Can You Really Read A person's Body Language?

One way of getting people to be more open to your ideas and suggestions is to be able to read their body language, interpret it, and change your strategy accordingly.

But how can we read people's body language?

Well for instance, if someone shows interest in what you say there are some tell tale movements that can give you clues.

They point their feet toward you.

They tilt their head forward.

The wideness of their eyes: The wider they are the more interested they usually are.

They maintain eye contact for more than 60% of the time.

They smile frequently. You have to be careful with this one though, an oblong smile back behind both sets of teeth is usually a fake smile.

If they tend to agree they will display signs like:

The palms of their hands are open

They put their hands flat on the table

They nod their heads

They unbutton their jackets

So what are some of the signs that people are lying?

They constantly clear their throat or swallow.

They tap their hands or feet.

They blink very fast.

They look elsewhere and avoid eye contact.

They shift position from one place to another.

As you can see this is just a small sample of ideas, and this subject is something that has to be studied for someone to become good at it. People also behave out of character sometimes, especially in high stress situations like in a job interview for example, so reading them becomes more difficult and you need more than one or two gestures to be accurate.