PDF Summary:What Every Body Is Saying, by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins

Have you ever wished you could tell what someone was really thinking? In What Every Body Is Saying, former FBI agent Joe Navarro provides insights into how to decipher body language. He argues that by practicing good observation skills and learning to decode universal patterns of behavior, you can master the language of nonverbal communication, gain access to people’s true thoughts and feelings, and detect signs of deception.

In this guide, we’ll explore why body language is an honest form of communication. Then, we’ll examine a process for reading body cues, as well as tips for detecting deception. Along the way, we’ll dig deeper into the psychology behind human behavior and compare Navarro’s insights to those of other guides on body language such as Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature and Jack Shafer’s The Like Switch.

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For example, a student might find a new school subject like chemistry to be neutral. However, based on their experiences in that class, they might associate with chemistry either more positively or more negatively. If the experience was very negative, the student might find themselves experiencing some threat responses when starting a new chemistry class, such as sweating or having a closed-off posture.

1) Observe the Direction a Body Points or Leans

Navarro argues that one major way to read a person’s level of security is to pay attention to the direction their body points or leans. Since the limbic system controls our emotional responses, most people subconsciously turn away or distance themselves from things they find threatening.

(Shortform note: In addition to the direction someone orients their body, another factor you can note is distance. Researcher Edward T. Hall argues that how close someone stands to you can indicate how familiar or intimate you are with them. He identifies four distance categories based on relationship intimacy in North Americans: intimate, personal, social, and public. An intimate distance is less than 18 inches away from your body. A personal distance is anywhere from 18 inches to four feet away. A social distance is anywhere from four to 12 feet. Lastly, a public distance is anywhere from 12 feet and beyond.)

Direction the Body Points: Since the feet and the legs are the most honest body parts, note whether a person’s feet point toward or away from you. Navarro explains that our bodies naturally orient toward things we like and away from things we dislike. For example, if you watch a horror movie at a theater, you might notice people cringing away from an unpleasant scene with their knees and legs pointed sideways. In your daily interactions, if someone is speaking to you but they’re standing with one foot directed toward the exit, their body might be subconsciously signaling their desire to leave.

(Shortform note: While Navarro says people direct their bodies toward and away from things they like and dislike, you also orient your body toward novel stimuli. This is called the orienting reflex, which happens when something new or unexpected occurs in your environment. When this happens, your pupils and blood vessels dilate so that you can pay full attention to the new stimulus.)

Direction the Body Leans: Next, assess security by noticing what direction a person’s body is leaning, if at all. Navarro explains that it takes more energy to lean your body than it does to hold yourself straight, which is why leaning is often an indicator of a person’s true sentiments. Like with pointing, a person leaning toward you is comfortable while a person leaning away is uncomfortable.

(Shortform note: Leaning away might not always indicate dislike. In fact, some experts suggest you lean back when you first interact with a stranger, especially when flirting, to present non-threatening body language that respects their personal space and helps them feel secure. As they become more comfortable with you, you then lean forward to communicate interest.)

2) Observe a Body’s Range of Movement and Openness of Posture

In addition to observing the direction someone moves, you can assess security by evaluating how much someone moves and how open their posture is. A comfortable person will move more expressively and present their body in a vulnerable and open way. On the other hand, an uncomfortable person will have restricted movements and closed body language—such as hiding, shielding themself, or preparing to escape from whatever’s causing discomfort.

(Shortform note: While posture can indicate comfort or discomfort, researchers argue that changing your posture can also change your mood. Good posture—sitting or standing with your head up and your back straight—increases testosterone and decreases stress hormones, making you feel more confident and positive. On the other hand, bad posture—sitting or standing with your head down and your back slouched—can lead to depression and lower energy, as well as increased negativity.)

Range of Movement: When we’re insecure, we naturally restrict our movements because our limbic system has activated our automatic freeze response. Navarro explains that insecure people tend to hold their arms and legs close to their bodies to avoid attracting attention. You might notice examples of this in public speaking—someone who’s uncomfortable in front of an audience will struggle to gesture emphatically and move around. They’re more likely to remain glued to the spot and struggle with voice inflection.

