It would be great if this book of gestures were required reading in university syllabuses. After all, every day non-verbal communication fills our lives with the help of poses, facial expressions and gestures. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of communication in modern world, so understanding sign language will always be a plus in your favor. But let’s first figure out who Piz is and what his creation is about.

Peace is an Australian writer who has dedicated his life to the deep study of body language. He wrote this book back in the 80s (there is already an expanded version), and it sold 20 million copies according to old statistics. Peace became interested in this field at the age of 11, because, according to him, he often had to come into contact with others during his work. Peace worked as a sales agent, selling rubber sponges to earn pocket money.

He made his first million Pis at the age of 21, working for an insurance company. And even then he began teaching colleagues at seminars and trainings.

And now he just enjoys life, travels around the world and performs in public. He holds meetings and writes books at the same time. His wife Barbara accompanies him everywhere and is a co-author of most of Allan Peace's published books. At the same time, he owns his own company, advises manufacturers of global car brands, networks fast food(MacDonald's) and other businesses.

Barbara helps in writing all the books, including the expanded version of the bestseller, which could not have been done without her help. But although these books are also interesting, the essence of the content is the same throughout. They describe a new body language just from a different angle. Here are some of them:

• “Why don’t men listen and women can’t read cards?”
• “Why do men lie and women cry?”
• “How to make a man listen and a woman remain silent”
• “The language of relationships (man and woman)”
• and some others.

Allan Peace and the popularity of his books

Having already sold more than 30 million copies, Peace is considered one of the most successful authors. Fifteen of his books are recognized as global bestsellers, and 9 are number one bestsellers (this is the highest figure in the world of books).

Peace collaborates with giants network business, because it is in such areas that his knowledge helps most. Seminars held around the world have been attracting full halls for many years in a row. Once even Peace came to Russia and came to the “Let Them Talk” show.

What is "Body Language"

In ordinary language, this is an external expression of your emotional state. That is, when you receive emotions, you express yourself through movements, gestures, facial expressions, and so on. The path to understanding a person lies through the study of sign language. Watching any person, in your head, like a constructor, from gestures, circumstances and facial expressions, a full-scale picture is formed about the person’s real feelings.

According to statistics, women are much more successful in this area, and to be more precise, 3-4 times. A woman recognizes a lie much more often than a man.

What is useful in the book

In terms of its usefulness, this book exceeds all expectations and deserves the maximum score. It reveals aspects of social relationships with people. That is, it becomes easier to establish contact with friends, girls, and in general, with everyone around you. After reading, you will interact and understand people better.

In Pisa’s book everything is shown clearly with the help of drawings and descriptions. life situations. You will easily remember what you saw, as if you put a photograph in an album. And pictures of gestures from the book will begin to unconsciously emerge in the dialogue.

The book reveals psychological aspects so deeply that it will even help you correctly arrange the furniture in your office. This in turn will change the attitude of partners and employees towards you.

From the book you can find out when the interlocutor is tired of you and wants to end the conversation. Do you sometimes need to change the topic or style of narration? All this helps to achieve incredible results in communication. And most importantly, it will never become outdated. Because all gestures and facial expressions came to us with evolution. And a person who understands gestures takes the advantage to his side.

In the book you will find a lot of information about the meaning of hand gestures and hand touches various parts body and face (scratching the nose, touching lips, etc.).

Peace, having described the science of gestures, enabled people to avoid unnecessary conflicts, be good communicators and progressive businessmen.

If you were to make a list of must-read books, Allan Pease's Book of Signs would certainly be in the top ten, if not higher. But on the bookshelves there is the second part of Allan Peace's book " New language body movements." This is an expanded version of the publication. It covers even more professions, situations and life moments.

For whom will the book be useful?

Despite the fact that the book of gestures is interesting and easy to read, it is highly likely to be uninteresting, or rather, not in demand by people school age. Simply because young people communicate at a different level compared to adults.

The main audience is all other people, from students, the unemployed to entrepreneurs, accountants, mechanics, directors and so on. Regardless of the position a person holds.

Author's purpose

The new body language described in Allan's book will allow people to self-actualize from A to Z. Thanks to the fact that all information is presented in a humorous manner, it becomes easy to remember.

