Some contributors to the subject of Body Language. The video content below is from Youtube
Marcus Tullius Cicero b. 106 BCThe statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer on rhetoric and orations, Cicero, was regarded as the greatest Roman orator. He wrote about sermo corporis ('language of the body') making comments about how to dress and stand, and distinguishing between 'a theatrical gesture’ which expresses single words, and ‘the rhetorical gesture’ which explains the entire topic and meaning. Typically, Roman orators either used a rich, florid, grandiose style or a direct simplicity of movement. As a younger man Cicero had used a certain strain and tension through his whole body but, under the guidance of Molon of Rhodes, he came to command a variety of styles, selecting the rhythms best suited for each audience and phrase. At this time, different actors took different systems, one producing the gestures, the other delivering the speech. Cicero understood that the action of the body expresses the sentiments and passions of the soul, and that every emotion has a particular look, tone and bearing.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus b. AD 35
"What you say is often not what the other person hears." Quintilianus
Quintilian was a Roman teacher of public speaking who analysed hand gestures and offered meticulously detailed explanations of them, specifying the kinds of gestures to be used by orators, for best effect. He illustrated how speakers could use gestures in addressing crowds and everyday conversation, including their arms, hands, and fingers, to give their words impact. Gestures that were damaging to the performance were also listed, and Quintilian focused on other areas of nonverbal behaviour from the head to toe, including ‘toga management’, posture and facial expressions. For Quintilian it was important for an orator not to give the impression of acting or mimicry, instead their movement should appear natural and authentic. Gesticulation obeys our mind, he wrote, and argued that gestural language and performance should be clear expressions of emotions. Also discussed in his twelve-volume textbook were how certain head movements display emotions such as how shame, doubt, admiration, or indignation.
"We should aim not at being possible to understand, but being impossible to misunderstand." Quintilianus
Read Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory) (95 CE)
Francis Bacon b. 1561
Francis Bacon argued the case for scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and the careful observation of events in nature. Concerned with understanding the human mind, he introducing the empirical (scientific) method during the Scientific Revolution, and was arguably the first person to consider body language from this empirical perspective. Bacon suggested that gestures provide an indication of the state of mind and will of the speaker, exploring them as a reflection or extension of spoken communication. He saw nonverbal language as the most natural form of communication, a form not dependent upon the country you came from. He also believed that looking and listening was equally as important in understanding conversation.
"As the tongue speaketh to the ear, so the gesture speaketh to the eye." Bacon
Read Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human (1605)
John Bulwer b. 1606
John Bulwer was an English physician and philosopher who wrote five works exploring the body and human communication. He suggested that much of our gesturing is intuitive and inherently natural to mankind, and he record the vocabulary contained in over 100 hand gestures and bodily motions, producing Chirologia, alongside a companion text which featured illustrated hand and finger gestures that were intended for an orator to memorise and perform whilst speaking, primarily from the pulpit. His described gestures included wringing the hands to convey grief, and pretending to wash your hands as a way to protest innocence. Bulwer’s theories had their roots in classical civilisation, including the works of Aristotle b. 384BC. Bulwer’s Pathomyotomia was the first substantial English language work on the muscular basis of emotional expressions. Bulwer later became one of the first to propose educating deaf people.
Read Chirologia: The Natural History of the Hand (1644)
Charles-Michel de l'Épée b. 1712
Charles Michel de l' Épée founded the first public school for the hearing-impaired in France, and created a systematic method of teaching them. He has become known as the inventor of sign language but he initially learned to sign from the deaf community of Paris. Acknowledging that they already had a visual language expressing needs, desires, doubts, pains, and so on, Épée looked for the shortest and easiest method of gesturing expression. At a time of much prejudice against the hard of hearing Epee founded his school and funded it with his modest inheritance, wishing to ‘make every effort to bring about their release from these shadows.’ He devoted his life to developing the world's first sign alphabet - based on the principle that ‘the education of deaf mutes must teach them through the eye of what other people acquire through the ear’ - and began a General Dictionary of Signs (Dictionnaire général des signes), which was completed by his successor Abbé Sicard, whilst one of his deaf pupils, Laurent Clerc, went on to co-found the first school for the deaf in North America paving the way for modern American Sign Language, including the signs of the ASL alphabet.
Read La veritable maniere d'instruire les sourds et muets, confirmee par une longue experience (The True Method of Educating the Deaf, Confirmed by Much Experience) (1784)
Gilbert Austin b. 1753
Irish educator, clergyman and author Gilbert Austin is best known for his book Chironomia, or a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery, in which built on Cicero and Quintilian’s words on the importance of voice and gesture to oration. Austin gave a detailed consideration of gestures and their effect on an audience, producing an instruction book to allow the practice of good habits, such as the role of gesture in accompany words for more effective speech-making. After tracing the study of delivery, from the classical world to the 18th century, he offered training with illustrations depicting positions of the feet, body and hands (he saw gestures as the action and position of all body parts). Austin was concerned with marrying well-conceived, appropriate delivery with words, and avoiding natural/unconceived gesture.
Read Chironomia; or, A treatise on rhetorical delivery (1806) London: T. Cadell and W. Davies
Andrea De Jorio b. 1769
An Italian antiquarian, Andrea De Jorio was the first ethnographer of body language. He recognised in the frescos of old, that the gestures depicted were recognisable from those on the streets of modern Naples. De Jorio suggested a continuity from Classical times, showing the similarity of hand gestures. He produced the first scholarly investigation of Neapolitan hand gestures comparing them with those in Roman and Greek art. There have been translations of de Jorio’s treatise including a scholarly translation from Adam Kenyon.
