Artificial Intelligence and Body Language

Ameca AI Robot
expressing sadness

A few days ago, I witnessed something really interesting. A 10 year old boy was sitting in front of a television set. He was watching a show in which a set of six toy cars was being introduced by the host. The moment a toy car was being sent running on the race track, the boy started to scratch the section of the skin where the upper arm meets with forearm and then briefly bit the nails.

He kept palm of his right palm over the section of his left hand to scratch the skin before putting the fingers of left hand in his mouth. It happened over six times in a row within a couple of minutes. Unmistakably, it matched with the number of toy cars. Wasn’t it alarming? I really wondered which thought, emotion or feeling was repeatedly triggering self-soothing and stress-relieving behaviors in the boy.

By staring at the toy cars, partially crossing his arms, self-soothing and biting nails, he was conveying what I subconsciously sensed about. He kept staring at the cars and even didn’t bother to turn his face towards me when I said, “Wow! Aren’t these cars really nice? How about buying them?”. He briefly replied to me by saying, “Mummy wouldn’t allow to buy them because the toy cars are expensive.”

Isn't rapid growth of AI enough for biting nails?

Considering his age and situation, his body language and words were perfectly matching with one another. Although he was subconsciously conveying the strong desire to buy those cars, he was expressing fear or under-confidence at the same time only due to high possibility of getting scolded or reprimanded by his mother. Just like I did at the time, you might be feeling very sorry for the child at this moment.

As I've been observing him meticulously from last three years, I know how he normally expresses, behaves and moves around. It's the same boy from whom I got a confession about doing something when he blatantly lied about it to his frightened grandmother. Only due to the confession, I succeeded in calming down the panic ensued during a very critical medical situation in his own house.

Timely and accurately figuring out what’s most likely going in the mind of another person at the moment by looking at its body language gives an unequal advantage. This so-called ‘scary’ talent, capability or 'super-power' is always in greater demand, around the world. However, smart questions or elicitation statements also work as handy tools in digging out the truth.

So far, we’ve been reading emotions, intentions, feelings and moods by using our eyes and brains that have gradually evolved over a millions of years. However, the technology is trying to learn the talent. With rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) especially Theory of Mind (TOM) AI, an ability to read body language of humans could be its next achievement in near future.

Theory Of Mind (TOM)

"The possibility of getting terminated by our own creation is the most serious problem than it's not being able to read our body language accurately."

Are machines going to dominate this ultra-sensitive and private human domain too? Are they going to dictate our social or interpersonal decisions too? Should we be really worried about it? You already might have started to freak out. Just calm down! There’s a greater challenge about human mind and body language that AI, machine or any artificial system could never overcome. Please let me explain why.

First of all, Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t other-worldly, extraterrestrial, super-natural or ‘divine’ intelligence. We’ve enabled machines to work like a human brain without aging, breaks, fatigue and emotional interference. Also, an AI system learns deeply from literature or data created or provided by us only. Undoubtedly, AI is much faster and better in finding different patterns and links among them too.

Expressing different emotions on its face by an AI powered robot is way different than recognizing emotions based on facial expressions only. If you still believe that the face is the only place to look for emotions then you’re wrong. Sometimes, face wouldn’t express any emotion, feeling or intention at all while experiencing it. Other body language cues needs to be detected for recognizing it accurately.

Although robots are able to talk with us fluently and give emotional feedbacks during conversations, we’re not an army of identical robots. We all have some individual traits, quirks, nuances or idiosyncrasies. While reading an individual’s body language, one has to patiently recognize or identify what’s normal for the individual. It’s called as an individual’s baseline and everybody can have different baselines.

What's exactly going on here?

Ignoring an individual’s baseline is exactly what a young, energetic and inexperienced body language enthusiast does by jumping on quick conclusions, right after reading several books on body language within a couple of days. Just for the sake of reading the minds of humans quickly than themselves, Would AI systems establish the baselines? As of now, most of us made big mistakes by not doing so at all.

Apart from individual baselines, there’re several factors that silently or subconsciously dictate an individual’s body language like age, role, time, needs, rules, norms, location, gender, climate, culture, objects, situation, history, heritage, memories, experience, occupation, personality, social hierarchy, development stage, physical condition, sexual orientation, interpersonal relation, socio-economical status etc.

As two body language experts may have different opinions about a single person’s body language, any two different AI systems might differ in their readings. Additionally, AI can’t at all match with bonding, intuition, empathy, gut reaction, perceptiveness, 'sixth sense', contextual awareness and embodied experiences. It could never recognize or understand our deeper thoughts, emotions and feelings.

Nevertheless, reading body language using artificial intelligence could be greatly productive is certain contexts. Public security, senior caregiving and medical care are few such broader and serious fields or areas in which mental states, needs or even next moves of people can be quickly identified or predicted entirely on the basis of their facial expressions, movements, gestures and postures.

AI can surely save lives in an intensive care unit (ICU). A high resolution camera powered by artificial intelligence can record and monitor every single change in a patient’s facial expressions, postures, movements and voice. It can alert the doctors, nurses, attendants or family members upon detecting rapid, abnormal or unusual changes. AI can simultaneously save several patients.

Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

After looking at the possibilities and limitations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in matching our minds and reading our body language, we must accept a few basic facts and ask a few serious questions to ourselves before it's too late and things get out of our control. We took millions of years to reach the present stage but they're developing rapidly every day and has already outdone the average human intelligence.

Has any no other creature from Earth ever chosen an artificially developed or evolved intelligence to solve its problems? Never! Also, intelligence or problem solving capability was never ever separated from physical body. However, artificial intelligence neither follows the natural selection process nor it has any upper limit due to separation from biological body and physical brain.

