Interview with Dr. Philip Furley
Christopher Philip
Dr. Philip Furley is a lecturer at the Institute for Human Cognition and Sports Game Research of the German Sport University Cologne. He is head of the Department “Cognition & Motivation.” He has published several papers dealing specifically with nonverbal communication in sports. For more on his work visit: https://www.dshs-koeln.de/visitenkarte/person/dr-philip-furley/.
1. First, for the benefit of the readers, how should a person hold their body if they want to portray a dominant versus a neutral or submissive posture?
In a very general sense, dominance is expressed by taking up a lot of room in space, whereas submissiveness is signaled by not occupying a lot of space. However, it is important to mention that these expressions vary depending on the context. Within our research we had actors express these postures in the following manner:
A typical dominant posture is characterized by standing/walking erect, pulling the shoulders back, pushing the chest out, slightly spreading the limbs from the torso, holding the head up with the chin parallel to the ground, and making direct eye-contact with other people.
A typical submissive posture is characterized by adopting a slouched posture with the head and chin pointing down, the limbs touching the torso and thereby minimizing the occupied space by collapsing the body inwards, the shoulders hanging to the front, and the eyes looking down.
Interestingly, it is harder than one might expect to show a neutral posture. When instructing actors in some of our studies we told them to adopt a relaxed stance with the feet shoulder-width apart and the shoulders casually hanging, to neither collapse the limbs inward nor outward, to not deliberately hold the head up and the chin slightly pointed towards the ground.
2. Do you believe that dominant and submissive postures are the most important cues in nonverbal communication? Would any other bodily cues rival these?
This is a tricky question and I would not feel comfortable ranking the varying nonverbal expressions regarding their importance. Again this would be highly influenced by the context and in regards to what is meant by importance (e.g. in evolutionary terms, for modern human life, for sport contests, etc.). In his excellent book on dominance and deference, Allan Mazur argues that dominance hierarchies and expressions probably evolved in group-living animals by the circumstance of scarce resources (territory, food, mates, etc.) in the environment. The dominance and submission communication helped to organize these group-living animals by ranking the group members vertically according to power, status, and privilege within this group. Obviously, status hierarchies are still highly important in modern human life and in sports competitions. However, an individual does not simply move up the hierarchy by adopting a dominant posture. But when expressed in the appropriate context, with the appropriate intensity, then this dimension of nonverbal behavior can be of major importance in social encounters as a growing body of research has documented.
3. In your research you have found that players in sports actively use and assess the nonverbal expressions of their opponents. Specifically, you have found that players will see dominant behaviour in players and then translate this into perceptions of strength and skill. Is it possible that our assessments of the relative dominance and submission of others is a hardwired trait, and that our assessments of others are ongoing throughout all aspects of our lives rather than something that simple begins and ends at competitive sports? What should we do about this? Should we hold our heads high all the time in order to project confidence?
If dominance and submission expressions evolved in order to rank group members vertically according to power, status, and privilege, then it seems feasible that humans are somewhat predisposed to interpreting these kinds of signals in other everyday encounters beyond sports. There is reason to believe that effects we have reported in the sport context transfer to other areas of everyday life, for example negotiations. However, my advice would not be to present oneself as confident “no matter what”. First, there is evidence that people can distinguish between staged nonverbal displays and nonverbal displays that coincide with “real” feelings. More importantly, in plenty of everyday situations it wouldn’t seem advisable to come across too “cocky” as other people might not take one seriously, or get annoyed with you. Therefore, it is important to be sensitive to the social context and adjust one’s nonverbal behavior accordingly. Sometimes it would probably be beneficial to display submissive cues as is evident in sayings such as “the wiser head gives in”.
4. What social purpose do nonverbal expressions of dominance serve? What about the complimentary signals of submission? Are these postures something that we’re born with or do you think they are something that we learn from observing the nonverbals of others while growing up?
I think it is quite likely that nonverbal expressions of dominance can be considered evolved signals of high status that helped primates to save valuable resources by communicating superiority over a potential aggressor and avoiding fights. On the other hand, sending submissive signals when losing an antagonistic encounter increased the chances of avoiding further potentially life threatening attacks for primates. However, there is probably both a nature and a nurture component in both the display of these nonverbal behaviors and their respective interpretations. Oftentimes, estimates on the respective contribution of nature and nurture in explaining human behavior go wide apart, while others settle on the more diplomatic compromise of 50-50. I am not aware of any solid evidence on this topic, so I will refrain from taking a position here. Today, dominance displays still communicate high status and indicate who deserves attention, who should be listened to, whom to follow, or whom to avoid in a confrontational situation. On the other hand, submissive signals communicate that one wants to be left in peace, that one recognizes the superiority of someone else, and does not pose a threat.
5. In one of your research papers you found that spectators of a basketball and table tennis could accurately detect who was winning and losing based only on the nonverbal expressions of the players. Is it possible that dominance and submissive postures are a sort of ongoing “score card” in our daily life and that this score card is a reflection of our past successes and failures?
