre, then shake the person’s hand. This
tactic allows you to straighten the handshake
position or to turn the other person’s hand into
the submissive position. It also allows you to
take control by invading the other person’s intimate zone.
Analyse your own approach to shaking hands to determine whether you step
forward on your left or right foot when you extend your arm to shake hands. Most
people are right-footed and are therefore at a great disadvantage when they receive a
dominant handshake, asthey have little flexibility or room to move within the confines
of the handshake and it allows the other person to take the control. Practise stepping
into a handshake with your left foot and you will find that it is quite simple to neutralise
a dominant handshake and take the control.


Who Reaches First?
Although it is a generally accepted custom to shake hands when meeting a person
for the first time, there are some circumstances in which it may be unwise for you to
initiate the handshake. Considering that a hand shake is a sign of welcome, it is
important to ask yourself several questions before you initiate one: Am I welcome? Is
this person glad to meet me? Sales trainees are taught that, if they initiate the handshake
with a buyer on whom they call unannounced and uninvited, it can produce a negative
result as the buyer may not want to welcome them and is forced to do something that he
may not want to do.
Again, such people as arthritics and those whose hands are their profession may
become defensive if they are forced to shake hands. Under these circumstances, sales
trainees are told that it is better to wait for the other person to initiate the handshake and,
if it is not forthcoming, to nod as a sign of greeting.
Hand Shake Styles
The palm-down thrust is certainly the most aggressive handshake style as it gives
the receiver little chance of establishing an equal relationship. This handshake is typical
of the aggressive, dominant male who always initiates it, and the stiff arm with palm
facing directly downwards forces the
receiver into the submissive position
because he has to respond with his palm
facing up.
Several ways
to counter
the
palm-down thrust have been developed.
You can use the step-to-the-right
technique (Figures 23 to 25), but
sometimes this is difficult to use as the
initiator’s arm is often tense and stiff to
prevent
such
tactics. A
simple
manoeuvre is to grasp the person’s
hand on top and then shake it (Figure
27). With this approach, you become the dominant party, as you not only have control
of the other person’s hand, but yours is in the superior position on top of his with your
palm facing down. As this can be embarrassing to the aggressor, we suggest that it be
used with caution and discretion.

The glove handshake is sometimes called the politician’s handshake. The initiator
tries to give the receiver the impression that he is trustworthy and honest, but when this
technique is used on a person he has just met, it has the reverse effect. The receiver feels
suspicious and cautious about the initiator’s intentions. The glove should only be used
with people to whom the initiator is well-known.

Few greeting gestures are as uninviting as the dead fish handshake, particularly
when the hand is cold or clammy. The soft, placid feel of the dead fish makes it
universally unpopular and most people relate it to weak character, mainly because of
the ease with which the palm can be turned up. Surprisingly, many people who use the
dead fish are unaware that they do so, and it is wise to ask your friends to comment on
your own handshake delivery before deciding which style you will use in future.

The knuckle grinder is the trademark of the aggressive ‘tough guy’ type.
Unfortunately, there are no effective ways to counter it, apart from verbal abuse or
physical action such as a punch on the nose!
Like the palm-down thrust, the stiff-arm thrust tends to be used by aggressive types
and its main purpose is to keep you at a distance and out of the initiator’s intimate zone.
It is also used by people brought up in country areas who have a larger intimate zone to
protect their personal territory. With country folk, however, there is a tendency to lean
forward or even balance on one foot when delivering the stiff-arm thrust.

The finger-tip grab is like the stiff-arm thrust that has missed the mark; the user
mistakenly grabs the other person’s fingers. Even though the initiator may appear to
have a keen and enthusiastic attitude toward the receiver, in fact he lacks confidence in
himself. Like the stiff-arm thrust, the main aim of the finger-tip grab is to keep the
receiver at a comfortable spatial distance.
Pulling the receiver into the initiator’s territory can mean one of two things: first,
the initiator is an insecure type who feels safe only within his own personal space or
second, the initiator is from a culture that has a small intimate zone and he is behaving
normally.

