In the beginning was ...

Silent film actors were the first to actively use body language, since this was the only means of communication available to them. Good actors used the gestures and signals of the body well, the bad - bad. With the advent of sound cinema, the non-verbal aspects of acting are less important. Many silent film actors were unclaimed. Success was achieved only by those who skillfully combined verbal and non-verbal skills.
Among the scientific works on body language, we can highlight the work of Charles Darwin "The expression of emotions in humans and animals," published in 1872. However, only scientists are familiar with this work. Nevertheless, it greatly influenced modern research on facial expressions and body language. Many ideas and observations of Darwin and today are widely used by researchers around the world. Since the writing of Darwinian work, scientists have identified and fixed almost a million non-verbal keys and signals. Albert Merabian, a pioneer in the field of studying body language, who worked in the 50s of the 20th century, found that the information of any message is divided as follows: 7% of it is transmitted verbally, that is, in words, 38% - vocally (voice tone, stress and pronouncing sounds) and 55% - non-verbal signals.

The meaning of what you want to say is largely conveyed by how you look at the moment of speech, and not by your words.

Anthropologist Ray Berdvistell conducted an original study of non-verbal communication. He called his observations "kinesic." Birdwistell evaluated the degree of nonverbal communication between people. He came to the conclusion that the average person speaks about 10-11 minutes a day, and the average sentence lasts only 2.5 seconds. Bervistell also found that a person can produce and recognize about 250,000 facial expressions.
Like Merabian, Birdwistell discovered that the verbal component of interpersonal communication is less than 35%, and over 65% of the information transmitted during communication is non-verbally transmitted. Our analysis of numerous trade deals and negotiations, conducted in the 70s - 80s, showed that body language helps to transfer from 60% to 80% of the information at the negotiating table. Most people form an opinion about a stranger in less than four minutes of communication. Studies also show that in cases where negotiations are conducted by telephone, the participant who benefits from stronger arguments wins. If the negotiations are conducted in the process of personal communication, the result is not so predictable, since the final decision largely depends on what we see, and not only on what we hear.