Read La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (‘The mime of the Ancients investigated through Neapolitan gesture’) (1832)
Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne b. 1806
Duchenne De Boulogne was a French physician who initiated pioneering studies on electrical stimulation of muscles, and the first person to identify microexpressions. Duchenne used electricity as a physiological investigation tool to study the anatomy of the living body. Duchenne's iconographic work stands at the crossroads of three major discoveries of the 19th century: electricity, physiology and photography. This is best exemplified by his investigation of the mechanisms of human physiognomy in which he used localized faradic stimulation to reproduce various forms of human facial expression. Duchenne remarked that a person in trying to remember something raises his eyebrows, as if to see it, and wrote of joy being expressed with two muscles (zygomaticus major muscle and the orbucularis oculi) contracting to produce a true smile. The ‘Duchenne smile’ is one that engages these muscles. Charles Darwin and Paul Ekman built on Duchenne’s work.
Read The mechanism of human facial expression or an electrophysiological analysis of the expression of the emotions. (1990) (original work 1862)
Charles Darwin b. 1809
"A hungry man, if tempting food is placed before him, may not show his hunger by any outward gesture, but he cannot check the secretion of saliva.” Darwin
English naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin specifically described the facial expressions of six basic emotions and how these expressions of emotion evolved from functional, survival actions of the facial muscles. He believed that these had common origin, and fundamental properties that are shared with other animals, and his detailed study of the muscular actions involved in emotion were underpinned by three principles. Darwin thought that there was a universality of human emotions with universal expressions for sadness, happiness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. He also saw the antitheses signal as telling (ie a tail wagging for happy or tucked and rigid in fear). Darwin questioned why each expression is best suited for the emotion it represents raising - and attempting to answer - the question of why one expression, rather than another? He noticed that we may shut our eyes momentarily and firmly, or shake our heads, if we see something disagreeable, and how muscles in the face, such as his ‘grief muscle’ can line the forehead (below).
"In joy the face expands, in grief it lengthens." Darwin
Read The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) John Murray
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt b. 1832
Wilhelm Wundt was a German physician, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, and the first person to call himself a psychologist. Separating psychology from philosophy he looked at the mind in a structured way, albeit an introspective one, and founded the first psychology lab in 1879. Considered the father of experimental psychology he focused on three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings. Aware that gestures had been much overlooked since ancient times Wundt produced work which concerned their use in conversation, including various communities in his studies. Concerned with link between gesture and thought, he concluded that gestural communication faithfully mirrors the emotions and inner world of the speaker, and that humans share a number of expressive gestures with other animals. Gestures are described as pictorial scripts, non-preserved sketches in the air. While some of them replace specific properties others are associated with the abstract.
Edward Burnett Tylor b. 1832
A father of contemporary social and cultural anthropology and the first professor of anthropology in Britain, E B Tylor’s works helped to build interest in the discipline. The gifted writer and tireless researcher had a keen interest in the development and evolution of language, suggesting that gesture probably preceded spoken language. His theory on the origin of language, explained in Researches into the Early History of Mankind influenced by Charles Darwin. Tylor’s “Gesture-Language” also considered cultural differences in gesture and he focused on what this said about the characteristics of the human mind, concluding that, with gesture-language, the uncultured minds work in much the same way as the cultured, at all times, everywhere. His Gesture-Langauge contrasted with Muller's idea that language was the runicon that separated man from animals.
Read Anthropology an introduction to the study of man and civilization (1881) Macmillan and Co.
Charles Spencer Chaplin b. 1889
As one of the finest exponents of nonverbal communication, Charlie Chaplin represents the stars of stage and screen that have mastered the ability to communicate emotions and messages without using words. From child star of the music halls and vaudeville acts, Chaplin became an icon of the early days of Hollywood and its silent film era. He developed the persona, The Little Tramp, and 1919 co-founded the distribution company United Artists giving him complete control over his films. Chaplin’s image as the little man with the moustache, bowler hat, cane, and recognisable gait, helped grow a universal fan base. His nonverbal skills could make any audience laugh and cry. Every move was choreographed to perfection, demonstrating the power of conscious body language.
Read My Autobiography (1964) Penguin
MacDonald Critchley b. 1900
MacDonald Critchley used his observations of a deaf mute’s inability to understand (or produce) speech, to write about the nature and language of gestures. Critchley noticed that there were similarities between the systems of gestures used by the deaf mute, with the hand signing of some aboriginal communities. Dividing gestures into two main areas - those of obvious interpretation, and those which have a specific or artificial meaning - he saw gesture as being full of eloquence to the judging onlooker who holds the key to its interpretation knowing how and what to observe. The Language of Gesture’s publication coincided with the outbreak of WW2, rendering it largely ignored, so he updated his theories in a second book on gestures, Silent Language (1975). Critchley thought of gesture as the precursor to speech with them then co-developing. Our instinctive gestures, he described, were more primitive than the symbolic gestures.
Read The Language of Gesture (1939) Edward Arnold & Co.
