Joe Navarro

You might enter into a party and see someone you don't like.

Your feet will immediately orient in a different direction.

Now, maybe from head up, you'll say hi, but your feet will orient you away from that person.

Well, there's certainly many more advances than there were in 1971 when I first started to look at this.

I mean, if you stay up with the literature, you're probably reading, as I do, anywhere from three to five...

peer reviewed journal articles a week.

That's how fast it's emerged.

I think where we're at is the realization that number one, it is the primary means by which we communicate.

It is the number one means by which we assess for

Trustworthiness for security.

Right.

When we look through that people and we see who's knocking on the door, that's really what we're assessing for.

It's obviously used in inmate selection in most cultures.

Well, the first thing is to realize that we're always transmitting information and so that we're being assessed for approachability, for friendliness, for our state of emotions.

And at the same time, we can be assessing others

to determine if they're hungry, if they have needs, if they have desires, but even preferences.

Something that you don't think about is, if I were standing in front of you, Mike, you might feel more comfortable if I was two and a half feet away.

And I might argue, well, I prefer to be three feet away.

Something like that where we can assess for preferences will determine how long we will talk to each other.

If you're uncomfortable at two feet, that's going to limit the amount of time we will have together.