Kansas in heat: non-verbal communication

Thursday, September 3, 2009

George Clooney has narrowed his eyes slightly, adopted a very sincere and warm smile. He’s leaning forward, and never takes his eyes of his partner across the table. Jennifer Lopez has a very similar gaze with narrowed eyes, is clearly leaning forward, smiling, preening, and has an unmistakable head tilt.

I believe we can say Mr. Clooney is a good flirt.

The aforementioned scene is from the movie Out of Sight. All of Clooney’s moves are perfect examples of body language cues that people use consciously or unconsciously to attract a mate. These nonverbal cues are much tougher to control than verbal cues, and therefore are more likely to tell the real truth. Pay attention to the nonverbal cues if the verbal cues someone is giving off are inconsistent. When trying to detect if someone is attracted to us, reading body language and someone’s nonverbal cues is crucial, especially for males. Studies have consistently shown that men much more than women overanalyze a female’s sexual interest. Men tend to attach the slightest of cues and displays of interest to be cues of sexual attraction. Here is a short list of body-language cues that will tell you if someone is truly interested.

The key is to spot signs of interests used in clusters or for a longer period of time. Like in the Clooney/Lopez example, there was a clear cluster of body language interests, which come together to tell the whole story.

Smiling is very powerful for increasing attraction. Research suggests that someone’s smile is the first thing that people notice when forming an initial impression. A smile of interest is one that is a sensual one, one in which the person’s eyes are narrowed, their mouth is slightly open, and their teeth are only partially seen (See Clooney for details, no one does it better).

Eye contact is important. It can really build connection. Someone who makes strong eye contact with eyes narrowed is showing interest. Preening involves adjusting ourselves to look more attractive. This is a definite sign of interest. Females will often stroke their hair or check their jewelry. Loosening of anything should also be a dead giveaway of interest. Men will often fix their ties, collars, lapels or shirt sleeves.

Pay attention to what they do with their drink. If someone lowers their drink, they are removing their barrier and showing interest. Also, if they play with objects, especially a drink, it is a sign they are interested. That extra energy has to travel somewhere and it usually manifests itself in a person playing with objects like glasses, silverware or jewelry.

Mirroring is also a traditional body-language cue used to increase liking. If you find that someone is mirroring your body language it means they are trying to increase your liking of them.

A tilted head means they are interested in you. In my opinion this is one of the easiest body cues to detect, and one of the surest signs of interest.

If you are wondering about cues of disinterest, just think about the opposite of all of these above. A tense person with a closed posture who squeezes and taps objects while touching their face, leaning away, not smiling, having shifty eye contact and keeping their drink high. And when they say they are not interested, they mean it.

In the end it takes practice and experience to be able to monitor your body language and pick up on the cues of others. But once you begin to see it, it will be clear as day. While some might argue for other cues of interest, it is my opinion that one will use and see the majority of these cues. We just need to keep our eyes open.

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