BODY TALK

Some enchanted evening, as Rodgers and Hammerstein once predicted, you may see a stranger across a crowded room.

But is that stranger attracted or repelled?

With Valentine’s Day approaching, it’s a good idea to know the difference. Fortunately, in Spokane we have one of the nation’s leading experts on nonverbal communication and body language.

David Givens is an anthropologist and director of the Center for Non-Verbal Studies, which he runs out of his South Hill home. His book, “Love Signals: A Practical Field Guide to the Body Language of Courtship” was published on Feb. 1, just in time to give us some tips on how to read the opposite sex for Valentine’s Day.

Let’s say you’re at a party or a bar and you can’t tell if someone is attracted to you. Here are a few Givens tips:

Pay attention to the shoulders: “When a woman is attracted to a guy, she’ll lift her shoulders or flex her shoulders forward,” said Givens. “We unconsciously flex and lift our shoulders with those we like. It’s called the cute response.”

Men as well as women will lift their shoulders and tilt their heads to indicate that they like being near you. Yet what if the shoulders are doing nothing at all?

“Lack of shoulder movement is like a freezing reaction,” said Givens. “It’s not good.”

Note the direction of the upper body: It’s not where the eyes are going, or even where the chair is facing. Check to see if the upper body is turned toward you or away.

“People always turn away from something they don’t care for,” said Givens. “The body does it automatically.”

On the other hand, it’s almost always a good sign if someone (man or woman) turns their upper body toward you.

Let’s say you’re standing at a party with a group of four or five people. Givens said the women in the group will almost always turn their upper bodies toward the man they find the most attractive, even when their faces may be turned to someone else.

Pay attention to the mouth: Emotions are expressed most clearly through the many muscles in the face and especially around the mouth. The mouth is capable of hundreds of expressions, from compressed lips to tight smiles to subtle frowns to what the French call “making the snout” (a pursed-lip expression).

Many of us can instinctively read what these expressions mean.

“The face and especially the mouth are really, really telling,” said Givens. “If you watch that, you can tell whether a person likes you, dislikes you or is neutral.”

One of the worst signs: A deadpan “blank” face.

In men and women, it “telegraphs indifference” or says that you have gotten “too close for comfort,” said Givens in his book.

Beware the “tongue show”: This is a subtle showing of the tip of the tongue – and should never, ever be mistaken for a lascivious lick of the lips.

Givens calls it in his book “an expression you should never show” – and that you don’t ever want to see.

“It indicates resistance or negative vibes,” said Givens. “Even if you don’t understand what the gesture is, there’s a feeling there that puts a little distance (between two people). Babies do it; chimps do it; gorillas do it.”

Yes, it’s instinctual. Yet not everybody, especially not all men, pay enough attention to those instincts. That’s one reason Givens wrote the book.

“Guys are often blockheads when it comes to nonverbal communication,” said Givens. “They don’t get it. Women are much more attuned. The problem with most guys is that they fall for a woman and don’t understand that she doesn’t care for them at all. Yet they waste all of their time on her. Meantime, there are plenty of candidates out there they should be talking to.”

Guys, being blockheads, might also question the veracity of these body language “signals.” How does Givens know, with any certainty, what they mean?

For one thing, the study of nonverbal communications no longer relies on mere observation and anecdote, he said. In the last 10 or 15 years, a tremendous amount of research has been done on the brain, and now scientists can pinpoint what parts of the brains are connected with different behaviors and emotions.

That’s one reason why Givens almost completely re-wrote this book. He wrote an earlier version in 1983.

“What I can do now is place nonverbal cues in the brain and show how they are wired in the neuromuscular system,” said Givens. “I found out so much from doing that – that a lot of what I did in the previous book was outdated and didn’t have a scientific basis.”

For instance, he now knows why the shoulders and mouth, for instance, are so expressive of emotion. Both are controlled by what Givens calls “special visceral nerves” which are connected to the emotional part of the brain (as opposed to the biceps, for instance, which are connected to the motor centers of the brain through a somatic nerve). Movements of the shoulders and the mouth are “not something you do on purpose,” he said.

In other words, we can’t always control what our mouths and shoulders are doing. They’ll give our emotions away every time.

Still, much of body language research is observational. Givens still gleans plenty of information from just sitting in a bar and watching the way people put themselves on display. He also notices a lot of obvious mistakes.

Most come from coming on too strong.

“Courtship is a negotiation process,” said Givens. “It’s back-and-forth and all about getting physically closer and closer. But if a guy gets too close too soon, he basically scares the partner away. So you have to take it slow.”

In his book he relates the anecdote of a man in a Seattle bar who swaggered into a singles bar and proceeded to show that he was available. He made a lot of big gestures: tossing his head, stretching his arms, standing up, sitting down, stirring his drink and making a big production of lighting a cigarette. Yet after an hour, he leaves alone, having attracted no female company.

He did a fine job of letting women know he was present, which is half the battle. Yet he did a lousy job of letting them know he was “vulnerable” and “harmless,” which is the other half.

“He is a lone stranger showing too much attitude for comfort,” wrote Givens. “Guys make a mistake. They think by virtue of their physical presence in a space, they are more attractive than they are. They go in there and take a position and wait. But it doesn’t really work that way.”

So what should he have done? A number of things:

Go out with a friend – If you arrive at party or bar with a friend, it shows that you are socially adept and not a loner.

“The lone male, in any society on earth – or the lone chimp – is always going to be the ‘stranger in our midst,’” said Givens.

Yet arriving with a friend – for both men and women – has other advantages.

“You are talking to your partner, making gestures, showing facial expressions,” said Givens. “You are not just a statue.”

So there’s something to the wingman (or “wingwoman”) concept?

“It has a basis in biology,” said Givens.

Use gestures that are inviting – Certain gestures, said Givens, are universally seen as friendly.

For instance, use palm-up gestures when gesturing with your hands. Palm-down gestures – everything from slapping the table to making that Donald Trump “you’re-fired” gesture – come off as expressing dominance and aggression.

The “eyebrow flash of recognition” is also an inviting sign. It consists of brief eye contact, a smile, a lifting of both eyebrows and then brief glance away.

“This cue is decoded everywhere as a sign of friendship and good will,” said Givens.

Tilting the head is also good, in that it implies harmlessness and a good nature. Both men and women use head tilts to signal that they are interested in someone.

Don’t forget those shoulders, either. To be seen as animated and friendly, you must keep those shoulders moving. Even shrugs are seen as disarming.

Givens goes into far more detail in his book. He defines the five universal phases of courtship: attracting attention, the recognition phase, the conversation phase, the touching phase and the lovemaking stage. Then he gives tips for deciphering and negotiating each one.

Does all of this knowledge truly help?

According to Givens, it can’t hurt. He put it this way. Bird owners have long noticed that canaries have a habit of wiping their bill against their perch. But most don’t know what it means. But ornithologists have studied it and given it a label – the bill wipe – and have seen how the bird uses it. That knowledge “helps you get more into the bird brain,” said Givens.

So why not get more into the man-brain or the woman-brain? Or even your own brain?