3 posts tagged “body language.”
There are 8 basic emotions per Robert Plutchik’s Psychoevolutionary Theory. They are:
- Fear
- Anger
- Sorrow
- Joy
- Disgust
- Acceptance
- Anticipation
- Surprise
Robert Plutchik developed what is known as the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion and this has turned out to be one of the most influential classification systems for categorizing general emotional responses.
Knowing and understanding what each of these emotions “looks” like is an important fundamental component to your tool box. There are more emotions that you can work with as you will see below, but the 8 above are a bare necessity for using body language to effectively communicate. Today we are going to talk about three common messages conveyed through body language. Dissecting all of the 8 above will be left for another day.
The three we will deal with today are sincerity (acceptance), happiness (joy) and annoyance (watered down anger)… These are great messages and can be very versatile in a communication setting. Being able to volitionally display any one of these can do a great deal for effective communication. So let’s get right into it…
Sincerity:
- Face – The brow of the eyes is lifted just a bit. The eyes and jaw line are relaxed with relaxed full lips. Affirming head nods can be used during the communication along with interactive questioning.
- Shoulders/posture – There should be zero tension in the shoulders and your torso should be slightly leaning toward the person you are communicating with. A loose, comfortable but upright posture should be used to convey vigilant comfort. Your shoulders and torso should also be facing them directly, squarely. The only possible exception to this may be when you have two men communicating. If there is not a common understanding or comfort level it may communicating a dominant stance.
- Arms/Hands - should be out in front of you and possible touching the arms of your partner. Hands should be relaxed and your palms facing upward.
- Hips/Stance/Feet – Your hips, like your shoulders should be facing the person directly with your feet a bit closer than shoulder length apart (to show comfort and attentiveness but NOT readiness for action).
Happiness:
- Face – The brow of the eyes is overtly lifted and the eyes will be very open. The jaw line is a bit tense as it supports a true limbic smile. The will be displayed by lips that are pulled back and the corners of the eyes should be squinting as the cheeks are pulled upward. If possible, showing teeth is a plus…
- Shoulders/posture – The shoulders will be a bit tense and pulled slightly upward showing excitement. You will be leaning toward them and again, shoulders should be facing your communication partner directly with an upright, slightly tense posture indicating readiness to engage in the proposed action.
- Arms/Hands -Arms should be out in front of you and possible touching the arms or shoulders of your partner. Hands should be open with palms upward to show acceptance and comfort.
- Hips/Stance/Feet – Your hips, like your shoulders should be facing the person directly with your feet about shoulder width apart (to show a playful readiness for action).
Annoyance:
- Face – The brow should be furled just a bit and the eyes will be slightly squinted. The gaze of your eyes will be held in-between their eyes and up onto their forehead. This is a tricky area as holding the gaze too long can be anger and dominance rather than annoyance. Cheeks will be slightly pulled directly upward with the squint of the eyes and the jaw line will be tense with a slight clenching of the mouth/teeth.
- Shoulders/posture – The shoulders will hold some tension in them and your posture will be erect and a bit tense. You will be facing your shoulders slightly away from them, say 20 – 30 degrees indicating and interest in leaving/disengaging.
- Arms/Hands – Arms should be straight downward and slightly in front of your body with palms facing downward and the tops of the hands facing your partners. Be sure to have your hands at least semi open as a clenched fist can show anger and aggression rather than annoyance.
- Hips/Stance/Feet – Hips, like the shoulders should be facing your shoulders slightly away from them, say 20 – 30 degrees indicating and interest in leaving/disengaging.
What is important here is that we are being cognizant of each part. When you are experiencing true sincerity, happiness and annoyance, all of these things will just happen naturally… But when you are volitionally enacting them without the true emotion, it is easy to let one or a number of the components slip and an incomplete “package” will NOT ring true.
The key is to really break each component down into an “action” rather than an evaluation. For instance, a “furling of the brow” is different that the evaluation of “an angry brow”. By determining the specific action/display, you will be able to better use it in your communication.
Having a fully characterized display of each of Plutchik’s 8 emotions and any other ones that you display on a regular basis is a MUST for your communication arsenal.
As always, please visit The Communication Expert to learn more about body language and other forms of effective communication.
In following yesterdays post on manipulation of information delivery, let’s get right into the subsequent 2 categories of event prediction and sensory acuity…
Prediction of Events:
When I say “prediction of events”, what I mean is the ability to assign a probability to whether someone is going to follow through on their assertions one way or another. Again, reading body language can only give you a view into one or both areas of congruence and general mental states. So although you won’t KNOW exactly what they are thinking, congruence or incongruence in their informational message and their nonverbally communicated message can be very informative.
