Author Archive for Chris Site Author

Haptics: The Use Of Touch In Communication

by  • March 5, 2013 • 3 Comments

Is this touching on purpose or to gain attention?

Is this touching on purpose or to gain attention?

Haptics is the study of touching and how it is used in communication. Handshakes, holding hands, kissing, back slapping, high fives, brushing up against someone or pats all have meaning. Touching is the most developed sense at birth and formulates our initial views of the world. Touching can be used to sooth, for amusement during play, to flirt, to expressing power and maintaining bonds between people such as with baby and mother. Touching can carry distinct emotions and also show the intensity of those emotions. Touch absent of other cues can signal anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude and sympathy depending on the length and type of touching that is performed. Many factors also contribute to the meaning of touching such as the length of the touch and location on the body in which the touching takes place.

In western cultures touching is infrequent which makes it even more significant when it happens. French and Italians for example, tend to touch frequently even continuously while walking, whereas the British prefer not to touch at all. At sporting events and especially in celebration of victory or success, such as scoring a goal or point, touching among male athletes is permitted whereas in the dressing room, a hands-off policy is the norm. Cultures that accept touching more often are India, Turkey, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, the Middle East, Parts of Asia and Russia whereas no touching cultures includes Germany, Japan, England, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia, Portugal, Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

In the workplace, touching is fairly uncommon. We therefore use the handshake as a universal form of touching to avoid offending others. More intimate forms of touching sometimes occurs such as a friendly pat on the back to display encouragement but generally speaking, touching at work should be kept to a minimum. We cover cultural differences with respect to touching in a dedicated chapter.

Reading Posture

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Slumped posture indicates to others that life has given you a bad hand.

Slumped posture indicates to others that life has given you a bad hand.

Confident erect posture.

Confident erect posture.

Asymmetrical posture shows a lack of confidence.

Asymmetrical posture shows a lack of confidence.

Posture is underrated in daily life but it can tell us a lot about a person. Posture refers not only to the erectness of our bodies, but also to our body orientation, direction of lean, and the degree to which our bodies are open and inviting.

Good healthy posture does not mean that the body is straight up and down since the natural spine has curves, but it does mean that the spine is aligned and not twisted. There are natural curves between the thoracic (upper) and lumbar (lower) regions where the upper curves slight backwards and the lower slightly forward. To be technical, the ears, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles should align as if a plumb line where run from top to bottom. This is called the neutral position because the body is best able to hold this posture without stressing joints, muscle and bones. What it really means is that the weight of the body is held by the bones and not by the muscles. You can imagine the structure of a house whose weight is carried down from the rafters to the side and supporting walls, then straight down to the foundation. A house that leans puts uneven stress over certain walls causing a risk of collapse. A good posture promotes breathing, circulation and balance. Persistent improper posture can lead to general discomfort, long term damage, or even deformities. While there are medical reasons for holding good posture, there are certainly nonverbal reasons for keeping a good level body.

Having rounded shoulders for example, shows that a person is inactive in the conversation, as does leaning away or even closing the body off. We also attribute negative ideas to people with poor posture. People that slumped over or habitually lean on their elbows while seated or against a wall come off as lazy and careless; sloppy. People with poor posture often come across as lacking confidence. Conversely, being too rigid can come off as stiff, awkward, stressed, nervous and uncomfortable. Holding good posture shows the world that one is in control, confident and powerful.

Shorter people can even add several inches with an upright posture over someone with poor posture. The effect is magnified even moreso while seated, and can even level the field entirely. A posture experiment is simple so feel free to try it at the next board meeting and see just how much height you can gain just by holding a more upright posture. The postural advantage therefore is best used by striking a happy medium between being proper and upright but not appearing stiff. Keep the shoulders back, with your spin generally straight and head upright.

Body orientation, a subset of posture, can also convey information. For example, having weight unevenly distributed across the legs can show that a person is ready to leave a conversation by slumping toward the desired exit direction. Usually this is a door, or hallway. Reading or using this posture can tell you when its time to wrap things up or tell others when you would prefer to end the conversation. I use this skill on adamant door to door salespeople. Simply by orienting my body away from the salesman and even slightly moving in that direction I can show the salesman that I am serious about my disinterest. You can easily do the same.

