|
BODY LANGUAGE
Really explained ... this is a big page and it's worth reading a few times!
Understanding body language is not as difficult as some people would have you believe. All human beings use it and so actually have a “built-in” ability to recognise and read it. Unfortunately, as humans have become increasingly better at “verbal” communication their ability to consciously recognise body language has faded away.
Having a complex spoken language is one of the great evolutionary tricks. It means that vast amounts of detailed information can be transmitted from one person to another. It allows us to read, write and even think in a certain way. As far as we can tell, human beings are the only creatures alive on this planet that truly have this ability. This incredible skill gave humans the advantage that put-us-on-top and, if measured in evolutionary timescales, it’s brand new.
We’re not saying that animals and other creatures don’t communicate - they definitely do. However, the way they communicate is much closer to body language than it is to verbal communication. Not so long ago we human beings were just like them. Deep inside us this form of communication is still strong but is now more commonly used to emphasize (or contradict) what we say. An angry man shakes his fist, a depressed girl sits slumped in her chair, and a soldier stands up straight – ready to take on the enemy. Yes, human body language is alive and well.
"Millions of words have been written about why we have body language and why we do what we so. Psychologists and psychiatrists believe that when we lie our bodies go into stress so we sweat, when we’re attracted to someone we assume postures we believe others will find attractive or when frightened or aggressive we try and make ourselves look bigger. These are just a few examples. Is the reasoning true? Well we don’t know, but we do know that they do happen. People do get itchy lips and noses when they lie. To demystify body language it is enough to know that it is real and that it works. We haven’t prepared this section to convince you that body language is real – just how to understand this intriguing form communication. "
The secret to “reading” and demystifying body language is the ability to understand the next eight points
- Signals or Tells
- Intensity
- Corroboration and Contradiction
- Clusters
- Progressions
- Contexts
- Conditioning (Culture)
- Objectiveness (Seeking and Denial)
Signals or “Tells” (non-verbal cues)
A signal, tell, or cue is a something that a person's body does that can be recognised to have meaning by other people. This can be a gesture, a facial expression, a posture, how close people choose to be to other people, what clothes people wear, a smell, sweating or even the way someone breathes. Some are common to all human beings while others are specific to certain cultures or groups. Most of this website section is dedicated to recognizing these signals and what they mean in certain circumstances.
Examples of signals include “crossing the arms” when feeling vulnerable or defiant, “covering the mouth” when lying and even “scratching our heads” when we’re thinking.
Signals can be subconscious so that people do not realize that they are doing them or they can be conscious and deliberate. For example, a person telling a lie might subconsciously scratch their nose or upper lip (a less obvious form of covering the mouth) but another person may consciously make a rude hand gesture while driving to express their dissatisfaction with another motorist.
Body language Intensity
The intensity of a body language signal helps the observer to understand the importance of the message being conveyed. For example, a person feeling slightly vulnerable or defensive might casually and loosely cross their arms. However a person experiencing extreme anxiety will not only cross their arms tightly but press them to their chest. Language has even tried to describe this concept of intensity by creating words for the various stages. For example, he frowned, grimaced, glowered and scowled are words all describing the same facial expression but with increasingly serious intensity.
People often lie or misdirect in small ways and quite often touch their mouths thus displaying the classic body language signal that indicates a falsehood has been spoken. Still, this does not mean that a complete lie has been told – it could be just a small exaggeration. The simple rule is: The more intense the body language – the more serious the message.
Corroboration and Contradiction
Signals, tells or cues usually corroborate or contradict either a verbal or non-verbal statement. Confused? Here’s an explanation. Let’s say a man is standing erect with his stomach pulled-in and his chest pushed-out while talking to a woman to whom he is attracted. This is a classic posture that human males adopt when wanting to impress a female. This is the statement. However, he has also crossed his arms indicating vulnerability or defensiveness. This is therefore a contradiction of his original body-statement. In effect he is saying “I’m not really as confident as I want you to think I am”. Had he tucked his thumbs into his trouser pockets (the classic cowboy pose) so that his fingers casually point to his groin he would be corroborating his original body-statement thus making it more powerful.