David Efron b. 1904
A pioneer in the study of gestures, David Efron studied the behaviour of groups of individuals, and of their descendants, in markedly different environments. Efron analysed everyday social behaviour using film recordings and a gesture coding system. A student of Franz Boas b. 1858, Efron conducted his gesture study to examine differences in the gestural repertoire of different neighbouring immigrant communities demonstrating the cultural basis of gestural style and challenging Nazi claims that gestural style was racially inherited. Efron grew up in an orthodox Jewish home and adopted “tense, jerky, and confined” gestures, but, when he spoke Spanish, he gestured with “the effervescence and fluidity of those of a good many Argentinians.” He coined the term 'emblem' for movements that have a precise meaning known by all members of an ethnic group, sub-culture, or culture.
Read Gesture and Environment (1941) New York: King Crown Press
Silvan Solomon Tomkins b. 1911
Silvan Tomkins was a psychologist who developed theory and script theory. During his work at Princeton he began to mentor Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard. Tomkins’ role in the emergence of research on the face inspired Ekman to undertake his research on the universality of certain facial expressions. According to Tomkins, humans have an enormous amount of information to process so that it can determine, “What do I want, and what do I need to avoid?”, so it needs a system for responding to information, storing it, classifying it, retrieving it and ranking its importance. As we move we learn, adapt, predict and decide. The Affect System evolved so that we can experience what is important (what things are urgent), maximising positive affect and minimising the negative. It’s the pattern of scripts (facial and body displays) that a person uses to modulate affect that make up a personality.
Read Affect Imagery Consciousness, Volume I (other volumes followed) (1962) Springer Publishing
Edward Twitchell Hall, Jr. b, 1914
Edward T Hall was an American anthropologist, author and cross-cultural researcher, best known for developing his concept of ‘proxemics’ (from proximity) and exploring cultural and social cohesion. Hall described how people behave, interpret and react in different types of culturally defined personal space (proxemics). He explained that we have five zones around us, different distances and what we are comfortable experiencing within them, and referenced the idea of context is imperative for interpreting nonverbal cues. For example, the more self-assured, advantaged socioeconomically or hierarchically, the more territory we demand and take up. Cultural roles and social situations vary and thus impact differently on the amount of personal space we require to feel comfortable. Hall showed us how cultural and biological rules determine how you use space and communicate emotions.
Read The Silent Language (1959) Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Eckhard H Hess b. 1916
Eckhard Hess was a professor of behavioural science and a leading authority on imprinting, a psychological phenomenon by which an animal's early experience permanently determines its subsequent behaviour, and a pioneer in pupillometrics, a field of psychology based on thoughts and emotions as revealed through the eye. The pupil, according to Hess, is the body's natural lie detector and a type of window to the brain. He found that changes in attitude can be detected by measuring changes in pupil size, and that the enlarged or constricted pupils can also affect the attitude and responses of the person who observes them.
Read The Tell-tale Eye: How Your Eyes Reveal Hidden Thoughts and Emotions (1975) Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Ray Birthwhistell b. 1918
Ray L Birthwhistell coined the terms kinesics (meaning ‘the study of body‐motion as related to the non‐verbal aspects of interpersonal communication’) and kine (the smallest observable unit of body movement). He saw that a small number of movement types combined to form larger structural units. Birthwhistell established kinesics as a field of enquiry and research to which he contributed for 20 years analysing people talking and examined how their gestures were used to emphasise and illustrate. His in depth observation led to him proposing a set of categories that characterised movements witnessed (kinesics) making identifiable social actions. He believed body‐motion communication to be systemic, socially learned and communicative behaviours unless proven otherwise, and argued that human communication needs and uses all the senses. Birthwhistell estimated that no more than about a third of the social meaning of a conversation (or interaction) is carried by the words. He proposed that gestures and movements convey information that is coded and patterned differently in various cultures; and that people’s preferred or typical postures reflected their past.
Read Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body motion communication. (1970) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Julius Fast b. 1919
An American author of both fiction and non-fiction, Julian Fast helped to popularise the term body language and brought the subject to a broad audience with his bestselling book Body Language, so well received it spawned several sequels, including The Body Language of Sex, Power and Aggression, Body Politics, The Body Book, and Talking Between the Lines: How We Mean More Than We Say, which he co-wrote with his wife Barbara Sher. Fast analysed the unconscious messages sent out by the human body, emphasising the use of nonverbal communication as a way of finding out hidden things about others. For many readers, it was Fast that introduced kinesics and the science of decoding unconscious human behaviour to reveal our hidden thoughts.
Read Body Language (1970) Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
Albert E Scheflen b. 1920
The psychiatrist Albert Scheflen explored the concepts of speech, meaning, kinesics, posture, interaction, setting and culture. His work on human communication, especially nonverbal, is based upon lower and earlier primate development as well as culturally learned behaviour. He writes well on the nature of our behaviour in its relation to space and time and explores the unconscious rules that govern much of our individual and group behaviour. Scheflen embraced new holistic perspective on human interaction, describing how our physiological state changes when we meet someone. Incorporating his knowledge of nonhuman primate communication, and the similarities in their social world and interactive processes, he came across commonly recognisable, standard configurations, with rules that determine when and where they occur. For example, we habitually use certain sequences of actions and also mirror who become comfortable with. This postural congruence, being affected by peers, naturally varies, like dialect, between communities. His observations of conversations are equally revealing, such as the shifting of head posture to mark the completion of a point made.
Read: Body Language and the Social Order: Communication As Behavioral Control (1972) Prentice Hall Direct.
