I'm including another copy here below the jump (click where it says 'czytaj więcej').
Also if someone will leave me an email address for the year in the comments (or email it to me) I'll email a copy of the materials to the email list as well.
See you Sunday!
THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES
Adapted from Culture and organizations:
by Geert Hofstede
All people carry within themselves patterns of thinking, feeling and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetimes. Many of these were learned in early childhood; because that is the time a person is most susceptible to learning and assimilating patterns of behavior. As soon as certain patterns of thinking, feeling and acting have been established within a person's mind, they must unlearn them before being able to learn something different. And unlearning is more difficult than learning for the first time.
Using the analogy of the way in which computers are programmed, this course will call such patterns of thinking, feeling and acting mental programs or software of the mind. This does not mean, of course, that people are programmed the way computers are. A person's behavior is only partially predetermined by their mental programs. They also have a basic ability to deviate from them and to react in ways which are new and unexpected. The software of the mind examined in this course only indicates what reactions are likely and understandable given a person's past.
The sources of people's mental programs lie within the social environments in which they grow up and collect their life experiences. The programming starts in the family, continues in the neighborhood, at school at work and in the larger community. Mental programs vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired.
A customary term for such mental software is culture. This word has several meanings, all derived from Latin, in which it refers to the tilling of the soil. In European languages the word has come to have two separate meanings in common. The first of these refers to the products of civilization such as the visual and performing arts, literature, architecture and education. It is sometimes divided between 'high' (national composers and poets) and 'low' (pop-singers and soap operas) culture. For this course such a distinction is not necessary and both will be called culture one, though it is not the subject of the course.
The second meaning refers to mental programs and will hereinafter be the meaning of the word culture unless otherwise specified. It will be called culture two when it is necessary to distinguish it from the others.
A third meaning of culture is found in some languages (but not English) and refers to kinds of personal behavior approved of in that culture.
It can be called culture three and will not be directly referred to although it interacts to some degree with culture two.
The subject of the course, culture two, is a catchword for those patterns of thinking, acting and doing referred to previously. Unlike the lofty subjects of culture one, it usually refers to very ordinary activities in life such as the way people greet each other, eat, show (or conceal) feelings, converse, arrange themselves at work, make love or maintain bodily hygiene. Often politicians and journalists confuse culture one and two without being aware of it. As a result, adaptation difficulties of immigrant groups are discussed in terms of promoting folk dancing or exotic cuisine. But culture two deals with human processes that are simultaneously more fundamental and have more potential for creating conflict. People are mostly unaware of culture two but simultaneously very protective of the patterns of behavior associated with it.
Before going any further, it is also necessary to distinguish culture from what might be broadly called political processes. Neither communism nor capitalism is culture (though the ways they are implemented depend on culture).
Culture is always a collective phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment where it was learned. Culture can be defined as the collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
Culture is learned, not inherited. It comes from the social environment and not from genes. It should be distinguished from Human Nature on one side and Personality on the other as in Figure I. Just exactly where the borders between Human Nature, Culture and Personality are is a matter of discussion and disagreement among social scientists.
Human Nature: This is what all human beings from Russian professors to Australian aborigines share. It is what all humans have in common and to some extent defines the species Homo sapiens from other species. It represents a universal level of mental software.
The basic human abilities to feel fear, anger, love, joy, sadness, the need to associate with others, to observe the environment and talk about it with others all belong to this level of mental programming, which is the universal biological inheritance of all people. Just how people deal with this inheritance is modified by culture.
Human nature is not perhaps as 'human' as the name may imply since much of it is shared with humans' closest primate relatives as well as other mammals.
Personality: The Personality of an individual on the other hand is their unique personal set of mental programs which no two individuals share completely. It is based partly on traits that are inherited and partly on traits that are learned. Here, learned, means modified by the influence of collective programming as well as unique personal experiences.
Cultural Relativism
Students of culture find human groups and categories thinking, feeling and acting differently. But there is no scientific standard for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Studying culture presupposes a position of cultural relativism. This does not imply normlessness for oneself, nor for one's society. It does call for suspending judgment when dealing with groups or societies different from one's own. It is also necessary to distinguish political aims from culture. Political aims are conscious and meant to achieve certain goals while culture is largely unconscious and values are not goals in and of themselves.
Manifestations of culture: Symbols, heroes, rituals and values.