This works just as effectively if the statement is verbal. For example, a person declares with a confident tone-of-voice that they are a great tennis player (the statement) but “turns-away” and pushes their hands downwards (the contradiction). |
|
 |
|
| |
Had the same person swung their arm in a classic tennis move then it would have been a corroboration of their verbal statement. They’re actually demonstrating their ability.
These corroborations and contradictions are extremely valuable if the person making them is doing it subconsciously – but beware, people are smart enough to fake these too. Politicians, PR people, lawyers, actors and others are often trained in this technique.
Clusters (critically important)
One signal, tell or cue is often not enough to make a clear assessment of the message being sent by a person’s body language. They may scratch their head while speaking simply because it itches and not because they are deep in thought.
The real trick is to look for clusters or collections of signals and then make your assessment. These are very hard to fake. An analogy to explain this is: A single piece of a jigsaw puzzle rarely reveals anything significant but join-up twenty pieces and the picture is obviously much clearer.
Clusters can be simultaneous or sequential. A person may display several different signals at the same time (corroboration) that all mean the same thing. For example a woman who is attracted to a man may touch her thigh, touch the man, nibble her lip and flick her hair all at the same time. She may also display these signals sequentially – one after each other – either way she has established a cluster. The message is clear – attraction!
The general rule is simple: The more corroborating signals in the cluster – the stronger and more reliable the message.
It is unusual to see contradicting clusters. Usually the dominant message forms the cluster but may have the occasional contradiction because human beings are frankly too complex to ever be fully understood. Strong contradicting clusters indicates that the person is “torn” between opposing intentions or messages.
A good example of this is where a happily married man is nevertheless out-on-the-town seeking an illicit relationship. One cluster will show “attraction” while the other may indicate “guilt”. It is interesting to note that even people that have difficulty reading body language seem subconsciously very aware of strong cluster conflicts and are distrustful of people that display them. This may be why so many people distrust politicians.
Progressions
Progressions are almost as valuable as clusters when it comes to reading a person’s body language intentions. A progression occurs when a body language statement (signal or cluster) is repeated over time with increasing or decreasing intensity – usually increasing. Just watch two men squaring up for fight and you’ll understand. In verbal terms it is the equivalent of first whispering, then stating and then shouting. The reason that this occurs is generally as a response to a previously ignored or unrecognized body language statement. A woman once told a member of the team: “Men are so dense! I started off by being coy and flirty by the bar. By the time he finally caught-on my legs were so wide you could have parked a bus between them.”
There are two interesting points to be made here. Firstly, women seem to be naturally better at consciously projecting and reading body language than men. Secondly, it seems to be an aspect of human nature that people progressively increase or decrease the intensity of their actions. Courtship, aggression, reconciliation, learning, careers and belief (to name but a few) are all progressions. In straightforward terms, humans want to be “heard” and if people don’t take notice they’ll raise their voices. In body language terms this is the equivalent of turning a spotlight on a person - the stronger the progression the clearer the intent.
Contexts
When reading body language signals, it is critical that the context (situation) is taken into consideration. A simple example is this: Imagine that two people are talking and one of them crosses their arms. If they are in a warm room then it is probably a defensive / anxiety signal. If the two are standing on a ski slope then the arm crosser may just be cold.
Understanding context is the ability to recognise that certain body language signals can have different meanings in different situations and circumstances.
A more complex extension of context is the fact that humans multi-task / multi-process. This means that a person can be doing one thing while quite easily thinking about something completely different. What a person is thinking and how they are feeling will affect the body language that they display.
For example, a man is sitting in a business meeting. His gestures are quick and aggressive. His sentences are short and clipped while his hands keep making unpleasant “chopping” gestures. An uninformed observer might easily assume that the man is reacting to communication and events that are taking place in the meeting. The reality is that the man is actually unable to stop thinking about the terrible fight that he had with his wife that morning.
