How to Read the Body Language - Essay Example

Body language Social scientists have spent a plenty deal of time studying what effects our body language and other individuals’ body language has on judgments. Thus we make quick inferences and judgments from the body language exhibited. These judgments help in making predictions that have meaningful outcomes in life such as who are hired, promoted or even potential dates. These judgments help us decide on which physician to visit or sue, which political candidates to elect for Senate and gubernatorial positions. So the moment we think of body language, we usually ponder of how others judge us, the judgment we pass on others and the respective outcomes we get. We usually forget another important audience, influenced, mainly by our body language, and that is certainly ourselves. We are not only influenced by our body language our physiology and feelings but also our thoughts. Amy has researched on this issue extensively and has come up with an amazing maxim; fake it till you make it! Her study is based mostly on body language expressions of dominance and power. Amy narrates her experiences with MBA students, who really exhibit full range of body language. Some of the students come, get right in the middle of the classroom like they are occupying space. As they sit down, they are spread out, raising their hands. The other lot is virtually collapsing as they come in, its written all over their bodies and faces as they take their seats and continue making themselves small, even while raising their hands. These nonverbals have a close relationship with gender and the extent of participation and how good they were at it. Women most times feel that men are more powerful than them and thus exhibit nonverbals depicting their powerlessness. This gap in gender grade has been a struggle for business schools and although all students admitted are equally qualified, you realise differences in grades, which is partially attributed to participation. This is what led to Amy’s questioning whether it was possible to convince her students to fake courage and thus lead to more participation from all. Thus Amy and her main collaborator at Berkeley, Dana Carney wanted to find out if one can fake it, till they make it. That is to say that you can practice this for some time and actually get to experience an outcome in behavior that makes one feel powerful. It is known that our body language governs how other persons may feel and think about us. Evidence exists to support this, but Amy’s and Dana’s question was whether our nonverbals control how we feel and think about ourselves. Thus for instance when we smile voluntarily we feel happy; however we can still feel happy when forced to smile, while holding a biro in our teeth. This therefore happens two ways. It’s also the same thing that happens when looking at power. Therefore when one feels powerful s/he is likely to do this, but there is a possibility that when one pretends to be powerful, s/he most likely bound to feel powerful too. It is known that our minds change our bodies, but can our bodies change our minds? This is the second question Amy and Dana sought to answer. The word mind here, in their context of powerful, relates to things like feelings and thoughts and other physiological things like, in this case hormones that compose feelings and thoughts. Thus Amy and Dana sought to examine what the minds of the powerless and powerful looked like. Powerful people naturally are more confident, assertive and more optimistic. Powerful people tend to have an appetite for risk, think abstractly and feel that they can win anything even in a game of chance.Physiologically,differences are found in two main hormones;cortisol,which is a stress hormone and testosterone, a dominance hormone. High power males exhibit high levels of testosterone in hierarchies of primates and low levels of cortisol. This also cuts across in humans whereby an effective and powerful leader exhibits low levels of cortisol and high levels of testosterone. Thus an effective leader should be assertive, dominant, powerful, laid back and not stress reactive. An individual’s level of testosterone will go up significantly and levels of cortisol will drop as well, if suddenly there is need for an alpha role to be taken over. This therefore proves that the body can significantly change the mind, as well as changes in roles can shape one’s mind. So how would it be like if you took just a minimal manipulation or tiny intervention, at a really minimal level? For example you say, for two minutes, you want to strike a certain pose in order to feel powerful. Amy and Dana brought people in a lab and ran a small experiment, and these candidates adopted for 2 minutes, either poses of low-power or poses of high-power. Poses of high power ranged from standing to sitting, whereas those of low power ranged from making oneself small to folding up. The candidates would come, spit in a vial, they were required to strike some poses according to the instructions and were not allowed to look at the pictures nor was the concept of power primed at them. Amy and Dana just wanted them to feel power. After they did this for two minutes they were asked how powerful they felt on a myriad of items. They were then given a chance to gamble and afterwards another sample of saliva was taken, and that was the whole experiment. They found out that risk tolerance, when one is in a pose of high-power, 86% of the people will gamble, whereas when a pose of low-power is struck only 60% are likely to gamble. On matters testosterone, high power persons experienced a 20% increase, whereas low-power persons experienced a 10% decrease. On matters cortisol, high-power individuals experience about 25% decrease whereas the low-power individuals experience a 15% increase. Thus a two minute exposure leads to all those hormonal changes that configures the brain to simply be confident, assertive and comfortable or else stress-reactive and have a shut down feeling. This therefore means that our body language govern how we feel and think about ourselves, that’s it’s not just others but also ourselves. Our bodies do change our minds too. The next big question for these two researchers was the real life application of this experiment. Amy proposes that the findings of their experiment can be applied in evaluative situations such as social threat ones. It could also be useful while speaking at a meeting of the school board or most importantly and common while doing an interview for a certain job. They therefore decided to use job interview scenario since most people can relate to this. So they brought candidates in the lab again, did either poses for low-power or the ones for high-power, put them in a rigorous job interview, five minutes long and all the time they are being recorded, and judged by judges trained to give no body language response. This really worked their cortisol up.Finally all the high power posers were recommended for hiring. Amy therefore argues that our minds are changed by our bodies and our behavior can be changed by our minds, and our outcomes can be changed by our behavior. She sums up by narrating her own story of faking it, till she made it. According to Amy, it’s all about convincing oneself that you can do it, and this is absolutely true of any human being. As for me I have been carrying out my own assessment and realised that I am shy while appearing before an audience. I sometimes become incoherent and cannot seem to compose my cool. I decided to confront this fear by following Amy’s research findings. So I went locked myself in my bedroom and stood before my mirror. I looked straight at my image and started talking to myself. I used all the high power postures suggested by Amy, and the moment I had practiced enough, my confidence increased tremendously. I was able to conquer my own fears and felt powerful, confident and ready to address any gathering. I pretended I was the President of the US and to my surprise; I could speak fluently for five straight minutes. Like Amy and her student, I had faked it and made it! Work Cited http://news.rapgenius.com/Amy-cuddy-your-body-language-shapes-who-you-are-annotated https://www.ted.com/speakers/amy_cuddy Read More