Erving Goffman b. 1922
The sociologist, social psychologist, and writer Erving Goffman made significant contributions to our understanding of humans through his detailed studies of face-to-face interaction and social customs in many regions. Concerned with everyday behaviour or ‘interaction order’, he added to the concepts of framing, game theory, interactions and linguistics. Within the discipline of communication Goffman has influenced research into language and social interaction. His work on ‘impression management’ fits well into the nonverbal communication cannon, and he highlighted the importance for people to see themselves as others see them. He saw language, posture, gaze and gesture as a holistic arrangement but also discovered subtle ways in which we present acceptable images by concealing certain information considered unsuitable for a particular context.
Read The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) Anchor
Ralph V Exline b. 1922
Ralph Exline and his colleagues demonstrated that nonverbal cues operate by signalling and maintaining dominance and power, and showed that sex differences could be explained by power–dominance relationships that were communicated nonverbally. His work on visual behaviour as an aspect of power included studies of presidential debates in which he built on his work linking gestures and speech. Exline argued that people who fail to show fluid body movements are perceived as being less competent; he defined visual dominance as looking while speaking as opposed to listening; showed how staring can be a threat gesture; and that we often avert our gaze when told bad news or are experiencing cognitive difficulty. Exline also explored the visual basis for judgments of competence in a stressful situation.
Read Exline, R V (1971) Visual interaction: the glances of power and preference. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 163-206.
Carroll Ellis Izard b. 1923
Carroll Izard conducted developmental and cross-cultural research on the activation, expression, experience, and function of emotion. The relevance of emotions to our daily lives was Izard’s focus and he argued that if you had an emotion, on some level you produced its expression. Izard studied infants tested his Emotions Course for Young Children, stating that, from 10 weeks of age, infants are capable of several basic emotions of interest. He also undertook empirical studies into the facial feedback hypothesis according to which emotions which have different functions also cause facial expressions which in turn provide us with cues about what emotion a person is feeling.
Read The Face of Emotion (1971) New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Gerard Irwin Nierenberg b. 1923
Gerard Nierenberg was an American lawyer, author, and expert in negotiation and communication strategy. He founded the Negotiation Institute, and wrote twenty-three books on the subjects of negotiation, communication and effective sales techniques. Amongst his titles was a bestselling work on body language written with Henry Calero. Nierenberg’s proven techniques for gaining control of negotiations and detecting lies are presented in an accessible manner together with a guide to recognising signals of affection and sexual attraction, and advice on gaining command of business and social situations. Nierenberg believed that we often ignore the information available from others’ gestures, feedback that should lead us to act in order to bring about a desired change in results.
Read How to read a person like a book (1971) written with Henry H Calero. New York: Pocket Books.
Michael Argyle b. 1925
Professor Michael Argyle was a pioneer in the experimental study of nonverbal behaviour and helped define the scope of social psychology in academic departments. He made modifications to Charles Berner’s communication cycle, involving six steps: someone decides to communicate an idea, encodes it, and sends it; someone else receives it, decodes it and understands it. Argyle’s studies into gaze and mutual gaze behaviour included cultural differences, gaze duration, and its role in conversation regulation. He also identified the ways in which conscious touch takes place, and how feedback demonstrates understanding. Among his many conclusions were that a greater importance is placed on nonverbal behaviour over what’s actually spoken when it comes to attitude assumptions (NV 12.5x more powerful) and the handling of immediate social relationships; that increased eye contact increases liking and helps ensure the smooth flow of conversation; and that the amount of eye contact decreases if a speaker stands closer to the listener than would normally be comfortable.
Read Bodily Communication (1975) New York, NY: Methuen
Robert Plutchik b. 1927
The professor, psychologist and author Robert Plutchik’s research interests included the study of emotions, the study of suicide and violence, and the study of the psychotherapy process. Plutchik’s prototype model Wheel of Emotions (1980) takes into account various forms and definitions of emotion and related theories, proposing an all-encompassing theory. His eight basic coloured emotions were sorrow, dislike, anger, fear, anticipation, pleasure, acceptance and surprise, and with his graph, new colours could be created with emotions combined, to create new ones, e.g. fear and surprise = alarm. His 2D wheel and conical 3D model of emotions have helped people understand his psychoevolutionary theory of emotion and how emotions are related. Plutchik’s eight primary emotions were coordinated in pairs of opposites, such as anticipation with surprise. Plutchik proposed the view that the study of emotion is a subject in its own right.
Read Emotions and Life (2002) American Psychological Association.
Desmond J Morris b. 1928
Desmond Morris is a zoologist turned ethologist whose observations of humans made the pages of many a bestselling work including The Naked Ape (1967). Morris covered so much ground that it’s difficult to do justice to his influence on the study of body language and nonverbal communication. He studied humans as he had once studied animals, stepping back and removing prejudices to examine us as subjects of enquiry. Amongst his more interesting theories are our ‘genetic suggestion’ via anatomy; whilst his categorising of gestures and actions created terminology that remains in use today. A true master who has done more than anyone to bring the study of our evolved actions into the public domain.
Read Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour (1977) London: Jonathan Cope.
Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt b. 1928
Like Morris, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfield applied ethology to humans by researching them in a perspective usually reserved for the study of other animals. He is the founder of the research branch Human Ethology and headed up his own research unit. With his Human Ethology Film Archive and an impressive life's work on publications, Eibl-Eibesfeldt held one of the world's largest comparative cultural documentary archive about human behaviour. He is the author of many books such as Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns and Human Ethology and his research towards evolutionary biology of human perception, sensation, thought and behaviour includes the origin of kissing, and the eyebrow flash as way of recognising and greeting.
