Suspicion and Secretiveness (2)
Posted on December 31, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Sideways Glance (Figure 28). Do you register it as suspicion and doubt when people give you the sideways glance? There is a common phrase, “She gave me a cold shoulder.” It confirms the gesture we associate with a distrusting attitude. Can you specifically recall instances when someone said something to you that you did not [...]
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Posted on December 30, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
“There are many wise men, that have secret hearts, and transparent countenances.”
— Francis Bacon
Gestures that connote suspicion or secretiveness are sometimes referred to as “left-handed” gestures. This reflects the American slang meaning of “undesirable,” as in a “left-handed” ship, compliment, or honeymoon. Interestingly, in sign language the right thumb extended upward meansgood, but the left [...]
Evaluation (4)
Posted on December 29, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Pipe-Smokers. Pipe-smokers are necessarily more involved with the ritual of smoking than are cigarette-smokers. After all, the pipe-smoker has many more functions to perform: He has to fill the pipe,
clean it, tap it, stoke it, and keep it lit. In the process he can use it as a scratcher, pointer, drumstick, etc., which permits the [...]
Evaluation (3)
Posted on December 28, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Stroking Chin (thinking/evaluating) (Figure 24). This “Well, let me consider” gesture, which seems to be worldwide, is made when people go through a decision-making process. Probably every Western movie has had a scene in which a bewhiskered frontier doctor stroked his chin and said, “I don’t know, Marshal, if that’s the best way to handle [...]
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Posted on December 27, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Sometimes a person assumes what we refer to as a “critical- valuation cluster” (Figure 23). He brings a
hand to his face, puts his chin in the palm, and extends his index finger along his cheek; the remaining fingers are positioned below the mouth. When these hand-to-cheek gestures are associated with the body drawn hack from [...]
Evaluation (1)
Posted on December 26, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
“When a student in a classroom becomes really absorbed in the problem at hand, he is likely to slip down on his shoulder blades, spread his feet, ruffle his hair and do any number of unconventional deeds. Let the spell be broken, and he sits up, rearranges his clothes and again becomes socially proper.”
— C. [...]
Defensiveness (3)
Posted on December 25, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Crossing Legs. If you were to stroll by the many sidewalk cafés in any European country, you could probably pick out a male American tourist simply from the way his legs are crossed. The European male crosses leg over leg. The American male uses what Birdwhistell describes as “figure-four,” one leg horizontally crossed with [...]
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Posted on December 24, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Very frequently a postmortem on video-recorded negotiations that have failed reveals that a demand, request, or offer was made at a time or in such a manner as to cause the other person to become defensive. From this point on, concessions, agreements, or other forms of cooperation become more difficult. Failing to recognize early [...]
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Posted on December 23, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
“An attitude not only of defence, but defiance.”
— Thomas Gillespie, “The Mountain Storm”
In contrast to gestures that indicate openness are those that guard the body or the emotions against a threatened assault. If openness is mishandled, it can easily become defensiveness.
Arms Crossed on Chest. Any baseball fan knows exactly what to expect when an umpire [...]
Openness (2)
Posted on December 22, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
As with other attitudes, openness encourages similar feelings in others. Charles Darwin noted this interaction when he wrote that he frequently observed animals communicating submissiveness, a form of openness, when they lay on their backs and exposed their soft underparts and throats to their opponents. He noted that in such situations even the most hostile [...]
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