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Ee - Dictionary of Terms


E

Eagerness The enthusiasm to do or to have something, or a keenness to experience what’s about to happen. Expect eagerness to manifest in a readiness position, such as on the edge of their seat, weight on the front of their feet/toes, sharp pacing or leaning forward. Bouncing feet or tapping fingers, a rubbing of the hands and short/fast nodding/answers are other examples.

Ear ornamentation The piercings or decorations worn on/through the ear. They can often make a statement about the wearer’s personality and cultural identification.

Ear reddening In a similar way to blushing (of the cheeks) this is an unconscious display. The blood warms the ear making it hotter to the touch. It’s often caused by a sudden feeling of embarrassment or the onset of anger.

Ear touch Often a pacifier, the massaging or pulling of the earlobe acts as a stress relief, and can assist thinking. The pull (no massage) can be a sign of deception or  a simple ear touch/tap may show that the doer doesn’t like what they’re hearing.

Echoing When an observer adopts the same body posture as the person they are observing. Echoing can be revealing. By changing their position a person can see how much others follow/echo their moves as a measure of their interest.

Echopraxia The involuntary repetition or imitation of another’s movements, gestures or postures actions. 

 Efron, David

Egotist A person who is excessively conceited or absorbed in themselves. To some extent it is rational for people to look after themselves, whilst seeing that by being cooperative/nice can also be beneficial to one’s own good.

Ejector seat When seated and aroused (not sexually) the hands can grip tichtly to the arm rests (or person’s legs) as if holding on for their life. This position is a rigid, freeze response.

Elation In a state of great happiness and exhilaration, elation may be seen in an affect display such as a Duchenne smile combined with arms aloft. Gravity-defying gestures like this or jumping for joy, punching the air, even dancing may be performed.  

Elbows Are often used for protection, either by creating an exoskeleton or being drawn in to the hips. Engaging the elbows in this way (elbow closure) may be a sign of a deception attempt. Elbows are also tucked in when feeling cold. When elbows move away from the body (abductor muscles) it can signal confidence, comfort and openness. 
Elective This is the intentional/voluntary choices a person makes about their appearance such as the clothes they wear or perfume used.

Emasculated The feeling of being undermined which can lead to defensive or retaliatory behaviours. Pacifiers and adaptors may be seen, or there’ll be disappearing hands or the hiding of thumbs. Cues include attempts to boost ego such as bragging or name-dropping.

Emasculation Insults intended to undermine someone masculinity. These can be gestures and, if so, they are culturally set.

Embarrassment Is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort, usually experienced when someone has a socially unacceptable or awkward act that’s witnessed by or revealed to others. In other words, it’s unwanted spotlight and may result in blushing or red ears as an involuntary attempt to render leniency in the observers. Freezing or hiding, perhaps behind something or by taking up less space, may occur.

Emblems Nonverbal signals with a verbal equivalent. Emblems are culturally specific, the hands used to substitute words to send a message.

Embodies cognition The theory that many features of cognition are shaped by aspects of the body. In other words, the body influences the mind.

Emotional chirality The face’s ability to display different emotional signals on either side.

Emotional contagion Humans catch feelings from one another. We send emotional signals in evry encounter, and those signals effect those we are with. women are more susceptible to this emotional contagion than men.

Emotional intelligence The capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately. People with good EI also use this emotional information to guide their thinking and behaviour, managing or adjusting their emotions to adapt to and achieve their goals.

Emotional suppression The reduction or holding back of emotion, it’s associated with decreases in emotional well-being and relationship quality. Over time the inhibiting of emotional feelings can cause serious damage to people’s wellbeing.

Emotions There is no scientific consensus on the meaning of emotion due to the differences of opinion on how they occur or are constructed. I describe emotion as a mental state or mood associated with the nervous system that occurs with thoughts or feelings that have behavioural and physical responses attached to them.