Reading the book will affect all aspects of life, from your relationship with your girlfriend (boyfriend) to work issues. For example, you will know when your girlfriend is angry, even if she doesn't say it or you can't tell it by her face.

After reading the book of gestures, you will be able to read people like a book and they won’t even know it.

A find for men

The book is useful for men to read, because compared to women, they are not so adapted to communication. This has been laid down at the genetic level since ancient times, where men hunted and women established contacts in their group. But the most important factor is the birth and raising of children. Women simply had to understand children, although they could not speak. Over time, this has become the basis of the subconscious.

• If you read the book of gestures, you will increase your popularity with the opposite sex and be able to make a positive impression on stranger. Because an opinion about a new friend is formed in the first four minutes, this has been proven by scientists. This means that if you misused the first minutes, then later you may have troubles in communication or cooperation.
• In addition to reading gestures in relationships, the book describes information on how to behave during negotiations or important business meetings. How to dress for such events, what to say or what you should never say to your interlocutor.
• It tells about the meaning of gestures in different countries, where and what gesture is gross violation moral standards, and where is a normal or even a good sign.

Reading the Pisa Sign Book is a pleasure. The benefits of Allan Pease and Barbara's book are endless. This book should be in everyone's home library and re-read from time to time, because over time information can be forgotten.

Chapter I
General understanding of body language

By the end of the 20th century there appeared new type sociologist specialist in the field of non-verbal speech. Just as an ornithologist enjoys observing the behavior of birds, a nonverbal person enjoys observing the nonverbal signs and signals of human communication. He watches them at formal functions, on the beach, on television, at work - everywhere where people interact with each other. He studies human behavior, seeking to learn more about the actions of his comrades in order to thereby learn more about himself and how to improve his relationships with other people. It seems almost incredible that in more than a million years of human evolution, nonverbal aspects of communication began to be seriously studied only in the early sixties, and their existence became known to the public only after Julius Fast published his book in 1970. This book summarized the research on nonverbal aspects of communication done by behavioral scientists before 1970, but even today, most people are still unaware of the existence of body language, despite its importance in their lives.
Charlie Chaplin and other silent film actors were the pioneers nonverbal communication, for them it was the only means of communication on the screen. Each actor was classified as good or bad based on how he could use gestures and other body movements to communicate. When talkies became popular and less attention was paid to the nonverbal aspects of acting, many silent film actors left the stage, and actors with strong verbal abilities began to dominate the screen.
Regarding the technical side of the study of the problem of body language; then perhaps the most influential work of the early 20th century was Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. It stimulated modern research in the field of “body language,” and many of Darwin’s ideas and observations are recognized today by researchers around the world. Since that time, scientists have discovered and recorded more than 1,000 nonverbal signs and signals.
Albert Meyerabian found that the transfer of information occurs through verbal means (words only) by 7%, through audio means (including tone of voice, intonation of sound) by 38%, and through non-verbal means by 55%. Professor Birdwissle has done similar research regarding the proportion of non-verbal means in human communication. He found that the average person speaks in words only for 10-11 minutes a day, and that each sentence on average lasts no more than 2.5 seconds. Like Meyerabian, he found that verbal communication in a conversation takes up less than 35%, and more than 65% of information is transmitted using non-verbal means of communication.
Most researchers share the view that the verbal channel is used to convey information, while the non-verbal channel is used to “discuss” interpersonal relationships, and in some cases is used instead of verbal messages. For example, a woman can send a man a murderous look, and she will clearly convey her attitude to him without even opening her mouth.
Regardless of a person's cultural level, words and their accompanying movements coincide with such a degree of predictability that Birdwissle even claims that a well-trained person can tell by voice what kind of movement a person is making. the moment of pronouncing a particular phrase. Conversely, Birdwissle learned to determine what kind of voice a person speaks by observing his gestures at the time of speech.
Many people find it difficult to accept that humans are still biological beings. Homo sapiens is a species of large, hairless ape that has learned to walk on two legs and has good developed brain. Like other animals, we are subject to biological laws that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. It is surprising that the human animal is rarely aware that his posture, gestures and movements may contradict what his voice communicates.

