Gestures and Body Movements in Interviews.

Abstract

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

Non-verbal communication and mental disorder

“…Some psychoanalysts have interpreted bodily posture in this way: folded arms, self-wrapping, is seen as self-protection, especially of the breasts of women; a drooping, listless posture is seen as helplessness, a request for help (e.g. Mahl, 1968). Self-touching gestures on the other hand have been interpreted as a kind of non-verbal talking to oneself, e.g.…”

Notation systems for coding nonverbal behavior: A review

“…Ekman and Friesen (1968) and Waxer (1977) found that the body "leaks" veridical emotional cues even during conscious deception. In his clinical investigation, Mahl (1968) discovered that he could predict verbal content by observing nonverbal behavior (NVB). Hence, NVB is a crucial element of human interaction.…”

Observed behaviors during clinical interviews predict improvement in depression

“…11). Other behaviors (body touching and head movements) presumably serve the regulation of the arousal state of the individual (Barroso, Friedman, & Grand, 1978;Hadar, Steiner, Grant, & Clifford Rose, 1983;Mahl, 1968) and are probably less essential on the interactional level. They are called "nonrelational" behaviors.…”

“…Body-touching behavior is considered to be indicative of the degree of anxiety (or arousal) in normal subjects (Barroso et al, 1978;Mahl, 1968) or the degree of uncertainty en-countered in the encoding process (Sousa-Posa & Rohrberg, 1977). Head movements are reported to occur relative to the stream of speech (Scheflen, 1964;Kendon, 1972) and to be related to elements of speech such as stress, juncture, tone, etc.…”