Empathy Proving an evolved advantage of being able to predict the behaviour of others, empathy is the echo of another person’s feeling. Empathy is biased, as people feel more of it when witnessing suffering in someone like them, or seeing it first-hand. One empathy display is the bitten lip, also showing that emotions are under control.  

Emphatic gestures Usually hand movements, emphatic gestures are used to emphasise or stress an important word or idea within a message. An example is beating a palm down on a table as an insistence that demands are met.

Emotional granularity An individual's ability to differentiate between their emotions. A person with high emotional granularity would be able to discriminate between their emotions with discrete emotion words. If they have low EG then you would expect general terms to be used.

Emotional past An influencer of emotional state, this is also one of the four quadrants used in the movement of the eyes. When recalling a past emotion there may be an unconscious movement of the eyes downwards and to the left.

Empathy Feeling the same emotions as another, empathising and identifying with them. It’s unlikely that this puts the person in the same bodily state, more like a similar watered down one, enough to sense what they are experiencing. It may be witnessed on a tilted face held in a soft or pained expressed possibly with a bitten lip, with a mirroring of posture.

Encoding Nonverbally this is the conscious and unconscious processes of producing information through facial expressions, gestures, postures etc. In other words, how a person acts to the purpose of communicating a message.

Encroaching When entering a person’s personal space that can threatened. To cope with this encroachment, people make spatial adjustments, usually unconsciously.

Endorphins Endogenous opioid neuropeptides and peptide hormones, produced by the central nervous system and the pituitary gland. When stress requires the stimulation of nerve endings – fingers in the mouth etc – then there is a release of calming endorphins. From exercise such as running, to the happiness of laughter, and the kindness of grooming, endorphins are released when pleasure is experienced. 

Energy displacement Often performed to ease anxiety, displacement activities shift energy. They are important social signals that can often be seen before an action as a void filler.

Enteric nervous system A collection of neurons in the intestine that can function independently of the central nervous system and has been described as the ‘brain of the gut’. Also known as the second brain, the enteric nervous system consists of sheaths of neurons - some 100 million, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system - embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, influencing our emotions and wellbeing as messages are sent from the gut to the brain above.

Environmental artefacts Objects that are part of a person’s habitat (house, office, etc.) which provide clues to their personality and disposition.

Envy Resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck. A thinning top lip, hidden palms, self-rubbing/stroking, squinting, and clenching are all among the cues.

Epigenetics The study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself, meaning that a person’s life events can alter the activity of their genes.

Episodic memory The collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place – a person’s autobiographical events as they recall them. There is debate about whether these memories can be inherited.

Erogenous zone An area of the human body that has heightened sensitivity, the stimulation of which may generate a sexual response, such as relaxation, the production of sexual fantasies, sexual arousal and orgasm.

Erythrophobia A term applied to a medical condition that creates blushing due to the fear of blushing.

Escape movements Limbic reactions to threat such as an invasion of personal space or being caught out, leads to escape movements, often preparing a person to flee. The involuntary nervous system hijacks all the surface vessels and channels the blood to larger muscles to prepare for this escape. Feet regularly and subtly act out the escape, the lead foot pointing towards the exit. Rocking is another escape movement, alternating intention direction that reminds the doer that escape is possible in either direction.

Estrogen or oestrogen The primary female sex hormone, it is responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics. At puberty estrogen floods the female brain giving a greater focus on emotion and communication and allowing female to make faster connections between their brain’s two hemispheres. The hippocampus fills with oestrogen receptors, growing more quickly in girls than in boys, giving women superior memory recall on emotional issues. After puberty, estrogen causes increasing amounts of adipose fat on women’s thighs, buttocks and breasts, and women often emphasise these estogen indicators nonverbally. In the monthly menstrual lead up to ovulation, there is a surge in estogen levels which affects sexual selection such as the increased odour sensitivity that occurs.

Ethology The scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait.

Euphoria The short experience of intense pleasure, happiness or excitement. Openness

European leg cross (the) It is more customary in Europe for males to cross their legs with one knee resting on the other, as women often do. This style is rarely seen in America where it is associated with a lack of masculinity.

