Tag Archive for Body Language

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!

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.

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.

The Feet Are Honest

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Feet aimed toward another person says "I'm interested in YOU."

Feet aimed toward another person says “I’m interested in YOU.”

It has been said that the feet are the most honest part of the body as it applies to the language they emit. Millions of years ago, we gave up quadrupedalism to walk upright leaving our feet to the dirt. While our hands busied themselves with other complex tasks like fire building, making clothing and shelters, throwing spears our legs were relegated to more primitive activities like locomotion. The hands, because of their opposable thumbs are more useful to complex tasks putting the thinking neocortex in charge. This in turn hampers honest language because the thinking mind can, within reason, eliminate the type of body language it desires.

These feet want to escape and so are turned away.

These feet want to escape and so are turned toward the escape route.

The feet on the other hand, carried out more traditional tasks like escaping predators, avoiding hot sand or coals from the fire, leaping from slithering snakes or poisonous spiders, or navigating rough rocking river bottoms. The feet were therefore connected more to the reptilian brain which reacts to stimuli directly instead of contemplating higher order tasks that require planning. When we’re frightened it doesn’t take much to put our feet in gear by getting them tucked under our legs and coiled up, or freezing instantly or get pulled up onto a chair when startled by a mouse that catches our eye scampering across the shadows of a room. Our feet carry the flight or fight reaction to the letter, although they tend to first freeze, then take flight through distancing them from negative stimuli, and if neither is possible will begin to kick or fight. None of these tasks require high order thinking, they are based on reaction and are immediate.

The same sorts of positive reactions can be read in the feet. For example, we know that children are interested in play rather then eating when their legs bounce at the dinner table quickly trying to eat their food so they don’t miss the next inning in street ball. Even if they don’t fidget the feet will still point, or inch toward to door in effort to prepare for escape. Even the feet of adults reveal true emotions by pointing away from boring conversations or toward a lover. Adults can also be seen “Jumping for joy”, even if rarely such as when they are surprised by winnings at the casino slots, or are when met with a grandson at the airport. People of all ages can seem to float on their feet showing joy, which is an important “gravity defying” body language showing that they are excited. Young babies and toddlers, when held by a parent who’s been absent for a short while, will kick up and down and the entire body will jump with joy despite being confined in an embrace. None of a child’s body is as exuberant as their legs and feet!

It is not all that surprising that our feet go unnoticed. Our faces are complicated and at times expressive, even though we quickly learn to hide our emotions so as to deceive others. We learn early enough that when cameras are shoved in our faces, to smile, even though we have nothing to smile about or to “turn that frown upside down” when we are in a bad mood. Naturally we get good at feigning emotions with our “poker faces.” Yet throughout the years, our feet pass under the radar, tucked under tables, hidden under clothing and shoes to do menial tasks like bring us from point A to point B and back again. Our feet and legs can display boredom through repetitive motions, joy by lifting the body up and down, fear by being tucked under a chair, depression by laying lazily or motionless and sensuality by being uncovered and flaunted. The list goes on.

As you read this book pay particular attention to foot and leg language which is peppered throughout, as these will be cues that indicate true hidden meaning and emotions that is much more reliable than other body language cues.

Intuition Versus Perception In Body Language: Seeing What We Want To See

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Research by Harvard Robert Rosenthal conducted in the 1960s showed how people see what they want to see, instead of what’s really happening. In his study, he had set up two groups of students with a maze constructed for their subjects – rats. One group of students were told that their rats where “dumb” and the other group was told that their rates were “smart”, specifically bred to run mazes better then the other rats. While both sets of rats performed equally as well, the students with the preconceived notion that their rats where dumb catalogued behaviours supporting their initial impressions. The students with the “dumb” rats found that they were lethargic and dull. The rats of the group who thought they had smart rats documented how bright, alert and efficient the rats where as they made their way through the maze. Clearly from this study, our preconceived notions are potent and misleading. The same pitfalls can arise during the analysis of body language. If we truly wish to see nervous, emotional or confident body language, we will. But if we open our minds, we might see something completely different from what we initially expected to see.

Can this shyster ever be trusted?

Can this shyster ever be trusted?

Intuition includes the processing of information that we’ve obtained by observing people. When someone says they have a “bad” feeling about someone or they feel “uneasy” or the salesman was “slimy” they are using their intuition. Sometimes though, our intuition becomes clouded by preconceived notions and new information is tainted or distorted. This is when reading people can backfire to hurt us and others. When reading people it is important to clean the slate continuously and read each cue separately. While the rule of fours says we need to add cues together to discover the true meaning, using proper intuition without distortion, means we need to read each cue on their own. It means we need to avoid looking for hints we can use to support our conclusion, they are either there or aren’t there. In fact, the conclusion needs not play into the equation at all when reading but rather be a formulated after we have analyzed all the available information.

Many optical illusions or visual tricks rely on the fact that our brains are constructed to find information we think should be there, rather than looking at information that is actually there.