Cultural differences manifest themselves in several ways. From the many terms used to describe manifestations of culture, the following four together cover the total concept rather neatly: Symbols, Heroes, Rituals and Values. In Figure 2. they are illustrated rather like the layered skin of an onion, indicating that symbols represent the most superficial and values the deepest manifestations of culture, with heroes and rituals somewhere in between.
Symbols are words, gestures, pictures or objects that carry a particular meaning which is only recognized by those who share the culture. The words in a language or jargon belong to this category as do dress, hairstyles, Coca Cola, flags and status symbols. New symbols easily arise and old ones disappear.
Also, symbols from one culture are regularly adopted by others. This is why symbols are put on the outer, most superficial level.
Heroes are persons alive or dead, real or imaginary, who possess characteristics which are highly prized in a culture and who thus serve as role models for the members of the culture. Even fantasy or cartoon figures such as Batman, Asterix or Švejk can serve as cultural heroes. In an age of television and movies, outward appearances have become more important in the choice of heroes than they were before.
Also, it should be pointed out that figures alive or dead, real or imaginary may possess characteristics which are highly disliked in a culture and serve as anti-heroes, role models of how not to behave. Of course the same person who serves as a positive role model for one person may serve as a negative role model for another member of the same society.
Rituals are collective activities that are technically superfluous in reaching desired ends, but which are considered to be socially essential. They are carried out for their own sake. Ways of greeting and paying respect to others, social and religious ceremonies are examples. Business and political meetings organized for seemingly rational reasons often serve mainly ritual purposes like allowing leaders to assert themselves.
Symbols, Heroes and Values have all been subsumed under the term Practices. As such, they are visible to an outside observer. Their cultural meaning, however, is invisible and lies in how these practices are interpreted by insiders.
The core of culture in this model is formed by Values. Values are broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others. Values are feelings with positive or negative evaluation attached. They typically have a plus and a minus side. The deal with issues such as:
evil vs good
dirty vs clean
ugly vs beautiful
unnatural vs natural
abnormal vs normal
paradoxical vs logical
irrational vs rational
Values are the first things children learn, not consciously, but implicitly. Developmental psychologists believe that by the age of 10, most children have their basic value system firmly in place and after that age, changes in values are difficult to make.
Because they are acquired so early in life, many values remain unconscious to those who hold them. Therefore they cannot be openly discussed, nor can they be observed by outsiders. They can only be inferred from the way that people behave in various circumstances.
Thus, systematic research on values is cumbersome and ambiguous. Various questionnaires have been developed which ask for people's preferences among alternatives. The answers should not be taken too literally because in practice people will not always act as they have answered on the questionnaire. Still, questionnaires do provide useful information in that they show differences in answers between groups of respondents. For example, suppose a question asks for one's preference between:
a)the same amount of money working only 2/3 the hours they work at present,
b) 1/3 more money for the same amount of hours they work at present.
Individual employees who state that they would choose a) may in fact choose b) if presented with the actual choice. But if more people in one culture claim to prefer a) than in another, this can indicate a cultural difference about the relative value of free time versus money.
In interpreting people's statements about their values it is important to distinguish between two concepts. The desirable refers to culturally approved desires and ideas about how people should behave. It is usually expressed in terms of right and wrong. It often bears only a faint resemblance to actual behavior. The desired refers to what a person actually wants for themselves. Differences between the desired and the desirable at both the individual and collective levels are often unconscious and scrutiny of the discrepancies is usually avoided.
Layers of culture: Since almost everyone belongs to a number of different groups and categories of people at the same time, people carry several layers of mental programming within themselves, corresponding to different levels of culture: These can include:
family: Tolstoy was only half-right, all families are happy or unhappy in their own ways and patterns of behavior unique to individual families may vary.
regional: this may be regional within a single country (most countries are composed of regions which differ from each other) or supra-national as many countries also belong to wider cultural traditions.
ethnic: national and ethnic boundaries often do not coincide.
linguistic: often people who speak the same language share values that distinguish them from other groups in the same country or other national groups.
religious: religious affiliations do not necessarily coincide with ethnic or national boundaries (though generally speaking, cultural factors influence religious observance more than the other way around.)
gender: above and beyond natural biological differences, males and females are almost always socialized differently.
generational: often children have different values from their parents, who have different values from their parents. Generational differences may arise out of the values of the culture itself or may have external causes.
class: these are associated with educational and occupational opportunities.
professional: for those who are employed there may be a professional level of values and experiences shared with others in the same profession.
organizational: this refers to the actual place a person works and the unique experiences associated with it.
national: people who live in the same country share a set of national experiences and values that distinguish them even from those they share language or ethnicity with in different countries.