The intention of the double-handed handshake is to show sincerity, trust or depth of
feeling towards the receiver. Two significant elements should be noticed. Firstly, the
left hand is used to communicate the extra feeling that the initiator wishes to transmit
and its extent is related to the distance that the initiator’s left hand is moved up the
receiver’s right arm. The elbow grasp, for example (Figure 35), transmits more feeling
than the wrist hold (Figure 34), and the shoulder hold, (Figure 37) transmits more than
the upper-arm grip (Figure 36). Secondly, the initiator’s left hand represents an
invasion of the receiver’s intimate and close intimate zones. In general, the wrist hold
and the elbow grasp are acceptable only between close friends or relatives and in these
cases, the initiator’s left hand penetrates only the receiver’s intimate zone. The shoulder
hold (Figure 37) and the upper arm grip (Figure 36) enter the receiver’s close intimate
zone and may involve actual body contact. They should be used only between people
who experience a close emotional bond at the time of the handshake. Unless the extra
feeling is mutual or the initiator does not have a good reason for using a double-handed
handshake, the receiver will become suspicious and mistrust the initiator’s intentions. It
is quite common to see politicians greeting voters and sales people meeting their new
customers with a double-handed hand shake without realising that this can be social
suicide, putting the receiver off-side.






Four
Hand and Arm Gestures
HAND GESTURES
Rubbing the palms together
Recently a personal friend of ours visited my wife and me at our home to discuss the
details of a forthcoming skiing holiday. In the course of the conversation our friend
suddenly sat back in her chair, smiled broadly, rubbed her palms together and
exclaimed, ‘I can hardly wait to go!’ Non-verbally she had told us that she expected the
trip to be a big success.
Rubbing the palms together is a way in
which people non-verbally communicate
positive expectation. The dice thrower rubs
the dice between his palms as a sign of his
positive expectancy of winning, the master
of ceremonies rubs his palms together and
says to his audience, ‘We have long looked
forward to hearing our next speaker’, and the
excited sales person struts into the sales
manager’s office, rubs his palms together
and says excitedly, ‘We’ve just got a big
order, boss!’ However, the waiter who
comes to your table at the end of the evening
rubbing his palms together and asking,
‘Anything else, sir?’ is non-verbally telling
you that he is expecting a tip.
The speed at which a person rubs his
palms together signals whom he thinks will
receive the positive results that are expected.
Say, for example, you want to buy a home and you go to see a real estate agent. After
describing the property you are seeking, the agent rubs his palms together quickly and
says, ‘I’ve got just the right place for you!’ The agent has signalled that he expects the
results to be to your benefit. But how would you feel if he rubbed his palms together
very slowly as he told you that he had the ideal property? He would then appear to be
crafty or devious and would give you the feeling that the expected results would be to
his advantage rather than yours. Sales people are taught that if they use the palm rub
gesture when describing products or services to prospective buyers, they should be
certain to use a fast hand action to avoid putting the buyer on the defensive. When the
buyer rubs his palms together and says to the sales person, ‘Let’s see what you have to
offer!’ it is a signal that the buyer is expecting to be shown something. good and is
likely to make a purchase.
A word of warning: a person who is standing at a bus terminal in freezing winter
conditions and who rubs his palms together briskly may not necessarily be doing this
because he is expecting a bus. He does it because his hands are cold!

Thumb and Finger Rub
Rubbing the thumb against the fingertips or against the index finger is commonly
used as a money expectancy gesture. It is often used by sales people who rub their
fingertips and thumb together and say to their customers ‘I can save you 40 per cent’, or
the person who rubs his index finger and thumb together and says to his friend, ‘Lend
me ten dollars’. This is obviously a gesture that should be avoided at all times by a
professional person when dealing with his clients.
Hands Clenched Together
At first this seems to be a confidence gesture
as some people who use it are often smiling and
sound happy. However, on one particular
occasion, we saw a sales person describing the
sale he had just lost. As he went further and
further into his story, we noticed that not only
had he taken the hands-clenched position, but his
fingers were beginning to turn white and they
looked as though they were welding together.
This was therefore a gesture showing a frustrated
or hostile attitude.
Research by Nierenberg and Calero on the
hands-clenched position brought them to the
conclusion that this was a frustration gesture,
signalling that the person was holding back a negative attitude. The gesture has three
main positions; hands clenched in front of the face, (Figure 39), hands resting on the
desk (Figure 40) or on the lap when seated and placed in front of the crotch when
standing (Figure 41).
There also appears to be a correlation between the height at which the hands are
held and the strength of the person’s negative mood; that is, the person would be more
difficult to handle when the hands are held high as in Figure 39 than he would be with
the Figure 40 position. Like all negative gestures, some action needs to be taken to
unlock the person’s fingers to expose the palms and the front of the body, or the hostile
attitude will remain.