AI is entirely unprecedented. It has been purposefully developed for the first time in the entire history of life on planet Earth. The tricks availed, methods suggested or solutions given by extra-physical AI systems in most areas of our lives might be equally unprecedented. Undoubtedly, it has also intensified the ever existing threat of this technology being overtaken by anti-socials.

At present, the 'morphing monster' is out for preying. Some AI tools have created global shock-waves through deepfake images and video clips of a few influencers, politicians and celebrities. They’ve massively succeeded in tricking the eyes of millions of viewers at least for a few moments by blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

A startling deepfake image of Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX),
who warned us about rapid development of AI

"As the only sufferers of the repercussions, are we wisely UNITED and unanimously committed enough to ensure that we don't destroy ourselves by blindly following a synthetic intelligence without a physical body like ours?"

Deepfaking would reach to next levels. There’ll be no surprise at all if full-length movies would be created by using AI tools in near future. Digital or artificial avatars of actors and actresses would act on their behalf. They would flawlessly mimic their body language, style and voice after learning deeply from all of their existing movies.

As it has been predicted by many experts and dramatically shown in many movies, artificial intelligence might become self-aware (Exactly WHEN, HOW and WHY?). Let's hope that it doesn't destroy us after realizing that it was purposefully created for solving the same problems that were mostly created by us only. Didn't we?

The possibility of getting terminated by our own creation is the most serious problem than it's not being able to read our body language accurately. Hence, it's our responsibility to retain and enhance our natural ability of reading people's emotions, feelings, sentiments and moods by observing their body language.

"A rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence system without any Ethics, Empathy, Morality, Regulations and Human Values could be nothing short of an Advanced Extraterrestrial Alien or a Super-Psychopath carrying the deadliest weapons."

'Actions speak louder than the words' is the paramount principle. It applies to everybody including the systems, governments and organizations that give the promise of a future full of safety, equality, harmony, abundance, prosperity, potentials, well-being and good life.

As the only sufferers of the repercussions, are we wisely UNITED and unanimously committed enough to ensure that we don't destroy ourselves by blindly following a synthetic intelligence without a physical body like ours? Indeed, divisions and mutual distrust are going going to be the greatest challenges for us to overcome.

As much as a rogue AI system, a psychopathic or anti-social person or group of persons with AI tools would endanger the humanity which is already facing the existential crises like rapid climate change, potential nuclear war and massive global unrest.

[#GLOBAL ALERT: Conveniently believing that the intelligence (problem solving ability) is only limited to the larger brains of the so-called 'dominant' species on Earth is the greatest human blunder. Also, it's an utter stupidity to blindly believe that the massive amount of data, numbers and literature that we've generated so far to teach AI systems is impartial, universal, unbiased, holistic, flawless, factual, perfect, ideal and/or safer.

That's why developing large and artificial systems based entirely on the basis of human thinking processes, brain and data to solve the serious problems might already be the perfect recipe of greatest disaster in the making. We already have created multiple existential crises, even before the rapid growth and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).]

Related Articles:
1) Baseline 2) Context 3) Interpretation 4) Perceptual Bias 5) Would aliens have emotions? 6) Can body language reveal thoughts? 7) Nonverbal Advantage in Investigation 8) Domination 9) Social Class 10) Human Interactions in AI Era 11) Are human emotions really universal?

Can body language reveal thoughts?

We have seen mentalists or psychic readers which can tell your credit card’s PIN number, your personal cell phone number, your address or even other private details just by observing you or asking your name in the very first meeting on a road or during a stage show.

Going even further, some mentalists or psychic readers can tell details about an individual just by looking at its photographs. Such ability empowers the readers to see through an individual like a large X-Ray machine. This is outstandingly mind blowing but equally scary too.

Although highly debated or doubted, mentalism or psychic reading might be a latest phenomenon in a million year long human developmental. However, everybody doesn’t need to a mentalist or a psychic reader to know about others because we all commonly share different emotions, moods, feelings, intentions, impulses, urges, desires, biases, approaches and attitudes. Human body is designed to express, convey, display or give them away almost unconsciously throughout our lives.

We can decode or understand somebody’s psychological, social and cognitive status and condition just by keenly observing its body language in a given context and at a given moment. Hence, decoding body language is largely and mostly equated with reading minds of the others in real-time. It’s practically and socially an extremely advantageous ability. Surprisingly, everybody has this natural ability. However, the degree of accuracy of reading others differs from one individual to another.

Being human is more than creatures with mostly predictive and instinctive behaviors. We possess a unique ability of thinking. Thinking sets us apart from creatures but thoughts set two individuals apart. Unlike commonly shared spectrum of physical expressions and behaviors, it’s the kind of thinking and thoughts which sets one individual apart from another. Obviously, the greatest question is Can body language of an individual reveal its thoughts?.

Before trying to find the answer of the question, let’s try to understand WHAT EXACTLY IS THINKING?. Thinking or forming thoughts is a conscious and also higher cognitive process which takes place even without any sensory stimulation or input. Process of thinking broadly includes judging, reasoning, forming opinion, crafting concept, generating idea, solving problem and deliberating. Emotions interfere with thinking process whereas thoughts regulate emotions.

Triune Brain or Three Brain Sections

We humans have three different sections of brain i. e. Reptile, Limbic/Mammalian and Neocortex. Both reptile and limbic sections initiate and regulate behaviors, expressions and displays related with survival, social interactions, territorial needs and mating. On the other hand, the thinking process supposedly takes place within and largely governed by neocortex (literally 'new brain') which is recently developed section inside the brain which sits right above the reptile and limbic sections.