Sensitivity, Intuition and Premonitions

When we say that a person is sensitive and intuitive, we mean that he (or she) has the ability to read another person's nonverbal cues and compare those cues with verbal cues. In other words, when we say that we have a feeling, or that our “sixth sense” tells us that someone is telling a lie, what we really mean is that we have noticed a discrepancy between the person’s body language and the words that person has spoken. Lecturers call this audience sense. For example, if listeners sit deep in their chairs with their chins down and their arms folded, the receptive person will have a feeling that his message will not be successful. He will understand that something needs to be changed to interest the audience. And an unreceptive person, accordingly, will not pay attention to this and will aggravate his mistake.
Women are usually more sensitive than men and this explains the existence of such a thing as female intuition. Women have an innate ability to notice and decipher non-verbal signals, to record the smallest details. Therefore, few husbands can deceive their wives, and, accordingly, most women can find out a man’s secret in his eyes, which he does not even suspect.
This female intuition is especially well developed in women raising young children.
For the first few years, a mother relies only on non-verbal channels of communication with her child, and it is believed that, due to their intuition, women are better suited to negotiate than men.

Innate, Genetic, Acquired and Culturally Conditioned Signals.

Although much research has been done, there is heated debate about whether nonverbal cues are innate or learned, whether they are genetically transmitted or acquired in some other way. Evidence was obtained through observations of blind, deaf, and deaf-mute people who could not learn nonverbal language through auditory or visual receptors. Observations were also made of the gestural behavior of various nations and the behavior of our closest anthropological relatives - monkeys and macaques - was studied.
The findings of these studies indicate that gestures can be classified. For example, most primate babies are born with the ability to suck, suggesting that this ability is either innate or genetic.
The German scientist Eibl - Eibesfeldt found that the ability to smile in children who are deaf or blind from birth is manifested without any learning or copying, which confirms the hypothesis of innate gestures. Ekman, Friesen, and Zorenzan confirmed some of Darwin's assumptions about innate gestures when they studied facial expressions in people from five widely different cultures. They found that representatives different cultures used similar facial expressions when expressing certain emotions, leading them to conclude that these gestures must be innate.
When you cross your arms on your chest, are you crossing right hand over left or left over right? Most people cannot reliably answer this question until they have done it. In one case they will feel comfortable, in another case they will not. From this we can conclude that this is perhaps a genetic gesture that cannot be changed.
There is also controversy over whether some gestures are learned and culturally determined or genetic. For example, most men put on their coat starting with the right sleeve, while most women start putting on their coat with the left sleeve. When a man passes a woman on a crowded street, he usually turns his body towards the woman as he passes; the woman usually passes, turning away from him. Does she do this instinctively to protect her breasts? Is this a woman's innate gesture, or has she learned it unconsciously by watching other women?
Most nonverbal behavior is learned, and the meaning of many movements and gestures is culturally determined. Let's look at these aspects of body language.

Basic Communication Gestures and Their Origins

All over the world, basic communication gestures are the same. When people are happy they smile, when they are sad they frown, when they are angry they have an angry look.

Nodding your head almost everywhere in the world means “yes” or affirmation. It appears to be an innate gesture, as it is also used by deaf and blind people. Shaking the head to indicate denial or disagreement is also universal, and may be one of the gestures invented in childhood. When the baby has pumped milk, he, refusing the mother's breast, moves his head from side to side. When Small child When he's full, he turns his head from side to side to evade the spoon with which his parents feed him. Thus, he very quickly learns to use shaking his head to express his disagreement and negative attitude.
The origin of some gestures can be traced using the example of our primitive communal past. Baring teeth has been preserved from the act of attacking an enemy and is still used today modern man when he grins evilly or shows his hostility in some other way. The smile was originally a symbol of threat, but today, combined with friendly gestures, it denotes pleasure or goodwill.