Eustress Means beneficial stress, either psychological, physical or biochemical/radiological (hormesis). The term was coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye, consisting of the Greek prefix eu- meaning "good", and stress, literally meaning "good stress". Distance running and weight training are examples. 

Evaluation gestures When weighing up the value of what a receiver is hearing they often perform evaluation gestures such as a chin stroke, or a hand on the cheek with an upward pointing index finger and thumb (others fingers curled). In this state the hand is not supporting the head and the finger is not pulling at the eye area. Immediately after an evaluation gesture it’s interesting to note if the person leans forward or shifts backwards as this can reveal their decision.

Evasive actions A fast and often effective manoeuvre made intentionally or unconsciously to avoid colliding with a person vehicle or object, or done to ignore someone, or avoid their attention such as giving the cold shoulder, or to escape.

Evocate To call out or forth, to summon, to evoke.

Evolution The change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) act on variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or rare within a population. Instinctual behaviours are products of evolution but their purpose may not now  benefit modern living.

Executive function The set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behaviour: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviours that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals. It’s the conscious control of thoughts and includes planning and reasoning.

Exhaling can be a fast pushing out of air, punching air our and the feeling of frustration with it. Or the longer out breath of relief. 

 Exline, Ralph V

Exogamy The social norm of marrying outside one's social group. The need to marry outside of kin provided a risk for early humans as it required fostering alliances with other tribes. It also meant that resources could be lost to the family.

Expansive movements These are the more animated, larger gestures which take up more space. Expansive gestures, often of the arms, can be seen at a greater distance.

Explicit system This is the ‘system 2’, the controlled, conscious, reflective, intentional and slow system of thought/reaction, as opposed to system 1.

Exposing wrists Loose or relaxed wrists can indicate an openness or willingness, and as the human brain gives a disproportionate attention to wrists, it’s a positive display. In exposing the wrists, a vulnerable area if attacked, a submissive appearance is presented. When sexually interested in a potential partner, a woman may increase her rate of wrist exposure (as her interest increases).

Expressive crowds A group of people who gather to express emotions or feel excitement through participation. They may, for example, have gathered for a political rally or religious worship. The expressive crowd is there for a shared subjective experience and not for a reason outside the members of the crowd. Members of the crowd release accumulated tension through motions and gestures expressing emotion.

Expressive gestures The biological gestures shared by all. These include several facial expressions such as frowning in anger, as well as other universal actions including laughter and blushing.

External displacement Done to ease discomfort, external examples of displacement can be seen in the fiddling with a pen, smoking, adjusting a tie, and commonly, using a phone, if done as a self-comfort gesture.

Extrapyramidal motor systems A neural network in the central nervous system that helps regulate and modulate motion. Part of the motor system network.

Extraverts An outgoing, socially confident person, extraverts, by nature, use more hand gestures, and typically have a strong handshake, but use fewer leg movements. 

Eye accessing cues Making eye contact with someone whilst processing a taxing thought is a difficult combination to perform so it’s common that the doer will look away. It’s said that people usually sort from left to right when processing images, in the way we read, with the past (left), present (centre) and future (right): so when recalling a past image see the eyes moving up and left, but if constructing the image, it’s up and right (or straight ahead). others argue differently. Rather than eye direction, look for eye movement before an answer is given, as this suggests cognition that requires effort such as recalling, rather than a routine or learned response.

Eye aversion People avoid eye contact for a variety of reasons such as when in close proximity, when feeling shame or experiencing embarrassment (even if it’s the other person that’s feeling the shame/embarrassment). When talking, women avert their eyes more than men.

Eye blink This is affected by the environment with sunlight, dust and pollen among the factors that increase blink rate. Stress generally increases blinking. People blink more when aroused (perhaps fear, perhaps sexual attraction) but don't confuse this with interest. When captivated, blinking reduces. When bored, it increases. A extended (slower than normal blink) may also show a feeling of superiority. Blinking may also be a version of eye blocking. Blinking can be measured with Eye Blink Rate (the number of blinks per minute).