The national level is also a very convenient level for data gathering. It is the level used by Hofstede both in his IBM study and in other works which provide most of the data used in this course.
Satir Modes
(adapted from "Gentle art of verbal self defense" materials by Suzette Haden Elgin)
Virginia Satir was a renowned family therapist. As a rule even under the best conditions therapy is very stressful. In addition Satir was dealing with people communicating with each other about emotionally charged topics as much as with her. This meant that she had lots of experience in watching people communicate (or failing to communicate or trying to block communication) under conditions of severe stress.
She began to notice the same patterns of communication surface again and again. Eventually she elaborated a typology of language behavior by people under stress. The different kinds of behaviors became known as Satir modes. In her original work there are five Satir Modes.
Blamer
The Blamer uses language with open and obvious hostility. Blamers are determined in their language to make certain that responsibility for anything that has gone or might go wrong is placed on someone else. They prefer to make that responsibility as permanent as possible. Blamers use language to clear themselves of all responsibility, no matter how trivial.
Some typical Blaming utterances:
"Why do you always spoil the whole day for everybody?"
"Why can't you ever consider anybody else's feelings but your own?"
"I will never understand why you always act like this!"
"You never think about what I might want to do, or how other people might feel – you don't care about anybody but yourself."
While Blamers often shout, and swear they don't always. Often they use a cold, grim, tight-lipped manner of speaking. They may even be used with a surface air of sweetness and concern.
"Sweetheart, the way you always completely ignore the feelings of everybody around you just amazes me. Don't you think you ought to consider other people at least once in a while, darling?"
Body language: Blaming is extremely easy to spot. There are lots of clenched fists, gritted teeth, knotted eyebrows, stiff, choppy gestures and a preference for looming postures (rather similar to dominance displays among monkeys and apes).
Verbal cues: There are three typical verbal cues for Blamers.
1. Lots of very personal language: That is, lots of first and second person pronouns.
2. Lots of absolutes: Blamers use many words like always, never, only, everybody, ever, not even once and the like.
3. There are a lot of heavy stresses, especially on the words mentioned in points one and two. The intonation tends to be falling
Dealing with them: There are two typical ways of dealing with Blamers. Anyone who has a choice will avoid them as much as possible and many Blamers end up lonely and bitter, shouting at the walls. Those who don't have a choice quickly learn to tune them out, that is to not notice the screaming and ranting going on around them. This unfortunately feeds directly into the Blamer's biggest fear, namely being ignored often causes them to turn up the volume even more.
Placater
The Placater wants responsibility for anything that has gone or could go wrong placed on someone else but shows no interest in placing it on their interlocutor. Indeed they often seem to not care where it's placed as long as it's away from them. The Placater uses language to deny responsibility not just for bad things, but good things as well. While the Blamer is a verbal tormentor, the Placater is the perfect victim.
"Oh you know me, I don't care!"
"Whatever you want to do is okay with me, you know that!"
"Oh, you decide! It doesn't matter to me at all."
Body language: Nonverbally, the Placater appears uneasy and worried, even when the major issue under discussion is completely trivial. The Placater tries desperately to be nice and to please everybody.
Look for wide eyes, frequent blinking, smiles that aren't called for, lip biting and a sort of constant intense leaning toward other people.
Verbal cues:
- Personal language. Lots of I and you.
- Intonation tends toward pleading or desperate niceness.
Many people feel a kind of disgust at the Placater's disinterest in maintaining basic human dignity and try to avoid them. If you do find yourself dealing with a Placater, by all means Be Careful! While they may do everything possible to be non-threatening, they can sucker you into traps you cannot anticipate or get out of.
"Of course I don't mind staying at home with the kids, I love to stay with the kids. And I really didn't want to go with you anyway, I was just pretending so you wouldn't feel bad. You go on ahead and have a good time without me. I'll be fine."
When Placaters collide, the rest of the universe comes to a standstill. Here are two Placaters trying to decide where to have lunch together while trying to avoid actually making a decision.
Steve: So where should we go for lunch?
Carl: Oh, you decide, I really don't care.
Steve: No, you know me. I really don't have any strong preferences.
Carl: It's all the same to me. I really think it would be better if you decided. (etc etc etc)
Warning: Despite everything they say, Placaters usually have definite preferences and will be upset if they don't get their way. They will do their best to make you pay for that in guilt.
(picking up the previous conversation some time later …)
Steve: Okay, maybe we'll go to Sphinx?