Steepling Hands
I stated at the beginning of this book that gestures come in clusters, like words in a
sentence, and that they must be interpreted in the context in which they are observed.
‘Steepling’, as Birdwhistell called it, can be an exception to these rules, as it is often
used in isolation of other gestures. In fact, people who are confident, superior types or
who use minimal or restricted body gestures often use this gesture, and, by doing so,
they signal their confident attitude.
My observation and research into this fascinating gesture show that it is frequently
used in superior/subordinate interaction and that it can be an isolated gesture which
indicates a confident or ‘know-it-all’ attitude. Managers often use this gesture position
when giving instructions or advice to subordinates and it is particularly common among
accountants, lawyers, managers and the like.
The gesture has two versions; the raised steeple (Figure 42), the position normally
taken when the steepler is giving his opinions or ideas and is doing the talking. The
lowered steeple gesture (Figure 43) is normally used when the steepler is listening
rather than speaking. Nierenberg and Calero noted that women tend to use the lowered
steeple position more often than the raised steeple position. When the raised steeple
position is taken with the head tilted back, the person assumes an air of smugness or
arrogance.
Although the steeple gesture is a positive signal, it can be used in either positive or
negative circumstances and may be misinterpreted. For example, a salesman presenting
his product to a potential buyer may have observed several positive gestures given by
the buyer during the interview. These could include open palms, leaning forward, head
up and so on. Let’s say that towards the end of the sales presentation the customer takes
one of the steeple positions.

If the steeple follows a series of other positive gestures, appearing when the sales-
man shows the buyer the solution to his problem, the salesman has been given a cue to
close the sale, ask for the order and expect to get it. On the other hand, if the steeple
gesture follows a series of negative gestures such as arm folding, leg crossing, looking
away and numerous hand-to-face gestures, and if the buyer takes the steeple position
towards the close of the sales presentation, the buyer may be confident that he will not
buy or that he can get rid of the salesman. In both these cases the steeple gesture means
confidence, but one has positive results and the other negative consequences for the
salesman. The movements preceding the steeple gesture are the key to the outcome.
GRIPPING HANDS, ARMS AND WRISTS
Several prominent male members of the British Royal Family are noted for their
habit of walking with their head up, chin out and one palm gripping the other hand
behind the back. Not only does British Royalty use this gesture; it is common among
Royalty of many countries. On the local scene, the gesture is used by the policeman
patrolling his beat, the headmaster of the local school when he is walking through the
school yard, senior military personnel and others in a position of authority.