It’s easy to silence our intuition and ignore it since that little voice inside our heads is always trying to speak out and it’s only right some of the time. Let’s take poker again as an example. We found that baselining an individual can help in many ways most notably to help us reference behaviour, however, it would be disastrous to continue to call or raise someone who normally bluffs just because we have a strong hand, say a full house. In this situation, we are ignoring the current behaviour of the individual in favour of preconceived notions about them. As the hand plays out, we find that this bluffer continues to call even on our strongest bets, we find that sometimes they even raise or re-raise pushing the stakes even higher. Naturally, they’ve caught a rare hand, four of a kind, and easily crushing our full house. We’ve missed all the signals. The clues given all along were consistent with a strong position but we failed to read it correctly because we ignored all the rules. The information coming told use to read his moves at face value instead of modifying it to suite our needs, but at every step we ignored this. Our filters are important in simplifying information since it’s impossible to analyze everything going on around us, but we shouldn’t throw aside good information.

Having a good intuition is often not enough though. A “funny feeling” or “having a sense” or being “uneasy” about someone or something has merit, but if you can’t support your intuition with support such as postures and signals or in the case of poker “tells”, then we can’t graduate into a full reader of body language.

When we describe our intuition to others, we also need the proper vocabulary to convey our feelings to them. But this isn’t the only time we need to use the proper language of nonverbal reading, in fact, we need to train the little voice inside our head to also talk us through as we read others. When I watch someone, I can say unequivocally, that I think they are a timid, or confident or lack confidence and use specific examples. By the end of this book and with a little bit of practice, you will be able to do the same. As you learn, don’t be afraid to review the information in your head. Every mind is built differently, and I have a gift (when I’m actively listening) to remember verbal dialogue that has transpired years previous whilst recalling specific sentences used, the context and the location. Unfortunately for others, and sometimes fortunately for me, this has made me a very powerful debater. I can remain one hundred percent consistent in my position and use inconsistencies across the short or long term, to point out errors in reasoning of others. I can also cite specific instances that lead me to modified my position on things which can later help should I change my defense. Your mind might have more visual strengths, or analytical skills, or something else to help you dissect the cues of others. The point here is to use your strength in reading people rather then to focus on your weaknesses. Regardless however, do be aware of your flaws as it will make you a stronger reader overall.

She really liked me, she was really showing skin...or is she just sweating to death?

She really liked me, she was really showing skin…or is she just sweating to death? It’s the sender that determines the intent of the message, not the body language reader.

Here are some final tips for reading via intuition. When in doubt, trust your gut as usually, but not always, it’s right and can be your saviour when we can’t pinpoint specific cues. Switch your mind back on and be more than just a casual observer of your environment. In the Sherlock Holmes book, A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes tells Watson that he knows there are seventeen steps leading up to Baker Street. Watson was impressed by his observations, but it didn’t happen through magic, it was not more than simple observation. While Watson had merely seen the steps, Holmes had actively observed them. In a study by Simons and Chabris in 1999 out of Harvard University, Cambridge it was shown just how poor people are as observers of their surroundings. In the study a man walked in front of a group of students dressed in a gorilla suit while other activities took place around them. Half of the students hadn’t even noticed the “gorilla in their midst” which aptly formed part of the title to the study! It just goes to show that passive watching and active observing are two very different things, and this is what will separate average body language readers that cover the material like anyone else, even recall it, but two weeks later, become half as effective or worse, from those who build on their skills daily on their way to mastery. Active observation is a key ingredient to reading people and it can’t be done walking around blindfolded, however, even with a keen eye there will still be signals that go unnoticed as body language is fluid, ever changing and sometimes never repeating, meaning you only get one shot to catch a signal before it’s gone forever. Life is rich in detail and complex, we’d be fools to think we could read everything, but even with minimal effort, we can still impress others, and even ourselves, with how much can be read.

Remember too that it is always your job to determine the true intent of the sender, whatever cues they give off. Once you’ve caught cues that you think matter, remember that it is the sender of the message that determines it’s meaning, not the receiver.

This all sounds like a lot of work, but don’t worry, with practice your mind essential shifts back into autopilot and the process happens naturally. With time and practice, your subconscious will pick up and interpret skills all by itself without requiring active thought.

A Caution About Biases During The Baselining Process

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Self hugging can mean that he's shy or just a place to put his hands.

Self hugging can mean that he’s shy or just a place to put his hands.

We also have inherent biases which we must be careful of when try to read other people. Our dislike of certain people could influence us to read their language in a less then favourable light. Knowing that this bias is an inherent possibility, can at least protect us in terms of accuracy, and set up conditions that avoid possibly destructive fallout. This is only one factor to be careful of while reading people as it relates to baselining. Reading lying body language, by example, is very difficult and not having anything to compare it to essentially makes it impossible.

