Dictionary of body language

2018·1.6 MB·English

by  Joe Navarro

Dedication
This book is dedicated to the love of my life,
my best friend, and the first editor of everything
I do—my wife, Thryth Hillary Navarro
Epigraph
If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts, then gesture’s purpose was to disclose
them.
— JOHN NAPIER
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
The Head
The Forehead
The Eyebrows
The Eyes
The Ears
The Nose
The Mouth
The Lips
The Cheeks and Jaw
The Chin
The Face
The Neck
The Shoulders
The Arms
The Hands and Fingers
The Chest, Torso, and Belly
The Hips, Buttocks, and Genitals
The Legs
The Feet
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Also by Joe Navarro
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
In 1971, at the age of seventeen, for reasons unknown to me then or now, I
began to keep a journal on human behavior. I catalogued all sorts of
“nonverbals”—what is more generally called body language. At first it was
the quirky things people did: why did they roll their eyes when they were
disbelieving or reach for their neck when they heard bad news? Later it
became more nuanced: why did women play with their hair while on the
phone or arch their eyebrows when they greeted one another? These were
small actions, but they captured my curiosity. Why did humans do such
things, in such variety? What was the purpose of these behaviors?
I admit it was an odd pursuit for a teenager. My friends told me as much;
they were focused on trading baseball cards, knowing who had the best
batting average or kicked the most extra points that season. I was far more
interested in learning the intricacies of human behavior.
In the beginning I catalogued my observations on three-by-five-inch cards
for my own benefit. At that time I was unfamiliar with the work of Charles
Darwin, Bronisław Malinowski, Edward T. Hall, Desmond Morris, or my
future friend Dr. David Givens—the giants in the field of human behavior. I
was simply interested in how others acted, and why, and I wanted to preserve
my observations. I never thought I would still be collecting them on index
cards forty years later.
Over the years, I collected several thousand entries. Little did I know
back then that I would later become an FBI Special Agent and would, for the
next twenty-five years, use those observations as I pursued criminals, spies,
and terrorists. But perhaps, given my interest in how and why people behave,
that was the natural trajectory all along.
I CAME TO the United States as a refugee fleeing Communist-controlled Cuba.
I was eight years old and didn’t speak English. I had to adjust quickly—in
other words, I had to observe and decode my new surroundings. What native
speakers took for granted, I could not. My new existence consisted of
deciphering the only thing that made sense—body language. Through their
countenance, their look, the softness in their eyes, or the tension in their face,
I learned to interpret what others implied. I could figure out who liked me,
who was indifferent toward my existence, whether someone was angry or
upset with me. In a strange land, I survived by observing. There was no other
way.
Of course, American body language was a little different from Cuban
body language. People in America spoke with a different cadence and
vibrancy. Cubans got close to one another when they spoke, and often
touched. In America they stood farther apart, and social touching might
receive an uncomfortable glance or worse.
My parents worked three jobs each, so they did not have the time to teach
me these things—–I had to learn them on my own. I was learning about
culture and the influence it has on nonverbals, even if I couldn’t have put it in
those words at the time. But I did know that some behaviors were different
here, and I had to understand them. I developed my own form of scientific
inquiry, observing dispassionately and validating everything I saw not once
or twice but many times before it made its way onto an index card. As my
cards grew in number, certain patterns in behavior began to stand out. For
one, most behaviors could be broadly categorized as markers of either
psychological comfort or discomfort; our bodies reveal very accurately, in
real time, our state of unease.
I would later learn that many of these comfort markers or behaviors, to be
more precise, originated in the mammalian or emotional areas of the brain—
what is often referred to as the limbic system. This type of involuntary
response squared with what I had seen in Cuba and was seeing now in
America. At school or through the window at the corner store, people would
flash their eyes with their eyebrows to greet those they truly liked. Such
universal behaviors I grew to trust as authentic and reliable. What I did doubt
was the spoken word. How often, after I had learned English, I heard people
say they liked something when just an instant earlier I had seen their face
reveal the complete opposite.
And so, too, I learned at an early age about deception. People often lie,
but their nonverbals usually reveal how they actually feel. Children, of
course, are terrible liars; they might nod to acknowledge they have done