Leaning towards or away also conveys useful meanings. Someone interested in the conversation will literally be thrusting themselves forward into the conversation by moving their bodies forward toward the speaker. Other times the body leans much more subtly. For example, an interested person might stand, shifting their weight slightly forward or might teeter just a touch to the side to display interest or connectivity to someone to their left or right. Because leaning requires a significant amount of work to do, not to mention balance, it is a significant nonverbal message especially when it is seen in the torso since it carries a large portion of our body weight. However, when the brain requires it to evade other people that we dislike or favour those we like, the body will hardly realize it. There will be times that distancing behaviours are not terribly dramatic as even just a few inches tells us that ideas and the people that voice them are diverging. While seated, interest driven leaning can be even more dramatic as weight is placed on the knees almost in a sprinter position as someone is trying to accept as much information as possible.

Steps to perfect posture
1. Stand upright, shoulders relaxed yet up and back.
2. Align your neck with your spine with your head back and level. Don’t let your head droop and ‘lead’ you.
3. Push your rear end forward so as to shift your weight onto your hips and legs without becoming overly rigid.
4. Keep your midsection tight to assist your back and keep your torso straight and upright.
5. Keep your arms to your sides with your fingers loose and keep your body weight even across both feet.

Emulating Alpha’s Body Language

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Being alpha.

Being alpha.

Gregory Hartley author of I can read you like a book talks at length about how we are constantly at the whim of ‘Alpha’. As he states it we are either creating the social norms or we are following them. Think about this in terms of your work place and about who calls the shots. Is your body language free flowing or does it react to that of your boss and managers? Do you sit like you do at home? Is your body language relaxed? How does it change when you move from your private space, your cubicle, or your office? How does it react when you are being reprimanded? I suspect that more then you know Alpha’s, not just in your workplace, but in your environment at large and plays a big part in how you comport yourself. Hartleys says that “Unless we are alpha, we are emulating the alpha and overlaying it to our own catalogue of gestures to maintain identity while keeping alpha happy.”

He divides us further into three categories. They are sub-typical, typical and super-typical and places everyone on a bell curve of behaviour within a given culture. The bell curve has a shape of a bell and shows the frequencies of behaviour with most people having middle ground behaviour. The super-typical show extremities in behaviour and set the rules for our cultures and microcultures, they are the politicians and celebrities of our world. Within every sector of our lives there exists this bell curve of behaviour because each of the groups we belong to has a set of acceptable behaviour; at work, your social network, at school and so forth.

Think of the playground, where the super-typical are the popular kids whom everyone looks up to and the sub-typical as the losers, the rest are in the middle. We look up to the super-typical and try to be like them except in the case of the sub-typical who simply long to advance to typical. In our workplace, the super-typical are our bosses and managers, the typical are the average people and the sub-typical are those at the low end of the bell curve.

Naturally, no matter where we are, we all know who these people are because rank is part of our evolutionary history. The sub-typical are those that form part of the group but aren’t the norm and they are consistently dismissed even though everyone sees them as part of the group. In life, the sub-typical are the homeless or socially inept, they don’t take any part in creating our social norms and as mentioned our super-typicals are our politicians and celebrities. Everyone belongs to some sort of group so we all follow social norming and we all to one degree or another follow our alphas. This then triggers behaviours, actions and therefore body language which becomes typical within our groups. So next time you watch other people’s body language be sure to frame it in light of imitating alpha.

Body Language Of Children

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BodyLanguageProjectCom - NeotenyBabies are almost entirely dependant on nonverbal communication in their first few months, that is, if we discount crying! As children age, they still rely, as adults do, on nonverbal language such as pointing at a toy rather then asking for it, pushing other children aside when it suites them, or even hugs to show affection and exaggerated pouting to garner sympathy. Babies as young as nine month’s old, who lack verbal language, can even begin using sign language to convey desires showing just how rooted non-verbal communication is all of us.