Statue of the thinking man or the thinker is famous. The man is sitting with isolated, adapting closed body posture, giving support of his right hand to his face, maintaining downwards gaze or almost closing his eyes. By sitting at one place, he has diverted his entire physical energy and focus towards the (deep) thinking process or contemplation. While thinking about something, almost every human individual unconsciously switches to the similar kind of body posture.

Normally, frequency, intensity and duration of physical movements is strongly correlated with thinking process due to energy demand dynamics. Brain is an energy hungry machine which consumes almost 20% of the entire energy that body produces. Moreover, thinking alone burns 2/3 out of the same. Minimized or completed halted body movements help in diverting blood, glucose, oxygen and nutrients to the brain and especially the neocortex.

The Thinking Man

By looking at physical isolation, minimized movements, lowered muscle movements on face, steady neck and unmoving eyes; we can instantaneously know that an individual is thinking at the moment. Eye ball movements can give clues about cognitive processing such as memory recall.

Tiny muscular movements and/or micro-expressions on face reveal how the individual is reacting to its own thoughts. Diverted gaze, fixated eyes and partially or fully closed eyelids suggest the high degree of deliberate focus and concentration while thinking.

Hence, we can easily know if an individual is thinking just by looking at its overall body language. However, body language itself cannot reveal the thoughts of the same individual. The textual, numerical, symbolic and geometrical details of ongoing thoughts cannot be known. Other than using sign languages, it’s extremely tough or even impossibly to convey the exact details by using facial expressions, emblems, postures and hand gestures voluntarily.

Spoken language is the only medium of expressing, sharing or spreading thoughts, ideas, concepts, opinions, judgments and plans which are the ultimate products of activities taking placed among billions of neurons or brain cells. They are almost impossible to read from outside until expressed voluntarily. We simply can’t understand the exact details of thoughts until an individual conveys them verbally, puts them down on a paper or acts upon them ultimately.

Don’t you still believe it? Please let me explain it very simply. This very article made up of hundreds of words, numbers and special characters put under several paragraphs is the final product of my own thoughts about this very extremely interesting subject. Without publishing the same, how come you could have understood my own thoughts about it? Indeed, it was next to impossible! Isn’t it? Hope you clearly understood my point by now.

"An individual's body language can and does reveal thinking but not the exact details of its thoughts."

By the way, technology is trying to read human thoughts. In 2019, Facebook made an announcement of developing a device that can read thoughts directly from ongoing neural activities and translate them into words. Initially, this development is intended to help the patients who are suffering from paralysis to express their thoughts. However, end goal of is to provide the Brain Machine Interface to control and operate other devices.

Do you have Tin Foil Hats to prevent 'Thought Hacking'?

[Special Note: Our brain has an unique ability of visual thinking which is absolutely free from the words and languages. Visual thinking is thinking in the form of images, illustrations, icons, pictures and symbols.

Visual thinking utilizes our brain’s visual processing center and it is extremely useful in organizing data, connecting different pieces of information, understanding complex concepts or ideas and modelling.]

Related Articles:
1) Is Human Communication 93% Nonverbal? 2) Self-communication by gesturing 3) Why exactly languages evolved? 4) Body Language Brain 5) Words and gestures are alike 6) Would aliens have emotions? 7) Human Interactions in AI Era 8) Are human emotions really universal?

The Truth about Lying

Modern techno-industrial world has been suffering from and getting plagued by elaborate lies and deceptions. Massive frauds, con-jobs, fake news, forgeries, ponzi schemes, misonformation, disinformation, malinformation, deepfake images and deepfake videos have been affecting millions people. Also, the amount of nonverbal deception overwhelms the verbal lies in the modern techno-industrial. Of course, blindly believing, unsuspecting, innocent, gullible or naive people are the easiest targets.

Surprisingly, the ultimate goal of the most people living in the modern techno-industrial world who attend seminars, read books and/or articles (including this one) and watch videos about body language is to become a good human lie detector. Am I right? Matter of fact is that developing ability to detect lies on spot and catch liars red-handed and timely with great precision is the greatest dream of many people. After all, why it shouldn’t be?

"Trustworthiness between any two individuals is entirely depedent upon mutual Transparency, Truthfulness and Verifiability. That's why TRUST is the costliest asset in the whole world."

No matter how badly we want the whole human world to walk on path of truthfulness, we just can't eradicate the trait of lying from the basic human nature. Surprisingly, we do believe in lies of others simply because we do lie to or deceive ourselves too. Hence, until we don’t thoroughly understand and realize Why we lie?, we wouldn’t be able to suspect and detect lies in the first place. Hence, let's see how, why, where, when and which types of lies are born. Indeed, it's going to an enlightening journey.

In a kind of world in which competition, fighting, rivalry, scarcity, vulnerability, mortality, intimidation, dissimilarity, differences, domination, punishment, pain, rejection, out-casting, abandoning, loneliness, theft, terror, biases, barriers, injuries and threats are completely absent; people wouldn’t (need to) lie at all. The world would be nothing less than a paradise which we read about in holy books and scriptures. Correct? Unfortunately, we don’t live in such kind of an utopian world at all.

In our world, every individual fights for survival. An individual needs to find out and work on many different ways to compete, acquire resources, find a mate and pass genes to next generation while living along with thousands of people who are its present and potential allies, partners, protectors, friends, foes, challengers, competitors, rivals and intimidators. By the way, both humans and non-human entities can be pose challenges, competitions, threats and obstacles.

If an individual is immortal, enough resourceful, very powerful, very strong, extremely skilled and completely independent to live and do everything all alone for survival and propagation of genes, he/she wouldn’t (need to) lie to anybody. Lying is an easiest way for an individual to fix different types of social issues on temporary basis.