Set of Gestures

One of the most serious mistakes that beginners in the study of body language can make is the desire to isolate one gesture and consider it in isolation from other gestures and circumstances. For example, scratching the back of the head can mean a thousand things - dandruff, fleas, sweating, uncertainty, forgetfulness or telling a lie - depending on what other gestures accompany it, so for correct interpretation we must take into account the entire complex of accompanying gestures.
Like any language, body language is made up of words, sentences and punctuation. Each gesture is like one word, and a word can have several different meanings. You can only fully understand the meaning of this word when you insert this word into a sentence along with other words. Gestures come in the form of “sentences” and accurately indicate the actual state, mood and attitude of a person. An observant person can read these nonverbal sentences and compare them with the speaker's verbal sentences.
rice. 4 shows a set of gestures indicating a critically evaluative attitude. The main thing here is the “cheek propping” gesture index finger", while the other finger covers the mouth and the thumb rests under the chin. The next confirmation that the listener is critical of you is that his legs are tightly crossed, and his second hand lies across the body, as if protecting it, and his head and chin are tilted (hostile). This nonverbal sentence tells you something like, “I don’t like what you’re saying and I don’t agree with you.”

Congruence - Coincidence of Words and Gestures

If you were the interlocutor of the person shown in Fig. 4, and asked him to express his opinion on what you just said, to which he would answer that he disagreed with you, then his non-verbal signals would be congruent, i.e. would correspond to his verbal statements. If he says that he really likes everything you say, he will be lying because his words and gestures will not be congruent. Research shows that nonverbal signals carry 5 times more information than verbal ones, and if the signals are not congruent, people rely on nonverbal information, preferring it to verbal information.
You can often see a politician standing on a podium with his arms crossed tightly across his chest (a defensive posture) with his chin down (a critical or hostile posture) and telling the audience how receptive and friendly he is to the ideas of young people. He may try to convince the audience of his warm, humane attitude by making quick, sharp thrusts at the podium. Sigmund Freud once noted that when a patient verbally assured him that she was happily married, she unconsciously took off and put on wedding ring. Freud understood the meaning of this involuntary gesture and was not surprised when the family problems of this patient began to appear.

The key to correctly interpreting gestures is to take into account the totality of gestures and the congruence of verbal and nonverbal cues.

The Importance of Context for Interpreting Gestures

In addition to taking into account the totality of gestures and the correspondence between words and body movements, in order to correctly interpret gestures, it is necessary to take into account the context in which these gestures live. If, for example, on a cold winter day you see a person at a bus stop sitting with his legs crossed, his arms crossed tightly on his chest and his head down, then this will most likely mean that he is cold, and not at all his critical attitude towards something. or. However, if a person in exactly the same position were to sit across from you at the bargaining table, then his gestures should most definitely be interpreted as having a negative or defensive attitude towards the situation.
In this book, all gestures will be considered in relation to the surrounding situation, and, where possible, the totality of gestures will be considered in context.

Other Factors Influencing Gesture Interpretation

If a person has a weak handshake, then we can conclude that his character is weak, and in the chapter on the characteristics of the handshake we will explore the reasons explaining this statement. But if a person has arthritis in the joints of his hand, he will use a weak handshake to protect his hand from pain. Therefore, artists, musicians, surgeons and people in other delicate professions that require sensitive fingers usually prefer not to shake hands, but if they are forced to do so, they use a gentle handshake.
Sometimes people who wear ill-fitting or tight clothing are constrained in their movements, and this affects the expression of their body language. These are quite rare cases, but they are important to keep in mind in order to understand the psychological impact such things have on body language.

Position in Society and Wealth Gesticulation

Scientific research in the field of linguistics has shown that there is a direct relationship between a person's social status, power and prestige and his vocabulary. In other words, the higher a person's social or professional position, the better his ability to communicate at the level of words and phrases. Research in the field of nonverbal communication has found a relationship between a person's eloquence and the degree of gesticulation a person uses to convey the meaning of their messages. This means that there is a direct relationship between social status a person, his prestige and the number of gestures and body movements that he uses. A person at the top of the social ladder or professional career can enjoy the wealth of his vocabulary in the communication process, while a less educated or less professional person will more often rely on gestures rather than words in the communication process.
In this book, most of the examples describe the behavior of middle-class people, but general rule is that the higher a person’s socio-economic status, the less developed his gestures and poorer his body movements.
The speed of some gestures and their obviousness to the eye depends on the age of the person. For example, if a 5-year-old child tells a lie to his parents, then immediately after that he will cover his mouth with one or both hands (Fig. 5). This “covering the mouth with one hand” gesture will tell parents that the child is lying, but throughout his life a person uses this gesture; when he lies, usually only the speed of making this gesture changes. When a teenager tells a lie, the hand covers the mouth in almost the same way as a five-year-old child, but only the fingers lightly trace the line of the lips (Fig. 6).

