body language reading
Decoding physical cues
Body language reading is the practice of interpreting nonverbal cues—posture, gestures, facial expressions, eye contact—to infer someone's emotions, intentions, or truthfulness.
The skill ranges from casual social awareness to claimed expertise in detecting deception: She's good at reading body language.
Pop psychology has popularized it, though scientific support for reliable "tells" is weaker than commonly believed.
- gesturesExpressive body movements
- postureBody position, alignment
- power poseAssertive body positioning
- expressionConveyed thought or feeling
- microexpressionsBrief involuntary facial signals
cues · signals · stance · fidgeting · crossed arms · closed off · eye contact · gaze · shifty eyes · nervous tic · tells · mirroring · leaning · tension · open palms · openness · defensive · shifty
- empathy skillsempathy, sympathy, compassion, caring, kindness
- empathy trainingactive listening, perspective-taking
- awarenessalertness, aware, attention, cognizance, conscious
- interpretationinterpretive dance, translation, interpreting, translating, construing
- observation skillsattention to detail, attention, detail, patterns, focus
- pseudosciencehomeopathy, astrology, phrenology, numerology, palmistry
body language readingliteral interpretation
Taking words at face value
language, reading, bodies, bodied, bodily, embody, embodied, embodying, disembodied