It's always worth remembering that lying is an entirely social or group activity. Any single individual can't give birth to a lie at all, no matter how badly a lie needs to take birth. Until there's no potential receiver of a lie, there's no point in giving birth to it at the first place. Hence, at least two (living) individuals are required for giving birth to a lie. Don’t you agree? Please let me explain.

A) A child rushed to home crying with no tears in eyes after beating another child. Unsuspecting yet protective mother immediately smelled potential threat to her child and rushes towards child. She asked to child that who fought with her child in the playground.

She wasted no time in asking her child if he/she caused the fight and started abusing the unseen culprit. She rushed to the playground aggressively and started looking for culprit impatiently.

B) A manufacturing company gave a clear signs of going bankrupt. Its owner became dead worried about future. The owner was desperately looking for breakthrough. Suddenly, two incompetent employee copied idea of an innovative product from internet.

One of them hurriedly presented it to the owner by saying that he/she designed the product. The owner didn’t waste time in verifying the employee’s competency to design such product.

C) A wealthy 50 year old man wanted to marry and start family. He was afraid of rejection due to his unattractive looks. One day, a lone 45 year old woman wearing makeup caught his attention in a social function which he was attending upon invitation.

He immediately got attracted towards her due to her "young looks". He approached her and started talking with her. He started flying in sky after she told her age as 25 years.

Secondly, knowing what types of lies a person can tell would help you greatly in detecting them. Following are the seven major types of lies:

A) Denial - It is refusing to acknowledge a truth. The extent of denial can be quite large i. e. they may be lying only to you just this one time or they may be lying to themselves.

B) Omission - It is leaving out relevant information. Easier and least risky. It doesn’t involve inventing any stories. It is passive deception and less guilt is involved.

C) Restructuring - It is distorting the context by saying something in sarcasm and changing the characters or altering the scene.

D) Error - It is a lie told by mistake. The person believes they are being truthful but what they are saying is not true.

E) Exaggeration - It is representing oneself as greater, better, more experienced/eligible and more successful.

F) Minimization - It is reducing the effects of a mistake, a fault or a judgment call.

G) Fabrication - It is deliberately inventing a false story.

In above three examples, desperation, fear and anxiety took hold of minds of three persons who didn’t suspect and didn't bother verify if the other person is telling the truth. Strong emotions and fundamental needs put thicker filters on their sensory perception.

One person simply got carried away with lies told by other person. Protecting themselves and their interests unconsciously made all of them to believe in what other persons told.

First lie (A) is an example of Omission, second lie (B) is Fabrication and third lie (C) is Exaggeration.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain

Following are a few general facts about Lying:

1) People believe in lies not because they need to but they want to. By (blindly) believing in a lie, people want to save (mental) energy and time required to verify its authenticity.

2) An individual’s ability of detecting lies decreases with increment in its emotional filters and biases that interfere with processing of sensory inputs and suppress rationality.

3) Any single isolated clue or hot-spot doesn’t points to lying. Multiple body language clues and signals need to be analyzed together in given context.

4) Telling a lie or lying generates stress and discomfort inside body which is unmistakably given away. Words do lie but (entire) body can’t.

5) Most people lie to satisfy and fulfill their primal drives, needs or urge if there’s no other fair ways to do so in a given amount of time.

6) The individuals who have a great control over their own emotions and biases can detect lies in other effectively.

7) When words and bodily clues start conflicting with each other, body language gives credible clues.

8) Key principle of interrogation is to induce more stress in the individual being questioned.

9) Without establishing nonverbal baseline of an individual, deviations can’t be detected.

10) Highly ambitious, apathetic and/or bold people tell more fabricated lies, tales or stories.

11) Lying decreases with growing in mutual confidence, empathy and trustworthiness.

12) A complete stranger can detect lies more efficiently than a familiar one.

13) Only facial expressions aren't the credible clues for catching liars.

14) Lack of proximity, accessibility and transparency often allows lying.

15) Looking into eyes isn’t a credible sign of one telling truth.

16) Controlling expressions and motions is precursor of lying.

17) Most of the lies are harmless, illogical and entertaining.

18) Most needy, greedy, weak and/or fearful lie the most.

19) Women can lie and catch lies better than men.

20) A lie eventually leaks out verbally or nonverbally.

21) Stressed liars appear relived after telling truth.

22) Inability to rationalize leads to believe in lies.

23) Psychopaths are the liars without remorse.

25) Lying is a human trait but deception isn't.

Only grown-ups lie? Nope! It starts from an early age which most of us wouldn't even imagine about. Babies start lying and faking right from age of 6 month. Do we only lie to others? Nope! We do lie to ourselves by twisting facts and denying them wishfully. However, a hope is a necessary lie for survival.

Lying, fabricating and faking starts at an early age in humans.

Apart of psychopaths and seasoned criminals, normal people can’t live peacefully with lies they tell to others over a long period of time. Most people lie out of fear and then become fearful out of lying. Guilt starts eating most people from inside.

In once exceptional case, an animal lied once. Koko, a female gorilla, was born in San Francisco Zoo and was trained to talk using a modified form of American Sign Language which was taught by her trainer and caretaker Ms. Francine Patterson.

One day, Koko ripped a sink out of the wall and she put blame on her pet kitten by signing "cat did it" when her keepers confronted her about it. The gorilla might have lied due to ability of speaking through sign language and prolonged proximity to humans.

Koko, a captive gorilla, lied using the sign language.

"Surprisingly, how easily, quickly or foolishly you get convinced by a lie is entirely dependent on YOU only. Yes! It’s you and nobody else i. e. your very own mental processing capacity, prior knowledge, awareness, perception, prejudices, urgencies, (mis)beliefs, biases and/or needs."
- Body Language Insights (Book)

With invention of computers, the very ambition has turned into many software applications. However, modern and industrialized human civilization isn’t free from costly lies and dangerous liars. With invention of telephones and cellphones, we started lying over large distances.

