Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The secrets of body language

blog.bufferapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 114 posts

Re: The secrets of body language

#71

Post by egypturnash »

ForrestN wrote: post #43

Two things I am wondering: First, what does it mean that these poses, these concepts ("power" as the desirable mode of relating to your coworkers for example) and even the key hormone we are meant to incite are so gendered? The poses are more essentially masculine than they are powerful. Have you ever seen a woman naturally with in the arm-around-the-chair pose, hips slunk forward and chest back? It would look quite…

I took burlesque dance lessons for a while. There was some time spent discussing posture and its use; I learnt some ways of standing that would make me look confident and sexy. There were some strong similarities to these "power poses" - but trust me, they were very, very feminine.

Re: The secrets of body language

#72

Post by egypturnash »

kyllo wrote: post #60

This is the actual definition of "cargo cult" behavior. It's getting cause and effect backwards because you don't understand their relationship, and trying to imitate the effect in the futile hope that it will cause the cause. People who sit all relaxed like that do so because they have power. They don't have power because they sit like that, and sitting like that will not magically confer power to you.

Here's some anecdata.

I took burlesque dance classes for a while. One of the things taught in this class was how to look confident, because projecting confidence is also pretty damn sexy.

Curiously enough, as I started learning these postures and using them, I found myself becoming a lot more confident. This was not something anyone told me to expect; it just sort of happened. It's spread out over a lot of how I move and behave, even when I'm not explicitly turning it on.

You are not a mind riding on top of a body. You are your body. And your body has a lot of weird feedback mechanisms that can be exploited.

Re: The secrets of body language

#73

Post by zeteo »

mamoswined wrote: post #68
zeteo wrote: post #66

This kind of article doesn't address the issue known as Chesterton's fence [1]. If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution? Why do we have such strong ingrained impulses to assume them in the first place? "Experts" need to give a very, very convincing answer to this question before urging us to abandon such poses. Anecdotally, I've often been with groups of engineers where eve…

From the perspective of primate social structures, the "low power" poses are incredibly important. For a male chimpanzee who doesn't have the physical strength or social clout to defend himself, adopting a submissive posture in the presence of higher ranking male can mean the difference between being tolerated and being beaten up. In a modern environment, I would hope that your boss would not beat you up for adopting…

Crouching, having your arms crossed etc. doesn't mean "don't beat me up". Sure, you might not be completely confident, but there's a long way from there to submissive. And, as I mentioned above, is it necessarily such a good social signal to fake confidence all the time?

Re: The secrets of body language

#74

Post by Mz »

zeteo wrote: post #66

This kind of article doesn't address the issue known as Chesterton's fence [1]. If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution? Why do we have such strong ingrained impulses to assume them in the first place? "Experts" need to give a very, very convincing answer to this question before urging us to abandon such poses. Anecdotally, I've often been with groups of engineers where eve…

I am female. My behavior is frequently interpreted by other people as extremely aggressive, attention mongering and so on. (Edit: I suspect a lot of it would be interpreted differently if I were male and it would be less of an issue.) It has gotten me loads of extremely negative attention. I have spent many years trying to learn to fly under the radar and deflect attention. This problem began very early in life with being an excessively cute, sunshiny child and continued with being viewed as a beautiful young woman (which came with perks like being raped and told it was my fault for being too beautiful to resist).

There are serious downsides to getting attention. Faking confidence when you do not have it and also do not have the ability that it implies can bring real trouble. I still want to figure out how to get traffic for my websites because I think that is my best hope for financial success but I have put a great deal of effort into learning to deflect attention away from me personally. I hope that if my work ever does garner good attention those lessons will stand me in good stead. Lots of celebrities have been seriously burned at some point and had trouble understanding why they were no longer darlings of the public eye. I got to go through that on a much smaller scale. My hope is that it will pay dividends some day when it matters more.

Re: The secrets of body language

#75

Post by jvm »

zeteo wrote: post #73
mamoswined wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of primate social structures, the "low power" poses are incredibly important. For a male chimpanzee who doesn't have the physical strength or social clout to defend himself, adopting a submissive posture in the presence of higher ranking male can mean the difference between being tolerated and being beaten up. In a modern environment, I would hope that your boss would not beat you up for adopting…

Crouching, having your arms crossed etc. doesn't mean "don't beat me up". Sure, you might not be completely confident, but there's a long way from there to submissive. And, as I mentioned above, is it necessarily such a good social signal to fake confidence all the time?

Noboyd's saying it's defensive, exactly, but I think it is unambiguously a signal that you don't have social ambition in the given context, which makes you unoffensive but also uninteresting.

Re: The secrets of body language

#76

Post by jvm »

kyllo wrote: post #60

This is the actual definition of "cargo cult" behavior. It's getting cause and effect backwards because you don't understand their relationship, and trying to imitate the effect in the futile hope that it will cause the cause. People who sit all relaxed like that do so because they have power. They don't have power because they sit like that, and sitting like that will not magically confer power to you.

If you read the article, they actually do an experiment and show via random assignment that assigning the posture actually causes the outcome (in this case, job interview success).

They didn't show the mechanism, but they did in fact show the direction of causality.

Re: The secrets of body language

#77

Post by newman314 »

egypturnash wrote: post #71
ForrestN wrote: post #43

Two things I am wondering: First, what does it mean that these poses, these concepts ("power" as the desirable mode of relating to your coworkers for example) and even the key hormone we are meant to incite are so gendered? The poses are more essentially masculine than they are powerful. Have you ever seen a woman naturally with in the arm-around-the-chair pose, hips slunk forward and chest back? It would look quite…

I took burlesque dance lessons for a while. There was some time spent discussing posture and its use; I learnt some ways of standing that would make me look confident and sexy. There were some strong similarities to these "power poses" - but trust me, they were very, very feminine.

Examples?

Re: The secrets of body language

#78

Post by Evbn »

robbyking wrote: post #14
solistice wrote: post #7

As a great practical guide to reading and applying body language, I'd recommend "What everybody is saying" by Dave Navarro. Guy used to do body language analysis for the FBI afaik, and then wrote a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d... Concerning the body language tips the article recomends, I think everyone except arms crossed behind head is covered for in the book. Arm akimb…

Joe Navarro also wrote an excellent book on how to read poker tells called "Read 'em and Reap." The books emphasises the importance of identifying behavioral patterns and recognizing deviations due to stress/confidence.

Which is in direct contradiction to OP's claim that everyone on Earth has the exact same set of tells.

Re: The secrets of body language

#79

Post by Evbn »

pfarrell wrote: post #21
doki_pen wrote: post #6

I hate it when people put their feet up on tables, especially near my person. If you did that around me I'd just think you were an asshole.

Perhaps you are unconsciously responding to the "power move"? I had a boss who would routinely show up late to sales calls _we_ were making. We were the salesmen; we'd show up 10 minutes late. He said it was classic power strategy. Make them think they're waiting on you. I was pissed, back then. Today, I'm less incredulous and wonder if he was on to something.

It is a classic gimmick that salespeople do to convince themselves that they have a special skill beyond lying through their teeth at a customer.

Re: The secrets of body language

#80

Post by Evbn »

molecule wrote: post #51

I can't locate the reference, but I've read, and observed, that if you want to verify that the person w/ whom you're conversing is paying attention to you, cross your arms: if the other person crosses their arms also, then they're paying attention to you.

Only if they are trying to sleep with you and have reqd a PUA book.
Post reply on HN