movements or actions in which
the hands can be involved.
One final gesture or movement involving the arms and hands is what we are going to call a “dismissal gesture.” This subtle gesture is one that suggests the person does not wish to talk about or deal with some issue or topic. Suppose you are talking to your current boyfriend and the topic of a past relationship happens to come up. As you discuss this other person in your companion’s past, you inquire about whether he still has feelings for her. Should you see him mak-ing some form of sweepmak-ing gesture with his arm and hand away from his body, it is an indication that he doesn’t want to discuss the issue.
The gesture suggests a desire to get rid of the problem, throw it away, or not deal with it. At some point in the future, you may need to delve into this topic a little further and find out why he prefers not to discuss the topic with you. It may be because he is unsure about the impact the former relationship has on his relationship with you.
It may be also that he is still experiencing some mixed feelings about the past relationship that still need to be resolved. There are any number of innocent explanations for it, but it is useful for you to know that the person you are talking to would prefer not to explore the issue at the current time.
What you do have to be alert for, however, is that in the midst of all these stress behaviors a person could generate behaviors that suggest that he is being deceptive with you. This is what makes it hard to determine the credibility of a person’s remarks when there is so much other stress activity going on. You may find yourself dis-tracted from the most important nonverbal and verbal signals while you are paying so much attention to his hands.
Legs
The behaviors you can observe from a person’s legs and feet can give you some insight about that person’s current emotional status. It is a good idea to watch the other person’s legs at least peripherally if you are looking for signs of stress. When you compare various areas
of the body with each other and their level of significance in diag-nosing body language, the feet and legs contribute very little to our ability to learn if someone is being truthful with us. A person pays little if any attention to what he is doing with his feet or legs during a conversation. If he has any conscious awareness of his body lan-guage and makes any attempts to control those behaviors, it will be limited to the upper portions of the body. This general failure to mon-itor the lower extremities means that you as a student of body lan-guage are going to get some very clear messages regarding a person’s emotional stress state because that person will do little to suppress or disguise these behaviors.
The simplest leg or foot actions to observe when you are talking to your friend is to watch for when they start moving. It’s almost as if the legs and feet are pressure gauges. General movement of the feet or legs tells you the person is experiencing an increase in stress.
Those movements include crossing or uncrossing the legs or maybe even changing the direction in which the legs are crossed. Another way to think about the significance of the movements of the legs is to consider them to be a demonstration of the person’s desire to flee the current setting or situation in which he currently finds himself.
After all, remember that all the body language changes we see are rooted in the instinctive response of fight or flight.
A similar diagnosis of the meaning of body language can be made if you see other types of motion from the legs and feet. Have you ever watched someone sitting in a chair and noticed that his knees are bouncing up and down, or perhaps wobbling back and forth? He is just trying to dissipate some of his stress. This person is not the least bit relaxed in his current setting. I can recall in junior high school and high school myself and fellow students sitting in the classroom taking an exam. Invariably you would see someone in the classroom with his legs pumping up and down like the pistons of a high performance racing engine. Boy, were we sweating out that exam in Ms. Pyle’s chemistry class!
If you pay attention to a person’s feet, you also can see some interesting changes in movement or behavior. If the person happens to have his legs crossed, you may see his feet start wiggling or pump-ing in the air. This is a clear sign of buildpump-ing stress or of impatience.
On the other hand, you may not so much see something the feet are doing as you will hear them. When some people become very impa-tient or angry, you may hear them begin to tap or even stomp their feet! You need to pay attention to this signal and try to determine if there are other signs of anger in the body lan-guage or possibly some verbal cues. We are going to discuss the appropriate responses you should make when dealing with a person who is angry. Among other things, a person who is angry is not going to be doing a very good job of listening to you or anyone else. You are going to need to find ways to get that per-son out of this anger phase before you are going to have any produc-tive communication with him.
There also may be times when the person seems to more or less withdraw from his surroundings or to feel a little self-conscious.
When this happens, you may discover that he has pulled his feet up underneath his chair or crossed his feet at the ankles and then pulled them up under the chair. This person may have a fragile sense of self-esteem or perhaps may feel a little inferior, at least in this particular setting. You will need to do your best to reassure this per-son.
At this point, you may be wondering why we are even discussing the feet and legs when they seem to have very little to do with iden-tifying a person who is being deceptive. First of all, there are some people who believe that the types of behaviors I have just described are undeniable signs of deception, when in fact they are not.
The second reason we are spending time talking about the legs and feet is because they are very good indicators of stress. When a person is exhibiting any of the various forms of stress responses we have discussed, we can learn a great deal about that person’s