28-11-2012, 05:34 PM
BODY LANGUAGE
Body Language How to Read Others Thoughts by Their Gestures.pdf (Size: 3.48 MB / Downloads: 253)
Introduction
When I first heard about ‘body language’ at a seminar in 1971, I became so excited
about it that I wanted to learn more. The speaker told us about some of the research
done by Professor Ray Birdwhistell at the University of Louisville, which had shown
that more human communication took place by the use of gestures, postures, position
and distances than by any other method. At that time I had been a commission salesman
for several years and had undergone many long, intensive courses on selling techniques,
but none of these courses had ever mentioned anything about the non-verbal aspects or
implications of face-to-face encounters.
My own investigations showed that little useful information was available on body
language and, although libraries and universities had records of the studies done on it,
most of this information consisted of closely set manuscripts and theoretical
assumptions compiled in an objective manner by people who had little or no practical
experience in dealing with other human beings. This does not mean that their work was
not important; simply that most of it was too technical to have any practical application
or use by a layman like myself.
In writing this book, I have summarised many of the studies by the leading
behavioural scientists and have combined them with similar research done by people in
other professions - sociology, anthropology, zoology, education, psychiatry, family
counseling, professional negotiating and selling.
The book also includes many ‘how to’ features developed from the countless reels
of videotape and film made by myself and others throughout Australasia and overseas,
plus some of the experiences and encounters that I have had with the thousands of
people that I have interviewed, recruited, trained, managed and sold to over the past
fifteen years.
This book is by no means the last word on body language, nor does it contain any of
the magic formulae promised by some of the books in the bookstores. Its purpose is to
make the reader more aware of his own nonverbal cues and signals and to demonstrate
how people communicate with each other using this medium.
This book isolates and examines each component of body language and gesture,
though few gestures are made in isolation from others; I have at the same time tried to
avoid oversimplifying. Non-verbal communication is, however, a complex process
involving people, words, tone of voice and body movements.
There will always be those who throw up their hands in horror and claim that the
study of body language is just another means by which scientific knowledge can be
used to exploit or dominate others by reading their secrets or thoughts. This book seeks
to give the reader greater insight into communication with his fellow humans, so that he
may have a deeper understanding of other people and, therefore, of himself.
Understanding how something works makes living with it easier, whereas lack of
understanding and ignorance promote fear and superstition and make us more critical
of others. A birdwatcher does not study birds so that he can shoot them down and keep
them as trophies. In the same way, the acquisition of knowledge and skills in
non-verbal communication serves to make every encounter with another person an
exciting experience.
A Framework for Understanding
As we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are witnessing the emergence
of a new kind of social scientist-the non-verbalist. Just as the birdwatcher delights in
watching birds and their behaviour, so the non-verbalist delights in watching the
non-verbal cues and signals of human beings. He watches them at social functions, at
beaches, on television, at the office or anywhere that people interact. He is a student of
behaviour who wants to learn about the actions of his fellow humans so that he may
ultimately learn more about himself and how he can improve his relationships with
others.
It seems almost incredible that, over the million or more years of man’s evolution,
the non-verbal aspects of communication have been actively studied on any scale only
since the 1960s and that the public has become aware of their existence only since
Julius Fast published a book about body language in 1970. This was a summary of the
work done by behavioural scientists on nonverbal communication up until that time,
and even today, most people are still ignorant of the existence of body language, let
alone its importance in their lives.
Charlie Chaplin and many other silent movie actors were the pioneers of non-verbal
communication skills; they were the only means of communication available on the
screen. Each actor was classed as good or bad by the extent to which he could use
gestures and other body signals to communicate effectively. When talking films
became popular and less emphasis was placed on the non-verbal aspects of acting,
many silent movie actors faded into obscurity and those with good verbal skills
prevailed.
PERCEPTIVENESS, INTUITION AND HUNCHES
From a technical point of view, whenever we call someone ‘perceptive’ or
‘intuitive’, we are referring to his or her ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues
and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we
have a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’ that someone has told us a lie, we really mean that their
body language and their spoken words do not agree. This is also what speakers call
audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if the audience were sitting
back in their seats with chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a ‘perceptive’
speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across. He would
become aware that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement.
Likewise, a speaker who was not ‘perceptive’ would blunder on regardless.
Women are generally more perceptive than men, and this fact has given rise to what
is commonly referred to as ‘women’s intuition’. Women have an innate ability to pick
up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details.
This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why,
conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man’s eyes without his realising it.
This female intuition is particularly evident in women who have brought up young
children. For the first few years, the mother relies solely on the non-verbal channel to
communicate with the child and this is believed to be the reason why women often
become more perceptive negotiators than men.
INBORN, GENETIC, LEARNED AND CULTURAL SIGNALS
Much research and debate has been done to discover whether non-verbal signals are
inborn, learned, genetically transferred or acquired in some other way. Evidence was
collected from observation of blind and/or deaf people who could not have learned nonverbal
signals through the auditory or visual channels, from observing the gestural behaviour
of many different cultures around the world and from studying the behaviour of
our nearest anthropological relatives, the apes and monkeys.
SOME BASICS AND THEIR ORIGINS
Most of the basic communication gestures are the same all over the world. When
people are happy they smile; when they are sad or angry they frown or scowl. Nodding
the head is almost universally used to indicate ‘yes’ or affirmation. It appears to be a
form of head lowering and is probably an inborn gesture, as it is also used by deaf and
blind people. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate ‘no’ or negation is also
universal and may well be a gesture that is learned in infancy. When a baby has had
enough milk, he turns his head from side to side to reject his mother’s breast. When the
young child has had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop his
parent’s attempt to spoon feed him and in this way he quickly learns to use the head
shaking gesture to show disagreement or a
negative attitude.
The evolutionary origin of some gestures
can be traced to our primitive animal past.
Baring the teeth is derived from the act of
attacking and is still used by modern man in
the form of a sneer and other such hostile
gestures, even though he will not attack with
his teeth. Smiling was originally a threat
gesture, but today it is done in conjunction
with non-threatening gestures to show
pleasure.
GESTURE CLUSTERS
One of the most serious mistakes a novice in body language can make is to interpret
a solitary gesture in isolation of other gestures or other circumstances. For example,
scratching the head can mean a number of things -dandruff, fleas, sweating, uncertainty,
forgetfulness or lying, depending on the other gestures that occur at the same time, so
we must always look at gesture clusters for a correct reading.
Like any other language, body language consists of words, sentences and
punctuation. Each gesture is like a single word and a word may have several different
meanings. It is only when you put the word into a sentence with other words that you
can fully understand its meaning. Gestures come in ‘sentences’ and invariably tell the
truth about a person’s feelings or attitudes. The ‘perceptive’ person is one who can read
the non-verbal sentences and accurately match them against the person’s verbal
sentences.