Three Rules for Accurate Reading

What you see and hear in any situation does not necessarily reflect the real attitudes people may actually have. You need to follow three basic rules to get things right.

Understanding the Basics

Rule 1. Read Gestures in Clusters One of the most serious errors a novice in body language can make is to interpret a solitary gesture in isolation of other gestures or circumstances. For example, scratching the head can mean a number of things - sweating, uncertainty, dandruff, fleas, forgetfulness or lying - depending on the other gestures that occur at the same time. Like any spoken language, body language has words, sentences and punctuation. Each gesture is like a single word and one word may have several different meanings. For example, in English, the word 'dressing' has at least ten meanings including the act of putting on clothing, a sauce for food, stuffing for a fowl, an application for a wound, fertiliser and grooming for a horse. It's only when you put a word into a sentence with other words that you can fully understand its meaning. Gestures come in 'sentences' called clusters and invariably reveal the truth about a person's feelings or attitudes. A body language cluster, just like a verbal sentence, needs at least three words in it before you can accurately define each of the words. The 'perceptive' person is the one who can read the body language sentences and accurately match them against the person's verbal sentences.

Scratching the head can mean uncertainty but it's also a sign of dandruff.

So always look at gesture clusters for a correct reading. Each of us has one or more repetitive gestures that simply reveal we are either bored or feeling under pressure. Continual hair touching or twirling is a common example of this but, in isolation of other gestures, it's likely to mean the person is feeling uncertain or anxious. People stroke their hair or head because that's how their mother comforted them when they were children. To demonstrate the point about clusters, here's a common

The Definitive Book of Body LanguageCritical Evaluation gesture cluster someone might use when they are unimpressed with what they are hearing:

You're losing points with this man

The main Critical Evaluation signal 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 having critical thoughts about what he hears is supported by the legs being tightly crossed and the arm crossing the body (defensive) while the head and chin are down (negative/hostile). This body language 'sentence' says something like, 'I don't like what you're saying', 'I disagree' or 'I'm holding back negative feelings'.

Hillary Clinton uses this cluster when she's not convinced

Understanding the Basics

Rule 2. Look for Congruence 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 - especially women - rely on the nonverbal message and disregard the verbal content. If you, as the speaker, were to ask the listener shown above to give his opinion about something you've said and he replied that he disagreed with you, his body language signals would be congruent with his verbal sentences, that is, they would match. If, however, he said he agreed with what you said, he would more likely be lying because his words and gestures would be incongruent.

When a person's words and body language are in conflict, women ignore what is said.

If you saw a politician standing behind a lectern speaking confidently but with his arms tightly folded across his chest (defensive) and chin down (critical/hostile), while telling his audience how receptive and open he is to the ideas of young people, would you be convinced? What if he attempted to convince you of his warm, caring approach while giving short, sharp karate chops to the lectern? Sigmund Freud once reported 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 body language channels are the keys to accurately interpreting attitudes through body language.

Rule 3. Read Gestures in Context All gestures should be considered in the context in which they occur. If, for example, someone was sitting at a bus terminal

The Definitive Book of Body Language

with his arms and legs tightly crossed and chin down and it was a cold winter's day, it would most likely mean that he 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, it could be correctly interpreted as meaning that the person was feeling negative or rejecting your offer.

Cold, not defensive

Throughout this book all body language gestures will be considered in context and, where possible, gesture clusters will be examined.