When young children lie they often have troubles making eye contact or they might hang their head, appear tense or they might even quickly pull both hands up and cover their mouths as if to shove the lie back in from where it came from. Even some adults will perform these gestures if they let slip a secret or particularly juicy piece of gossip in the wrong circle. However, at other times, both children and adults are not as obvious. A 2002 study by Victor Talwar and Kang Lee out of the University of Queens, Canada, however, showed that children as young as three are naturally adept at controlling their nonverbal language as it applies to deception. In the study, children were able to fool most of the evaluators of their deception as a videotape showing the lie was replayed. Children are not particularly skilled at lying through verbal channels though, and they slip up easily revealing inconsistencies in their stories, so this is where you can really catch them. We will cover deceptive body language at lengths later on.

Other emotional body language emitted by children is much more prevalent. For example, children use slouching and pouting to show that they are upset and disappointed but as we age, we drop our nonverbal cues in favour of verbal expression. We naturally become more adept at repressing what our bodies do and tend to use more conscious thought and spoken words since it is more direct and less easily misinterpreted. What starts off as a quick mouth slap movement to the mouth when lying (or swearing) in children, slowly becomes a touch to the corner of the mouth. Later, restraint forces the finger to the side even further and then instead of touching the mouth it touches the side of the nose instead. As people age, they become much more difficult to read. By logical progression, the hardest to read of all are sixty-year-old politicians!

As an interesting aside, dedicated parents even claim to be able to sense when a baby is about to relieve themselves and so avoid messy diapers. This technique is referred to as elimination communication. By reading gestures such as frowning, squirming, fussing or tensing, mother’s (or fathers!) in combination with baby’s particular rhythms, can detect when potty time is immanent. Once the baby’s cues have been deciphered the mother can anticipate potty time by holding baby over the toilet and cuing with “hiss-hiss” or “wiss-wiss” sounds. To associate the hissing sounds with urination, this process must be repeated ten to twenty times each day!

Age, Age Gaps, Status And Its Affect On Body Language

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Since we’ve isolated women as the best readers of body language, it’s time to weed out the rest of the bad apples from the bunch. In fact, many other factors, aside from our sexes, play into our ability to read and use body language.

The first such factor is our age. Children first learn to communicate through nonverbal channels by using posture, gestures and proximity to influence the behaviour of the adults around them. If this doesn’t work they will resort to crying but for the most part this is non-directional and unsophisticated. In children, it is their body language which helps us to figure out their true desires. Before they can signal nonverbally, we are simply left guessing so thankfully children have relatively simple and predictable needs. Once they figure out the use of words, their nonverbal gestures quickly diminish and eventually get mostly left by the wayside. Children who first begin to speak will show more interest in speaking then other channels even if it means they need to interact more with their adult counterparts versus other children of the same age. At the age of three, most children have lost or dropped almost all of their nonverbal communication and are fully into verbal speech.

Age also plays another more important role in reading body language. Those people that are closest to our age are the easiest to read. Our ability to accurately read others is much lower with people who are much younger and much older then ourselves and easiest amongst our own peer group. We spend the most amount of time with our peer group so familiarity could be a factor, however, more importantly is our ability to relate and empathize. So the take-away message is that our ability to empathize with the needs, desires and emotions of others is a key part in reading body language. Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others and to feel what they feel.

The greater the gap in age between the reader and the target, the greater is the discrepancy in accuracy. If you’ve ever watch siblings of similar age, you know that they have an uncanny ability to interpret and understand each other. It’s particularly interesting to watch small children decipher each others seemingly nonsensical gibberish and random movements. Naturally it follows that teenagers and seniors are difficult to read by the middle aged and children are poor readers of all adults (or at least do a good job pretend to be).

Older faces are difficult to read naturally, even for other seniors. Older faces have
weaker muscle tone, and so produce less exaggerated expressions. What expressions are made are then covered by wrinkles disguising them even more. Status and occupational differences that we see everyday at work, also make it difficult for us to read others. Upper management dealing with lower management in a company or teachers dealing with students must deal with cohort differences daily and it can become stressful.

