The Ultimate Body Language Book

Chapter 16 - Deception and Lie Detection
Comfort and Discomfort Body Language
Comfort on the left side of the image, discomfort on the right.
We have covered many signals of comfort and discomfort throughout the book and have even eluded to
their use in lie detection. To simplify things, I wanted to take the time to cover the cues we can use to
detect lying as it relates to comfort and discomfort. We have seen how open and closed language can
signal a desire to allow access to the body. Ventral displays shows that a person is open and trusting of
someone and this sort of response is difficult when we feel we are hiding emotions. Comfort is
displayed through proximity and people do this by moving their torsos closer or leaning inward rather
than away and will remove objects that impede their view so as to establish more intimacy.
Comfortable bodies open up and spread out.
Comfortable people will hold their bodies loose rather than rigid, and their body will move with
fluidity. They will gesture with their speech instead of freezing instantly or awkwardly, called “flash
frozen.” Sometimes people will slow to catch their thoughts, but this will be obvious to the body
language reader and will come at appropriate times and in context when thought is actually required to
produce accurate answers. Comfortable people mirror others around them instead of avoiding
synchrony. Their breath rate will be similar and they will adopt like postures instead of showing