This is therefore a superiority/confidence
gesture position. It also allows the person to
expose his vulnerable stomach, heart and
throat regions to others in an unconscious act
of fearlessness. Our own experience shows
that, if you take this position when you are in a high stress situation, such as being inter-
viewed by newspaper reporters or simply waiting outside a dentist’s surgery, you will
feel quite relaxed, confident and even authoritative.
Our observation of Australian police officers has shown that the officers who do not
wear firearms use this gesture frequently and often rock back and forth on the balls of
the feet. However, the police officers who do wear firearms seldom display this gesture,
using the hands-on-hips aggressive gesture instead (Figure 98). It seems that the
firearm itself has sufficient authority for its wearer so that the palm-in-palm gesture
becomes unnecessary as a display of authority.
The palm-in-palm gesture should not be confused with the hand-gripping-wrist
gesture (Figure 45) which is a signal of frustration and an attempt at self-control. In this
case one hand grips the other wrist or arm very tightly as if it is an attempt by one arm to
prevent the other from striking out.
Interestingly, the further the hand is moved up the back, the more angry the person
has become. The man in Figure 46, for example, is showing a greater attempt at
self-control than the man in Figure 45 because the hand in Figure 46 is gripping the
upper arm, not just the wrist. It is this type of gesture that has given rise to such
expressions as, ‘Get a good grip on yourself’. This gesture is often used by sales people
who have called on a potential buyer and have been asked to wait in the buyer’s
reception area. It is a poor attempt by the salesman to disguise his nervousness and an
astute buyer is likely to sense this. If a self-control gesture is changed to the
palm-in-palm position, a calming and confident feeling results.
THUMB DISPLAYS
In palmistry, the thumbs denote strength of character and ego and the non-verbal
use of thumbs agrees with this. They are used to display dominance, superiority or even
aggression; thumb gestures are secondary gestures, a supportive part of a gesture
cluster. Thumb displays are positive signals, often used in the typical pose of the ‘cool’
manager who uses them in the presence of subordinates. A courting man uses them in
the presence of a potential female partner and they are common among people who
wear high-status or prestige clothing. People wearing new, attractive clothing use
thumb displays more frequently than those who wear older, outdated clothing.
The thumbs, which display superiority, become most obvious when a person gives
a contradictory verbal message. Take, for example, the lawyer who turns to the jury and
in a soft, low voice says, ‘In my humble opinion, ladies and gentlemen of the jury …’
while displaying dominant thumb gestures and tilting back his head to ‘look down his
nose’ (Figure 48). This has the effect of making the jury feel that the lawyer is insincere,
even pompous. If the lawyer wished to appear humble, he should have approached the
jury with one foot toward them, his coat open, an open palm display and stooping
forward a little to show humility, or even subordination to the jury.


Thumbs most often protrude from people’s pockets, sometimes from the back
pockets (Figure 49) in a secretive manner to try to hide the person’s dominant attitude.
Dominant or aggressive women also use this gesture; the women’s movement has
allowed them to adopt many male gestures and positions (Figure 50). In addition to all
this, thumb thrusters will often rock on the balls of their feet to give the impression of
extra height.


Arms folded with thumbs pointing upwards is another popular thumb gesture
position. This is a double signal, being that of a defensive or negative attitude, (folded
arms) plus a superior attitude (displayed by the thumbs). The person using this double
gesture usually gesticulates with his or her thumbs, and rocking on the balls of the feet
when standing is common.


The thumb can also be used as a signal of ridicule or disrespect when it is used to
point at another person. For example, the husband who leans across to his friend, points
toward his wife with a closed fist thumb gesture and says, ‘Women are all the same, you
know’, is inviting an argument with his wife. In this case the shaking thumb is used as a
pointer to ridicule the unfortunate woman. Consequently, thumb-pointing is irritating
to most women, particularly when a man does it. The shaking thumb is less common
among women, although they sometimes use the gesture at their husbands or at people
they do not like.

Five
Hand-to-Face Gestures

DECEIT, DOUBT, LYING
How can you tell when someone is lying? Recognition of the non-verbal deceit
gestures can be one of the most important observation skills one can acquire. So what
deceit signals can give people away?
One of the most commonly used symbols of deceit is that of the three wise monkeys
who hear, speak and see no evil. The hand-to-face actions depicted form the basis of the
human deceit gestures (Figure 53). In other words, when we see, speak and hear
untruths or deceit, we often attempt to cover our mouth, eyes or ears with our hands.
We have already mentioned that children use these obvious deceit gestures quite openly.
If the young child tells a lie, he will often cover his mouth with his hands in an attempt
to stop the deceitful words from coming out. If he does not wish to listen to a
reprimanding parent, he simply covers his ears with his hands. When he sees something
he doesn’t wish to look at, he covers his eyes with his hands or arms. As a person
becomes older, the hand-to-face gestures become more refined and less obvious but
they still occur when a person is lying, covering up or witnessing deceit; deceit can also
mean doubt, uncertainty, lying or exaggeration.
When someone uses a hand-to-face gesture, it does not always mean that he or she
is lying. It does, however, indicate that the person may be deceiving you and further
observation of his other gesture clusters can confirm your suspicions. It is important
that you do not interpret hand-to-face gestures in isolation.
Dr Desmond Morris noted that American researchers tested nurses who were
instructed to lie to their patients about their health in a role-play situation. The nurses
who lied showed a greater frequency of hand-to-face gestures than those who told the
truth to the patients. This chapter looks at the variations in hand-to-face gestures and
discusses how and when they occur.
The Mouth Guard
The mouth guard is one of the few adult gestures that is as obvious as a child’s. The
hand covers the mouth and the thumb is pressed against the cheek as the brain sub-
consciously instructs it to try and suppress the deceitful words that are being said.
Sometimes this gesture may only be several fingers over the mouth or even a closed fist,
but its meaning remains the same.
The mouth guard is not to be confused with evaluation gestures, which will be
covered later in this chapter.
Many people try to disguise the mouth guard gesture by giving a fake cough. When
playing the role of a gangster or criminal, the late Humphrey Bogart often used this
gesture when discussing criminal activities with other gangsters or when being
interrogated by the police to show non-verbally that he was being dishonest.
If the person who is speaking uses this gesture, it indicates that he is telling a lie. If,
however, he covers his mouth while you are speaking, it indicates that he feels you are
lying! One of the most unsettling sights a public speaker can see is his audience all
using this gesture whilst he is speaking. In a small audience or a one-to-one situation, it
is wise to stop the presentation or delivery and ask, ‘Would someone care to comment
on what I’ve just said?’ This allows the audience’s objections to be brought out into the
open, giving you the opportunity to qualify your statements and to answer questions.

