FEX602 - Ch2 - Body orientation and movements. Flashcards
What does Body Language reveal about a person?
Reveal voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious motivations, attitudes, intentions, and reactions.
A person has basic posture at rest - return to after deviation - could give info on social relations and structure of interaction
Define Kinesis.
Kinesis is the universe of body postures, facial expressions, gestural behaviors, and all those phenomena oscillating between behavior and communication.
(Eco and Volli, 1970)
What is included in the analyses of kinesics?
- Body orientation.
- Posture.
- Gestures.
- Facial Expressions.
- Eye and Eyebrow movements.
- Gaze direction.
According to Patterson (2011), how should nonverbal behavior be interpreted?
The NV system works coordinated and integrated, with an overall effect greater than the sum of its parts.
Not sought meaning in isolated components such as gaze, but combined information through different channels and contexts.
Define Body Posture.
We call posture the disposition of the body or its parts about a given reference system (Corrace, 1980).
This reference system can be another element of the same body, the rest of the body, or the bodies of other individuals.
Posture and gesture are intimately related since they can involve the same body parts. We will treat posture as static since a posture endowed with movement would be treated as a gesture.
How does status influence posture use?
Higher status - less rigid rules, presenting a wider range of postures than lower-status subjects.
Goffman (1961) - postural rules study in psychiatric hospital.
Differentiate between dominant-superior and submissive-inferior postures.
The difference between dominant-superior and submissive-inferior postures - an upright posture with the head throwing back (haughtiness) and the hands on the hips (desire to occupy more space), could be interpreted as a desire for domination.
Is body posture voluntary or involuntary?
The posture adopted is mostly involuntary and can intervene to a greater/lesser extent in the communication process.
Name some revelations on attitude observed through posture and body movements.
- Posture and body movement often reflect emotions.
- Posture reveals the attitude, confidence, or self-image of the subject.
- Posture less controllable than face or voice intonation. It can reveal anxiety when masked by facial expressions.
Discuss Mehrabian’s (1977) revelations on the Tension-relaxation dimension.
How does posture communicate valuable info on the subject’s attitude towards a possible interaction or as nonverbal indicators of the subject’s status or power?
-Three observations of the attitude of the receiver through posture.
- Received of high status - receiver more tense if from lower status.
- Positional signs of relaxation - the asymmetrical position of joints, the oblique or reclining inclination, and the relaxation of hands and neck, which would denote positional relaxation.
- Positive attitude towards receiver - observed physical proximity, more intense eye contact, and forward leaning.
Describe an open attitude towards interaction.
Posture - relaxed arms, feet directed towards the person interacting with, frontal orientation, and direct eye contact.
Describe a closed or rejecting attitude towards interaction.
Posture with closed arms, titled body, or averted gaze.
Describe posture that communicates power or status.
Expansive postures, trying to occupy more space, e.g., arms in a jug, on hips.
Arrogant postures, e.g., chin raised, eg).
Proud postures, e.g. chest puffed out and back curved backwards.
Name the four postural categories according to Mehrabian (1968).
- Approach Postures.
- Withdrawal Postures.
- Expansion postures.
- Contracted postures.
Explain ‘approach postures’.
Approach postures transmit attention or interest, shown by the body’s inclination forward.
Explain ‘withdrawal postures.’
Withdrawal postures are negative postures of rejection or repulsion, shown by retreating or turning away.
Explain ‘expansion postures.’
Expansion postures are proud, arrogant, haughty, or contemptuous postures, shown by the expansion of the chest, an erect or leaning backward trunk, an erect head, and elevated shoulders.
Describe ‘contracted postures.’
Contracted postures include depressed or crestfallen postures, which are communicated by a forward-leaning trunk, a sunken head, slumped shoulders, and a sunken chest.
Which factors are crucial when interpreting postures?
The correct translation of most of the indicators and postural categories depends on the context in which they are produced, mediated by other variables such as the person’s sex, age, race, or culture. Different meanings will be attributed when in isolation or in front of other people.
How can body orientation be understood?
By body orientation, we refer to the degree of deviation of the legs and shoulders that an individual maintains concerning another individual or other individuals during an interaction.
If the interaction is between two people, the main orientations that can be assumed are
frontal orientation (“face to face”) and lateral orientation (“side to side”).