(Shortform note: More movement doesn’t always equal confidence. When insecure, people might display nervous jitters like shifting weight or pacing around. Some psychologists believe these repetitive movements help calm people and relieve muscle tension.)

When we feel secure, our threat responses aren’t being triggered. According to Navarro, a comfortable and confident body takes up space and often makes what he calls “gravity-defying behaviors,” such as rising onto the toes when greeting someone or raising the arms above your head to emphasize a point. For example, consider a class of students. When asked a question, students with their hands raised above their heads exude more confidence than those with bent arms at shoulder height.

(Shortform note: Researchers Jessica Tracy and David Matsumoto studied gravity-defying behaviors in Olympic medal winners, finding that both blind and sighted victors all displayed the same behaviors, such as raising their arms, expanding their chests, and tilting their heads back. Based on this, the researchers argue that behavioral displays of success and failure are biological and universal. They suggest that these behaviors stem from the biological instinct to appear bigger, convey dominance, and attract attention when confident. On the other hand, we share cringing behaviors with other animals including chimpanzees, wolves, and even crayfish to dispel conflict and signal our acceptance of someone else’s dominance.)

Posture: Navarro explains that a comfortable body has an open and vulnerable posture, whereas an uncomfortable body is more closed off. When we feel secure, nothing activates our body’s limbic instinct to protect itself. For example, if someone’s leaning back in a chair with their hands folded behind their head, they’re not conscious of themselves or the environment they’re in. Crossed legs while standing, Navarro points out, is also a sign of security because it is more vulnerable—this position leaves you more off balance. People in a heated debate, for instance, won’t stand with their feet crossed.

(Shortform note: Navarro suggests that an open posture can signal comfort, but one study also found that an open and expansive body posture also makes you more attractive to others. The study suggests that openness is nearly as important as dominance in initial attraction, as it can signal your willingness to share resources. In fact, our tendency to like people who are more willing to share goes beyond romance and holds true for all social relationships.)

Navarro adds that people often enlist their arms to protect their bodies. They might shade their eyes with a hand or cross their arms tightly across their chests. Some examples of this shielding behavior might be rearranging nearby objects to act as a barrier, clutching a protective object like a pillow, or buttoning up a shirt.

(Shortform note: In The Definitive Book of Body Language, Barbara and Allan Pease offer deeper insights into how arm blocking behaviors affect our interactions. They found that crossed arms decrease your ability to pay attention and remember the information you hear by 38%. Further, crossed arms tend to make you more critical of what someone’s saying and can often be a sign of disagreement. To break arm barriers, they advise the listener hold something, such as a book or a pencil.)

3) Observe the Presence of Self-Comforting Actions

If you notice someone displaying the insecure behaviors we’ve explored above, observe if any self-comforting acts follow. According to Navarro, people perform self-comforting acts as a natural coping mechanism for stress. These are subconscious and take on many forms such as touching the body and engaging in distractions.

(Shortform note: Research has shown that self-comforting acts, such as touch, have immediate stress-reducing benefits, decreasing heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones while increasing oxytocin, a hormone associated with affection and love. Massage, in particular, can even improve your focus and immune system functioning.)

Self-comforting Touch: According to Navarro, people often comfort themselves when under stress by rubbing or massaging their necks, faces, or limbs. He explains that the neck and the face have many nerve endings that, when rubbed, release calming chemicals inside the brain and lower heart rate and blood pressure. These self-comforting behaviors can manifest in different ways for men and women—women tend to cover the dimples between their collarbones, while men prefer touching their faces.

There are numerous other ways a person might use touch to soothe themself, such as sliding their hands down their thighs while seated (which serves to both calm them and dry any sweat from their palms), hugging themselves, or rubbing their inner cheek with their tongue.

(Shortform note: Some researchers suggest that people touch their faces more than other parts of their bodies—up to 800 times a day. Like Navarro, they argue that these behaviors tend to increase in frequency when you’re experiencing negative emotions, adding that they also increase when you’re trying to focus on a demanding cognitive task. They found that suppressing self-touch can lead to poorer memory. This highlights the important role of self-touch in regulating not just your emotions but your cognitive performance.)