Carl: That sounds ... okay …. I was kind of thinking about Chinese food, but ... I guess Sphinx will be okay.
Steve: No, that's good, I know a good Chinese place nearby…
Carl: No, you want to go to Sphinx, we'll go to Sphinx. I can do what I want some other time...
Computer
The Computer uses language to hide emotion rather than project it. Computer language either denies there is any blame to be concerned about or places it upon abstractions. There is a tendency toward solemn, educated vocabulary which can often mask the fact that there is no real content to anything the computer says.
"Undoubtedly there is a reasonable explanation for all this."
"It's clear that there is no cause for anyone to be concerned."
"It would be imprudent to express an opinion with regard to that particular situation."
Body language: As close to non-existent as possible, movement occurs when it is absolutely unavoidable. Facial expressions are kept to the bare minimum to indicate that the Computer is not asleep or dead. One of the most extreme displays of emotion from a computer is a kind of slight distaste.
Verbal cues:
The clearest sign that you're dealing with a Computer is an almost complete avoidance of personal language, words like I, me, you are rare.
There are many references to unidentified entities like "a person", "people" or "one". This is so the computer can deny making a direct statement. Intonation is flat with no special stresses.
In popular culture, the perfect English butler is a perfect Computer as is the loner American cowboy (who says almost nothing besides "yep" and "nope".
A peculiarity of American work culture is that certain kinds of formal settings (especially committees) almost require that everyone present go into computer mode, which helps to explain why committees get so little done compared with the amount of time and effort expended. Anyone working with or spending a significant amount of time around Americans should learn to use computer mode.
John: As much data as possible should be gathered before any preliminary decisions can be made.
Alice: It would certainly be imprudent to neglect the data-gathering process. The question is what the best way to proceed might be.
John: Well, that certainly is a question worthy of consideration on its own. (etc etc etc)
Distracter
The Distracter cycles rapidly through Blamer, Placater and Computer modes with similar changes of body language:
"Why can't you ever think of anybody but yourself? I mean not that I'm complaining, I hope you realize that, I don't care. But it should be obvious that a person who does not think of anyone else will incite anger in others. Oh, I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, not that you'd care, you never care about anyone else's feelings, and there is certainly an abundance of evidence on that score. But I don't wanna fight, okay? It's just that you're bound and determined to drive me crazy!"
Distracting is about the least productive communication strategy possible. It does have two possible uses in extreme cases. In the first case, it functions superbly well in convincing people to stay very far away from you. Related to this, it will serve you very well if you really want or need to convince anyone that you are mentally ill. There is no way of accomplishing any other communication goal by Distracting.
Leveler
There are two ways to recognize a Leveler. The first is negative in that the obvious signs of Blaming, Placating and Computing are absent. The second is positive in that there is a high level of congruence between the content, intonation and body language of the Leveler.
To a large extent Blaming, Placating and Computing are based on a mismatch between the content and delivery. The aggressive bluster of Blamers is usually a (poor) cover for deep insecurity. The overt message of the Placater is "I don't care," while it is often obvious that they care very much. The overt message of the Computer is "I have no emotions," which is not a possible state for human beings to maintain for any length of time. The overt message of Distracting is chaos and may well reflect what the Distracter is feeling, but chaos is not a good foundation for effective communication.
Since Leveling can always include the same words as those used in any other Satir Mode, it's important not to be confused by the words themselves. Compare these sentences:
"WHY are you LEAVing so EARly?" (frowning; fists clenched)
"WHY are you LEAVing so EARly?" (blinking, lip biting).
"Why are you leaving so early?" (relaxed posture)
But be warned, congruence is not necessarily always pleasant. Much of social life between human beings is made smoother by conventional polite lies like "I like your purse", "It was nice talking to you", "I'm sorry I kept you waiting" or "It's not you, it's me."
Levelers often ignore polite social lies and are more likely to say "That purse will never be in fashion", "I don't want to talk to you anymore", "I don't care that you had to wait" or "I don't want to see you again." This disruption of familiar patterns can be unsettling.
Similarly, a person who despises you and makes that clear though the content and intonation of what they say and their body language is leveling, but you probably won't enjoy interacting with them much.
On the other hand, some people misinterpret leveling as a personal attack when it isn't. "I find the way you crack your knuckles to be very irritating." in Leveler mode is not an attack. It's an invitation to negotiate (and should be responded to in Leveler mode).
"I'm sorry I'll try to stop." or "I'll stop cracking my knuckles if you stop whistling under your breath, deal?" are both appropriate responses if also delivered in Leveler mode.