What information can body orientation provide us on relationships?
(Ricci and Cortesi, 1980)
Whether persons are collaborative, friendly, or hierarchical.
Hierarchical: the superior subject will be positioned in front of the inferior.
Collaborative or Close friendship: two subjects will adopt a side-by-side position.
Intimate: Talking face-to-face, bodies facing each other - intimate, not wanting to be interrupted.
Encouraging: When two people hold a conversation in a place such as a party or a meeting and are positioned at an angle greater than ninety degrees, they indicate to other people their willingness to join in the conversation.
How can childhood create a perception of dominance in terms of height?
In childhood, we likely associate the greater height of parents and adults with people in authority. Perhaps because of this, the cultural convention has been established that one person stands taller than another because he or she holds a dominant position over that person.
What are the three groups of body orientation observed by Scheflen (1964)?
- Guidelines for inclusion or non-inclusion in the group.
- Front, side, or angle orientations.
- Orientations of congruence or incongruence with the group.
What is gestures?
Gestures are different from postures because they are a form of movement.
Including movement of hands, arms, and other body parts - head, trunk, legs, or feet.
Is there a link between gestures and emotions?
Gesture is intimately linked to speech and are important in the communication of emotions and interpersonal attitudes.
Explain the interaction of gestures, speech, and synchrony between persons.
Body movements are synchronized with speech (autosynchrony).
Body movements of conversational partners can also become synchronized (interactional synchrony), and the listener provides constant feedback to the speaker regarding attention level and interest.
There is considerable controversy over this synchrony in the field (Bull, 2012).
According to Bulle (2012), hoes does gesture and speech interact?
Gestures relate to speech in terms of their
- temporal coordination (coinciding with syntactic boundaries and separating important words and phrases) and
- their meaning (conveying meaning through their visual appearance, as with emblems).
Concerning meaning and unlike speech, gestures can simultaneously convey multidimensional aspects of meaning. Thus, for example, a powerful iconic image could convey information simultaneously about the movement of an object, incorporating simultaneous information about speed and trajectory. In contrast, this information would have to be conveyed sequentially through speech.
Which gestures are closely linked to speech?
Emblems
Illustrators and
Regulators.
Which expressive channel is believed to be the primary channel?
Ekman and Friesen (1969) affirm that the face is the primary seat of emotional expression, calling the nonverbal signals that express an emotion “affect exhibitors.”
Which is the most complex and observed NV Channel?
Caballo (1993)
The face is the most important and complex area of the body in nonverbal communication and the part that is most observed during an interaction because it is the main system of signals we possess to show emotions.
Can genuine emotional expression be controlled by an individual?
Genuine expression can be
- Attenuated
- Amplified
- Substituted or
- Hidden.
Which gestures are the most difficult to manipulate, according to Morris (1977)?
Deliberate control of body parts farther away from the face is given less importance. When trying to control emotion, more focus is placed on facial expression, and less awareness is given to movements farther away from the head.
E.g. the feet.
If a person is nervous and tries to hide uneasiness, he will try to simulate tranquility by controlling the verbal content of what he says and manipulating his facial expression, but the continuous movement
of his feet could be giving him away.
How is power or powerlessness communicated in body posture?
Humans, like other animals, express power through open postures, expansive postures;
powerlessness, however, is expressed through closed postures and contracted postures.
Explain James’ (1890) theory on emotion and the ideomotor effect.
The ideomotor effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby a subject involuntarily and unconsciously performs movements due to the influence of suggestion or expectation.
Visceral and motor bodily reactions, including FE, are the basis of emotional states.
We are afraid because we ran away, we do not run because we are afraid. Perception of bodily changes (running away) five rise to emotion (fear).
What was found in bidirectional relations between NVB, thought and emotions?
(Carney and Colleagues, 2010)
High power poses provoke elevations in testosterone levels (the dominance hormone) and decrease cortisol levels (the stress hormone), increasing a sense of power and risk tolerance.
Individuals adopting low-power poses would exhibit the opposite pattern.
According to these authors, adopting poses of dominance and power for a few minutes provokes physiological and behavioral changes.