Read Ethology: The Biology of Behaviour (1975) New York, NY: Holt, Renehart and Winston.
Robert Sommer b. 1929
The Environmental Psychologist and author Robert Sommer’s writing includes research in mental hospitals, libraries, classrooms, and living spaces. He is best known for his work on the influence of the environment on human activities and has consulted on the design of bicycle paths, residence halls, geriatric housing, airports, offices, prisons, farmers’ markets, and other facilities. Realising that patients preferred to keep certain distances between themselves and others, Sommer came to coin the term ‘person space’ distinguishing between this and territory - notably that personal space is carried around while territory is relatively stationary. We mark the boundaries of our territory, whilst our personal boundaries are invisible. Like animals, humans are primed to respond if our space or territory is intruded upon uninvited.
Read Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design (1969) (Spectrum Books)
David McNeill b. 1933
David McNeill is a psychologist, psycholinguist and writer, specialising in the relationship of language to thought, and the gestures that accompany discourse. McNeill studied videos of stimulus stories being retold "together with their co-occurring spontaneous gestures" by speakers of different languages, ages and abilities. McNeill found that body gestures, rather than being unrelated to spoken content, worked together with words to convey true meaning. Gestures can replace speech but should therefore be typically considered jointly as integral components of communication, emphasising and supporting each other. He hypothesised that the brain circuits used in language could not have evolved without gestures, and that there remains a thought-language-hand link, with many of our hand movements being spontaneous accompaniments to informal speech. His conclusions included that speech and gesture may present different pictures but jointly give clearer insight; that gestures can help us discover what’s highlighted (relevant and not); gestures can present an image of the invisible or abstract; and that they can be symbolic. McNeill also produced a Gesture-Space Diagram.
Read Gesture and Thought (2005) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robert Rosenthal b. 1933
Much of Professor Robert Rosenthal’s work has focused on nonverbal communication, particularly its influence on expectations: for example, in doctor-patient, student-teacher or manager-employee situations. His interests include self-fulfilling prophecies, which he explored in a well-known study of the Pygmalion Effect: the effect of teachers' expectations on students. Using different approaches to nonverbal measurement, Rosenthal found that a teacher’s expectations about a child’s behaviour has a firm influence on how they actually behave; he studied doctors’ sensitivity to nonverbal behaviours; discovered delay tactics in deception; and his demonstrations of thin slicing made for some classic studies. In his study of rapport at different stages of an interpersonal relationship, he examined coordination, matching and synchrony, something he found with mother-infant interactions.
Read Skill in Nonverbal Communication: Individual Differences (1979) Rosenthal, R (ed.). Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Ham
Paul Ekman b. 1934
Paul Ekman is a renowned expert in emotions research and nonverbal communication, specialising in emotions, facial expressions and deception. In the 1960s he travelled to Papua New Guinea to study the nonverbal behaviour of the Fore people, an isolated group, and provided research supporting that Darwin was correct in writing that there are universal facial expressions (for the six basic emotions). Much of Ekman’s focus has been on why and when we become emotional and what happens when we do. His ground-breaking inquiry into lying and the methods for uncovering lies has helped people understand why it’s so difficult to spot a lie. In 1978, along with Wallace V Friesen, Ekman developed the Facial Action Coding System, a tool for objectively measuring facial movement. He also made an important contribution in the area of hand gestures, defining the terms illustrators (hand movement emphasizing speech rhythm), affective displays ( movements with facial gestures that displaying specific emotions), regulators (that control, adjust, and sustain the flow of a conversation), adapters (adjustments that make the person more comfortable) and emblems (a symbolic hand movement with a verbal meaning known to a particular group).
Read Emotions Revealed (2003) Henry Holt and Co.
Jane Goodall b. 1934
World-renowned primatologist, conservationist, and humanitarian Jane Goodall studied our cousins, chimpanzees, for forty years becoming one of the world's most honoured scientists. Goodall was a young secretarial school graduate when the legendary Louis Leakey chose her to undertake a landmark study of chimpanzees in the wild. She has provided an absorbing account of her early years at Gombe Stream Reserve, telling us of the remarkable discoveries she made as she got to know the chimps and they got to know her. In the Shadow of Man tells the story of one of the world's greatest scientific adventures. Equipped with little more than a notebook, binoculars, and her fascination with wildlife, Goodall braved a realm of unknowns to give the world a remarkable window into humankind’s closest living relatives.
Read In the Shadow of Man (1971) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Adam Kendon b. 1934
Adam Kendon, zoologist and experimental psychology, worked on face-to-face interaction, sign languages, and gesture becoming an authority on the subjects and the history of their study. His observed how these nonverbal signals relate to spoken language, his focus including work on Australian Aboriginal sign languages. In developing a general framework for understanding gestures he was able to apply the same rigorous semiotic analysis that had previously been applied to spoken language. According to Kendon gestures are as important as speech as a representative of meaning and has a place in the theories of language origin. He developed a Gesture Continuum defining five different kinds of gestures. In his analysis of everyday conversations he demonstrated the varied role of gestures and how they vary according to cultural and language differences. Kendon’s analysis of conversation also showed how eye movements affect the flow of conversation signalling turn-taking, including that people look nearly twice as much when listening than speaking.