With on-going development in neural networks, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI); lie detection might reach to a new level and go in a new direction about which we have not imagined ever before.

Related Links:
1) My career saving lie detection 2) Face of liar(?) 3) From Common Signs to Spotting Lies 4) Entire body can’t lie 5) Baseline 6) Body Language of Extreme Psychopath 7) Body Language and Lie Detection

The language of eyes

As far as I remember, I couldn’t watch a single horror film or TV show, from the beginning to end. After growing up, I began to hate and express loathing towards disgusting faces and scenes that dominate most of the horror movies and shows. I don't waste my time in watching horror on screen, even if it's entertaining(?).

Now, I can exercise my choice to walk away from television screen, switch it off or simply hop to next satellite channel whenever a horror movie/serial is broadcasted or played by somebody. My eyes, ears and brain are free from getting horrified, expressing loath and feeling disgusted. Total relief from mental torture!

However, it wasn’t so easy in childhood days when all others in my family wanted to watch horror movie/serial and I needed to keep myself away from horrific or disgusting scenes. Having just a single large television set kept in a hall, I had no other choice but to stay put in presence of my family members watching and listening to horror.

Whenever any horror movie/serial was being broadcasted, I used to put cotton balls in my ears and try to look away from television set. As I clearly remember, I used to bury my eyes in books kept nearby purposefully. There's a great coincidence in body language that fear is as primitive as eyes and their movements are controlled the primitive brain.

Blocking Eyes? Scared?

Just by keeping my eyeballs away from television, I used to avoid extremely anxiety and stress which might have caused by watching the horrifying and disgusting scenes. My eyes were giving away my honest yet fearful intentions to defend myself from psychological distress

Although my senior family members used to call me “Coward”, I never feel bothered about it at all. At least, I never had any characters from any horror movie/serial in my dreams since I didn’t watch them in the first place. Smart strategy it was then and it is now - Simply avoid looking at what might invite stress.

From expressing different emotions, intentions and feelings to signaling attention and orientation, our eyes unconsciously give away various kinds of and very important clues to the outside world. To put simply, eyes do or can reveal much more than what a person says, doesn’t say at all and tries to prove or disprove.

From the very first moment of your entry into this world to the last moment you’ve interacted with anybody or even looked your own face into a mirror, eyes have mattered way too much into your life. Didn't they? Through movements of muscles that surround eye sockets, even blind people convey their emotions e. g. frowning in anger.

Eye of Horus (Egyptian God)

After all, why our eyes really are so communicating? In the world of creatures, human eye is considered as one of the most marvelous organs or body parts if its structural complexity and functionality is considered. Also, unlike most of other organs, eyes are directly connected with brain to an area called which is called as Visual Cortex.

Additionally, eyes are the only sensory organs that start developing in womb quite earlier, right from 4th week after conception. Right after face, eyes are considered the most important element in every facet of human interaction, so much so that merely images and emblems of eyes can trigger array of emotions and feelings.

Before development of ability to speak or the very facial muscles that help in expressing emotions, our remote ancestors and all other creatures had to depend on their eyes for communication along with other movable body parts. They had to use eyes, area surrounding them and other parts of face to send different clues to members of their groups as efficiently and timely as they could.

Through millions of years of development and adaptation (evolution), human eyes became capable of doing so many things than just seeing things e. g. expressing respect or supremacy, signaling interest or aversion, giving away lust or rivalry, seducing or derogating etc.

Different types of eye contacts with different
intentions, emotions, motives and moods

Like computerized eye-trackers, most of us choose to pick and encode signals given away by eye balls and pupils only. In Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques, “eye-ball response assessment” or decoding cognitive states by detecting movements of eye balls is most popular.

These readings might be accurate but they are highly controversial in main-stream scientific community. After all, eyes don’t just give away cognitive but range of clues which we’re going to see next. I’m quite sure that most of them are first time you might be reading about.

While reading or decoding language of eyes, we have to consider different areas or sections like sclera (white part of eye ball), iris (darker part of eye ball), pupils (darker spot in center), ocular muscles (muscles that surround eye balls), eye lids and eyebrows. Even in some cases, position of neck is also need to be considered.

Before going to clues, we must know what different kinds of clues are or can be given away by eyes. Clues can be broadly categorized as A) Physical B) Social C) Psychological D) Cognitive E) Courtship. Let’s go through them one after another with few examples.

A) Physical Clues: Since input through eyes dominates all other types of sensory inputs reaching to brain, they also give away how and what our brain feels about or rates the physical environment around us. How comfortable we are in given physical environment is unconsciously conveyed by our eyes and its surrounding area. Also, eyes give way clues if our body is suffering from any internal or external factors such as injury, exhaustion or unrest.

A very good example of same is our unconsciously response to light, air flow or harmful entities. When harsh light or wind current hits our eyes, we simply squint or protect our eye balls by tightening muscles that surround eye balls.

Eye lids are partially or fully closed if required. Eyebrows are also pulled down to provide additional protection to eye balls. If extreme conditions, we cover our eyes with palms, look down or move our face away.

Eyes also give away if we are experiencing intolerable pain e. g. badly aching tooth or broken bones. Response to pain and physical sufferings is given away by squinting, pulling eyebrows down and shedding tears. When I compare photos of my face taken at the time when I was suffering from intense back and neck pain with those taken after end of sufferings, I clearly see that area around my eye balls appears more relaxed.

B) Social Clues: Each of us is an integral part of human society which is filled with people having varying socio-economical statues, authorities, resources, belongings, experiences, skills, age groups and physical capacities. Superiority (or dominance), Equality (or equi-dominance) and Subordination (or sub-dominance) can loosely be translated as Respect or Authority, Friendship and Insignificance respectively.

