Body Language of Hooding or The Catapult
Cue: Hooding or The Catapult.
Synonym(s): Full Body Steeple, Catapult (The), Interlaced Hands Behind The Head.
Description: Hooding is a body posture that occurs by placing both hands up and clasped behind the head, elbows back, and chest puffed out while in a seated position. Think of making a hood with your arms and hands.
In One Sentence: Hooding is a posture signaling high dominance.
How To Use it: Use hooding to expand the body and make it appear larger than it is in reality. This will be viewed by others as dominance and confidence therefore it should be reserved for higher ranking individuals who will not be challenged by others.
Bosses, should feel free to assert their dominance with the hooding posture, whereas lower ranking employees should not.
Women should generally not carry the posture due to its high perceived dominance. When done by women it can appear overbearing. If women do choose to do it, they should be expecting to be viewed as capable of backing their dominance with not only verbal counterarguments, but also supportive action. When dominance lacks substance it is viewed in a negative light rather than a positive one.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m so dominant and confident that I’m placing my hands on my head where they can’t be used for defense, splaying wide open and taking up a bunch of space and leaning back to be comfortable.”
Variant: See Military Man or Regal Stance and Cowboy Pose Stance for two similarly dominant postures.
Cue In Action: The boss was cocky and confident. When meeting with employees he always placed his hands up behind his head and leaned back in his chair. When the owner of the company showed up and surprised him, he quickly shot forward, took his hands off the back of his head and made a point of shaking hands with him. He didn’t get back to his hooding posture until the owner was safely out of the office.
Meaning and/or Motivation: Hooding or interlaced hands behind the head is an extremely dominant and possibly arrogant, self-satisfied, even threatening display.
The arms behind the head posture shows arrogance because it openly exposes the body to attack through its expansiveness. Dominant people don’t worry about being attacked and often show this confidence by overexposing themselves and their vulnerable areas to challengers.
The full body steeple is common to professionals such as lawyers, accountants, managers, bosses, and others that feel more superior then their counterparts.
Hooding can be used to intimidate others, or convey a relaxed, cocky disposition, but as always, body language needs to be taken in context. The accompanying dialogue will help tell us what is really going on.
Professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, managers, bosses, and others that tend to take their superiority to higher levels than the rest of us, will be seen using the full body steeple. This is the hooding posture coupled with a figure four leg cross and leaning back in the chair.
Cue Cluster: When seated hooding is coupled with body leaning backward with the legs spread wide open we have a very dominant crotch display. The postures is completed by combining it with the figure-four-leg cross which happens by placing the ankle of the opposite foot across the knee.
Body Language Category: Arrogance or arrogant body language, Aggressive body language, Authoritative body language, Confident body language, Dominant body language, Expansive movements, Gravity defying body language, High confidence body language, Open body language.
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