Yes, we found that people in general were pretty good at inferring the score of ongoing sport competitions when only looking at brief video clips of athlete’s nonverbal behavior. We speculated that these accurate ratings might have been based on the fact that athletes change their nonverbal behavior depending on how it was currently going in that competition. However, we presently do not know whether the score ratings were in fact based on more dominant displays of leading athletes and more submissive displays of trailing athletes. Although this might seem a plausible story, we are currently looking into which kinds of display (e.g. dominance/submission, pride/shame; or some other dimension of nonverbal behavior) change during sport competitions.
Within our research we can show that top-level athletes change their nonverbal behavior depending on whether they are currently in the lead or trailing. There is also research showing that nonverbal expressions change according to more enduring past events, such as one’s job. Therefore, our current nonverbal behavior is most likely influenced by different circumstances, including the current situation we are in and our past experiences.
6. It has been said that it’s evolutionarily adaptive to take on a submissive posture in defeat because it would convey that one acknowledges a position of subordination and therefore reduce the risk of further onslaught from an opponent, thereby protect against possible injury. Do you think there would be any value in fighting our instincts and “keep our chin up” or “hold our head high” when facing defeat in modern competition, or should athletes match their body language with their emotional state? In other words, is shame in losing simply a vestigial posture that we might do well to discard in order to protect an image of strength?
This is an interesting question. I think several instances come to mind in which evolved adaptations, although beneficial in ensuring the survival of a species, might be not as beneficial for individual goal attainment in modern human life. From an evolutionary point of view displaying internal states or subordination seems to have had a greater survival value than disguising our intentions and feelings, so much so that we now have ways of unintentionally “outing” ourselves to others. This tendency, however, does not seem to be ideal in some areas of modern societies, for example sport competitions. It seems unlikely that leading athletes will go easy on trailing athletes due to them showing submissive nonverbal behavior. Therefore, showing submissive signals during sports competition might be harmful for trailing athletes as it might increases the downward spiral by strengthening the opposition. In this respect, submissive nonverbal behavior during sports competitions might be an example of behaviors that were adaptive in group life during our evolutionary past and possibly in some domains of modern social life, but that have become dysfunctional in others.
Having said this, athletes and coaches are probably well advised in encouraging themselves and their team players to “hold their head high”.
7. In your opinion, do you believe that there has ever been a time in sports or in daily life when using submissive postures (rather than dominant postures) would be advantageous? Also, when you personally take a penalty kick, do you posture as dominant or submissive? What about in social meetings or, say, when speaking with your students?
I do not think that the implications of our research are as straightforward to say that dominant nonverbal behavior is good and submissive is bad in every context. For example when watching tennis I think that some players deliberately play with their body language to “lull the opponent in a (false) sense of security” in order to catch the opponent of guard. Some players seem expert at this deceptive use of nonverbal behavior in sport. Nevertheless, in other situations—and I consider the soccer penalty kick a prime example for this—it seems highly beneficial to present oneself as confident due to its short, intense one-on-one nature. Within social meetings, or teaching situations I think the matter is more complex again. When teaching for instance, especially in seminars in which you want to get students to join into discussions, it would seem detrimental to act in an intimidating dominant manner.
8. It’s been recommended that people “fake it until they make it” when it comes to portraying dominance. Is this something people can successfully fake or do you think that other people (our day-to-day “opponents”) will simply see right through the display? [referring to the baseball study – abstract: “the results indicate, that further information about the ability level of the athlete might diminish this effect.”]
Yes, indeed, experimental studies as we have done them in our lab focus on small subsets of variables and tend to ignore the complex interplay of the endless variables in real world scenarios. Therefore, some of our studies run the risk of drawing a too simplistic picture or inflating the effect of dominant nonverbal behavior in sport contexts. This does not mean that I don’t consider our findings to be meaningful for actual sporting context or other everyday life situations; I certainly do, but think that—as always—the story gets more complicated.
Returning to the question: There is reason to believe that some people would be better “actors” as others and therefore, in turn, be more likely to “fake it until they make it”. On the other hand, some opponents would probably also be more sensitive to detecting whether a certain dominance display is staged or authentic. However, within the sporting context, I think it is often beneficial to present oneself as dominant and confident, even if one is actually not feeling that way. Also, in light of research showing that posing in certain dominant postures seems to affect hormone concentrations and in turn behavior in a beneficial way for sports contests, I would lean towards advising athletes “to fake it until they make it”.
9. What are you currently studying and what sort of research should we expect from you in the future?
The study of nonverbal behavior in sport is still a research priority within my current work. We have several ongoing streams of investigation at the moment. For one, we are interested in gaining further insight into the finding of people being able to correctly inferring the current score based on nonverbal cues: for example which cues are the most informative (face or body), what are athletes actually expressing when leading or trailing. We have also started to look at some neuronal underpinnings of this effect. These are only a few examples of my current work and hopefully there will soon be some new findings coming out in the literature.
Resources
Furley, P., and Schweizer, G. (2019). The Expression of Victory and Loss: Estimating Who’s Leading or Trailing from Nonverbal Cues in Sports. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 38, 13-29.
Furley, P., Dicks, M., & Memmert, D. (2019). Nonverbal Behavior in Soccer: The Influence of Dominant and Submissive Body Language on the Impression Formation and Expectancy of Success of Soccer Players. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 34, 61-82
Furley, P., & Dicks, M. (2019). “Hold your head high”. The influence of emotional versus neutral nonverbal expressions of dominance and submissiveness in baseball. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 43, 294-311.