Fortunately for observers of body language, human beings are creatures of the present. |
|
It takes very strong emotions or thoughts to affect behavior that is directed to an active and current situation. Still, it does happen and that makes context important.
Conditioning (Culture)
Some body language signals are universal and everyone from every corner of the planet uses them but some are the product of conditioning – they’re learned (cultural) - and can have quite different meanings. Fortunately, the commonality of body language is far greater than the differences. For example a nod generally means yes, a smile generally indicates happiness, wide eyes equals shock – and so on.
Still, there are other signals that have radically different meanings. The colour red is considered lucky in China (East) but tends to mean danger in the West. The way you bow in Japan can covey a huge variety of information but in England it’s just a bow. Arab men will often hold hands as a sign of friendship – western men do not unless they’re gay. Africans are far more comfortable being close to each other but Europeans like a bit more personal space. It goes on-and-on.
Later in this website we have prepared a far larger list of variations worth knowing.
In addition, some cultures are just more expressive. Naturally these are generalizations and don’t apply to every individual. Of course there are extrovert English and introverted Greeks. There are very tall Chinese and very short Afro-Americans. Still, there are some general perceptions about cultures that are worth noting. These are simply differences and are in no way meant to imply racial ranking.
Generally it is believed that Mediterranean people are more expressive than their northern counterparts. British are seen as conservative and the expression “stiff upper-lip” is synonymous with English reserve. American tourists are often described as “loud”. Spanish women are seen as flirtatious because they emphasize their courting signals. When people from different cultures interact there is always the risk that signals are over-read or under-read.
In intercultural communication, body language can help with translation. When spoken language isn’t an option it is surprising how much can actually be communicated just with gestures.
Objectiveness (Seeking and Denial)
This is one of the hardest skills to master when it comes to reading body language. In short, it’s about being truthful with yourself. Human beings have a truly incredible ability to see what they want to or, for that matter, refuse to see the obvious. This is known as “Seeking” and “Denial”.
Seeking is where you want to see signals that are important to you – even if they’re not really there - and Denial is when you refuse to see signals that conflict with what you want to see. For example, a man is talking to an attractive woman and she crosses her legs – he see this as a flirtatious gesture (in some cases it can be) but in this context it is actually an attempt to end the contact – “I’m shutting my legs so you can’t come in”. He is seeking what he wants (imagining the positive) while at the same time refusing to accept that she doesn’t want to go further (Denial). He increases his advances and eventually she is forced to openly reject him. His self esteem is damaged and later he describes her negatively as a tease. He misinterpreted the signals because psychologically he could not, or would not, accept the truth of what he was seeing.
As a student of body language you have to accept the evidence objectively. This means accepting the truth of what you see or experience - even if you don’t want to.
Seeking and Denial are common mistakes made by people that have just started reading and understanding body language. About twenty percent of people will never be able to separate their preconceptions (desires and fears) from what they’re seeing (experiencing). For these people trying to understand body-language is a dangerous undertaking.
Conclusion
The temptation with body language is to concentrate on the “signals” and ignore the other seven points. Seriously, do this at your own risk. Also, beware of trying to fake body language. It can be done but it takes a lot of practice to get it right.
As stated earlier, understanding body language is not that hard if you discipline yourself to adopt and internalise the above mention points. The Aquiziam team hope that this introduction has helped to demystify the subject but, as with all things, study every source and come to your own conclusions.
We openly admit that we’ve left-out a fair amount of the scientific jargon, evolutionary origins, justifications and page-filling impressions. We’ve genuinely tried our best to simplify a complex subject and cut out a lot of the psycho-babble. We’re clever people but there are other cleverer people out there that are definitely worth listening to.
Please just remember to filter the “valuable” from the “padding”. One last thought is this: Authors often get paid to write a certain number of pages – not concepts. Would you pay ten dollars for a five page book? That’s human nature for you – we humans want value for money and, after all, isn’t bigger better? Well, sometimes.
|
|
