A Little About Me

I am a psychology student. My interest in psychology comes from my fascination with how people act and why—their underlying motivations, thoughts, and feelings. I like to casually observe people and see what they do and how they act. I find comfort in knowing about the people around me, and my natural curiosity drives me to learn as much as I can about as many people as possible.

Unfortunately, sometimes I don’t get to see people in action. They may just be sitting or standing around and not doing much else. This doesn’t help my pursuit of knowledge, does it? This is where my interest in body language comes in. People give away more information in their posture, leg placement, or even idle hand movement than they realize. The way a person stands in an elevator can give you as much, if not more information about the person’s state of mind than asking them. I started looking for subtle hints, or tells, that indicate a change in a person’s state of mind to figure out how exactly that person is feeling.

I’m still fairly new at this and I’m not an expert by any means, but I’m going to try and give you some basic pointers on what kind of behaviors to look out for and how to apply them in context to the situation. To clarify, there is absolutely no “universal tell” for a lie—this is a myth. A body language cue, or nonverbal behavior, merely tells you that the person in question went through a change in his/her state of mind, and it is up to you to put your observation in context and figure out what that cue means.

By reading my blog, I hope you learn a few easy tricks you can use in your daily lives to figure out how people around you are feeling. A lot of my information comes from the book What Every BODY is Saying, by former-FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro. I may also take pictures to illustrate examples if I think a given behavior calls for it.

Terms to Remember:

Tells
Nonverbal behavior vs. body language (for the purpose of this blog, nonverbal behavior is defined as an observable action made by a person, while body language is the broad collection of information you get from observing that person)