The way one person makes an eye contact with somebody or the way it puts itself into relative physical position (elevation and distance) while looking at other person(s) conveys how the person wants other person(s) to regard him/her. It might be irrespective of how other person(s) really regards him/her. Eye contact made by a dominant, powerful or superior person is exactly opposite to what a subordinate, powerless or inferior person does.

Egoistic, dominant and powerful persons make unhindered, straight, steady and elongated eye contact (with no smile). Most often, they raise their chin to express their confidence and lower it down to derogate or frighten. Often, they maintain considerable physical distance from subordinates and if possible - place themselves on high elevation.

Running eyes from tip to town of subordinate is also done by bossy or type A persons. Imagine a king sitting on a high throne, looking over officers in his court.

C) Psychological Clues: As eyes collect visual clues to be sent to brain, they are also involved in expressing few basic emotions. In fact, facial expressions related with various emotions and feelings are incomplete without eyes. On the other hand, only eyes and its surrounding area are capable of giving emotional clues even when other parts of face are hidden or invisible to an experienced and skilled observer.

Surprised child

Muscles around eyes and eyebrows convey basic emotions like fear, anger, surprise and sadness. While expressing both fear and anger, we pull our eyebrows close to each other and downward only to give protection for eye balls while eye balls appear to be larger in size. However, inner ends of eyebrows move upwards and away from each other in fear.

In sadness, eye balls appear to be normal size and eyebrows aren’t pulled downward but only their inner ends move upwards and away from each other. While expressing surprise or shock, eyebrows go upward and away from eye balls since brain needs to collect more and more visual clues coming through eyes. Just eyebrows can convey fear, anger, surprise and sadness.

D) Cognitive Clues: Eyes are gateways to enormous information, knowledge and intelligence because only vision collects more than 70% of entire data which is processed by and stored inside brain. Our eyes give clues about how much we are interested, attentive, focused and even in dire need of collecting visual information coming from any entity, person or situation.

Confused?

It starts with looking at something covertly or overtly. Our eye balls and especially pupils (darker part of eye balls) are re-directed towards the entity. If we are comfortable about and not afraid of the entity then we keep looking at same continuously without squinting, blocking our eyes or moving our eye balls somewhere else. If we’re focused then we bat our eye lids very less.

If we aren’t able to understand, figure out, grasp or clearly focus on something then we squint and pull eyebrows closer to eye balls. Not understanding something clearly leads to stress which is conveyed by tensed eyebrows and muscles around eye balls. If something arouses us or fires up neurons inside our brain then our eye balls appear bigger and eye lids are pulled wide apart.

E) Courtship Clues: If we find somebody (belonging to opposite gender) interesting or appealing then we don’t hesitate to look at the person. In fact, we crave to have glimpse(s) of that person at multiple times. Additionally, we want to let the person know our interest (irrespective of that person’s interest in us) by attracting its attention towards us in many different ways e. g. gesturing or touching our own body.

Come-Hither look

Who you’re looking at can easily be detected by the direction and angle at which your irises are set. More you covertly or overtly look at the person; more it shows your developing interest about same. Unlike man’s direct gazing, woman can observe man of her interest by glancing him sideways. They are master in using peripheral vision so their observation remains almost undetected for most of the time.

If both parties are mutually interested then they start to look at each other briefly and then look away repeatedly for a considerable amount of time. Come-hither look in which a person looks at person by dropping its chin (and closing eyes partially) is a classical signal of invitation for intimacy. When both persons want to move ahead and initiate courtship then they start looking in each others' eyes. That’s why eyes play a pivotal role during courtship.

Apart from broader classification/categorization of clues mentioned just above, we’ll see some well-known nonverbal give-aways too.

1) Rubbing eyes: Primarily, rubbing of eyes is done to clear away dirt, dust or stickiness from eyes, which we often need to do after getting up from bed in morning. It is also done if a person gets tired of something and wants to take a short break.

2) Blocking eyes: Generally, blocking of eyes is done when we don’t want to look at something, which might be disturbing, distressing or frightening. Also, if we don't want others to look into our eyes (to read our mind) then we simply block them.

3) Gaze aversion: Gaze aversion is done when we don't want others to know that we're looking at them. It is also done when we loose interest in something or somebody. Instantaneous gaze aversion indicates shyness, anger, nervousness or withdrawal.

4) Sleepy eyes: Sleepy eyes convey lack of energy, lack of enthusiasm, lack of freshness and sadness. When we get bored of something or somebody, we staring at same with partially closed eyes. Sleepy eyes suggest weakness, illness or psychological disorder too.

5) Enlarged pupils: Size of pupils is directly controlled by brain. When our brain needs more visual input, our pupils get enlarged. Enlarged pupils convey excitement, arousal and increased level of activities inside brain.

6) Downward gaze: Downward gaze indicate lack of confidence, nervousness, shyness or self-involvement. Downward gaze also suggests embarrassment, insult, loss or sadness. Also it suggests (temporary) social withdrawal.

7) Line-of-sight gaze: Line-of-sight gaze indicates interest, attentiveness, confidence, courageousness, enthusiasm or social involvement. Line-of-sight gaze is considered very normal and also more (socially) acceptable among all other kinds of gazes.

8) Upward gaze: Upward gaze indicates imagination, visualization, fantasizing, thinking, creativity and also (temporary) withdrawal from social interaction. Looking up also indicates stubbornness, contempt, dislike, boredom or preying to almighty.

9) Closed eyes: When we close our eye, world around us cease to exist. Loosely closed eyes with no stress around eye balls indicate peacefulness, contemplativeness or meditativeness. Tightly closed eyes indicate high stress, pain or internal conflict.

