How to Read Body Language to Reveal the Underlying Truth in Almost Any Situation

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You've likely heard that body language accounts for up to 55% of how we communicate, but reading non-verbal cues isn't just about broad strokes. The same gesture can indicate a number of different things depending on context. In this post, we're going to take a look at three common situations in which non-verbal cues are especially important—detecting lies, going on a date, and interviewing for a job—then explain how to interpret body language more accurately so that you can read between the lines when a person's words aren't necessarily conveying the way that they honestly feel.
We lie a lot. When having a conversation with a stranger, chances are we'll lie in the first ten minutes. Sometimes we'll lie more than once in that same period of time. These may not always be big lies, but we still do it. We all willingly partake in deception from time to time because it helps us avoid conflict, but often we're better off knowing the truth. While words can be deceptive, the human body is a terrible liar. This is where reading body language and using your own effectively, can be extremely useful when communicating with others.
First, the basics.

Body Language Basics

When you're reading body language, your primary goal is to determine whether or not a person is comfortable in their current situation. Once you do this, it's a process of using context and other cues—which we'll get into later—to figure out the specifics. There are plenty of ways a person may indicate their comfort level, but here are a few of the most common.

Add caption

Positive body language:

• Moving or leaning closer to you
• Relaxed, uncrossed limbs
• Long periods of eye contact
• Looking down and away out of shyness
• Genuine smiles

Add caption

Negative body language:

• Moving or leaning away from you
• Crossed arms or legs
• Looking away to the side
• Feet pointed away from you, or towards and exit
• Rubbing/scratching their nose, eyes, or the back of their neck

A single cue can mean a myriad of things. For example, crossed arms falls under the category of negative body language and can suggest that a person is physically cold, closed off, or frustrated. It can even indicate that they've simply had too much to eat. It's necessary to pay attention to multiple behavioral cues as a single one can be misleading. While it will help to indicate comfort level, to really understand why you need to look deeper. This means paying attention to other cues as well as their context. As we get into the specific situations, we'll look at how these cues work together to help uncover the truth in a given moment.

Spot a Liar

One of the biggest advantages of learning to read body language well is being able to judge when someone is lying with a fair amount of accuracy. Your intuition is never going to be 100% accurate, but with a little practice you can become more aware of when you're being fed a load of crap. It's very important to recognize what kind of lies you are actually detecting. The techniques we're going to discuss in this section correspond to big lies—the lies people tell when they are uncomfortable or afraid of the truth. These skills will get you almost nowhere in detecting white lies, small lies of omission, and what people do most often: exaggerate. Those types of deception are very hard to detect, and it's important to remember that, regardless of the type of untruth, you'll never know for certain. You can, however, pick up on common cues so you know when to hold a healthy suspicion about what a person is saying.
Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, conducted significant research on the ways we lie to figure out the common patterns in our body language. She found that liars often exhibit much of the behavior you'd find in any other uncomfortable person, but with a few very specific additional traits.

Add caption

Fake Smiles
People are bad at offering a genuine smile when they're lying. In fact, a genuine smile (often referred to as a Duchenne smile), is often said to be impossible to fake. This is why many of us end up with awkward family photos. We may think we look like we're smiling, but to most anyone it looks like we're faking it. This is because your smile is in your eyes, or, more specifically, the wrinkles around them. You display a few crows feet when you smile genuinely because your smile pushes up your cheeks which bunches up the skin near your eyes. It's fairly hard to fake this. You need to feel some sort of genuine happy emotion at the time to do it, and when you're uncomfortable this is next to impossible. This is why a non-genuine smile can be a helpful indicator of a lie in progress.

Add caption

Stiff Upper Body and Too Much Eye Contact
Liars like to overcompensate when they're lying, and so they'll often try to remain still and offer eye contact. This will often result in so much eye contact it's often a little unsettling, and their body will become stiff because they're attempting not to fidget. Normally, people move and do not hold eye contact for extended periods of time. When uncomfortable, however, people will often rub their neck or eyes and look away to the side. Rather than exhibit the positive body language that would imply comfort, liars tend to opt for doing very little. This, in and of itself, is an indicator. Look for tense shoulders and an unusually high amount of eye contact and you'll be more likely to spot a liar.

Add caption

Context and Paired Behaviors
I

How to Read Body Language to Reveal the Underlying Truth in Almost Any Situation

Add caption

You've likely heard that body language accounts for up to 55% of how we communicate, but reading non-verbal cues isn't just about broad strokes. The same gesture can indicate a number of different things depending on context. In this post, we're going to take a look at three common situations in which non-verbal cues are especially important—detecting lies, going on a date, and interviewing for a job—then explain how to interpret body language more accurately so that you can read between the lines when a person's words aren't necessarily conveying the way that they honestly feel.
We lie a lot. When having a conversation with a stranger, chances are we'll lie in the first ten minutes. Sometimes we'll lie more than once in that same period of time. These may not always be big lies, but we still do it. We all willingly partake in deception from time to time because it helps us avoid conflict, but often we're better off knowing the truth. While words can be deceptive, the human body is a terrible liar. This is where reading body language and using your own effectively, can be extremely useful when communicating with others.
First, the basics.