Higher status people might lack the interest to associate with lower status people and low status people might sense this and so return less eye contact feeling not cared about. This lack of empathy spirals into each party caring less and less about each other. Lower status employees may also feel envious of higher status employees and share less information with them make it difficult to develop empathy. Health care workers that spend a lot of time with seniors can develop skills and read them more accurately, but only if they empathize with them. To be a good body language reader, you have to be able to put yourself in someone else’s position, and see the world as they do.

So How Exactly Do The Minds Of Men And Women Differ?

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BodyLanguageProjectCom - Neocortex Or Mammalian BrainDr. Gurian believes there are about a hundred structural differences between the male and female brain. Men tend to compartmentalize their communication into smaller parts of the brain and therefore tend to get right down to the issues whereas women’s brains gather a lot more information from different areas of the brain and therefore tend to be more detailed in their conversations. Men also show more activity in mechanical centers of the brain and females show more activity in verbal and emotional centers. These changes happen very early in boys and girls. To a little girl, a doll becomes life-like with desires, feelings, needs or in other words a life, but to a little boy, that same doll is simply an object.

The brain scans of women show that the corpus callosum which handles communication is larger than that of men’s. The corpus callosum is an anatomical part of the brain that is centered between the left and right hemisphere and helps women’s brains “talk” better across each hemisphere. The corpus callosum is a thick collection of nerve fibers that conduct information. In essence, it helps women multi-task by sending information to an fro, from one side to the other to be dissected, disseminated and refabricated as it is put through various brain centers. Men on the other hand tend to move information within the same side of the brain better and tend not to confuse issues with others. Women’s brains easily move from the right side (creative) to the left side (logical) and vice versa, very easily. This is why they often inject all sorts of emotions into their arguments and details into stories whereas men get stuck on the facts and logic and progress from A to B to C. Because of this ease of movement women can perform more operations at the same time, they can pick berries, take care of their young, and discuss camp ethics all at the same time. As it applies to our nonverbal discussion, it means that they can focus on more than just the words being spoken, they can also monitor body language as well.

So what does this all mean? Well, in practical terms, it means that women might have a better natural ability to read people. However, this book isn’t about what’s natural, it is about what can be learned and just about anyone can learn to read body language well, even if they are at an inherent disadvantage.

Are Men Bad Readers Of Body Language?

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Many beliefs exist about the sexes. Men are thought to be task and goal oriented, more aggressive, dominant and loud when they communicate. Women are thought to be emotional, gentle and sensitive. Women are also thought to talk more and also to be more aware of others’ feelings. But how much of these beliefs are accurate is up for debate. When we talk about reading people and intuition, we are really talking about someone’s ability to read someone’s body language. It can also be called audience awareness or perceptivity and can relate to a speaker or listener.

The research shows us that some of preconceptions are in fact correct but this dismisses a huge variable. That variable is our massive ability to learn. Men reading this book will have a vastly superior ability to read others when compared to women who have no schooling whatsoever in body language. Research has shown that men lack empathy for others and disregard other’s emotions. Is this a simple case of being lazy or are there real notable differences? A second research experiment found that homosexual men and male nurses were also more in-tune with reading others, and that this might actually be related to differences in the brain. However, not all, or even most male nurses would be presumed to be homosexual so obviously there are variation in the ability of men to read emotions.

The Evolutionary Differences Between Men And Women

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We rarely catch women checking men out because they can always see the 'whole picture' unlike men and their predatory hunter eyes.

We rarely catch women checking men out because they can always see the ‘whole picture’ unlike men and their predatory hunter eyes.

Eyeball assault! Predator alert!

Eyeball assault! Predator alert!