Eye blocking When disliking what their seeing (or even hearing) humans may cover their eyes, often with their hands. This is also seen during times of stress or anxiety stress, as is longer blinking. Eye blocking is a protective adaptor, and is also performed by the congenitally blind.

Eye contact Eye contact is powerful and can be a challenge, or sign of interest. Proximity and cultural expectations influence eye contact behaviour. It is respectful in some societies to make plentiful eye contact but disrespectful in others, with the differences sometimes dependent upon age, gender and status. The person who breaks eye contact takes the submissive role unless during the rules of conversation which usually follow thus: eye contact is made as a person begins speaking, they then look away and back to signal the end of their statement (handing back the floor); the listener spends more time looking at the speaker. This rule changes when there is a wide divide of status, with the dominant person tending to look away when listening and more when speaking. People with thin lips tend to make more eye contact.

Eye cover A form of eye blocking, this protective adaptor works on the idea that if something can’t be seen it reduces the stress caused. It seems to be a hardwired behaviour with young children and the congenitally blind also eye covering.

Eye dip When gaze is averted downwards it’s usually a submissive sign, which can indicate a reluctance to interact or even submission as flirtation.

Eye direction Many believe that the eyes look towards the part of the brain or abstract position relevant to the corresponding thought, such as a rightward movement of the eyes indicating symbolic thinking, or leftward movement hinting at a creative thought. What is established is that eye direction is an important indicator of where a person's attention lies.

Eye flicker A fleeting - blink and you’ll miss it – slight raising of the eyelids done to signal interest or keep an observer’s attention. A cue of recognition, the eye flicker is a subtle version of the eyebrow flash. It may be done following a received compliment.

Eye flutter Done when experiencing disbelief or a difficulty in thought processing, probably one of discomfort.

Eye lock When eye contact is held for slightly longer than the normal second or two, it can signal an interest is the other person.

Eye narrowing The eye muscles contract for protection, in a possible cue for negative emotions, threat or stress.

Eye roll A sign of contempt, rejection, or disrespect, which may be performed for observers.

Eye rubbing Could be eye blocking or a sign that the person has seen enough.

Eye shuttle Quickly scanning a scene, for exit routes or help. quickly, escape. The eyes don’t sweep, they move in a series of jerky stills (unless following movement). It’s a flight response.

Eye squinting Displeasure or a disliking of something. The doer doesn’t like what seeing, hearing or smelling. Or It could be caused by mental effort (concentration), sunlight or visual focus. If a quick squint, think, what did that person just experience?

Eye widening Unconsciously performed for improved peripheral vision, when surprised or fearful.

Eyebrow asymmetry A questioning, sceptical, pondering or confused expression. Mixed feelings are being experienced.

Eyebrow flash Usually accompanied with a smile and a quick head tilt (backwards), the eyebrow flash is a ‘distant display’, often used when greeting someone in an environment when shouting/talking wold not be suitable. It’s a universal show of recognition (though more common in developed cultures). It's the antithesis of anger, in which the eyebrows lower.  

Eyebrow hold Can be done when a decision is being sought, the holding of this position waits a second or two, until the receiver’s approval - of a head nod or verbal confirmation - is provided. Raised, held, eyebrows can signal alarm. 

Eyebrow knit Often linked to grief, worry, pain or confusion, the eyebrows are raised and drawn inward creasing the forehead (and the space between the eyebrows). The more intense version, with more pull and deeper wrinkling, cues a more intense pain or emotion (grief).

Eyebrow lowering Done to protect the eyes such as in the anger or fear facial expressions. Also performed when concentrating hard. 

Eyelid touching A form of blocking performed if something regrettable is seen or heard. Also cultural, this behaviour can signal alertness. When the eyelids are rubbed, the stress may be more intense. More commonly performed by men, the eyelid rub is a sign that the doer wishes to escape from their current thoughts.