Nose Touching
In essence, the nose touch gesture is a sophisticated, disguised version of the mouth
guard gesture. It may consist of several light rubs below the nose or it may be one quick,
almost imperceptible touch. Some women perform this gesture with small discreet
strokes to avoid smudging their make-up.
One explanation of the origin of the nose touch gesture is that, as the negative
thought enters the mind, the subconscious instructs the hand to cover the mouth, but, at
the last moment, in an attempt to appear less obvious, the hand pulls away from the face
and a quick nose touch gesture is the result. Another explanation is that lying causes the
delicate nerve endings in the nose to tingle, and the rubbing action takes place to satisfy
this feeling. ‘But what if the person only has an itchy nose?’ is frequently asked. The
itch in a person’s nose is normally satisfied by a very deliberate rubbing or scratching
action, as opposed to the light strokes of the nose touch gesture. Like the mouth guard
gesture, it can be used both by the speaker to disguise his own deceit and by the listener
who doubts the speaker’s words.


The Eye Rub
‘See no evil’ says the wise monkey, and this gesture is the brain’s attempt to block
out the deceit, doubt or lie that it sees or to avoid having to look at the face of the person
to whom he is telling the lie. Men usually rub their eyes vigorously and if the lie is a big
one they will often look away, normally towards the floor. Women use a small, gentle
rubbing motion just below the eye, either because they have been brought up to avoid
making robust gestures, or to avoid smudging make-up. They also avoid a listener’s
gaze by looking at the ceiling.
‘Lying through your teeth’ is a common phrase. It refers to a gesture cluster of
clenched teeth and a false smile, combined with the eye rub gesture and an averted gaze.
This gesture is used by movie actors to portray insincerity, but is rarely seen in real life.
The Ear Rub
This is, in effect, an attempt by the listener to ‘hear no evil’ in trying to block the
words by putting the hand around or over the ear. This is the sophisticated adult version
of the handsover-both-ears gesture used by the young child who wants to block out his
parent’s reprimands. Other variations of the ear rub gesture include rubbing the back of
the ear, the finger drill (where the fingertip is screwed back and forth inside the ear),
pulling at the earlobe or bending the entire ear forward to cover the earhole. This last
gesture is a signal that the person has heard enough or may want to speak.


