What Every BODY is saying
Purchase What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-reading People
What Every Body is Saying
Body language and non-verbal communication is one of those subjects that gets a lot of attention but, in my opinion, doesn’t really get the TYPE of attention it deserves. Too often, literature on body language falls into one of these three traps:
1) Simplification. The complexities and subtleties are boiled down into simplistic rules like “people-who-cross-their-arms-are-negative” and then applied to everyone indiscriminately.
2) Overblown claims. A working knowledge of body language will give you Svengali-like powers to read the minds of others and influence them accordingly.
3) Too much emphasis on Attraction. Not surprisingly a lot of the material obsesses over dating, attraction (and lack thereof) and romantic relationships. Not to say that this is not all relevant but it’s not the be all and end all.
It comes as a relief then to read Joe Navarro’s book on the subject. Navarro is a retired FBI agent who has worked in the top end of law enforcement for 25 years. He has been involved in many investigations (including terrorism-related cases) so he’s used to playing for higher stakes than “gee-he’s-just-not-that-into-you” type observations. He uses examples of cases from his FBI career to demonstrate his points at regular intervals in the book to very good effect but just as important as his career is his cultural background as a Cuban migrant who moved to the USA as a child in the early 1960’s. Unable to speak the language the young Navarro became very adept at reading non-verbal communication and also recognizing the cultural differences between his new home and his ethnic background. More on this point later.
Navarro begins by stressing his “ten commandments” for reading body language. I won’t reproduce them all here but he emphasizes the importance of concerted, consistent observation and analyzing how that individual is responding in the particular circumstances they find themselves in. Whereas more sensationalist literature might say that if you notice this then they are lying, Navarro points out that it is so easy to misread or partially read people and then draw the wrong conclusions, particularly when it comes to people who are trying to deceive you. However, with careful practice it can be done, sometimes to great effect.
Why does reading body language work though? Why is there even a language to read in the first place – can’t we all just control our bodies to make sure that we give nothing away? The answer is in the limbic brain. This is our emotional centre, it is always “on”, it reacts to the world in real time and, because logical thinking is not involved (that is done by the neocortex), it cannot lie. This is why the limbic brain is sometimes referred to as the “honest” brain whereas the neocortex – because it is capable of complex thought – is sometimes referred to as the “lying brain”. There are plenty of examples cited of where the lying brain is saying one thing but the body language is telling a different and more honest story. The limbic brain has been a part of us for a long, long time (much longer than the neocortex) and has been ensuring that our species has survived for five million years or so. Its classic way of doing this is through the freeze, flight or fight response to danger (often misrepresented as “fight or flight”). Our first line of defense when confronted by danger is actually to freeze; this goes back to our Stone Age ancestors who subconsciously knew that many predators are attracted to movement and will overlook a stationary target. Interestingly this ancient self-defense mechanism is still very strong today – eye witness accounts of the shooting at Columbine and Virginia Tech report that several students “froze” or “played dead” and, even though they were very close to the shooters (i.e. predators), they survived. Navarro notes that, when confronted by perceived danger, such as being questioned by the Police, many people will “go still” in some way, a frequent giveaway being anchoring the feet to keep them from moving.
Interestingly, when Navarro covers each part of the body and points out what to look for, he begins with the feet, citing them as the most “honest” part of the body. As a mobile species that moves via our feet they obviously determine IF we are moving (freeze), where and how fast we are moving (flight) and if we are kicking (fight) – they can also display if we are happy, confident, nervous, distracted and so on. He states that as you move up the body it becomes progressively “less honest” and capable of deception and that this is most true of the face. The face is the most expressive part of our bodies but it is also the part that we have most influence over, particularly as we have been conditioned to be politely deceptive and show good manners for many years. As much as the information leaks out of our face we can also exert more influence over what we reveal.
The topic of deception warrants its own chapter and Navarro openly admits that it is very difficult to detect when someone is lying and (worryingly) most law enforcement professionals are no better than 50-50 at doing so and even the good ones seldom rate better than 60-40. Whereas there are reasonably straightforward tells when someone is feeling a level of stress or discomfort it is not so easy to determine whether they are actually lying. This is an area he has done a great deal of work on and this chapter is worth reading very closely as he offers his interpretation of “best practice” in this area.
I mentioned before that cultural differences are important when reading body language. Although some body language responses are universal, different physical customs between cultures can affect the picture considerably. For instance, in Latin America men frequently hug (abrazo) rather then shaking hands and in many Muslim countries men hold hands as a sign of trust and warmth. Recently I went on a cultural awareness course at work and was taught that the strong-handshake-and-lots-of-eye-contact behaviours that most Australian men use are not appropriate when interacting with Aboriginal people. This is just another consideration that underlines that it is easy to read body language but draw the wrong conclusions (e.g. “I knew he was lying because he wouldn’t look me in the eye”).
In “What Everybody is Saying”, Joe Navarro has written an authoritative text on the subject of body language and non-verbal communication. Given his background you have absolute confidence in the information he provides and the weight of experience he brings to the subject. The real-life examples that he uses illustrate his points very well without being gratuitous (and you can imagine some of the awful situations he must have encountered). The book’s focus is not confined just to law enforcement though: there is a lot of material on attraction, family life and business situations as well. The various body language tells identified are all displayed through photographs of him and assistant so that you can see both male and female examples of what he is talking about. The fact that he makes frequent reference to how body language can be misinterpreted and cautions against getting carried away with it just increases the credibility of his work. I don’t normally indulge in “promotional” style recommendations but, seriously, if you only buy one book on body language make it this one.
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