Interpreting and Reading Body Language

What can be one of the greatest barriers some people have is the inability to detect physical social cues in conversations. Extroverts are usually more prone to develop this skill naturally through years of high exposure to new social interactions, while other more introverted personalities would need more guidance in this area. 

Sometimes we over-complicate things because we’re oblivious to what for others appears to be so simple they aren’t even conscious of their ability to read these signals. On the other hand we are far more conscious of the words we use, how we control and arrange our words in a particular way to portray our thoughts and emotions in a given moment. 

The idea of body language is to simply have a better understanding of social interactions between yourself and others and to understand your surroundings and what is going on in the minds of the ones around you to the best of our ability.


Free £59.50 from Topcashback. Click here to learn how!

It definitely is worth your time to learn about body language, first of all because it's a fascinating topic and by learning body language you can instantly improve your interactions by having a better read on a person or a groups state of mind. Also by taking a new view on social interactions with more of a critical eye on why things the way they are can really change the way you see others and yourself. 



And when I speak about control or a critical eye, the way I see it, it's not about tricks or manipulations (although there are many), but about training your intuition to have a better read on an interaction so you can steer it to a better and more positive direction.

If you want to learn more about body language...

Continue

Donald Trumps speech style - what may have helped him win and influence the American nation.

If you were asked the unlikely question of "Who is Donald Trump?" One of the possible answers you could give would be, "The President of the United states - and a controversial one at that." But what is most controversial about President Trump is how he addresses large crowds and responds to anything anyone says to him. It's unlike any President that's preceded him. Or any other politician for that matter. 

One of the reasons Donald Trump is so seemingly unique is due to his unorthodox speech style. From an objective stand point he uses very straight forward and simplistic language to get his points across - though not always coherent but it is very straight forward and much easier to absorb what he is saying for anyone who doesn't often keep up with a lot of politics or do not fully understand it.   

Some also say he speaks with brutal open honesty which has helped him win his Presidency while others say he has little composure and low impulse control which can may often attribute to his need to use aggressive language when put on the defensive or just simply disagrees with whoever he is against. What we'll speak about is what aspects of his speech style has helped win over the people of America and ultimately influence the nation to win his Presidency.

His simple outspoken conversational style.

It's no secret that Donald Trump doesn't seem to come across as someone with a sophisticated and large vocabulary when comparing to other politicians and if anything his way of speaking since being in the political arena comes across as even surprisingly simplistic. Coupled with him often just speaking his mind and not seeming to be as measured with his words like other politicians this in itself has made him stand out tremendously because he just doesn't seem to want to fit the mold of how a politician would typically act and behave like and this build a sense of intrigue whilst at the same time being easy listen to due to his seemingly small vocabulary.

He frequently uses quick punchy phrases which really makes anything he says easy to comprehend and remember. Similar to how advertising campaigns use mottos to keep their brands memorable and easy to associate with. For example Kit Kat – “Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat” or KFC – “Finger Lickin’ Good”.

Some of Donald Trumps own memorable phrases:

"I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively"

"We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating - let’s say China - in a trade deal? I beat China all the time. All the time"

"Rocket man is on a suicide mission."

Incoherence and confusion

Due Trump's speech style being so unorthodox and disruptive, this means that the audience is forced to pay more attention to making sense of his of what he is saying. And because of this that means that the listeners are more likely to be influenced and persuaded. Though this isn't fool proof but effective nonetheless.

The majority of Trump sentences are essentially sentence fragments where two or more unrelated thoughts are thrown into one confusing sentence. Words are arranged in a way that not everyone can grasp, even if you have a good command of the English language. (“There is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself, and the Russians, zero”). - quoted from President Trump himself.

SIGN UP. VERIFY. RECEIVE $5 IN FREE BITCOIN. ONLY WITH NBX! CLICK HERE!

The use of repetition.

Our brains are excellent pattern-seekers and because repetition breeds familiarity we tend become accustomed to what we are regularly exposed to - be it a song we hear on every other radio station or a movie trailer we see on every other television channel or maybe it's a slogan we may often hear such as "Red Bull - it gives you wings." This can be described as the mere exposure effect which is written in more detail here.

George Lakoff, a graduate professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California – Berkeley, explained that the brain is made of a vast amount of interconnected neurons that form circuits similar to a network, and these carry out every single word or thought we have. When these circuits are activated by words or the things we see, they become stronger, and if repeatedly activated, they can become permanent. To be put simply - by repeating something to someone you are training them to think a certain way.

In Trumps case he punctuates his speeches with repetition. It helps to bring his point across without the risk of his messages being forgotten and can also serve as a way to keep his messages memorable. Also it’s also a delaying tactic, giving him time to think of the next thing he needs to say. 

