Kinesics
By Tan Wei Heng, Toh Wei Chuan,
Khor Yuk Liang, Ch'ng Liyang William
Getting A Leg Up on Body Language
Why are the feet and legs such accurate reflectors of our sentiments? For millions of years, long before humans spoke, our legs and feet reacted to environmental threats. The feet and legs have been the primary means of locomotion for the human species. They are the principal means by which we have manoeuvred, escaped, and survived. This survival regimen, retained from ancestral heritage, has served us well and continues to do so today. First they freeze, then they attempt to distance themselves, then they prepare to fight and attack.
This freeze, flight, or fight mechanism requires no high-order cognitive processing. It is reactive. This is important evolutionary development benefited the individual as well as the group. Humans survived by seeing and responding to the same threat simultaneously or by reacting to the vigilant actions of others and behave accordingly.
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In our contemporary world, soldiers on patrol will fix their attention on the “point man”. When he freezes, they all freeze. When he lunges for the side of the road, they also take cover. When he charges an ambush, they react in kind. With regard to these life-saving group behaviours, little has changed in five million years.
This ability to communicate nonverbally has assured our survival as a species, and even though today we often cover our legs with clothing and our feet with shoes, our lower limbs still react——not only to threats and stressors—but also to emotions, both negative and positive. Thus, our feet and legs transmit information about what we are sensing, thinking, and feeling.
A few examples of this in our everyday lives:
- jumping up and down is extensions of the celebratory exuberance people exhibited millions of ears ago upon the completion of a successful hunt
- A child may be sitting down to eat, but if she wants to go out and play, notice how her feet sway, how they stretch to reach the floor from a high chair even when the child is not yet finished with her meal
The Most Honest Part of Our Body
More often than not, people will observe the face first, and work their way down until the feet. However, the face is most often used to bluff and conceal true sentiments.
The more 'scientific' approach is the exact opposite. For example, having conducted thousands of interviews, FBI agent Joe Navarro learned to concentrate on the suspect’s feet and legs first, moving upward in observations until finally reading the face last.
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We lie with our faces because that’s what we’ve been taught to do since early childhood. “Don’t make that face,” our parents growl when we honestly react to the food placed in front of us. “At least look happy when your cousins stop by,” they instruct, and you learn to force a smile.
If we couldn’t control our facial expressions, why would the term poker face have any meaning? We know how to put on a so-called party face, but few pay any attention to their own feet and legs, much less to those of others. Many emotions such as nervousness, fear, caution, boredom, restlessness, happiness, shyness, humility, confidence, anger etc can all be manifested through the feet and the legs.
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To decode the world around you and interpret behaviour accurately, watch the feet and the legs; they are truly remarkable and honest in the information they convey. The lower limbs must be viewed as a significant part of the entire body when collecting nonverbal intelligence.