Self-comforting Distractions: When people experience discomfort, they seek distractions as a way to relieve stress, such as tidying their clothes, playing with their hair, or adjusting jewelry. Navarro explains that, in moments of stress, the limbic system instructs the body to distract itself from the stressor. People might drum their fingers on a table, speak to themselves, or whistle a tune.

(Shortform note: While fidgeting may be a way to relieve discomfort, psychologists suggest that people also fidget when they need to concentrate on something. One study involving children with ADHD found that fidgeting can improve the ability to retain new information. However, excessive fidgeting can also be a sign of underlying conditions such as restless leg syndrome.)

How to Read Facial Cues

Now that we've explored how different behaviors of the human body reflect security or insecurity, let’s discuss how and why you should approach facial cues differently. As Navarro explains, unlike other parts of our bodies, we’ve trained our faces to mask how we truly feel. This means that when reading facial expressions, you must use careful judgment and look for subtle cues. He contends that lying is an adaptation that many of us have formed since childhood—we’ve learned to hide displeasure and feign agreement to maintain relationships and avoid conflict.

(Shortform note: In The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene agrees with Navarro’s claim that masking our emotions is a social adaptation and says that you should wear a pleasant mask to form good impressions. He argues that complete honesty would cause us to offend others and make us vulnerable to being judged or taken advantage of. To preserve our mental and social health, we commonly mask negative emotions like aggression or vindictiveness that would provoke negative responses from others.)

With this in mind, Navarro suggests you pay more attention to the first emotion that you notice when reading someone’s facial cues. For example, if you make a suggestion to someone and notice they furrow their brow before nodding in agreement, give more weight to the first behavior you observe (the furrowing of the brow).

(Shortform note: According to Robert Greene, this first display of emotion is likely to be a microexpression, or one that appears for under a second. These may occur when someone is trying to suppress their emotions, as expressions are hard to control. Greene suggests you use your peripheral vision to observe these microexpressions.)

Also, focus more on displays of negative emotions over positive ones. If someone says they’re excited but their facial expression indicates displeasure, consider the negative emotion as more truthful. This is because it's often harder for someone to conceal their body’s limbic response to discomfort than it is to feign pleasure.

(Shortform note: While Navarro recommends you focus on displays of negative emotions, Robert Greene points out in The Laws of Human Nature that it can be harder to notice negative cues for two reasons. First, we naturally want to be liked and might subconsciously ignore hints of dislike. Second, people mask their dislike to be socially appropriate. When you’re trying to detect negative cues, Greene suggests you look for microexpressions and mixed signals.)

While facial expressions can be misleading, certain cues can still offer helpful insights. Navarro points out several parts of the face you should observe: the eyes, changes in face color, and the mouth.

1) Observe the Eyes

Although we have more control over facial expressions than other parts of our bodies, our eyes still have numerous automatic limbic responses that have developed over the course of human evolution: They instinctively block out things we dislike and widen to things we like.

Your blink response, for instance, happens instantaneously to protect your eyes from physical harm such as dust blowing in your face. When reading body language, you can pick up more subtle eye blocking behaviors that a person might display for less obvious threats, such as seeing a person they dislike. Take note of more subtle cues like squinting, rapid blinking, and pupil constriction, which are common indicators of discomfort. On the other hand, widened eyes and dilated pupils reveal positive interest since they’re not being triggered to block out any threats.

(Shortform note: Researchers support Navarro’s claim that the eye’s instinctual behaviors can help you read body language. However, they add that the expressiveness of your eyes serves not only as an indicator of your emotions but as a way to alter your vision depending on the situation. Navarro suggests that widened eyes might signal positive interest, but they can also indicate fear. In both cases, your eyes widen to increase your field of vision. Narrowing your eyes, on the other hand, sharpens your vision onto whatever prompts your dislike.)

