Touching the Nose and what it Really Means in Body Language

A person would touch his nose if he believed that something negative has happened.

Here is an example to make it clear:

What will happen if you were really thirsty then you opened the refrigerator only to find nothing to drink? Certainly, any person would experience negative feelings in such a case. These negative feelings might be accompanied by negative body language gestures such as touching the nose.

Here is another situation that could trigger negative body language. Suppose that you had an appointment for a job interview and that you were already late. What will happen if, upon arriving at your car, you discovered that you left the car keys at home?

Certainly, that situation will lead to negative feelings that will be accompanied by negative body language.

By understanding this negative body language gesture, you will be able to perfectly communicate with people and know more about their current state of feeling.

But why do people touch their noses?

When you get negative feelings, the blood capillaries in your nose will contract, and you will feel like wanting to scratch it. This results in the negative body language taken in the picture below, which is touching the nose. This gesture is one of the most famous body language gestures because it’s quite common that people face many negative situations each day.

While giving lectures about body language, many people always ask me why they never noticed themselves making this gesture. Your subconscious mind was designed to keep the information relevant to you and discard the ones that are not of use.

Previously you never knew that this was a negative body language gesture, and that’s why your mind always used to discard it, but now that you know its importance, you will never miss it.

Why touching the nose is connected to lying.

Some people, who don’t know much about body language, have mistakenly connected touching the nose with lying. Yes, a person might touch his nose while lying, but this will only happen if that person believed that lying is bad.

In other words, it’s the fact that the person finds lying negative that leads to touching the nose and not the fact that he is lying.

The other point to consider is that if any negative thought came to the person’s mind while speaking, which frequently happens to all people, he would touch his nose while speaking. Now, this doesn’t mean that the person was lying at all.

Speaking vs. talking

Whenever any negative thought is triggered, a person might feel like touching his nose. This is why the person could do it while listening to you or while speaking.

The whole point here is that touching the nose is an indication that the person found something that he considers negative.

You can use this negative gesture to know whether someone likes you or not. Just send a common friend to the person you like and let him mention anything about you getting married, and then let him watch the other person’s response. If he made this negative gesture, then he didn’t like what he heard.