In this third part of my series on decoding body language, I'm continuing with openness signals  from the face, head and torso. 

Flaring nostrils are the stuff of romance novels and books about horses. Nevertheless, there may be truth to the descriptions connecting sexual attraction to this part of the face, especially if research about pheromones and attraction turns out to be true.

It is certainly the case that a wrinkled nose can indicate disgust, or at the very least disgust at a bad smell. Extreme facial gestures like these are hard to miss and easily brought to the conscious. It is the subtler ones you should be more concerned about. By the time someone gets to the point of wrinkling his nose, he’s probably already told you how he feels or is just about to do so.

The mouth is capable of a thousand variations on the basic retinue of smile, frown, surprise, fear, and so on. In simple terms, look for the smile. That’s the universally understood sign of approval from others, and thus people who are smiling are more likely to be open to you than people who are neutral or frowning. But of course people can smile for other reasons; once again context is important to be able to distinguish a rigid, unhappy, or false smile from a relaxed, natural one that is welcoming and open.

Think about the whole face for a moment. How we orient our heads toward each other in space is extraordinarily revealing of our degree of openness toward one another.  I recently saw a news clip of two politicians meeting. The one was a presidential candidate, the other a potential endorsement the candidate was eagerly courting. The clip was brief, but as the two sat in side-by-side chairs, the potential endorser’s head was tipped back and away from the candidate. My take was that there would be no good news that night. 

As it turned out, the news came the next day, and the endorsement was not forthcoming; the vote went to the other candidate. In that case, the head told the story.

We move our heads away and out of the plane of the other person, either up or down, when we’re thinking or withdrawing in some way — from anger, fear, or a host of other possible negative emotions.  Once the person is done thinking, watch where the head goes. If the person makes strong eye contact and turns her head back toward yours, the answer is yes. Otherwise the answer may be no.

If the other person is a spouse or close friend, the underlying message may be something like, “I still love you, but the answer’s no this one time.”  In that case, the head may signal yes to the loved one in order to stress that the other person doesn’t want to change the underlying relationship, just signal an answer in the current discussion.

For the torso, nearness and direction signal degrees of openness. Fundamentally, the closer and more directly oriented the other’s torso is toward you, the more open that person is, and the farther away and more turned away from you, the more closed.

Next time I'll wrap up the discussion of openness with a discussion of hand gestures.  More on all of this in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.