Body Language Basics

When you're reading body language, your primary goal is to determine whether or not a person is comfortable in their current situation. Once you do this, it's a process of using context and other cues—which we'll get into later—to figure out the specifics. There are plenty of ways a person may indicate their comfort level, but here are a few of the most common.

Add caption

Positive body language:

• Moving or leaning closer to you
• Relaxed, uncrossed limbs
• Long periods of eye contact
• Looking down and away out of shyness
• Genuine smiles

Add caption

Negative body language:

• Moving or leaning away from you
• Crossed arms or legs
• Looking away to the side
• Feet pointed away from you, or towards and exit
• Rubbing/scratching their nose, eyes, or the back of their neck

A single cue can mean a myriad of things. For example, crossed arms falls under the category of negative body language and can suggest that a person is physically cold, closed off, or frustrated. It can even indicate that they've simply had too much to eat. It's necessary to pay attention to multiple behavioral cues as a single one can be misleading. While it will help to indicate comfort level, to really understand why you need to look deeper. This means paying attention to other cues as well as their context. As we get into the specific situations, we'll look at how these cues work together to help uncover the truth in a given moment.

Spot a Liar

One of the biggest advantages of learning to read body language well is being able to judge when someone is lying with a fair amount of accuracy. Your intuition is never going to be 100% accurate, but with a little practice you can become more aware of when you're being fed a load of crap. It's very important to recognize what kind of lies you are actually detecting. The techniques we're going to discuss in this section correspond to big lies—the lies people tell when they are uncomfortable or afraid of the truth. These skills will get you almost nowhere in detecting white lies, small lies of omission, and what people do most often: exaggerate. Those types of deception are very hard to detect, and it's important to remember that, regardless of the type of untruth, you'll never know for certain. You can, however, pick up on common cues so you know when to hold a healthy suspicion about what a person is saying.
Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, conducted significant research on the ways we lie to figure out the common patterns in our body language. She found that liars often exhibit much of the behavior you'd find in any other uncomfortable person, but with a few very specific additional traits.

Add caption

Fake Smiles
People are bad at offering a genuine smile when they're lying. In fact, a genuine smile (often referred to as a Duchenne smile), is often said to be impossible to fake. This is why many of us end up with awkward family photos. We may think we look like we're smiling, but to most anyone it looks like we're faking it. This is because your smile is in your eyes, or, more specifically, the wrinkles around them. You display a few crows feet when you smile genuinely because your smile pushes up your cheeks which bunches up the skin near your eyes. It's fairly hard to fake this. You need to feel some sort of genuine happy emotion at the time to do it, and when you're uncomfortable this is next to impossible. This is why a non-genuine smile can be a helpful indicator of a lie in progress.

Add caption

Stiff Upper Body and Too Much Eye Contact
Liars like to overcompensate when they're lying, and so they'll often try to remain still and offer eye contact. This will often result in so much eye contact it's often a little unsettling, and their body will become stiff because they're attempting not to fidget. Normally, people move and do not hold eye contact for extended periods of time. When uncomfortable, however, people will often rub their neck or eyes and look away to the side. Rather than exhibit the positive body language that would imply comfort, liars tend to opt for doing very little. This, in and of itself, is an indicator. Look for tense shoulders and an unusually high amount of eye contact and you'll be more likely to spot a liar.

Add caption

Context and Paired Behaviors
I

How to Convince Someone You Work in Their Building
 

There are fewer opportunities to put your social engineering skills to the test better than trying to convince someone you work at their establishment. Whether you just want to serve yourself a drink refill at a restaurant or you want to surprise your significant other with a birthday bouquet, here's how to get in unnoticed.

Project Confidence

If you walk around looking nervous and glancing from side to side, people will be able to tell that you don't belong. Worse, they may approach you and ask questions. It may be unavoidable, but the most important thing to do if you're trying to blend into any environment is to look like you belong there. That is, stand up straight, walk confidently like you know where you're headed (even if you have no idea where this hallway will lead you,) and acknowledge people as they acknowledge you—the way you would in your own office or workplace.
This makes the other people around you subconsciously believe that you're there for a reason. An old friend of mine who used to do penetration testing and physical security evaluations at large companies found that all too often she could find her way to the CEO's office to hand-deliver her report just by walking around the building looking like she belonged there.

