The Ultimate Body Language Book

differences.
Bodies show discomfort by increased heart rate, breath rate, sweating, a change in normal colour in the
face or neck, trembling or shaking in the hands lips, or elsewhere, compressing the lips, fidgeting,
drumming the fingers and other repetitive behaviours. Voices often crack when under stress, mouths
might dry up producing noticeable swallowing, “hard swallows”, or frequent throat clearing. Liars
might use objects as barriers. They might hold drinking glasses to hide parts of their face or use walls
and chairs while standing to lean against to gain support. Liars might engage in eye blocking
behaviours by covering their eyes with their hands or seem to talk through them or even squint so as to
impede what is being said from entering their minds. The eyes might also begin to flutter or increase in
overall blink rate showing an internal struggle.
Drumming fingers, fidgeting, kicking feet and so forth are burning off nervous energy – discomfort.
We’ve hit on the fact that stress creates nonverbal language such as preening to show detachment from
a conversation (picking lint), energy displacement gestures such as scratching the body or rubbing the
neck or wiping the side of the nose. Palm up displays show that a person has some doubt, and indicates
a desire for other to believe them while palm down displays show confidence and authority.
Microexpressions can also be particularly revealing since they happen instantaneously and
subconsciously. Watch for movements that happen first especially if they are negative in nature as these
are more honest than positive body language. Positive language is used by people to appear more in
control and polite instead of appearing vulnerable. Fake smiles are an excellent example of an
expression that can sometimes be put on to appear to disguise stress. We know smiles are faked when
they seem to last for much longer than what would be considered natural.
Lack of touching, or touch reduction also signals discomfort and a divergence of ideas. When people’s
ideas differ they find it hard to come close to others as part of the natural fear response. Head
movements that are inconsistent with speech such as slightly nodding affirmatively though making a
denial or vice versa, or delaying head nodding until after speech is made such that speech and gestures
lack synchrony can give liars away. When gestures are done out of sync they tell us that a person is
adding the gesture on as support for their statement. The entire affair appears to be out of the normal
order of flow in communication which liars can often do. When affirmative nodding happens during