Genesis and psychological role of self-purification and grooming gestures in human pantomimic production

Abstract

The article proposes a classification of gestures when hiding information from the persons involved. Pantomimic production with fear of exposure has an unconscious origin. It is differentiated into resource gestures that restore the body's homeostasis and adaptive body movements, which refer to the self-preservation reactions of the limbic system to a dangerous stimulus. Gestures - manipulators, as actions that cleanse the body, were singled out by the American psychologist, psychiatrist P. Ekman. According to the authors, the pantomimic production described by P. Ekman has the nature of grooming. The paper considers examples of the cleansing pattern and gestures in primates and humans. Grooming, as a regressive behavior, refers to a psychological defense mechanism, reduces anxiety and neuropsychic stress in case of psychological trauma. In mentally ill patients, self-purification is a marker of dysontogenesis, a manifestation of primitive thinking and behavior in pathology. In healthy individuals, redirection and substitution for scratching the body, pinching, shaking off ‟invisible dust”, pulling clothes, under which negative emotions are disguised, predominate. In instrumental lie detection (verification), gestures - self-cleansing are an indirect marker of deception, if another unconscious pantomime is jointly produced in the external pattern of the interviewed person's behavior. On neutral topics, they signal unformed rapport, situational anxiety, and maladaptation to testing. The appearance of grooming on control topics is the “target” of experienced psychotraumatic events in the subject.