Is body language a pseudoscience?

Body language refers to the nonverbal communication skills that someone oftentimes uses to convey different thoughts or feelings.  These nonverbal communication skills or cues can include posture, eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures, among others.  Body language is an essential part of interpreting what a person is trying to tell someone else.  In fact, one of how therapists and counselors can determine if there is an issue or something that client is not talking about is if certain types of body language are present during the therapy session.

The word pseudoscience refers to beliefs that are often conflated with scientific beliefs when really, there is no solid, empirical evidence to support the validity or the accuracy of these different beliefs. They, typically, gain so much popularity or traction because they are associated with scientific fields and, therefore, taken as being as “true” or “provable” as other sciences. Some common examples of pseudosciences include astrology, numerology, polygraph testing, and cryptozoology.  All of these different types of fields have copious amounts of information and experts associated with them.  However, they are lacking in the providing of articles published in peer-reviewed journals using various forms of study (including the scientific method and case studies) to support different scientific theories that exist within the given field.

Body language intersects with pseudo-sciences because certain body languages have been “debunked” over the years as having no accuracy or validity regarding what they say about a person’s intentions, feelings, or emotions. Some of these include direction of the eyes to indicate deception, lack of eye contact in general to convey deception, and the body's position in relation to another person indicating a significant meaning.  However, it cannot be denied that there are certain nonverbal communication cues that most people use due to modeling and mirroring different behaviors that have been deemed acceptable when communicating various thoughts and feelings.  And, although some of these behaviors are easy to manipulate to deceive when somebody is less mindful and unaware of their use of these different nonverbal communication skills, it can tell another person a lot about how a person feels or how a person thinks.