Whenever you take part to an important conversation, whether it’s a sensitive topic or a conversation with potential damaging financial outcome, you would like to know if information is being held back from you. Gesture analysis is a fundamental skill in business.

Many articles and experts promise these signs could help you identify a lie. Fact is they can’t or at least not directly. What they do show is a “negative” emotion or use of imagination. When someone is making these gestures while speaking (therefore as an active participant to conversation), it’s quite possible that information is being hidden from you.

What can you do whenever you notice these signs? Pay attention to what is being said, at that specific moment, and ask for more details. That will lead to at least one other sign and point you to the next conversation target.

Mouth covering

How it looks: the speaker is trying to cover or touch his/her lips or the whole mouth, with a finger, an object or the whole palm.

Meaning: “speak no evil”. The speaker is trying to stop the words from coming out, either because they are misleading or because he/she feels it might cause a potential damage if uncovered. You can see the origin of this gesture in the way children react when they say a lie and cover their mouth with their whole hand.

Head movement contradicts speech

How it looks: The speaker makes a positive statement (“I will do whatever I can to support you”), but the head shakes left to right suggesting disapproval or refuse. Or the opposite: the speaker is making a negative statement (“I don’t think it looks bad on you”), but the heads nods ‘yes’.

Meaning: When making a false statement it is difficult for most people to control both speech and body language. It’s kind of cute that our body wants us to stay honest. The body’s reaction will always be the true one.

Unusual stare

How it looks: Whenever we talk to someone in a natural way, we blink, we change focus, even if we look people in the eye. An unusual stare would mean someone staring at you without blinking while making a whole (long) statement.

Meaning: There was a saying, which is not far from truth, that “when someone stares you in the eye for more than 5 seconds, that person either wants to f… you or kill you”. Staring too much at someone for whom you feel a sexual attraction, in a social context (vs a private one) would lead to a risk of “overexcitement” which we try to avoid. In case of a confrontation, we obviously have our eyes on the potential adversary. The point is, the other person is going the extra mile to keep eye contact, because “that’s what honest people do”.

Standing very still

How it looks: Picture someone staying stiff like a plank or like a robot while talking to you. This can be a sudden change in the body language. Imagine someone making natural gestures and once a topic is reached, that person becomes stiff.

Meaning: This comes from the fight or flight reaction. Whenever someone is hiding an information (which is a form of lying), that person is at risk of being uncovered. So the context is confrontational, therefore it triggers a fight reaction. That person is ‘en garde’ because he/she has to pay attention to what he/she says.

Sudden speech difficulties

How it sounds and looks: diction is affected. Suddenly, the speech is not so clear anymore. The speaker needs to drink something.

Meaning: salivary flow in time of stress, affects speech. After a while, the mucous membrane of the mouth dries, forcing the speaker to drink (if water is at hand).

I have pointed out on all articles relating to body language that gesture analysis should never be done in isolation. Always take them in context. Gesture analysis show you a path which you can investigate further via conversation. If body language suggests a negative attitude for example, you can try to find out what’s causing it and notice how body language changes as you are creating a more positive emotion.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we will discuss about eye movement showing when imagination is actively used, other body gestures and specific ways to uncover if you were misled.