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Take Advantage of Human Nature

The best way to get into a building or office that you want access to is to go in behind someone else. Most people call it "tailgating," and it's a serious security issue for offices, apartment complexes, college dorms, anywhere with restricted access, but it's your best friend here. Photo by Lydia.
It's easy to slide up to the door when someone else is going in and grab it as it closes, to beg the person going in to hold it for you, or—more often—just walk through while the person just ahead of you walks in. Most of us would consider it rude to just slam a door to a building on someone or let an elevator close when someone is just a step behind us, especially if it's a secure door where you would otherwise have to fumble for a keycard or other device to get in, so we do the nice thing and hold it open. You may have taken advantage of it on a day where you forgot your badge at work—you can do the same just about anywhere.

Dress the Part

This part requires some familiarity with the place you're going to visit, but no one is going to believe you work in an office where everyone is wearing shirts and ties if you walk in wearing a polo and jeans. Make sure you dress at or slightly above the dress code for the place you're visiting. Fewer people will question a person wearing a button-down shirt and a slacks in an office full of polo shirts than will call out the guy wearing cutoff jean shorts and a t-shirt in the same office. It's also important not to go too far over the dress code: you'll stick out wearing a tie in an office where everyone wears t-shirts and jeans (although that can work to your advantage, as we'll discuss later.)

Be Ready for Questioning

Ideally, you'll be able to slip into an office and get around to where you need to be without any questioning at all. However, if you're overdressed, underdressed, or just unlucky enough to run into a curious employee, you need to be ready to deal with it. Photo by lululemon athletica.
If you're overdressed compared to them, point out that you're there on an interview and you're just coming back from/going to get a cup of coffee. Alternatively, if the company you're visiting has a large office or a whole building, say that you work in another office, or that you only started recently. If asked, "What do you do?" Respond that you work in a department almost every company has, like IT, or human resources. Whatever you say, make sure you have something in mind already. It shouldn't be scripted, but you should have it ready to go.
If they buy it, ask for directions—you'll be surprised how often you get them. If they're not buying it, keep in mind some of these tips to subconsciously persuade people. Mirroring the person's body language and movements will definitely make them feel at ease, and reciprocating their questions with your own will turn the attention away from you and make them think about how to respond. Ask them what they do and whose team they're on. Ask them how that's going, and if recent changes in your department have impacted them at all (note: this is an especially good trick if you claim to be in IT. Almost everyone will take the opportunity to talk or gripe to a new IT staffer about something.)

Remember to Smile

Not always, of course—grinning to yourself will make you stand out—but keeping a relatively upbeat and positive demeanor will make you stand out less than someone who's hunched over, shifty-eyed, and ducking around corners wearing a Mission: Impossible serious-face. People by nature avoid confrontation, and you can use this to your advantage by being confident, being positive, and engaging when appropriate.
This isn't the movies: your goal is not to be so convincing that you could charm everyone, you just want to get in, surprise your fiancee in front of her coworkers, or drop off your boyfriend's lunch without him or his coworkers knowing, and leave without attracting attention to yourself. Ultimately, you don't want anyone to know someone who doesn't belong was even there, even if you were right in front of their face.

How to Convince Someone You Work in Their Building
 

There are fewer opportunities to put your social engineering skills to the test better than trying to convince someone you work at their establishment. Whether you just want to serve yourself a drink refill at a restaurant or you want to surprise your significant other with a birthday bouquet, here's how to get in unnoticed.

Project Confidence

If you walk around looking nervous and glancing from side to side, people will be able to tell that you don't belong. Worse, they may approach you and ask questions. It may be unavoidable, but the most important thing to do if you're trying to blend into any environment is to look like you belong there. That is, stand up straight, walk confidently like you know where you're headed (even if you have no idea where this hallway will lead you,) and acknowledge people as they acknowledge you—the way you would in your own office or workplace.
This makes the other people around you subconsciously believe that you're there for a reason. An old friend of mine who used to do penetration testing and physical security evaluations at large companies found that all too often she could find her way to the CEO's office to hand-deliver her report just by walking around the building looking like she belonged there.

Add caption

Take Advantage of Human Nature

The best way to get into a building or office that you want access to is to go in behind someone else. Most people call it "tailgating," and it's a serious security issue for offices, apartment complexes, college dorms, anywhere with restricted access, but it's your best friend here. Photo by Lydia.
It's easy to slide up to the door when someone else is going in and grab it as it closes, to beg the person going in to hold it for you, or—more often—just walk through while the person just ahead of you walks in. Most of us would consider it rude to just slam a door to a building on someone or let an elevator close when someone is just a step behind us, especially if it's a secure door where you would otherwise have to fumble for a keycard or other device to get in, so we do the nice thing and hold it open. You may have taken advantage of it on a day where you forgot your badge at work—you can do the same just about anywhere.