The Neck Scratch
In this case, the index finger of the writing hand scratches below the earlobe, or may
even scratch the side of the neck. Our observation of this gesture .reveals an interesting
point: the person scratches about five times. Rarely is the number of scratches less than
five and seldom more than five. This gesture is a signal of doubt or uncertainty and is
characteristic of the person who says, ‘I’m not sure I agree.’ It is very noticeable when
the verbal language contradicts it, for example, when the person says something like, ‘I
can understand how you feel.’
The Collar Pull
Desmond Morris noted that research into the gestures of those who tell lies revealed
that the telling of a lie caused a tingling sensation in the delicate facial and neck tissues
and a rub or scratch was required to satisfy it. This seems to be a reasonable explanation
of why some people use the collar pull gesture when they tell a lie and suspect that they
have been caught out. It is almost as if the lie causes a slight trickle of sweat to form on
the neck when the deceiver feels that you suspect he is lying. It is also used when a
person is feeling angry or frustrated and needs to pull the collar away from his neck in
an attempt to let the cool air circulate around it. When you see someone use this gesture,
a question like, ‘Would you repeat that, please?’ or, ‘Could you clarify that point,
please?’ can cause the would-be deceiver to give the game away.


Fingers in the Mouth
Morris’s explanation of this gesture is that the fingers are placed in the mouth when
a person is under pressure. It is an unconscious attempt by the person to revert to the
security of the child sucking on his mother’s breast. The young child substitutes his
thumb for the breast and as an adult, he not only puts his fingers to his mouth but inserts
such things as cigarettes, pipes, pens and the like into it. Whereas most hand-to-mouth
gestures involve lying or deception, the fingers-in-mouth gesture is an outward
manifestation of an inner need for reassurance. Giving the person guarantees and
assurances is appropriate when this gesture appears (Figure 60).
INTERPRETING AND MISINTERPRETING
The ability to accurately interpret hand-to-face gestures in a given set of
circumstances takes considerable time and observation to acquire. We can confidently
assume that, when a person uses one of the hand-to-face gestures just mentioned, a
negative thought has entered his mind. The question is, what is the negative? It could be
doubt, deceit, uncertainty, exaggeration, apprehension or outright lying. The real skill
of interpretation is the ability to pick which of the negatives mentioned is the correct
one. This can best be done by an analysis of the gestures preceding the hand-to-face
gesture and interpreting it in context.
For example, a friend of mine with whom I play chess often rubs his ear or touches
his nose during the game, but only when he is unsure of his next move. Recently I
noticed some of his other gestures that I can interpret and use to my advantage. I have
discovered that when I signal my intention to move a chess piece by touching it, he
immediately uses gesture clusters that signal what he thinks about my proposed move.
If he sits back in the chair and uses a steepling gesture (confidence), I can assume that
he has anticipated my move and may already have thought of a counter move. If, as I
touch my chess piece, he covers his mouth or rubs his nose or ear, it means that he is
uncertain about my move, his next move or both. This means that the more moves I can
make after he has reacted with a negative hand-to-face gesture, the greater my chances
of winning.
I recently interviewed a young man who had arrived from overseas for a position in
our company. Throughout the interview he kept his arms and legs crossed, used critical
evaluation clusters, had very little palm exposure and his gaze met mine less than
one-third of the time. Something was obviously worrying him, but at that point in the
interview I did not have sufficient information for an accurate assessment of his
negative gestures. I asked him some questions about his previous employers in his
native country. His answers were accompanied by a series of eye-rubbing and
nose-touching gestures and he continued to avoid my gaze. This continued throughout
the rest of the interview and eventually I decided not to hire him, based on what is
commonly called ‘gut feeling’. Being curious about his deceit gestures, I decided to
check his overseas referees and discovered that he had given me false information
about his past. He probably assumed that a potential employer in another country would
not bother to check overseas references and, had I not been aware of non-verbal cues
and signals, I might well have made the mistake of hiring him.
During a videotape role play of an interview scene at a management seminar, the
interviewee suddenly covered his mouth and rubbed his nose after he had been asked a
question by the interviewer. Up to that point in the role-play, the interviewee had kept
an open posture with open coat, palms visible and leaning forward when answering
questions, so at first we thought it might have been an isolated series of gestures. He
displayed the mouth guard gesture for several seconds before giving his answer, then
returned to his open pose. We questioned him about the hand-to-mouth gesture at the
end of the role play and he said that, when he had been asked the particular question, he
could have responded in two ways; one negative, one positive. As he thought about the
negative answer and of how the interviewer might react to it, the mouth guard gesture
occurred. When he thought of the positive answer, however, his hand dropped away
from his mouth and he resumed his open posture. His uncertainty about the audience’s
possible reaction to the negative reply had caused the sudden mouth guard gesture to
occur.
These examples illustrate how easy it can be to misinterpret a hand-to-face gesture
and to jump to wrong conclusions. It is only by constant study and observation of these
gestures and by having regard to the context in which they occur that one can eventually
learn to reach an accurate assessment of someone’s thoughts.
CHEEK AND CHIN GESTURES
A good speaker is said to be one who ‘instinctively’ knows when his audience is
interested in what he says and when his hearers have had enough. A good sales person
senses when he is hitting his client’s ‘hot buttons’, that is, finding out where the buyer’s
interest lies. Every sales person knows the empty feeling that results when he or she is
giving a sales presentation to a potential buyer who says very little and just sits there
watching. Fortunately a number of hand-to-cheek and hand-to-chin gestures can tell the
sales person how well he is doing.
Boredom
When the listener begins to use his hand to support his head, it is a signal that
boredom has set in and his supporting hand is an attempt to hold his head up to stop
himself from falling asleep. The degree of the listener’s boredom is related to the extent
to which his arm and hand are supporting his head. Extreme boredom and lack of
interest are shown when the head is fully supported by the hand (Figure 61) and the
ultimate boredom signal occurs when the head is on the desk or table and the person is
snoring!
Drumming the fingers on the table and continual tapping of the feet on the floor are
often misinterpreted by professional speakers as boredom signals, but in fact they
signal impatience. When you as a speaker notice these signals, a strategic move must be
made to get the finger drummer or foot tapper involved in your lecture, thus avoiding
his negative effect on the other members of the audience. The audience who displays
boredom and impatience signals together is telling the speaker that it is time for him to
end the speech. It is worth noting that the speed of the finger tap or foot tap is related to
the extent of the person’s impatience – the faster the taps, the more impatient the
listener is becoming.