In a conceptual replication of the power pose study, Ranehill et al. (2014) found an effect of expansive posture on subjective feelings of power but not on risk tolerance, testosterone, or cortisol. How do Carney et al. (2015) explain this discrepancy?
Due to three key differences between the studies.
In Carney’s Studies, the experimental purpose was concealed. Their experiments involved a social task during the postural manipulation, and the postural manipulations used were comfortable, easy to adopt, and of short duration (lasting one minute versus three minutes in the Ranehill et al. experiments), avoiding discomfort, awkwardness, and habituation to the effects of the posture.
What is the main criticism of the power posture research?
Failure to determine whether the blinded method was used since the impact of the experimenter and the pervasiveness of expectancy effects are key variables to be controlled.
Who is considered the pioneer in gesture-meaning research?
David Ephron (1941).
Observations on the NVB of Jews and Italians in New York.
What was found between the gestures of first-generation immigrants and their descendants?
Ephron (1941) found behaviors were different in first-generation emigrants but uniform in their descendants, who exhibited fewer gestures specific to their origin group.
Individuals exposed to the influence of several different groups in their gestures adopt and combine the gestural behaviors of those groups.
What was the basis for Ekman and Friesen’s (1969, 1972) kinesthetic categories?
Ephron (1941) established a typology of gestures, the basis for Ekman
and Friesen (1969, 1972) establish the well-known five categories of kinesthetic behavior according to their origin, use, and codification.
What are the categories of kinesthetic behavior (Ekman and Friesen, 1972)?
Classify kinesthetic behavior according to origin, use, and codification.
Categories refer to the movement of body parts but focus on hand gestures.
Categories are:
1. Emblems
2. illustrators.
3. Regulators.
4. Display of affection and
5. Adaptors.
Gestures are not confined to one category; they could belong to more than one category.
What are emblems?
- non-verbal behavior with specific meaning - can be translated into words.
- emitted consciously and intentionally.
- Function - purely communication.
- Used as an alternative to voice communication when it is difficult/impossible to speak, at a great distance, by agreement, to emphasize verbal (hand indicates phone against ear when saying please/I will call) or ironic contradiction of verbal message.
Who usually knows the precise meaning of an emblem?
Group, Social class, subculture, or culture - know the meaning of emblems used in their circle.
Emblems often insult and often at a distance, maybe to give space to escape.
Which part of the body is used for emblems?
The whole body could be involved, but most often, hands, head orientation, facial musculature movements, or posture are involved.
Explain the meaning of ‘emblematic slips’.
If a person does not want to use an emblem but does so unconsciously.
E.g., shake your head no but say verbally yes (or vice versa).
Explain how emblems are culture-specific or universal.
Eyebrow flashes for a brief duration - usually greeting.
Waving hand - greeting, farewell.
Hand over mouth - hunger (some countries).
Tilting the head to the side and another hand as a pillow - sigh to sleep.
It can be problematic when the same gesture has different meanings in different countries and cultures - eg, index finger and thumb make a circle and the other fingers up like a three:
- OK in the US/UK
- Money in Japan
- Obscene sexual insult in Italy or Brazil (anus)
What is meant by Illustrators or illustrative gestures?
It is exclusively used by the sender but cannot be directly translated into verbal meaning, although it accompanies speech.
Illustrators - gestures emitted consciously or intentionally.
Facilitate - repeating successive parts of speech or fx as a punctuation system,
- other time - amplify content by describing spatial relationships
- or draw shapes of objects.
- can contradict verbal or
- be used as a substitute for words.
For example, you might use hand gestures to indicate the size or shape of an object. Unlike emblems, illustrators do not typically have meaning on their own and are used more subconsciously than emblems.
Frequency of illustrators depends on the state of mind and existing problems in verbal communication. How does use decrease or increase?
ILLUSTRATORS TEND TO DECREASE:
Suppose a person is demoralized, discouraged, tired, unmotivated, worried about the impressions he or she will make on the other person, or has a non-dominant role in a formal interaction; the rate of illustrators will be lower than is usual for that person.
ILLUSTRATORS INCREASE:
When there is interest, passion, and enthusiasm for the topic or communicative process, when they are perceived to be in a dominant role in formal interaction, or when there is little concern for impression during information interaction, illustrators tend to increase.
Illustrators increase if a person lacks words or perceives that the listener does not understand.
