What Every Body Is Saying

What Every Body Is Saying is an ex-FBI agents guide to reading non-verbal cues, which will help you spot others’ true intentions and feelings, even when their mouths are saying something different.

The numbers often vary, which is why I’m lowballing it here. I remember the opening scene from Hitch – The Date Doctor, where Will Smith says that 60% of communication is body language, while 30% is tone.

Some studies agree on those numbers, others include tone in those initial 60%, so it’s hard to say. However, a very safe bet to make is that more than half of what you say does not come out of your mouth.

Joe describes human communication as a complex puzzle, and the words we use are just a small part of the big picture. When you think about it, he’s right. The example he makes is that two complete strangers can become friends without ever exchanging a word – which is a process he went through multiple times when coming to the US as a kid.

Or consider Chris Hughes, who used a simple gesture of respect to let him and his team walk away from an Iraqi ambush unharmed. We often don’t understand what other people’s bodies are trying to tell us, because we’re not good at reading them, but when we do, we can be sure what we find out is the truth.

Non-verbal cues are a lot more reliable than words, because we’re trained to adjust speech (and even truth) to the situation from a young age, but can’t get rid of our deeply rooted, ancient physical behaviors.

The reason it’s next to impossible to suppress our body language (have you tried not touching your face or neck when you’re stressed?) is because it’s rooted in our limbic brain. Joe also calls it “the honest brain” because the reactions from it are instant and pure. The limbic brain was responsible for getting us safely to the next cave the second we saw a lion thousands of years ago, which is why it’s always on and can’t afford to have us “think things through”. You’ve probably heard of this before as fight-or-flight response. But actually, that’s only two thirds of the equation. Joe says there’s another part of this response, the “freeze” reaction, and it actually comes before flight, with actually fighting being our last resort. Lots of animals freeze in place when a predator is about to sneak around the corner, because movement attracts attention. By remaining silent, the predator might pass by and let them go unnoticed. Remember when people tried to stay still in Jurassic Park? That’s the freeze response in action, and people still resort to…