The Ultimate Body Language Book

Burying yourself in a book or listening to music through headphones are two great ways to retreat from
the public eye so as to go unnoticed.
Displacement behaviours also show that we aren’t interested in interacting with others. You can test
this for yourself by approaching people on the street looking for directions, for example. When you
approach them it will take a second for them to snap out of their trance, if at all, before they notice that
you are talking to them. They might even ask you to repeat what you have said because their mind had
been “switched off”. Sometimes they even refuse to snap out of the trance at all and simply shake their
head in a “no” type fashion from side to side, before continuing. We know people are in this type of
trance because their body language become more self-focused. We pull our arms and legs inward, our
face will become defocused, seemingly looking through people, and our body motions will become
more minimal so as to avoid drawing attention to us. We may even become completely immobile and
take on protective postures.