Often people think of Levelers as being disruptive and hostile when it's really the nice guy (a Placater) down the hall who's really causing them problems.
BODY LANGUAGE
(adapted from materials by Suzette Haden Elgin)
The term Body language is not an exact term and many other terms are used to refer to the field or to parts of it – these include paralanguage (behaviors that accompany language), proxemics (cultural attitudes towards the arrangement of people in physical space), chronemics (cultural measurement of time), pragmatics (interpreting the practical meaning behind language utterances) and kinesics (body movement and posture within a culture). Here the term Body language will be used as a cover term and will be defined as follows:
Body language is every part of the communication act that is not the actual spoken words (Verbal language) used.
This includes gestures, facial expressions, postures, the way the body is located in space and time, clothing and body decoration and so on.
In some ways, intonation is a bridge between Verbal and Body language. In English, some intonation patterns are grammatically necessary and thus clearly part of the Verbal language sphere. The rise in pitch at the end of yes-no questions is one example. Other kinds of intonation are clearly in the Body language sphere (like the loudness that often accompanies anger). Others seem to have qualities in both the Verbal and Body language spheres (the intonation patterns used in the expression of sarcasm for example).
The definition used here is overall a broader than usual use of the term. Some may object that this definition makes all human behavior, including silence, into language. There do seem to be virtually no human behaviors that are under the voluntary control of human beings that can be clearly defined as not being part of language behavior.
Researchers trying to find out exactly how much of any message is carried by the body rather than by the words themselves have had a variety of results. The precise figure is not crucial because even the lowest claim cited is over 50 per cent. This makes Body language a matter of major importance.
There are functioning, intelligent adults who do not understand Body language (usually they have atypical neurological conditions like Asperger's syndrome that make understanding anything besides verbal language difficult or impossible). But this is a small minority.
So the good news is that you are probably already an expert in both using Body language and in interpreting the Body language of others.
But this knowledge, like the knowledge of the grammatical structure of your native language is almost entirely unconscious.
Without special training, native speakers of English cannot list or easily describe the different conditionals used in the language. Likewise, Polish speakers cannot explain concepts like 'functionally soft stems' that those who learn Polish as a foreign language have to deal with.
Body language works in much the same way. And just as not every native speaker is a great orator, not every user of Body language is equally skilled.
There are people who are so highly skilled in their conscious use of Body language that they can use their bodies to lie with. Great actors are trained to present Body language they don't personally feel and may even find repulsive and to do that so well that it is completely believable. But this is not the usual case. Most people are not great, or even good, actors. Most of the time, most people who lie with words, will still tell the truth with their bodies.
Think of what happens when you're frightened and you're trying not to let other people know that. Your mouth may be saying "Oh, I'm fine." or "There's nothing to worry about," But if you are shivering, your lips are trembling and your muscles are tense, people will understand that your words are false.
Likewise, the speaker who accompanies "I love you with all my heart" with the steady pounding of their fist on a table is demonstrating a conflict, whether or not the conflict is consciously understood. Again, in this case, the fist is probably the more reliable indicator of the person's true feelings.
When there is a conflict between the message of the words and the message of the body, you can usually rely on the body. It's not that one message is more important than the other – after all, it's usually important to know what lie is being told – but to do that, you need to be able to tell them apart.
This all means that few skills are more practical than even a basic conscious understanding of the mechanisms of Body language. But unlike grammatical subtleties, there are no convenient guides for turning the unconscious knowledge you have into conscious knowledge. There are some ways that are effective but these may be impractical for various reasons.
As mentioned earlier, acting is a kind of conscious use of Body language and many of the best teachers of Body language are found in acting schools. If you have the time and means for taking acting lessons then that is certainly a highly effective way of learning Body language.
Similarly, culturally Deaf people have a highly tuned ability to communicate without the benefit of Verbal language and in interpreting the Body language of other people. If you have the means and time for learning a natural Sign language (and not a signed version of a spoken language) and for socializing with Deaf people, then that is also a highly effective way of learning about Body language.
Books on body language, however, are less useful. There are many books written for the mass market. They often have titles like How to read a person like a book and may include passages like the following:
"Pinching the Bridge of the Nose: This gesture usually accompanied with closes eyes, communicates great thought and concern about the decision to be made." Such books also usually provide a catalog of body gestures, postures and facial expressions, each with a line drawing to make it more clear. The book states what each item is supposed to mean and provides anecdotes about businesspeople, lawyers, housewives and various nationalities as examples of the items.