Evaluation
Evaluation is shown by a closed hand resting on the cheek, often with the index
finger pointing upwards (Figure 62). Should the person begin to lose interest but wish
to appear interested, for courtesy’s sake, the position will alter slightly so that the heel
of the palm supports the head, as shown in Figure 61. I have attended numerous
management meetings where the young up-andcoming managers have used this interest
gesture to show respect to the company president who is giving a boxing speech.
Unfortunately for them, however, as soon as he hand supports the head in any way, it
gives the game away and the president is likely to feel that some of the young managers
are insincere or are using false flattery.
Genuine interest is shown when the hand is on the cheek, not used as a head support.
An easy way for the president to gain their individual attention would be to say
something like, ‘I’m glad that you are paying attention because in a moment I’m going
to ask questions!’ This rivets his listeners’ attention to his speech because of the fear
that they will not be able to answer the questions.
When the index finger points vertically up the cheek and the thumb supports the
chin, the listener is having negative or critical thoughts about the speaker or his subject.
Often the index finger may rub or pull at the eye as the negative thoughts continue.
Because a gesture position affects a person’s attitude, the longer a person holds the
gesture, the longer the critical attitude will remain. This gesture is a signal that
immediate action is required by the speaker, either by involving the listener in what he
is saying or by ending the speech. A simple move, such as handing something to the
listener to alter his pose, can cause a change in his attitude. This gesture is often
mistaken as a signal of interest, but the supporting thumb tells the truth about the
critical attitude (Figure 63).

Chin Stroking
The next time you have the opportunity to present an idea to a group of people,
watch them carefully as you give your idea and you will notice something fascinating.
Most, if not all the members of your audience will bring one hand up to their faces and
begin to use evaluation gestures. As you come to the conclusion of your presentation
and ask for the group to give opinions or suggestions about the idea, the evaluation
gestures will cease. One hand will move to the chin and begin a chin-stroking gesture.
This chin-stroking gesture is the signal that the listener is making a decision. When
you have asked the listeners for a decision and their gestures have changed from
evaluation to decision-making, the following movements will indicate whether their
decision is negative or positive. A sales person would be foolish to interrupt or to speak
when a buyer begins the chin-stroking gesture after he has been asked for a decision to
purchase. His best strategy would be a careful observation of the buyer’s next gestures,
which will indicate the decision he has reached. If, for example, the chin-stroking