Let’s say that you want your best friend to help you move you’re the contents of your loft on Saturday of this week. Your friends so your guard is down and you haven’t prepared anything persuasive for him… You just ask outright “So are you going to be there on Saturday to help with the move?” Now let’s analyze his answer.
- What type of message should you receive from him? “Yes, of course…”
- What message are you receiving? “Yes, of course…”
- What is the context geographically/socially/culturally? You are in the mall in a suburb of New Jersey.
- What type of demeanor will help them to facilitate that? A direction of compassion and sincerity.
- What type of demeanor are you receiving? Nervousness and fidgety behavior
- What are the fundamental verbal and nonverbal traits of the demeanor that goes with their verbal message? An open and “toward facing” stance with both arms relaxed and a slight, relaxed airiness to their face. Their voice should be relaxed, with a bit of pep to it and have normal volume and rhythm.
- What are the traits you are receiving? His hips and feet are facing away from me with his arms folded… He is continually running his fingers through his hair and he looked away frequently during the conversation. His voice was a bit elevated in pitch, tone and volume and the rhythm/pace was a bit quicker than normal.
- Are their any specific fringe traits that should occur? When he is really interested in engaging in something he will usually ask questions to understand what exactly is going on.
- Were the fringe traits present? No. He was very happy to change the subject.
I think it is (or at least it should be) pretty obvious where this is going. He most certainly will NOT be there on Saturday.
Sensory Acuity Barometer:
If you have ever seen someone with NO sensory acuity engage in a conversation, you will probably understand how incredibly important this skill is. People with our sensory acuity generally conduct a deposition or a lecture… they will not engage in a two way communication. This is because they have no clue as to what type of engagement or reactions their own communication is creating inside of the other person.
For you to be effective in your communication, you need to be able to read the signals the other person is giving off while you are speaking with them in order to appropriately directionalize, or even end things as the conversation progresses.
Let’s say that you met this amazing woman at the local club… You’ve had a few drinks together and the conversation has seemed to be moving along nicely. It is getting late and you have to get going and would like to get her number. Although you have been talking for a while the conversation never took an “intimate” turn and being the communication expert that you are, you want to draw her toward that aspect tactfully rather than simply dropping the hammer and just asking out right for her number. This way, if you can be sure of her interested regardless of simply receiving her number.
So your next move is to ask her about any interesting dates she has been on lately… Let’s analyze her response.
- What type of message should you receive from her? “Disappointment because she hasn’t found the right man YET…”
- What message are you receiving? The same as above… disappointment because her search hasn’t yielded her dream man. The mustache donning, leisure suit wearing disco stud that you just so happen to be…
- What is the context geographically/socially/culturally? You are in a night club in Hollywood, CA. Energetic, open, liberal and exciting.
- What type of demeanor will help her to facilitate this message? Disappointment followed by hopefulness.
- What type of demeanor are you receiving? Disappointment followed by an upward glimmer of hopefulness.
- What are the fundamental verbal and nonverbal traits of the demeanor that goes with their verbal message? A bit of a drooped posture with a slightly frowning face followed by a bit of upright movement in her posture. Her face should move into a slight smile with her eyes squinting a bit and a pouting of her lips. Her voice should be a little bit monotone and deepened at first followed by a bit of pep to it and move into a bit of increase volume and rhythm.
- What are the traits you are receiving? All of the above… we are right on and I think she really is interested in seeing you again.
- Are their any specific fringe traits that should occur? You have never met her before so you cannot gauge her historically.
Your sensory acuity should tell you on this one that you are free to go to the next step and ask her for her number to begin fulfilling all of her wildest disco dreams…
Whew… ok. That was quite a bit of work there. Now it is IMPORTANT to understand that what I have outlined above is a system of thought that should be practiced for a period of time to develop a SKILL. Obviously, you cannot go into each situation for the rest of your life taking 60 seconds to determine, consciously, what direction to go in and how exactly to act. With practice, what you can and will do is develop a subconscious thought pattern that will greatly help you to achieve an effective communication strategy automatically and instantly.
Tomorrow, to finish our 7 part tutorial we will discuss 3 of the most common emotional states that you will encounter on your daily walk of life so that you will know what to look for and how to use them for your own effective communication.
As always, please visit The Communication Expert to learn more about body language and other forms of effective communication.
The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
Yesterday I introduced the 5 questions necessary to direct your mind through the effective usage of body language in any communication effort. I think it is important to repeat the fact that you should be looking to use these questions to TRAIN YOUR MIND through repetition.
