Cookies on the Business Insider India website

Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.

17 Tactics For Reading People's Body Language

Drake BaerNov 15, 2014, 00:00 IST

What you say communicates only about half of what people hear.

According to UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian, 55% of the message you convey comes from your body language.

That's why studying body language has such a long history.

None other than Charles Darwin wrote the first academic investigation into body language, his "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," published back in 1872.

Over the past century science has made lots of advances into understanding the many social meanings of body language. Here are 17 of the most useful findings, pulled from Psychology Today, research journals, and a few awesome books.

Max Nisen contributed research to an earlier version of this article.