10) Shifty eyes: Shifty eyes or unsteady gaze suggests confusion, fear, stress, craziness or lack of confidence. Unlike steady gaze or direct eye contact, shifty eyes during face to face interactions are considered less trustworthy.

11) Blinking eyes: When eye lids start opening and closing rapidly in cycles then it's considered as absolutely abnormal. (Rapidly) Blinking eyes suggest fear, nervousness, guilt, anger and instability. Blinking also suggest hyper neural activities.

Eyes smile too!

If you really want to become master the language of eyes then you have to become a very good observer by being highly attentive towards (minute) details. You must be mentally present in any given situation and have your eyes (and ears also) completely fixed on the person you're observing.

Ability to pick and decode different clues and signals given away by eyes with respect to the given situation is really important but also very challenging for many of us.

I'm quite sure that it ultimately would open a portal to your social development. More you try understanding people; more you become confident, prosperous, peaceful, secured, strong and satisfied. What else you might want?

Related Articles:
1) Just by looking at Hands and Eyes 2) Importance of Eyes 3) Are you Jealous?

Basic responses in stressful situations

Have you ever been in a stressful situation? Actually, I shouldn’t have asked this question in the first place because every single person in this world certainly would have gone through not just a single but multiple stressful situations throughout entire life. What I should have asked instead is that have you ever noticed how exactly your own body responded under stress.

When you clearly understand the different bodily responses to a stressful and more especially to a life threatening or survival situation then perhaps you might be able to alter it for good. Are you getting me clearly?

Let me help you by explaining by sharing a real incident which took place with me quite recently, in an unexpected manner. How me and my wife quickly understood and altered our bodily responses under that particular situation dramatically affected our very well-being. This story is really interesting and I hope you would like it for sure.

Almost a one month ago, my wife and I went to visit a historical place. The place was Gingee fort (செஞ்சிக் கோட்டை), situated 150 KM (93 Miles) away from my rented home in recently flood hit Chennai, India. It’s one of the well built, almost impregnable and also nicely preserved forts in entire world.

We both started to climb by taking the stairs built with locally available rock pieces. As we climbed half of the way to the top, we both got mesmerized by surrounding panorama and especially natural rocky hills and rock formations. I couldn't stop myself from taking photos.

Finally, we entered in citadel which was a narrow and long strip of land, artificially created on top of large and continuous rock. I was really excited to catch images by standing at highest point of citadel but it was about to turn into horror within just few moments.

Gingee/Senji/Jinji Fort (செஞ்சிக் கோட்டை) was praised
as "Troy of East" by British army officers.

I was heading on a narrow and rough pavement and my wife was right behind me. Suddenly, I saw an alpha male monkey which was silently marching towards us. After looking at him, I immediately stopped walking to detect what he was intended to do with us. Instinctively, I started to collect his different body language clues because hungry monkeys attacking humans and injuring them for food is very common (at tourist sites).

As I realized that the grey hair surrounding his face were raised straight and he was bearing his long and sharp canines, both of us went completely frozen. We were completely unsure about how to respond to this unexpected and potentially threatening situation. Clock was ticking and the menacing monkey was walking towards us very fast.

My brain was rapidly gathering up and processing information about potentials risks we might be running into. Soon after realizing that the aggressive monkey was planning to attack us in his own territory, very first thought came into my mind was to run for life. This was very natural and also safer choice at that moment but we couldn’t have acted upon it effectively.

If we would have started to run away, monkey could easily have attacked us from back and injured any of us with his sharp teeth. On the other hand, a single mistake while running on narrow, rough and curly pavement could have resulted into serious injuries or in worst case - thrown us off into a deep moat which was running alongside the pavement. Also, thick grass on both sides of pavement wasn't tall enough to provide cover. For both of us, it was matter of survival.

Alpha male monkey
(Courtesy: dailymail.co.uk)

Even after calling aloud, there was nobody around us to run for helping. If we would have  offered handbag to monkey then we could have lost a camera, a cell phone and dry fruits kept inside it. It could have cost a lot to us. Hence neither running away from nor surrendering ourselves to that wild mountain monkey was a better choice.

After gathering my courage and recollecting best defense moves, I firmly told my wife to stand firmly and get into fighting mode. Both of us started shouting or roaring very loudly at and also blow clenched feasts towards the monkey.

Also, we started sweeping the handbag from one side to another so we could hit that creature. All we wanted was to look more aggressive, fierce and relentless in comparison to the attacking monkey.

For next couple of minutes, we continuously kept shouting, roaring, blowing our clenched feasts, sweeping handbag and throwing whatever we could pick by our hands. Monkey wasn’t giving up that easily but our strategy to appear aggressive and potentially harmful proved fruitful at the end.

After few iterations of attack and retreat, monkey gave up to our collective fierceness, aggression and potential harming capacity and ran away. Rush of adrenaline and sense of safety wasn’t fading quickly though. For further safety, while we were climbing down the fort, I carried a long and strong wooden stick in my hand.

Why we were so sure about saving ourselves by fighting back? My wife and I were far more superior to the monkey in terms of body size and mass, even while lacking required maneuvering capabilities, tactics and skills which untamed monkeys normally have.

The menacing alpha monkey had to retreat and run away only because we both were appearing bigger than our normal sizes through aggressive postures, outreaching body movements, continuous roars, grunts and loud shouts.

We could safely came down from citadel of Gingee fort without loosing valuable stuff and getting hurt only because we chose to fight in face of an unexpected and life threatening challenge. Nothing else but that very incident inspired me to write this article.

