Can You Keep Your Feelings to Yourself?

Actions often speak louder than words.

In fact, they usually precede your words as you walk into view to meet someone. Because light travels faster than sound, people respond more quickly to what they see than what they hear from you. Thus, the way you move and gesture has a huge impact on how people literally see you in that first 7 to 10 seconds that Americans now take to develop a first impression of others.

To establish a first impression of comfort and credibility, remember these three words: lower, slower, and less.

When you first meet, someone talk and move less, with a lower and slower voice rate and level and fewer gestures. You don't have to look comatose, just not speedy. This serves two purposes. First, people subconsciously associate self-confidence and empathy with a slower body style, although it has no provable relationship to these human qualities. Second, humans, like all other animals, need to feel comfortable in a new situation before they can hear other people and begin to form positive feelings toward them.

The most reliable way to feel more comfortable is to get "in sync" with others: a two-step dance. First, minimize your movements and voice in the beginning. This gives others less "data" to process so they can get comfortable with you more quickly. Then, bring out the part of you that looks and sounds most like the person you are with.

Why? Because people are most comfortable with and favorably disposed toward people who look “right” — like them. Although you can't make many changes in the four main ways we are either similar or different (age, sex, ethnicity, and size), you can become more like another person. Children do this instinctively. As adults, we have lost the instinct to get into sync with others, except in the thrall of early romantic love.

Your every move is telling the world what you expect from it.

In fact, as adults, we tend to act more different when we are around people unlike us, thus accentuating our differences and further increasing our sense of discomfort, distrust, and potential for conflict.

How can you become more like someone else? By making your voice rate, volume, and volubility and your number and kind of gestures and other body movements approximate theirs.

Curious about how to read others better? Conversely, would you like some insights on how to cover your feelings when you want to keep them private from others who are around you?

Here's a place to begin. The expression on your face might reveal how you feel, but your body language indicates the intensity of that feeling. We literally leak — to use the scientific term — our feelings. In fact, a system for recording body movement for study (the Effort Shape System) is derived from dance choreography notation and offers a way to attempt to understand which sequences of gesture have which meaning in which cultures.

Some gestures are nearly universal in meaning. For example, watch men in the company of other men they do not like. Their posture becomes more strained, tense, and often rigid. On the other hand, women tend to assume an over-relaxed position with people they dislike.

Body Signs and Their Possible Meaning

Follow this guide to observe physical changes in someone else and discern their possible emotional meaning. Remember, these indicators are not true for everyone.

Sweating: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.

Blinking more: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.

Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal or fear.

Blushing: Might signal embarrassment, shame, anger, or guilt.

Talking louder and faster: Usually signals anger, fear, or other excitement.

Talking slower and softer: Might signal sadness or boredom.

Body gesturing: Signals a negative emotion, usually fear or anger.

Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates the presence of emotion.

Are You Out on a Limb?

Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many gestures usually takes away from the potency of your natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud or at great length diminishes your power and credibility.

Most people cannot help “leaking” their feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to noticing the often subtle signals that indicate strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.

Don’t assume that someone else’s gestures have the same meaning as they would if you were to make them. The only truly universal gesture is the upright open palm, facing away from the person, used to fend off others.

As in all body motion, we reflect an aura of self-assurance through fewer, slower, lower arm gestures. You might find that reducing your gestures and other body movements does actually keep you more calm and able to focus.