Some of Donald Trumps own repetitive phrases:

“That’s wrong. They were wrong. It’s The New York Times, they’re always wrong. They were wrong.”  

"I went to an Ivy League school. I'm highly educated. I know words. I have the best words, I have the best, but there is no better word than stupid. Right?"

"(on fellow candidates) All of 'em are weak, they're just weak. Some of them are fine people. But they are weak."

Continue

10 Quick And Interesting Facts About Body Language

As you may know body language is more complex than it seems at first glance. This is because reading body language has so many nuances and subtleties you have to account for such as context, culture, mood, level of comfort, baseline behavior etc. The list can go on. For example a country and its culture can have a wide range of facial expressions, body movements, and hand gestures that can signal particular emotions and feelings but go from one country to another and those same gestures and expressions can get lost in translation.

Take a look at these 10 quick and interesting facts about body language and see if you learn something new. Because body language is often nuanced and subtle with wide variations of expression you'll always learn something new. There are also experts who professionally study and research in reading body language, and even they can’t always read and interpret body language correctly. It just goes to show how complex human beings can be! We hope you enjoy this list of interesting body language facts.

1. Amazingly woman have a wider range of peripheral vision which allows her to look at a man’s body from head to toe without even getting noticed. A male’s peripheral vision on the other hand is not as good. This is why a man would typically move his gaze up and down a woman’s body which is very obvious and can wind up with the man getting caught.

2. Britain, similar to a lot of Northern Europe and the Far East, is labelled as a “non-contact” culture where there is little physical contact in their daily interactions. The Middle East, Latin America, and Southern Europe are considered “high contact cultures” where physical touch is a part of everyday socializing.

3. Covering the eyes or "eye blocking" such as prolonged blinking, lowering the eyes for a longer than usual period are all powerful signals that portray confusion, disbelief or disagreement.

4. Custom officers often notice that passengers who point their feet toward the exit while talking to the officer to make their custom’s declaration are more likely to be hiding something they should have declared in the first place.

5. Research shows that whatever we’re feeling first shows up in our body before entering our conscious minds microseconds later.



SIGN UP. VERIFY. RECEIVE $5 IN FREE BITCOIN. ONLY WITH NBX! CLICK HERE!

6. Kissing and romantic touch releases Oxytocin in the brain. It is a hormone that strengthens the emotional bond between the two people.

7. Similar to how a dog will expose its throat to show submission or surrender, humans use their palms to show that they are harmless and not threatening.

8. It has been noted that in stores thieves will try to hide their physical presence by restricting their motions by hindering their head exposure by raising the shoulders and at times lowering the head. Otherwise most people walk around the store with their arms quite free and active and their posture upright.

9. Squinting is a motion that can be very brief, just fraction of a second, but it can often signal negative thoughts or emotions. We tend to squint when we are angry or when we hear sounds, or music or even voices we don’t like.

10. Even when a person is standing still, a person’s body is always telling a story.

For more free and interesting tips on body language, click to get our free Body Language Guide here

Continue

Fundamental attribution error

When an incident or an event occurs (whether negative or positive) the tendency to place a significant amount of blame on a persons personality or characteristics rather than situational factors is quite a common one. This is because we tend to focus more on the person involved by assuming that a person is responsible due to their personality/characteristics and not the conditions around them that they could not have had control over in the first place. This phenomena is what you call the fundamental attribution error.

An example of fundamental attribution error is when you see someone driving and swerving and crashing into a tree, automatically you would think ''what is this person doing?!'' or ''this person is actually crazy?!'' but the real reason for the accident was not because of the person directly but because a pedestrian ran into the road and so to avoid hitting the pedestrian the driver hit the brakes whilst steering round them where their tyres slipped over a wet patch on the road causing the crash. As an observer watching the whole thing take place you would most likely blame the person driving for being reckless if you had not have known what contributed to the crash. The truth is that these multiple factors such as the surprise pedestrian, the wet patch in the road, etc, would have caused the crash regardless of who was behind the wheel, so it wouldn't have just taken a reckless personality to crash the car in this scenario.

SIGN UP. VERIFY. RECEIVE $5 IN FREE BITCOIN. ONLY WITH NBX! CLICK HERE!

 A second example of the fundamental attribution error is when you ask a stranger for directions but they give you a seemingly snarky response or they're simply rude to you. Naturally you would peg this person as rude and having a bad personality, but looking past their initial first impression they may have had a bad day putting them in a foul mood or they've just received some devastatingly bad news and you were the first person they have come into contact with since receiving this news. They acted the way they did not because of their natural personality (most people are generally polite to strangers) but their circumstances made them act they way they did, in this case it was just having a bad day which was the cause.