This gesture of covering one's mouth with one's hand becomes more refined in adulthood. When an adult lies, his brain sends him an impulse to cover his mouth in an attempt to delay the words of deception, as is done by a five-year-old child or teenager, but at the last moment the hand moves away from the mouth and another gesture is born - touching the nose (Fig. 7). Such a gesture is nothing more than an improved adult version of the same gesture of covering the mouth with one's hand, which was present in childhood. This is an example of the fact that with age, people's gestures become less flashy and more veiled, so it is always more difficult to read the information of a 50-year-old person than a young one.

Ability to Fake Body Language

The most typical question is “Is it possible to fake one’s own body language?” The usual answer to this question is no, because the lack of congruence between gestures, body microsignals and spoken words will give you away. For example, open palms are associated with honesty, but when a deceiver opens his arms and smiles at you while telling a lie, microsignals in his body will reveal his secret thoughts. This could be constricted pupils, a raised eyebrow, or a curved corner of the mouth, all of which are signals that conflict with an open hug and a big smile. As a result, the recipient tends to disbelieve what he hears. It is as if the human brain has a safety device that goes into overdrive every time it detects incongruent nonverbal cues. There are, however, cases where body language is specifically taught to achieve a favorable impression. Take, for example, the Miss America or Miss Universe beauty pageants, where each contestant is taught body movements that radiate warmth and sincerity. The more skillfully a contestant can convey these signals, the more points she will receive from the judges. But even experienced specialists can imitate necessary movements only for a short period of time, since the body will soon involuntarily transmit signals that contradict its conscious actions. Many politicians are skilled at copying body language and use this to woo their voters and make them believe their speeches. Those politicians who successfully do this are said to have “God’s gift.” The face is used more often than any other part of the human body to hide false statements. We smile, nod and wink in an attempt to hide the lie, but unfortunately for us, our body tells the real truth with its signs, and there is a discrepancy between the signals read from the face and body, and the words. Studying facial expressions is an art in itself.
This book pays little attention to this and more detailed information is given in Robert L. Whiteside's book The Language of the Face and Reading Faces by Leopold Bellan and Sam Sinpolier Baker.
In conclusion, it is difficult to imitate and fake body language over a long period of time, but it is useful to learn to use positive, open gestures to successfully communicate with other people and get rid of gestures that carry a negative, negative connotation." This will allow you to feel Making yourself more comfortable around people will make you more attractive to them.

How to Tell a Lie Without Revealing Yourself

The problem with lying is that our subconscious mind works automatically and independently of us, so our body language gives us away. This is why it is immediately noticeable when people lie who rarely tell lies, no matter how convincingly they present it. The moment they start lying, their body starts giving completely opposite signals, which gives you the feeling that you are being lied to. During deception, our subconscious releases a bundle of nervous energy, which manifests itself in gestures that contradict what the person said. Some?1people whose professions are directly related to deception in different forms, such as politicians, lawyers, actors and television commentators, have trained their body movements to such an extent that it is difficult for them to notice that they are telling a lie, and people fall for their bait and trust them.

Allan Pease's book Body Language has been a global bestseller for two decades. Its total circulation has already amounted to about a hundred million copies, it has been translated into 36 languages.

A person’s feelings and thoughts can be easily guessed by his posture, facial expressions and gestures, and this greatly facilitates the task of choosing the right line of behavior in a friendly and business communication and making important decisions.

A “new” language will open up new horizons for you in perceiving people, will help you feel confident and at ease in any unfamiliar environment, because you will always know what your interlocutors really think and feel. Learn body language and you will certainly achieve success in everything!