Read Visible Action as Utterance (2004) Cambridge University Press
William S Condon b. 1934, unconfirmed
W. S. Condon began his research in human communication in 1964 using a frame-by-frame video recording (1/25th of a second) to analyse people talking (and listening) in conversation, an area that maintained his interest for decades of future research. Through his pioneering research Condon noticed ‘self-synchrony’, that the speaker’s interlocking systems worked rhythmically; and that there were movements that seemed to co-occur between those of the listener and the speaker, called ‘interactional synchrony’. In his quest to help define gesture, Condon’s video observations could extend beyond those noticed by the naked eye, including micro movements. He recorded segments of body movement, and this microanalysis allowed for the two apparently disparate systems to be studied in terms of how they integrate (co-occur) during speech and organizations of change in movement (correlated with articulatory changes), as well as movement during pauses and silences.
Read Speech and Body Motion Synchrony of the Speaker-Hearer (1971) In D. L. Horton and J. J. Jenkins (Eds.), Perception of Language, Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 150–173.Condon, W. S.
Russell Dale Guthrie b. 1936
The zoologist, professor and writer R Dale Guthrie writes well on the ways humans (and other animals) establish status and attract mates. Our physical signals and behaviours originating in childhood are discussed in insightful ways. Guthrie has written extensively on prehistoric life, his opinions informed by such sources as animal remains and cave paintings. Guthrie believed himself to be working in a new discipline he called 'Human Social Anatomy' blending paleontology and anthropology, human ethology and human evolution with social psychology. He wrote of our ‘body hot spots’, features that have evolved to improve an individual's chances of producing offspring that survive to breed a third generation. He examines how visual status and ‘organs’ can help with threat displays, copulatory lures and the facilitation of cooperation, and how the antithesis of these can also be advantageous.
Read Body Hot Spots (1976) Van Nostrand Reinhold
Emanuel Abraham Schegloff b. 1937
Emanuel Schegloff was a professor of Sociology who, along with Harvey Sacks and Gail Jefferson, is regarded as the creator of the field of Conversation Analysis. The research, which used audio and video recordings of naturally occurring conversations, enabled Schegloff to discover new areas for social science inquiry. Through his detailed naturalistic study of interaction and people’s experience of it, he went on to write over 100 publications, covering a broad range of topics. Schegloff observed that hand gesturing is a speaker’s phenomenon, and that listeners rarely gesture with their hands. His work included all manners of turn-taking including the negotiating of traffic but it was his discussions on the turn-taking system used for conversation that holds the most interest. He described this turn-taking system (for conversation) in terms of two components and a set of rules.
Read Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in Conversation Analysis (2007) Cambridge University Press.
Mark Knapp b. 1938
Professor Mark Knapp is internationally known for his research and writing on nonverbal communication and human relationships. A professor, consultant, lecturer, trainer and author, Knapp has helped many individuals, businesses and groups with their nonverbal communication, something he classifies as being almost all human communication, except the spoken or written word. His work includes studies into touch (one of our earliest and most basic forms of communication), hand gestures (which must be consistent and synchronised with our words), honesty (which we emphasise through our hands), lying and deception. His published research also included greeting and parting behaviours, conversational starting, turn-taking and end signalling, and play behaviour. Among his findings are that the congenitally blind still cover their eyes when hearing bad news.
Read Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction (1972) New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Albert Mehrabian b. 1939
Engineer turned psychology professor Albert Mehrabian is best known for the research in the role of non-verbal communication which led to his 7-38-55 rule. This idea, that the words account for 7%, tone of voice for 38%, and body language accounts for 55% of liking, has been widely misunderstood and cited. He has served as consulting editor to Sociometry, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Psychology, and has authored or co-authored 20 books. Mehrabian’s experiments have helped identify nonverbal and subtle ways in which one conveys like-dislike, power and leadership, discomfort and insecurity, social attractiveness, or persuasiveness. His contributions include a three-dimensional mathematical model for the precise and general description and measurement of emotions and individual differences. Mehrabian is of much more value than his famous rule, finding much of interest such as that liars talk less and more slowly; and that people are more relaxed in the presence of someone of inferior status, and more most tense if their company has a perceived superior status.
Read Nonverbal Communication (1972) Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.
David B Givens b. 1943 (approx)
Anthropologist David Givens is the director of the Centre for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, Washington. He has been a consultant for Pfizer, Epson, Wendy’s, Dell, Unilever, and Best Buy, and teaches Communication and Leadership in the graduate program of the School of Professional Studies at Gonzaga University. In his books, which include Crime Signals, Love Signals and The Nonverbal Dictionary of gestures, signs and body language cues, Givens looks at how and why we behave as we do, as animals do, such as our metalis muscle, which covers the chin and causes the skin to quiver, being a muscle that reflects emotion. Our primal behaviours and influences are discussed, applying greed, trust and deception to contemporary, practical settings.
Read Your Body at Work: A guide to sight-reading the body language of business, bosses, and boardrooms. (2010) NY: St Martin’s Press
Chris L Kleinke b. 1944
The psychology professor Chris Kleinke has conducted a number of key experiments into nonverbal behaviour. He found that people engaging in positive facial expressions increased positive moods and likewise with negative facial expressions and decreased mood, effects that were enhanced when participants viewed themselves in a mirror. Mutual gaze and touch also provided interesting ground for research especially concerning romantic attraction and likability ratings. His work into the effects of cultural context and proxemics on eye gaze, touch and compliance are important contributions, as is how honesty is affected by unconsciously felt touch.