Dress the Part

This part requires some familiarity with the place you're going to visit, but no one is going to believe you work in an office where everyone is wearing shirts and ties if you walk in wearing a polo and jeans. Make sure you dress at or slightly above the dress code for the place you're visiting. Fewer people will question a person wearing a button-down shirt and a slacks in an office full of polo shirts than will call out the guy wearing cutoff jean shorts and a t-shirt in the same office. It's also important not to go too far over the dress code: you'll stick out wearing a tie in an office where everyone wears t-shirts and jeans (although that can work to your advantage, as we'll discuss later.)

Be Ready for Questioning

Ideally, you'll be able to slip into an office and get around to where you need to be without any questioning at all. However, if you're overdressed, underdressed, or just unlucky enough to run into a curious employee, you need to be ready to deal with it. Photo by lululemon athletica.
If you're overdressed compared to them, point out that you're there on an interview and you're just coming back from/going to get a cup of coffee. Alternatively, if the company you're visiting has a large office or a whole building, say that you work in another office, or that you only started recently. If asked, "What do you do?" Respond that you work in a department almost every company has, like IT, or human resources. Whatever you say, make sure you have something in mind already. It shouldn't be scripted, but you should have it ready to go.
If they buy it, ask for directions—you'll be surprised how often you get them. If they're not buying it, keep in mind some of these tips to subconsciously persuade people. Mirroring the person's body language and movements will definitely make them feel at ease, and reciprocating their questions with your own will turn the attention away from you and make them think about how to respond. Ask them what they do and whose team they're on. Ask them how that's going, and if recent changes in your department have impacted them at all (note: this is an especially good trick if you claim to be in IT. Almost everyone will take the opportunity to talk or gripe to a new IT staffer about something.)

Remember to Smile

Not always, of course—grinning to yourself will make you stand out—but keeping a relatively upbeat and positive demeanor will make you stand out less than someone who's hunched over, shifty-eyed, and ducking around corners wearing a Mission: Impossible serious-face. People by nature avoid confrontation, and you can use this to your advantage by being confident, being positive, and engaging when appropriate.
This isn't the movies: your goal is not to be so convincing that you could charm everyone, you just want to get in, surprise your fiancee in front of her coworkers, or drop off your boyfriend's lunch without him or his coworkers knowing, and leave without attracting attention to yourself. Ultimately, you don't want anyone to know someone who doesn't belong was even there, even if you were right in front of their face.

Overcome Your "Brand Loyalty" and Buy Better, Cheaper Stuff

When we like a company that puts out a good product we become loyal to the brand, don't we? What we see as brand loyalty is actually more the effects of comfort and laziness than anything else. Furthermore, we'll defend that comfort to the death. This results in some bad buying decisions, which is especially bad come holiday shopping season. Here's how to overcome those problems, get better products, and save yourself some money in the process.

The Problem

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ScienceDaily points out that brand loyalty isn't so much about staying true to a particular company, but rather defending one's own opinions and choices:

When companies get consumers motivated about their products, they are just as motivated to protect the brand as they are themselves. So it's really more about the self than the brand. When people can self-affirm through other means and activities, they're not defensive at all.

It also doesn't help that we will cling to bad ideas if we're invested in them. We'll knowingly ride a horse off a cliff just because it seemed like the right way to go when we began. When we put money into a product and time into using it, so long as we don't immediately hate it we'll often become more attached because we've bothered to learn it. You may hate your smartphone's operating system, but you've purchased a bunch of apps for it and you know how to use it so why switch? That's the dilemma of brand loyalty. You become lost in the comfort of familiarity. Harry Beckworth, writing for Psychology Today, elaborates:

Overcome Your "Brand Loyalty" and Buy Better, Cheaper Stuff

When we like a company that puts out a good product we become loyal to the brand, don't we? What we see as brand loyalty is actually more the effects of comfort and laziness than anything else. Furthermore, we'll defend that comfort to the death. This results in some bad buying decisions, which is especially bad come holiday shopping season. Here's how to overcome those problems, get better products, and save yourself some money in the process.

The Problem

Add caption

ScienceDaily points out that brand loyalty isn't so much about staying true to a particular company, but rather defending one's own opinions and choices:

When companies get consumers motivated about their products, they are just as motivated to protect the brand as they are themselves. So it's really more about the self than the brand. When people can self-affirm through other means and activities, they're not defensive at all.

It also doesn't help that we will cling to bad ideas if we're invested in them. We'll knowingly ride a horse off a cliff just because it seemed like the right way to go when we began. When we put money into a product and time into using it, so long as we don't immediately hate it we'll often become more attached because we've bothered to learn it. You may hate your smartphone's operating system, but you've purchased a bunch of apps for it and you know how to use it so why switch? That's the dilemma of brand loyalty. You become lost in the comfort of familiarity. Harry Beckworth, writing for Psychology Today, elaborates:

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