Allan Pease

The Definitive Book of Body Language was written with Barbara Pease, and the two have made a long career of it through seminars, television and a shelf of related titles. Pease started in insurance sales in Australia and built the material from what worked in a room rather than from laboratory work. He holds no research qualification in psychology, and academics have pushed back hard on the confident percentages the books quote for how much of communication is non-verbal, figures that trace back to a narrow 1960s study about attitudes and were never meant to be general. What survives the criticism is a readable field guide to gesture, posture and personal territory.