The hunter gatherer theory of human sex differences describes that men have evolved to be hunters whereas women have evolved to be gatherers. By this theory, the brains of men and the brains of women have been created under different selection pressures. The female mind was focused on language and communication especially between other females (gossip) and on searching out multiple food items, such as berries, vegetables and nuts. Men where more focused on tracking down prey, a single item, and used far less dialogue since talking too much might upset the animals they were pursuit. Once a successful plan was hatched amongst a group a men, spoken words were no longer necessary. Women, on the other hand, had to keep each other abreast of which fruits were in season and their location. The research supports this as women use landmarks and memorize routes to connect familiar places to navigate, even in cities, whereas men use more spatial factors such as direction of travel and the patterns of the roads themselves. Presumably it would be easier to describe to someone else how to go about finding berries in the wilderness through landmarks over a sense of the hills and terrain. For women, the food they gather doesn’t move, but men needed to be move about and orient an environment that was always changing based on the prey they were hunting and the season. Landmarks while hunting become useless when in new areas.

Men also tend to score higher on three-dimensional tasks such as moving an object in their minds to match similar items, a task called “mental rotation”. This spatial skill is attributed to throwing accuracy as one might use to fall moving prey. In tests, women perform better on language oriented tasks such as verbal memory and verbal recognition of sounds. Gossip amongst women around camp would have played a key role to protect unity, maintain peace and uncover dissenters. Women have also been shown to be more proficient at using both hemispheres of their brains since their left and right sides are better connected. Women can therefore use their minds more fully and draw from many centers of their brain.

The ability to use both hemispheres makes it much easier for women to work out complex relationships between people and their environment simultaneously. It fascinates me to listen to my wife click away at a game of solitary on her computer while she talks with her mom on the phone. Without pause the dialogue continues, whereas when I speak to my brother on the phone, and he’s watching television, the line practically goes dead! Body language requires a lot of focus and attention and women have much more mind to draw on to analyze it. Women seem therefore more naturally attuned to reading body language subconsciously, but that doesn’t mean it can’t easily be learned as is the case with my wife and I. By far, I am more aware of body language, due in large part to the amount of research I have done. My experience makes up for what I lack in brain power!

Women have a much wider visual field then men. That is, they can see further out on the periphery while still fixated on a central point. This is why women are so much better at finding things in the cupboard or in a drawer. Men’s eyes have pin point or tunnel vision and must look from one object to another eliminating them in sequence just to find what they need whereas women can see the whole picture all at once and identify the object needed. This partially explains why men find it so frustrating to have their things moved about the house when women tidy up. Men simply can not find them if they are relocated, but it’s not as if we don’t appreciate the effort! Conversely, women have difficulty pointing out and following moving objects such as animal in the woods or baseballs. With training however, both can become better at each task, the point is that men and women are inherently different, acknowledging our deficiencies just makes us each easier to live with! Having a better peripheral vision also explains why women don’t ever seem to stare at the men’s “junk” whereas men drop their gaze routinely to check women out. Women do check out other men, they just don’t get caught!

Verbal Language Is Confusing, Body Language Sorts Things Out

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Body language makes the intent of a message much more clear. This 'spear thrower' isn't interested in listening to your viewpoint.

Body language makes the intent of a message much more clear. This ‘spear thrower’ isn’t interested in listening to your viewpoint.

What proportion of communication is affected by the actual words versus how the words are used and the body language that it accompanies it? I don’t know of any real metric by which to calculate this, so it’s really anyone’s guess. Suffice it to say that the vast majority of communication and meaning has nothing at all to do with words. Body language in this case gets lumped in together with other signals such as tone, pitch and word emphasis whilst we subtract the actual words and their meaning. Take the phrase “Would you prefer to lie?” as an example. If I were to emphasize the word “would” it puts the emphasis on “you”, but if I put the emphasis on “lie” it puts emphasis on the action. Confusing things further and not privy to the spelling of “lie”, one wouldn’t know if I was speaking about telling the truth or “lying”, or taking a nap or “laying”. Emphasis is used to add meaning and emotion to our speech by stressing specific words and can completely change the meaning of the sentence. This can also be done by using a higher tone, using longer stressed syllables, or increasing the volume as we speak certain words. Even in the cases above I have used a nonverbal method to emphasis words by using the italics function, a feature of this writing program that arose out of necessity.