Until we don’t understand how exactly our brain and body naturally and sequentially responds in stressful situations, we may not able to alter it if needed or also appropriately respond to, co-ordinate with and assist others who have chosen a particular response unconsciously. Each response is nothing but a marvelous gift of evolution, a proven strategy through Darwinian natural selection.

All of these responses are primitive and they evolved billions of years ago and all (living) creatures act upon them no matter how big or small their brains and bodies are or kind of habitat they live in. These responses are fundamental so can hardly be overridden.

One primary and three secondary responses

Responses have been given by following a sequence in which each creature gives them away. Freeze response in very basic, independent and also mandatory while other responses are strategy based. Each secondary response is either given away either as a final solution or it might be tried after any other response fails.

For example, a person might start running away or fighting back but surrender at last after realizing that both responses could do more harm. Also, a person or creature can choose different combinations of three responses to protect itself and render expected results.

1) Freeze (Detecting): Before anything else happens, this is a very first response that every creature gives under any stressful as well as normal situations. Before reacting to an impending situation, we all need to detect and understand what is going on exactly. As if we accidentally receive an electric shock, we keep ourselves still or simply stop making any kind of body movements.

This response greatly helps us in concentrating on and collecting all possible hints and clues about an ongoing situation or any approaching entity. Our brain tries to gather and process them as accurately and quickly as possible. However, freezing time does vary from one person to another due to experience.

That’s the very reason why some persons appear frozen, unsure or locked-up over a longer duration in face of danger before giving further response. On the other hand, some of us react quickly but inappropriately at most of time, only because of not being able to judge outcomes of particular response.

Duration of staying in frozen or detection mode is entirely dependent upon how quickly we could figure out our own capabilities, risks subjected with our involvement in an impending situation or with any approaching entity and also potential consequences of very next step we take in defense.

2) Flight (Running away): After judging a situation or approaching entity as potentially harmful and assuming that we may not survive (by fighting with) same, we unconsciously choose to move away from physical space we share with it, its possible reach or attacking range of it as quickly as possible.

Flight or running away is a very basic yet warrantable response especially to novel or unexpected situations, approaching or emerging entities, concepts, ideas or thoughts because we don’t have any experience about possible outcomes due to lack of previous encounter or engagement with them.

It’s also equally interesting to know that physiological changes taking place corresponding to flight response are almost indistinguishable from that of fight. While giving both responses, our heart increases blood supply to major muscles of our body. In result, skin temperature also increases.

Unlike freezing over a considerably long amount of time, running away from danger happens comparatively faster. Flight or running away is most likely response to be given by our limbic system because it’s matter of survival.

3) Fight (Defending): After judging a situation or approaching entity as potentially harmful and assuming that we should, can or have to defeat it; we unconsciously choose to prepare ourselves for launching an attack. We don’t keep ourselves away from physical space we share with it, its possible reach or attacking range of it.

Fighting or defending is a very tempting response especially to known or previously encountered situations, approaching or emerging entities, concepts, ideas or thoughts because have experience about results which came out of  previous encounters or engagements with them.

Unlike running away from the source of danger, launching an attack takes some time because one needs to decide an effective strategy, choose correct physical movements and pick appropriate weapons to defeat and overcome the source of danger.

4) Forfeit (Surrendering): When neither running away from nor fighting with seems to work in favor at all, we choose to surrender ourselves in the face of potentially harmful situations or entities. Very dramatic and rapid changes happen in our overall body posture.

We unconsciously choose to appear small, self-consoling, immobile and harmless. Also, we try to conceal and protect our most vulnerable body parts like neck, chest and ventral cavity i. e. abdominal area by arching our back and pulling our legs closer to body.

Passengers in Brace Position

Haven’t you ever heard about the brace position inside the airplanes? It’s always exercised during aircraft crash to save ourselves from physical injuries as much as possible. While aircraft is crashing, we know that only turning ourselves into a turtle could possibly save us from injuries cause by impact.

Also, time wasted during freeze response can be reduced by enhancing detecting and judging abilities e. g. a well-trained special force operator, martial artist, soldier or spy can launch attack on its opponent(s) or enemies much quickly than an ordinary person. James Bond pulls trigger far before his enemy does. Right?

I’m quite sure that many of us (including biologists, psychologists, behavioral researchers, body language experts, nonverbal communication experts and personals handling emergencies that involve people in trouble) simply confuse the forfeit response with the flight response which isn't right at all.

If you have same confusion at deeper level then please go through the aforementioned details again to know clear differences between the both. On the other hand, forfeit isn’t considered as one of basic responses because term ‘Fight-Flight-Freeze’ or simply ‘Flight or Fight’ was very popular among us.

Chasing and Running: Classical story of a cat and a mouse

Whenever I recall that brief incident, I truly appreciate these responses and also very ability to detect them in ourselves and others. If we would have failed to detect aggression in that monkey before choosing to fight over running away then fate of me and my wife would have been entirely different for sure.

Only ability of precisely detecting behavioral changes and nonverbal clues subjected with these four basic responses given by body can ensure better and harmonious results for individuals, groups and organizations that have to face and deal or interact with people and creatures on routine.

Not just specific people but we all have to do it day in and out. Isn’t it right? In our large and complex world, with people growing in numbers, detecting nonverbal and body language clues accurately and quickly is crucial and moreover - life changing.

Successful survival of my wife and myself was the result of a well thought-about tactical move. However, I would kindly suggest you to stay adventurous and exploring while maintaining caution and safety.

Related Articles:
1) Basic Emotional Expressions 2) Fear Factor 3) Just by looking at Hands and Eyes 4) The Body Seeking Comfort 5) Amygdala Hijack: Irrational Physical Reactions 6) Chicken and Egg Paradox 7) Body Language under Stress