Jan Hargrave is a body language expert in America. I was very pleased to hear Jan Hargrave speak the other day. She explained that although our mouths may lie, our bodies do not. For the most part, we all have the ability to tell when people are lying to us by reading their tone of voice and body signals.
It was Professor Albert Mehrabian who discovered that we express our feelings and attitudes with 55 percent body language, 38 percent tone of voice and only 7 percent actual words. In other words, if I asked you how you were doing and you said “fine”, that word wouldn’t mean anything by itself. It would be your body signals and how you said it that would let me know how you were really doing.
So, can you tell when people are lying to you? Jan Hargrave says we lie with the right side of your brains, so it is our left hand that tips us off. A person touching his nose, pulling at his ear or rubbing his eye with his left hand might be lying to you. Also, a person who, in a way crosses fingers might just be lying.
Here are some things we do to shut people out. We continually look at our watch. We fail to make eye contact. We fail to look up from the paper or away from the TV. Our body is leaning away from them.
By paying attention, we can open these important lines of communication and see the truth more clearly. I think it would be a mistake to use these tools to control or lie to people, but we need to realize the signals we are giving so we can show people that they really do matter to us.
1 What does the underlined sentence “it is our left hand that tips us off” in the third paragraph mean?
A. Our left hand is more faithful than our right hand.
B. Our left hand is connected with the right side of our brains.
C. Our left hand can tell people that we are lying.
D. Our left hand shows our feelings in a negative way.
2 Which of the following do we do to shut people out, according to the fourth paragraph?
a. look at our watch continually
b. fail to look up from the TV
c. stare at people for a long time
d. lean away from people
A. abc. B. abd. C. acd. D. bcd.
3 What is the author’s purpose in writing this passage?
A. To advise people to act more than they speak.
B. To compare different body signals.
C. To explain how people express their feelings.
D. To make people realize the importance of body language.