Going back to our previous example, we also have homonym’s which are words that share the same spelling and same pronunciation but have different meanings. An example includes the word “bow” which can mean to bend forward, the front of a ship, a weapon which fires an arrow, a ribbon tied in a knot (a bow tie) or to bend outward to the sides (bow-legged). Polysemes are words or phrases with multiple related meanings. For example “bank” can describe a financial institution that handles money or it can be used to describe trust as in “We’re friends, you can bank on me.” Antagonym’s are forms of slang that actually mean their opposite. Examples of antagonyms include “bound” for a direction or heading, or tied up and unable to move, cleave can be to cut apart or seal together, buckle can mean to hold together or to collapse, clip means to attach or cut off, and so on. Other time we use words to mean the opposites. “That skateboard trick was sick” comes across in slang as meaning that it was actually a pretty good trick.

While the myriad of definitions stemming from word-use might confuse you, don’t let it bother you too much because this is the only time it actually matters. In fact, body language is the likely reason our vocabulary is permitted to be so confusing and most of us have at least a rudimentary understanding about how our bodies and verbal language coincide to produce meaning anyway. The point of raising the dysfunction that peppers verbal language is precisely because confusing word meaning plays such a minor role in our lives. When we just don’t get it, in comes body language to sort things out and bring everyone back on to the same page.

What we are looking to accomplish in this book is a higher order reading of nonverbal language to graduate from simple word meaning to get at the hidden ‘script’ that unfolds ‘between the lines’, so to speak!

Silent Speech Has Flow

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How is the flow of your body language?

How is the flow of your body language?

Body language is like verbal and written language; it has structure. Body language flows, it has its own rhythm, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. Some gesture are single letters which join with others to form words right on up to formulate full sentences and phrases until we finally reach full ideas and meaning. Part of the way things come together is connected to congruence, meaning that the overall body of language comes together seamlessly. Just like someone might have poor written grammar, some people have poor nonverbal language, sometimes even dramatically so leading to even more drastic consequences.

We are all born understanding the basics of body language and have the minds to master it, but none of us are born ready emitting perfect body language. Instead we learn body language like we learn to speak, by observation and practice. ‘Naturals’, as it were, may only exist because instead of ignoring body language like most people do, they bring it to consciousness early on and follow successful example around them. Their minds are subconsciously prepared to imitate good postures and appear in control and confident. As we will see, good body language isn’t something you are either born with, or must be without forever. It can be learned.

I recall a time when my wife and I were visiting a fellow who was giving away a second hand washing machine which would I would use for a rental apartment. His body language made him appear inept and he came across as awkward. He’d cross his arms when I was talking and when I’d make a point, he would do his best to contradict me. He’d lean in too close and his body odor was overpowering. This person had no reason to be dishonest, he explained that he needed the space in his house for another project. We took the machine because at the time we needed it, however since he gave us such a negative impression we still don’t know, to this day, if the machine works or not. I’ve never hooked it up or used it! My wife and I got a terrible impression of the guy and the feeling attached itself to everything about him including his free washer. It didn’t affect us while we were there, but as soon as we left, we were able to verbalize reasons for storing, instead of using the machine. We simply didn’t trust that the machine would work properly despite his verbal assurances, and instead of taking the energy to move it into the basement to test it, we stored it in the garage and purchased a new set. His body language told us that something must be wrong with the washing machine, that perhaps it ruined clothing or leaked and he just wanted some sucker to help him dispose of the machine. Other people who aren’t studied in body language but finding themselves in a similar situation would have concluded that their ‘gut feeling’ was off. Since I could read his cues, it was obvious to me why I didn’t trust him, but I did have to explain to my wife why she felt so uneasy.

This story illustrates the point about the strength of nonverbal body language and how salient and important it is. Even though the result was at no cost to him (and little cost to me), if he had been a commissioned salesman, or salesman of any sort, he would have lost the deal with certainty.