Poker is an excellent game that hones our nonverbal analysis of people, and the best modern day poker players will, with the advent and popularity of televised poker, review thousands of hours of video on their opponents. While some of the time they are watching to pick up on specific “tells” they are also developing their baseline. By doing so, even prior to meeting them they can have some players pegged. They can then use their baseline to determine actions, especially novel ones, that are out of the ordinary. If you’ve ever walked into a new poker group, you understand exactly what I mean. You might know some of the people, but usually there are others that you haven’t yet met add to this a novel context and you’ve got your work cut out for you. Since you don’t know the other player’s baselines you naturally end up being cautious and if you know poker cautious being “tight” can be just as bad as being “loose”. Over time you build their character and they start to “make sense”. In everyday life we call this process “getting to know someone” but in the body language world, we are formulating their baseline. Baselining is really about having the ability to compare someone to themselves.

Nose crinkle can mean a negative thought as in a game of poker. I've, however, see this gesture feigned (and yes I lost the hand over this bluff).

The ‘nose crinkle’ can mean a negative thought as in getting a bad card in a game of poker. I’ve, however, seen this gesture feigned (and yes I lost the hand over this well executed bluff).

Let’s look at arm crossing or even touching the nose. Everyone thinks that arm crossing means that someone is closed and unreceptive. This might be true for some people some of the time, but to others, it means that they are comfortable. If I were to cross my arms, just now, would it mean I was closed? No, it wouldn’t, it simply means that my arms are crossed. The same goes for nose touching as an indication of lying or deception. Some people touch their nose at the end of every sentence – it’s their idiosyncrasy. Does this mean that every word that comes from their mouth is a lie? It could be, but it is not likely. Once we’ve caught someone in a lie we can backtrack and look at the clues that preceded the lie and those that followed the lie to pick up on cues that might have given him away. Poker players do just this, although for them it’s simpler since there really are only two possible scenarios, he is bluffing, or he really has a strong hand. Video even provides professional poker players with one hundred percent of the information at hand, there are no secrets and so baselining can happen very quickly. In real life, things are not as obvious and there is a lot of gray in between the truth and a lie so it takes a lot more effort do develop baselines, however with practice even novel situations with unknown people will begin to appear similar to other past experiences and people. So baselining provides us with information that we can use in the future when lying or any other emotional behaviour is suspected, where we can draw from our database of “tells” and make educated guesses about the truthfulness, or emotional state of our subject or subjects.

Congruence

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Honest hands - palms up, but what happens next?

Honest hands – palms up, but what happens next?

Hands return to pockets indicate dishonesty and is incongruent with the intended meaning.

Hands return to pockets indicate dishonesty and is incongruent with the intended meaning.

The word congruence, as it relates to body language, refers to the degree to which body language cues in a person matches one another in terms of their meaning. If, for example, one is speaking honestly with the palms up (an honest gesture) we can say that the body language and verbal language are congruent. That is, honest words match up with honest body language. A child with their hands in their pockets (dishonest gesture) speaking about how they didn’t steal a cookie is incongruent since their body language does not match their verbal language.

We regularly place more importance on what words are used rather than how others gestures in their delivery, but this is a mistake. When we don’t have congruency and the verbal language doesn’t match the nonverbal gestures we should always place more importance on the nonverbal channel. Credence should almost always be given to nonverbal language over spoken words since the research tells us that it is often more accurate. When people plan lies they often rehearse the sentences and in what sequence they will deliver them, but they often ignore or disregard gestures that will accompany them. While we monitor our spoken words, our unconsciousness can leak unwanted information through our bodies. However, even if people were consciously aware that their body language gave them away, they would not know what to do since most people are completely unaware of the meaning their body conveys.

Politicians can leak information through congruency and this can give them away, although most politicians today are quite learned in body language. We should be suspicious of politicians, however, when they have their arms tightly folded against their chest while saying that they are open to change or to a door-to-door salesman that swears his life on a product but wipes downward with his hand as if to clear the lie. Another example is the cheating husband who tries to pass off a late meeting and then pulls at his neck tie, collar or scratch his neck indicating stress.

Sometimes however, knowledge about body language just comes off as less expressiveness. The body language thus tends to be much more controlled and subdued because it’s much easier to eliminate body language altogether then it is to add honest body language. However, even reduced expressiveness helps us read people because a relaxed and natural politician is more likely to be telling the truth. Therefore, even reserved body language can be a ‘tell’ to those who are in tune. Congruency therefore, is very important because it is a clear comparison between two communication channels, the verbal and nonverbal. When words are mismatched against the body language, we can be sure something dishonest is at play and these hints should instigate us, at minimum, to pay closer attention.

The Five Cardinal Rules Of Body Language

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Is she cold, or angry?

Is she cold, or angry?

Single gestures by themselves can not reveal the true meaning of the situation. There are many more factors that play into reading people then just identifying single cues. When people move, they are fluid and changing, so too are their moods and context. One must use the full picture to discover the story. The ‘rule of four’, congruency, context, baselining, and intuition are the five cardinal rules that any body language master must abide by and we cover them next.