Read Gaze and eye contact: A research review. (1986) Psychological Bulletin, 100, 78-100.
Peter Collett b. 1945
Dr Peter Collett is a psychologist was a member of staff at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, where he taught and did research. Collett was one of the authors behind the book Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, which not only looked at gestures in details, but studies their cultural differences. Building on this collection, Collett wrote his own book on tells, those actions that can provide insight into what someone is thinking, even if that person doesn’t know it themselves. A widely acknowledged expert on body language, he often writes articles or produces videos which attend to famous people’s state of minds, deciphered from their actions. In the style of Desmond Morris, whom he has worked with, Collett not only shows how tells work but attempts to explain their origin.
Read The Book of Tells: How To Read People’s Minds From Their Actions (2003) Bantam
Judee K Burgoon b.1948
Professor Judee Burgoon has worked in different aspects of interpersonal and nonverbal communication and deception. She has authored (or edited) 13 books and published nearly 300 articles, chapters and reviews. The communication theories with which she is most notably linked are: interpersonal adaptation theory (which focuses on how pairs of communicators coordinate their communication), expectancy violations theory (building upon Hall's work on proxemics and personal space, the theory shows that unexpected behaviour causes arousal and uncertainty in people, and people then look to explain the violation in order to better predict another's behaviour) and interpersonal deception theory (when liars attempt to manipulate messages, which may cause them apprehension about being detected). Burgoon was aware of the importance of nonverbal messages and discussed how expressing emotions can affect our popularity, relationships, and physical and mental health. She linked eye contact with perceived competence, and investigated gaze’s effect on attraction, liking and credibility.
Read The Unspoken Dialogue (1978) Houghton Mifflin School
Geoffrey Beattie b. 1952
Professor of Psychology Geoff Beattie is one of the leading international figures on nonverbal communication and has written (or contributed to) many excellent books and studies. His academic publications have appeared in a wide variety of international journals. Beattie argues that gestures reflect aspects of our thinking but in a different way to verbal language, and that spontaneous hand movements often communicate a good deal more than they intend to. These unconscious movements can give us real insight into people's underlying implicit attitudes, with gestures rationed to the most important information. With research into phone and face-to-face conversations, to the beach, Beattie has lots to say about mirroring, the use of gestures to aid memory, attraction, and lots more. Building on the work of McNeill he has made a vital contribution to the role of our hands in communication.
Read Rethinking Body Language: How Hand Movements Reveal Hidden Thoughts (2016) Routledge.
Joe Navarro b. 1953
Joe Navarro worked for the FBI as both as an agent and supervisor in the areas of counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Through his work he was able to study, refine and apply the science of non-verbal communications, on which and he’s become one of the world’s foremost authorities writing articles and books for the past 30 years. He also trains people to read people. Navarro is particularly strong on the warning signs of dangerous personalities, the honesty of the feet (as intention/interest signals), our first fear (freeze) response, the significance of the ventral region, and perception management.
Read Louder Than Words (2010) Joe Navarro
Bella M. DePaulo b. 1954
Professor Bella DePaulo is an expert on the psychology of lying and detecting lies. Spanning more than three decades, DePaulo’s studies and research on deception have resulted in dozens of published papers and chapters and several books. With so-called professional “lie detectors” (police, customs officials…) being no more accurate at detecting deception than laypersons, DePaulo helps us understand why we are so bad at detecting deception (and so good at lying, showing what science has to say about deception; people’s beliefs and stereotypes, sex differences, big liars and everyday lies. Her work on the visual channels involved is an important contribution to the field, as is her writing on our unconscious gut-level detection. In more recent years DePaulo has turned her attention to single life and and how we live now.
Read The Psychology of Lying and Detecting Lies (2018) Amazon Digital Services LLC
David Matsumoto b. 1959
Dr. David Matsumoto, is a renowned expert in the field of microexpressions, gesture, nonverbal behaviour, culture and emotion. The Professor of Psychology has published over 400+ articles, manuscripts, book chapters and books on these subjects. Matsumoto is an Editorial Board Member for Personality and Social Psychology Review, Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, Motivation and Emotion, Cognition and Emotion, and Human Communication. His many studies include recent work on microexpressions (expressions that last less than ½ a second), deception, gesture frequency, ethnic and cultural differences. Matsumoto promotes the use of active listening and the value in looking at clusters, and not just observing through one channel. He is the director of Humintell.com, a company that provides training to individuals and organizations in these fields, and Detectdecpetion.com.
Read Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications (2012) Sage Publications.
Nalini Ambady b. 1959
Psychology professor Nalinini Ambady was a social psychologist and leading expert on nonverbal behaviour and interpersonal perception. Her findings have had important implications for the areas of personality judgment, impression formation, and nonverbal behavior. Her research found that humans perceive nonverbal cues in response to novel people or situations, and that the information gleaned from an instant impression is often as powerful as information gained by getting to know a situation or person over a longer period of time. This ‘thin slicing’ a term she coined with Robert Rosenthal, refers to these instantaneous non-verbal cues. Ambady's thin slicing experiments include interesting finding for students’ ratings of teachers, sexual orientation and clinical-patient interaction.