Allan Pease
Body language. How to read the thoughts of others by their gestures

Chapter I
General understanding of body language

By the end of the 20th century, a new type of sociologist, specialist in the field of nonverbal speech, emerged. Just as an ornithologist enjoys observing the behavior of birds, a nonverbal person enjoys observing the nonverbal signs and signals of human communication. He watches them at formal functions, on the beach, on television, at work - everywhere where people interact with each other. He studies human behavior, seeking to learn more about the actions of his comrades in order to thereby learn more about himself and how to improve his relationships with other people. It seems almost incredible that in more than a million years of human evolution, nonverbal aspects of communication began to be seriously studied only in the early sixties, and their existence became known to the public only after Julius Fast published his book in 1970. This book summarized the research on nonverbal aspects of communication done by behavioral scientists before 1970, but even today, most people are still unaware of the existence of body language, despite its importance in their lives.

Charlie Chaplin and other silent film actors were the founders of nonverbal communication; for them it was the only means of communication on the screen. Each actor was classified as good or bad based on how he could use gestures and other body movements to communicate. When talkies became popular and less attention was paid to the nonverbal aspects of acting, many silent film actors left the stage, and actors with strong verbal abilities began to dominate the screen.

Regarding the technical side of the study of the problem of body language; Perhaps the most influential work of the early 20th century was Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. It stimulated modern research in the field of "body language", and many of Darwin's ideas and observations are recognized by researchers today all over the world. Since that time, scientists have discovered and recorded more than 1,000 nonverbal signs and signals.

Albert Meyerabian found that the transfer of information occurs through verbal means (words only) by 7%, through audio means (including tone of voice, intonation of sound) by 38%, and through non-verbal means by 55%. Professor Birdwissle has done similar research regarding the proportion of non-verbal means in human communication. He found that the average person speaks in words only for 10-11 minutes a day, and that each sentence on average lasts no more than 2.5 seconds. Like Meyerabian, he found that verbal communication in a conversation takes up less than 35%, and more than 65% of information is transmitted using non-verbal means of communication.

Most researchers share the view that the verbal channel is used to convey information, while the non-verbal channel is used to “discuss” interpersonal relationships, and in some cases is used instead of verbal messages. For example, a woman can send a man a murderous look, and she will clearly convey her attitude to him without even opening her mouth.

Regardless of a person's cultural level, words and their accompanying movements coincide with such a degree of predictability that Birdwissle even claims that a well-trained person can tell by voice what kind of movement a person is making. the moment of pronouncing a particular phrase. Conversely, Birdwissle learned to determine what kind of voice a person speaks by observing his gestures at the time of speech.

Many people find it difficult to accept that humans are still biological beings. Homo sapiens is a species of large, hairless ape that has learned to walk on two legs and has a well-developed brain. Like other animals, we are subject to biological laws that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. It is surprising that the human animal is rarely aware that his posture, gestures and movements may contradict what his voice communicates.

Sensitivity, Intuition and Premonitions

When we say that a person is sensitive and intuitive, we mean that he (or she) has the ability to read another person's nonverbal cues and compare those cues with verbal cues. In other words, when we say that we have a feeling, or that our “sixth sense” tells us that someone is telling a lie, what we really mean is that we have noticed a discrepancy between the person's body language and the words that person has spoken. Lecturers call this audience sense. For example, if listeners sit deep in their chairs with their chins down and their arms folded, the receptive person will have a feeling that his message will not be successful. He will understand that something needs to be changed to interest the audience. And an unreceptive person, accordingly, will not pay attention to this and will aggravate his mistake.

Women are usually more sensitive than men and this explains the existence of such a thing as female intuition. Women have an innate ability to notice and decipher non-verbal signals, to record the smallest details. Therefore, few husbands can deceive their wives, and, accordingly, most women can find out a man’s secret in his eyes, which he does not even suspect.

This female intuition is especially well developed in women raising young children.

For the first few years, a mother relies only on non-verbal channels of communication with her child, and it is believed that, due to their intuition, women are better suited to negotiate than men.

Innate, Genetic, Acquired and Culturally Conditioned Signals.

Although much research has been done, there is heated debate about whether nonverbal cues are innate or learned, whether they are genetically transmitted or acquired in some other way. Evidence was obtained through observations of blind, deaf, and deaf-mute people who could not learn nonverbal language through auditory or visual receptors. Observations were also made of the gestural behavior of various nations and the behavior of our closest anthropological relatives - monkeys and macaques - was studied.

The findings of these studies indicate that gestures can be classified. For example, most primate babies are born with the ability to suck, suggesting that this ability is either innate or genetic.