Vanessa Van Edwards explains that sudden mouth touches, nose rubs, and lip touches are instinctive signals people use when hiding something, feeling embarrassed, or ashamed. Even children do this when lying. Watch for these gestures in conversation as a sign someone is trying to conceal something.
Have you ever seen a little kid tell a lie? They'll tell a lie and they kind of go, "Oh," and they cover their mouth. That is because it is a natural human instinct when we are trying to keep something in or we don't like what we said, we'll cover our own mouth. We might even do this with like a rub of the nose or rub of the lips, and that is because we're trying to withhold something or keep something in. Sometimes it can even come with shame. For example, I think that we found a celebrity example here of a mouth block and a little shame gesture, and that's because if we're really embarrassed especially if something we said, that's exactly what we wanna do is we're like trying to cover our face and trying to keep it in. So watch out for any sudden mouth touches. You're talking to someone and they're, it means they wanted to just keep that in just a little bit.