The length of time necessary for a skill to become automatic is person-dependant so to say how long it will take you to learn this is futile. It depends on how quickly your mind is able to create strong enough bonds to create a neural net. For the middle of the bell curve, if you practice for a half an hour every day you should be well on your way to developing an actual skill.
That being said, let’s get right into discussing the first and most complex of the three categories of body language usage…
Manipulation of information delivery:
As discussed earlier, there are three subcomponents to information delivery… erasing, buffering and amplification. Let’s get right into them…
1. Eraser - As an eraser we can use body language for “deceit”. As a major point of reference, I do not and am not condoning destructive deceit… When I use the term deceit I am referring to the process of hiding your raw internal thoughts in the event that they DO NOT facilitate the accomplishment of your communication goals. In this instance you are looking for congruence between your body language and your linguistic communication, even though your linguistic communication is NOT reflecting your true thoughts.
Let’s say that your wife has just bought a dress and you really aren’t thrilled with it. She loves it, but you don’t… But what the hell do you know about fashion? If she is happy, then you are happy. You know she is going to ask you what you think and your opinion does matter, so what do you do?
- What type of message are you trying to communicate? – Sincere happiness and acceptance of her dress.
- What is the context geographically/socially/culturally? – Geographically you are in a retail store. You shouldn’t be jumping around or yelling. Culturally you are in the US… It would be tacky to have a long make-out session to display your over zealousness…
- What type of demeanor will help to facilitate that? – Joy, happiness, ogling, etc…
- What are the fundamental verbal and nonverbal traits of that demeanor? – Smiling, open gestures, a “toward facing” stance, etc… A bit of an elevated pitch and a stronger than normal volume.
- Are their any specific fringe traits that should occur? You usually hug her when you are happy…
2. Buffering agent. As a buffer, among other things, body language can be exceedingly helpful when delivering bad news. Although you realize that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel, you know that their impending emotional state will deter them from seeing it… Body language can help to minimize the emotional impact.
Let’s say that your best friend has just been turned down for acceptance into a school that they really wanted to attend. This is going to crush them, but you know it isn’t the end of the world…
- What type of message are you trying to communicate? Informationally it is a negative one, but you want to also communicate hope.
- What is the context geographically/socially/culturally? You are in a coffee shop on the lower east side of Manhattan in the US. Although you can’t just do what ever you want, it is a fairly liberal place and “unorthodox” displays happen quite often here so you have a fairly broad field to work within.
- What type of demeanor will help to facilitate that? Directionally you want to move from negative toward neutral. (This is a bit more complicated because you need to understand how far you can realistically go without displaying complete incongruity? If you do that, you will basically dissolve the effectiveness and possibly exacerbate the situation. Let’s call our ideal destination “empathic / compassionate hopefulness”. If you try to be joyous, you will most likely get a polar response as you will be just too far from their actual emotional state. If you can float somewhere around neutral/center with your body language this will help bring them to closer to your goal.)
- What are the fundamental verbal and nonverbal traits of that demeanor? A slight symmetrical smile with a concerned look, touching in the arm area or possibly a hug, straight back and shoulders for confidence, etc… Softer tone with a bit of a volume increase and just a little spring in your voice.
- Are their any specific fringe traits that should occur? When you really belief that an event doesn’t mean much you will usually joke about it and have a few laughs. Some times you even punch your friend in the arm…
3. Amplification device. As an amplifier, body language can basically put a double stamp on the emotion of the message you are trying to display. Whether it is happiness, sadness, anger or anything in-between… You can really drive it home with super congruent body language.
Let’s say you are running late for a party that your boss is throwing and your husband is taking for ever plucking his eyebrows… Although you are delighted that he is finally getting rid of the uni-brow, you NEED him to get going so you won’t be late and at this late of an hour, you don’t have a moment to spare.
- What type of message are you trying to communicate? A message of urgency, importance and necessity.
- What is the context geographically/socially/culturally? You are in the UK, in the bathroom of your flat, alone with your husband… basically, anything goes.
- What type of demeanor will help to facilitate that? Stern, serious with just a touch of annoyance or anger.
- What are the fundamental verbal and nonverbal traits of that demeanor? Strong stance, feet shoulder width apart, hands on hips, furled brow, square shoulders, etc… Volume of voice is raised and tonality is deepened with a bit of a sped up pace.
- Are their any specific fringe traits that should occur? You will usually shake your finger at him and follow the demand up with a threat.
As an information delivery manipulator, body language is second to none as the proper and skill usage of nonverbal communication passes right by our critical thinking faculties to create decision at the nonconscious, automatic level.
Tomorrow we will finish the remaining to categories of event prediction and sensory acuity…
As always, please visit The Communication Expert to learn more about body language and other forms of effective communication.
The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
