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I Can Read You Like a Book
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Extremities Hands Most of what I’ll tell you about hands will be in the section on holistic expressions because a majority of meaningful hand gestures involve other body parts. The fig-leaf posture is one example (at right). Watch men of different cultures in diverse situations do it. The one thing they have in common if they feel the least bit threatened is an involuntary compulsion to, in a phrase that J.R.R. Tolkein’s Golem would use, “protect the precious.” Fidgeting hands, picking at cuticles, and an autoerogenous finger rubbing are all potentially signs of stress and/or attempts at stress relief. But again, without context, what you may be observing is nothing more than an annoying personal habit. Grooming of the hands sends messages, too, but they may be mixed. In interrogation, I might ask a source, “What do you do?”