2) Observe Changes in Face Color

Navarro explains that changes in face color, such as blushing or growing pale, can be truthful indicators of emotions since we have little control over the blood flow in our faces. When you experience strong feelings like embarrassment, your limbic system gets triggered, causing blood to rush to your face and creating a flushed look. When you sense something alarming, your face pales as your blood flows to other parts of your body in preparation for fight or flight.

(Shortform note: Navarro primarily discusses blushing and paling, but researchers have found that many emotions have a unique pattern of facial coloring. Disgust, for instance, results in a bluish-yellow tint around the lips and a reddish-green around the nose and forehead area, while happiness is associated with reddened cheeks and temples along with blue around the chin.)

3) Observe the Mouth

Navarro explains that the fullness of your lips indicates your level of security. When we feel secure, our lips are relaxed and full. The more uncomfortable we are, the more we purse our lips. This is a protective limbic response that activates so that you don’t ingest anything dangerous during a threatening situation.

(Shortform note: In The Like Switch, Jack Schafer and Marvin Karlins agree with Navarro that lips can be revealing and provide insights beyond broad indications of comfort and discomfort. They argue that pursed lips can more specifically indicate disagreement with what you’re saying. Furthermore, lip biting or lip compression might mean that the person is hesitant to speak their mind.)

How to Detect Deception

According to Navarro, body language can reveal signs of possible deception. He explains that people who are lying tend to exhibit more insecure behaviors because deception takes mental effort and often causes stress, which can trigger some limbic responses that we can identify.

(Shortform note: Neuroscientists explain why lying is more stressful and mentally taxing: it requires you to use your brain’s executive function and, more specifically, your working memory. This is because you need to predict the directions the conversation might go and determine what you need to say to maintain your lie. One study showed that lying increased both mental workload and reaction time.)

However, no behavioral cue can directly indicate whether or not a person is lying. Research has shown that even the most experienced behavioral analysis experts have, at best, a 60% chance of correctly guessing whether someone’s lying. For this reason, he cautions you to be careful when using body language alone to accuse someone of deception.

(Shortform note: Other researchers echo Navarro’s warning, adding that it’s a common misconception that you can tell if someone is lying based on the way they’re acting. A 2003 study by psychologist Bella DePaulo found that out of 102 nonverbal cues gathered from 116 experiments, none could reliably indicate deception. Because lie detection mistakes can have costly consequences in the criminal justice system, psychologists are looking into alternative strategies to detect lies, such as allowing interviewees to talk more freely so that they might contradict themselves.)

Behaviors That May Indicate Deception

While the signs of insecurity we’ve discussed earlier indicate discomfort and can reflect possible deception, Navarro offers two more specific deception-related signs:

1) Delayed or Inconsistent Behavior: Navarro explains that people who are lying often have delayed responses, since they’re consciously trying to behave in a way that matches their words. For instance, if someone says that they agree with you, observe whether their nod occurs at the same time as their words. If they start nodding after they speak or even start shaking their head side-to-side, this delay or inconsistency in behavior may indicate inauthenticity.

(Shortform note: These delayed or inconsistent body signals are what psychologists refer as nonverbal leakage. This term was popularized by psychologist Paul Ekman in the 1970s, who argued that the face has the highest sending capacity of signals—it’s the most easily visible body part with nuanced expressions. The feet, hands, and legs, then, have lower sending capacity in that they’re more easily concealed and less expressive. However, like Navarro, Ekman acknowledges that the face can also produce confusing signals and suggests looking for contradictory expressions.)

Similarly, people who are lying might not be displaying the appropriate emotions for the situation. For example, if someone asks to borrow money for an emergency, they should be acting anxious and urgent rather than relaxed and collected.

(Shortform note: While, as Navarro suggests, inappropriate emotions can indicate deception, research shows that people also display unexpected emotions during intensely emotional situations. You might be familiar with some common examples: crying when happy or laughing when sad. Psychologists theorize that this behavior isn’t deceptive, but used as a form of emotional regulation. Essentially, when you’re overwhelmed with positive or negative emotions, you express an opposite reaction to lower the intensity of your feelings.)

