When you wring your hand or interlace your fingers. So when he start to gesture it probably means that he is more confident at the moment or that he is speaking about something important to him. A shy person don’t tend to gesture a lot. So that you know what is normal for this person. To use this you of course have to establish a baseline first. On the other hand, when we lie or have low confidence about what we are speaking, we tend to not have a clear picture in our mind. This often leads to a lot of hand gesturing. When people lie they tend to gesture less, which can be because of the fear of getting caught.Īlso, people who are confident about what they are speaking have a clear picture in their mind and they do what they can to get their message across. When silent hands can be an indication of lying. We simply didn’t have any reason to keep gesturing. If we’re telling a story and are gesturing a lot and when we’re done telling the story we also stop the gesturing. With this nonverbal signal it’s of course extra important to look at the context. In the same way an animal can freeze when it feels threatened. It’s a freeze response, our brain feels threatened and freezes our hands so that we attract less attention. When they go from a lot of gesturing to suddenly laying still. I call it silent hands when hands suddenly freezes. So you might guess that when we put our thumbs in the pocket it indicates low confidence. When we put our hands in the pocket with thumbs sticking out it was a high-status or high confidence display. Just to clarify, when we interlace our fingers without the thumbs pointing upwards. Interlacing fingers without thumbs pointed upwards This is what I mean when I say that the thumbs can play a big role in how we interpret a body language signal. If the thumbs suddenly disappear, depending on the context of course. When we interlace our fingers, with our thumbs pointed upwards, it’s a sign of comfort and positive feelings. Interlacing fingers with thumbs pointed upwards It’s a high-status or high confidence display. When someone has their hand in their coat pocket with only their thumb sticking out. The way our thumbs are pointing can completely change the meaning of a nonverbal signal. In some nonverbal signals our thumbs play a significant role. But even though it’s such an obvious nonverbal signal, you can still see people do this unconsciously. Politicians today are well aware of their body language and how it makes people watching them feel. But he’s probably aware that he’s doing it. If you want to see this in action you can look at any interview with Donald Trump, he almost always does this. Palms moving away from each other forming a triangular shape. Hand steepling is when fingers are spread out and fingertips are touching those of the other hand. This is a powerful signal of high confidence. There are countless YouTube videos of this and you can see their hands instantly start to shake out of control because of their excitement. For example when someone meets their celebrity crush or when they win the lottery. It’s also as obvious when someone is really excited. You can see the whole paper shake like it has come alive as the student is meeting his worst fear. What makes it even more visible is if they’re holding an object in their hand, especially a paper. This is often seen in school when students are forced to practice public speaking. The biggest fear of many people are public speaking. You have probably seen this during a presentation. There are two reasons behind shaking hands, it’s either the cause of stress or excitement. Now let’s dive into some basic body language of the hands. It’s when his blink rate deviates from his baseline that we gain information. A lot of eye blinking indicates stress, but if a person always blinks a lot, it doesn’t tell us much. It’s when a person deviates from his baseline that we get important information. It’s also as important to look at the context and to draw a baseline.

You draw conclusions by looking at multiple nonverbal signals pointing you to the same answer. Don’t draw any conclusions just because of one sign. I say this in every article, but there’s a reason behind that. The nonverbal signals that you see the most in everyday situations.

In this article you’re going to learn some basic body language of the hands.

Closed hands body language