Hands are an important means of human nonverbal communication. This article will explore the various hand gestures and their meanings with the aid of pictures. Do you know why humans rule the earth? What do you think has given us the greatest edge over other species? Why, among all the primates, only the Homo sapiens …
When people shake hands, they don’t just shake hands. They also convey attitudes and intentions. In this article, we’ll explore the different types of handshakes and what they mean. Long time ago, when humans had not yet developed a full-fledged spoken language, they communicated mostly through grunts and body language gestures.1 At that time, hands …
The ‘hands clasped in front’ body language gesture is displayed in three major ways. Clasped hands in front of the face, hands clasped on a desk or a lap, and, whilst standing, hands clasped over the lower abdomen. When a person assumes this gesture, they are exercising some sort of ‘self-restraint’. They’re symbolically ‘clenching’ themselves back …
This article will discuss the meaning of the steeple hand gesture- a gesture commonly observed in professional and other conversational settings. Before I go into what the steepling hand gesture looks like and what it means, I want you to imagine the following scenario: You’re playing chess and have reached a crucial moment in the …
‘Crossed arms’ is perhaps the most common body language gesture that we come across in our day-to-day lives. Crossing arms across the chest is a classic gesture of defensiveness. This defensiveness usually manifests as discomfort, uneasiness, shyness, or insecurity. When a person feels threatened by a situation, they cross their arms over their chest, creating a barrier that …
In this post, we’ll discuss the various shoulder movements and what they can reveal about their mental state. Shoulder shrug Raising the shoulders is a submissive gesture that implies some sort of apology. We shrug our shoulders when we want to communicate the message, ‘Sorry, I can’t do anything about it’ or ‘Sorry, I don’t know’ …
Your head and neck gestures reveal much more about your attitude than you think. When we come into contact with other people, their head (face, in particular) is what we look most at. Therefore, it makes sense to understand what signals we’re giving off with our head and neck movements Head gestures- The head nod …
Reading body language is not easy. People who have mastered non-verbal communication have done so with years of practice. However, you can jump the learning curve by keeping in mind some of the common pitfalls that most people tend to fall in when they first begin to read body language. Here are the things that you need to …
While communicating with others, we don’t just randomly move our bodies and make gestures. The gestures that we make, our various body movements and the facial expressions we put on are all connected to the way we are feeling at any particular moment. In other words, our body language is an outward expression of our inner …
What’s behind feeling lost and out of sorts? You know, that emotional state you’re in where you feel your life’s out of order. Your friend gives you a call asking you to hang out, but you say you’re not in the mood. What does not being in a mood mean? Your current emotional state is …