2) Uncommitting Behavior: Navarro explains that people who are lying tend to be less committed to their statements and use fewer grand gestures to convince you of what they’re saying. A person might give a half-hearted shrug instead of a full one, or they might cover their mouth while speaking.

(Shortform note: Although Navarro writes that people who are lying use less emphasis to support their words, Robert Greene argues the opposite: that deceptive people may intentionally use exaggerated gestures to distract you from their true thoughts. Greene explains that the mouth and face are likely to be the most animated body parts and advises you look for other parts of the body that might be tense.)

One specific behavior that reflects commitment is whether someone gestures with their palms up versus palms down. Navarro explains that raising your palms up when you speak suggests you’re asking to be believed, whereas facing your palms down while speaking demonstrates emphasis.

(Shortform note: Researchers explain why palm gestures have these meanings: Evolutionarily, our distant ancestors used palm-up gestures in a submissive crouch position and palm-down gestures as part of a push up into a higher, more aggressive stance. More specifically, palms-down signals denial or interruption while palms-up signals an offering or request. In fact, palm-up gestures are so deeply rooted in our evolutionary history that they’re still common in apes. For apes, researchers believed these gestures occurred originally as a means to catch fallen food while another ape was eating, which later evolved into a communication signal.)

Tips for Detecting Deception

Now that you understand the difficulty of detecting deception and two specific cues you can look for, let’s look at Navarro’s tips on how to assess whether someone might be lying:

Tip #1: Get a complete view of the person. Navarro suggests you clear any obstacles between you and the person you’re interacting with so that you can observe their full body. He states that oftentimes the most honest half is concealed under a table, making it harder to make good judgments.

(Shortform note: When you think of a police interrogation room, you might imagine a room with two chairs and a table in between them. In recent years, experts are becoming more aware of the importance of nonverbal cues and argue for the removal of physical barriers between interviewer and interviewee. They elaborate that this type of barrier not only physically hinders your ability to read their body language cues but serves as a psychological obstacle to building rapport. Instead, they suggest the interviewer and interviewee sit less than four feet apart.)

Tip #2: Make the person feel comfortable. Since discomfort can indicate deception, try to help the person feel comfortable at the start of your interaction. This gives you a baseline to judge their future behaviors when you transition into more difficult topics.

(Shortform note: While Navarro doesn’t provide any advice on how to make your interviewee more comfortable, experts provide some actionable suggestions: maintain eye contact and match their body language. Therapists, for instance, often mirror the body language of their patients to subtly convey understanding and cultivate a feeling of comfort.)

Tip #3: Ask focused questions. Navarro explains that just because someone’s talking a lot doesn’t mean that they’re telling the truth. By controlling the conversation with specific questions, you can trigger behavioral cues in someone instead of letting them ramble and lead the interaction.

(Shortform note: To lead an interaction with focused questions, consider asking a series of “funnel questions,” which start off broad and grow more specific or vice-versa. Useful in a variety of situations, such as job interviews, funnel questions allow you to get detailed answers and easily change the focus of the conversation according to your needs.)

Tip #4: Look for self-comforting behavior. After asking a focused question, assess the person’s stress levels by looking for any attempts they make to comfort themselves. When you observe self-comforting behaviors, try to make note of what stimuli preceded it to get an understanding of what made them uncomfortable.

(Shortform note: According to psychologist Paul Gilbert, these self-comforting behaviors often follow a distressing question because our bodies have a natural soothing system, much like our threat response system that Navarro focuses on. Like the limbic system, this soothing system is hardwired into our bodies, and it relieves the intense effects of the stress response.)

Tip #5: Leave room for silence. Navarro advises you to insert deliberate pauses between your questions so that your interviewee has time to react and you have time to observe. Instead of drilling them with a series of questions, ask a single question and wait for a response.

(Shortform note: Leaving space for silence in your interactions is useful beyond trying to detect deception. In The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier writes that being comfortable with silence is also a good practice for coaching and understanding others. He writes that asking too many questions back-to-back can be overwhelming, and giving people space allows for thoughtful responses.)