Read Ambady, N., Hallahan, M and Conner, B (1999) Accuracy of judgements of sexual orientation from thin slices of behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 538-47
Aldert Vrij b. 1960
A Senior Lecturer turned Professor of Applied Social Psychology, Aldert Vrij is a member of the International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology (ICRFP) within the Department of Psychology. His research includes the nonverbal and verbal cues to deception, and lie detection, and he has published more than 500 articles on these subjects. Vrij has written a comprehensive text about deception and lie detection in which he describes the lie detection tools used to date and discusses the problems related to these tools, in addition to providing guidelines on how to improve lie detection. Vrij found that the assumption people have about liars having shifty eyes are wrong, with liars actually looking straight at the receiver, perhaps making sure they are being believed.
Read Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities. (2008) Chichester: Wiley
Allan Pease b. 1962
The motivational speaker Allan Pease has no education in psychology, neuroscience, or psychiatry, but has managed to establish himself as an expert on relationships and body language. He is the author of 18 bestselling books, many of them co-written with his wife Barbara, and he teaches simple, field-tested skills and techniques that show how to decode other people's behaviour. Pease is particularly strong in the area of handshakes, business encounters, sex differences and the body language of attraction and love. The Peases have conducted their own experiments such as the effect of furniture arrangements on responsiveness. Together with Barbara he runs Pease International and they produce videos, training courses and seminars for business and governments worldwide.
Read The Definitive Book of Body Language (2004) Bantam.
Grey Hartley b. 1963 (approx)
Greg Hartley was an Arabic speaking interrogator, deployed as interrogation and language support for a Special Forces operation and he has been recognized by the US army for his expertise. Since leaving the army he has continued his career as a body language and behaviour expert, appearing on Podcasts, Radio and Television, and authoring ten books on body language. He is a big believer in the importance of baselining. He also makes up one quarter of The Behavior Panel.
Read Get People to do What You Want (2005) Crimson.
Alexander Todorov b. 1968
A professor of psychology, Alexander Todorov’s research in the areas of social cognition and person perception have often focused on first impressions. With a particular emphasis on the social dimensions of face perception, he has used multiple methods: from behavioural and fMRI experiments investigating evaluative processes to building of computational models identifying the perceptual properties of objects and faces evoking specific evaluations. Todorov describes how we have evolved these using a network of brain regions dedicated to the processing of faces, suggesting that the impressions we draw from faces reveal a map of our own biases and stereotypes. His work includes examining how we use snap judgments of faces to predict, and what implications this has.
Read Face Value (2017) Princeton University Press
Mark Bowden b. 1971
Mark Bowden is a world renowned author, trainer and engaging keynote speaker on human communication, body language and behaviour in business. He is the creator of TRUTHPLANE™, a communication training company and unique methodology for anyone who has to communicate to an audience with impact. Bowden has a background in theatre and anthropology, both of which feed nicely into his work. His advice for public speakers is particularly strong: if you’ve ever wondered what to do with your hands, Bowden’s your man. With an emphasis on the limbic system (reptilian brain), Bowden successfully applies our ancient instincts (evolved responses) to everyday life.
Read Winning Body Language for Sales Professionals (2012) McGraw-Hill Education
Henrik Fexeus b. 1971
A Swedish mentalist and author of ten books on practical psychology and influence, Henrik Fexeus has worked as psychological illusionist and mind reader, and hosting his own TV-show for Sweden’s largest broadcaster. With a focus on body language, Fexeus has trained police and custom officials. His understanding of communication techniques and mental skills has given new practical meaning to the phrase “mind reading”. He writes about how to decipher the hidden thoughts and feelings of others and how to influence others. Using new concept mind reading – some rooted in magic/illusion/mentalism – he teaches practical applications for everyday life, such as interviews, dates and business deals/. Check out this video (below) on mirroring.
Read The Art of Reading Minds (2012) Stockholm Text
Eric Goulard b. 1973
Eric Goulard is a consultant and trainer in communication, customer relations, and management. Based in Lille, France, he’s an expert in behavioural communication, he is specialized in the detection of lies and in techniques of persuasion. Goulard has written several books and published many writings, including on www.nonverbal.expert. Passionate about cognitive and behavioural sciences for over 25 years he teaches people how to decrypt the attitudes and intentions of others through their demeanour, gestures and voice for better business situations and private lives. He had written several books and the subject and offers online education.
Read Body Language Secrets Revealed (2013) CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Patryk Wezowski b. 1977
Married couple Patryk and Kasia Wezowski have developed many non-verbal communication training programs tailored for sales, recruitment, leadership, branding and negotiations. They are bestselling authors of books on micro expressions and body language and are working a new film IMPACT, a cinematic documentary about body language. Patryk Wezowski is the founder of the Center for Body Language, where their various programs can be accessed. Wezoski puts a strong focus on the reading – and importance - of micro expressions, but many other areas of nonverbal research have been put to good use in explaining what behaviours contribute to positive and negative body language. Wezowski also developed the BLINK Conversation Technique.
Read Without Saying A Word: Master The Science Of Body Language And Maximize Your
Success (2018)
Vanessa Van Edwards b. 1985
Vanessa Van Edwards is the Lead Investigator at ScienceofPeople.com, the founder of People School, a bestselling author, and Body Language trainer (and trainer of trainers). Her website and media appearances (and YouTube videos) are highly accessible, presenting cutting-edge scientific research in public-friendly ways. Van Edwards’ science-based framework helps people improve their EQ, charisma, and communication skills. With her lab and dedicated team in Portland, Van Edwards collates and produces research that aim to support the application of people skills or hacks.
Read Cues (2022) Penguin
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