Observe

While our conscious brains tend to focus on the words people say, our pre-verbal brains are busy giving and receiving copious amounts of communication that often don’t even get consciously processed. Some researchers suggest we get up to 93% of our information from these non-verbal signals.

Non-verbal signals provide meta-information that helps us interpret the verbal information. Is this person joking, or are they serious? Are they nervous or confident? Are they being aggressive or just matter-of-fact?

Perhaps most importantly, non-verbal cues are often about the speakers’ emotions, and research shows that we’re adept at rapidly interpreting changing emotional dynamics. When a person has an unguarded emotional expression, called a ‘macroexpression,’ it lasts from 1/4 to 4 seconds and involves the whole face. But, if they feel conflicted or are trying to conceal emotions, however, they may display multiple ‘microexpressions’ which can last just 1/30 second. The more we pay attention and correctly interpret macro- and micro-expressions, the more we connect with and understand the people in our lives.