Though there hasn't been one widely accepted causal reason for the fundamental attribution error there has been several theories which have been associated with being a root cause for why people are quicker to blame character traits for their circumstances rather than situational factors. One of the reasons is due to culture; for instance western cultures where people who are more individualistic tend to emphasize the individual over situational factors so they are  

more prone to fundamental attribution error as opposed to people from non-western cultures who tend to emphasize context and situational factors over the individual so they are less prone to the error. A study conducted by social psychologists Michael W. Morris and Kaiping Peng where they tested the hypothesis of a bias toward individual autonomy in American western culture while in there was a bias toward collective or contextual factors in Chinese eastern culture, in the experiment the participants where they were asked to watch an animated cartoon of swimming fish where one fish deviates from several other fish. In the experiment the animation was designed so that it was ambiguous whether the fish was a coordinated group influencing the behaviour of the lone fish or the lone fish acted on its own preference. Over several studies with different sets of participants both Morris and Peng confirmed their hypothesis with the western participants believing the fish acting on its own accord while most of the eastern participants believed the fish acted due to other factors outside of the individual fish.

The just world hypothesis is another possible reason for the fundamental attribution error where people have the belief that people get what they deserve whether good or bad, so if someone finds themselves in a car crash then most people believe that the person involved must have had it coming to them, conversely if someone has won a new car then most people would believe that they deserve it. In either case the just world hypothesis suggests that people in general believe that people get what they deserve. Social psychologist Melvin Lerner conducted an experiment where a group of participants watched a video of a subject complete a set of tasks where when they got a task wrong they would receive an electric shock. The subject pretended to get an electric shock of course. Lerner found that the participants had a low opinion of the subject saying that the subject deserved it and berated their appearance and character. Lerner concluded that the sight of the subject suffering ''electric shocks'' or their general misfortune motivated the participants to devalue the subject to bring about a more appropriate fit between their fate and their characteristics.

Continue

Group perceptions

When we observe or first encounter a group we inevitably have an opinion of them, we use all available and necessary information to create a mental picture of that group, and the information we use will be all relative to who we are individually, our experiences and their general impression. As we know opinions and impressions of a group don't always stick and they can and do change the more information we receive about a given group thus changing how we may respond to them whether they're negative or positive. This post will be discussing two aspects of group perceptions; one theory will be regarding how the observer and the observed perceive group decisions and the other will be regarding how groups perceive other groups in relation to themselves.

Group Attribution Error
Studied by social psychologist Professor Scott T. Allison in 1985 the group attribution theory comes in two layers, where a group that makes a decision for a course of action the members within the group believe that the decision outcome was a result of group effort following group norms while on the other hand an observer watching the same group will attribute the decision outcomes as a result of the roles of each individual member of the group having their part to play with the decision making.

For example when a group of advertisers come together to make the decision for the type of advertising campaign they want to use and they all agree on the models they will use, the colour scheme, fonts etc and go ahead and create and their campaign. After their efforts the advertising campaign they all worked on turned out to be a failure due to not getting the kind of response they were looking for. In reflection the members of the group would attribute their failure as a result of the decisions made by the group as a whole while to the contrary an observer such  

as their manager would attribute their decision failures to certain individuals within the group. In other words group members usually believe that their actions are driven by the group as a whole while the observer believes the groups actions are driven mainly by individual personalities within the group. 


In-group bias
The idea that we favour people that we perceive as part of our group is quite a common one. As a result of this we act positively towards the people within our group while anyone who isn't associated with our group are seen as outsiders and therefore are tainted in a less than positive light. This creates an us versus them mentality and can of course be the root of any larger scale animosities such as rival gang fights, racial tensions and hostilities between whole nations.



SIGN UP. VERIFY. RECEIVE $5 IN FREE BITCOIN. ONLY WITH NBX! CLICK HERE!

A common and smaller scale form of the in-group bias phenomenon can often be found in team sports such as football. Where if you support one football team you automatically assign positive attributes to the team you support and also view anyone else who supports the same team to be associated with your in-group and assign them with similarly positive attributes. Also this means that because you're a supporter of one team this would paint other teams and their supporters as outsiders or potential rivals, and this can result in the your team using such behaviours such as team chants/rituals talking about the other teams shortcomings to feel a sense of superiority over them and even using mockery all resulting in further reinforcing your preference to your own team. Contrary to the idea that being involved in a group depends on an automatic conflict to an outside group this in fact is strictly not the case though it can be a common theme. Marilynn Brewer Professor of psychology at Ohio State University in 2007 stated that people join groups to feel security and a sense of belonging and these qualities are in no relation to having a sense of conflict with other groups what so ever. 

Continue