These books may be very valuable in some respects and may contain interesting and useful information. But the impression given by their titles and their covers, even when the authors try to counteract it inside the books, is very misleading.
In the first place, the information offered is valid in the strict sense only for the cultural background in which the author works (usually white middle-class Americans). A book written from that viewpoint might be confusing even for British readers not to mention non-English speaking audiences.
In the second place, there are no items of Body language that can be relied on independently of the context in which they occur. Take any unit of Body language that can be easily identified. It will mean one thing when used with the eyebrows raised, another when the eyes are fixed on the floor, another when it co-occurs at the same time as a clenched fist and so on for all the possible combinations.
Even identical clusters of Body language units can mean one thing in conjunction with one topic of conversation and quite a different thing in conjunction with another. You may be pinching the bridge of your nose because you are expressing "great thought and concern about the decision to be made" or because your glasses are too tight or your sinuses hurt or you are stalling for time before admitting you have no idea what to say.
In the third place, the entire premise of the books is wrong. They have as an underlying framework the claim that you can read the books, memorize the information and use it to interpret the Body language of others around you. This is simply not the case. The person who attempts to do this will have many interesting experiences, but an increased conscious knowledge of Body language is not one of them.
If acting classes and Sign language are impractical for most people and the existing books are not effective as anything but reference works, then what can be done?
Fortunately, there is a simple and at least moderately fun way of learning about Body language that is almost certainly available to you. It probably doesn't even require anything that's not available to you already in your own home.
All that's needed is a TV or PC and some way of recording videos. The basic method is to record certain kinds of programs. Next, watch what you've recorded with the sound off and pay attention. For a long time it might seem that not much is going on or there is too much going on. Obviously, priorities need to be set.
First, not all programs lend themselves equally to analysis of body language. News programs are generally not the best for several reasons. The news anchors are generally reading text with a somewhat artificial intonation and not very much body movement.
Reporters in the field face similar constraints and people being interviewed are usually under the pressure of too many conflicting emotions to be good models.
Foreign shows are also not good because body language details differ too much from culture to culture. It's generally best to gain a conscious understanding of your own culture's body language before examining body language in other cultures.
Soap operas are excellent for the purpose at hand. Worldwide, soap operas tend to have characteristics in common that make them good for learning about Body Language.
In the first place they present an idealized picture of life in the culture they're produced in. In the second place, many or most of the plot elements deal with common (or less common but deep) fears of the members of the culture as well. Characters in soap operas are less characters in the traditional sense than archetypes - models of commonly occurring personality types in the culture.
Further, the appeal of soap operas is for viewers to be able to imagine themselves in similar situations. Therefore the performances of actors in successful soap operas are distilled least common denominators.
Another benefit is that you are liable to be somewhat familiar with the characters in question (or can become familiar with them very quickly). This gives you more context for examining the body language described.
Here, it is important to remember that body language must be interpreted in context and part of the context is a particular individual's baseline behavior.
Some talk shows are good as they feature people with no training in covering up their body language talk about emotional issues.
Once you have some programs recorded the question is how to use them. The process should go in several steps.
Watch the program with the sound off. Find a scene or segment of two or three minutes that looks interesting. Watch it two or three times, paying careful attention to issues like the following:
- distance between people,
- how the people move together,
- facial expressions (the shorter, the more important
- reaction time (how long it takes people to react to what another person has said)
- manner of movement (does a particular person make smooth movements or jerky ones? is there a rhythm or not?)
It may take several times before you start to notice the above and related issues consciously.
When in doubt as to what a particular body language set means, freeze the picture and assume the same posture/expression and ask yourself what you feel.
"Matching realities" (Elgin)
One of the hardest things for people to accept about human communication is the uselessness of logic. It comes as something of a shock to discover that logic has been proven to have almost nothing to do with the effective of persuasive language. In fact, language can be so far out on the edges of total non-logic that it approaches insanity without keeping it from functioning perfectly well as a means of persuasion.
This is one reason why advertising is generally so awful. Advertisers know that a tasteful, clever commercial causes people to remember the commercial and not the product. Logic might indicate that irritating commercials would cause buyers to avoid the product being advertised. In reality though, obnoxious advertisements have a more positive than negative effect on sales.
George Miller formulated an extremely useful rule for all kinds of communication, which will be referred to as Miller's Law hereinafter: In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.
Notice that he does not say you must assume it is true if it is logical or reasonable. Just assume it is true (in the sense that the other person is accurately conveying how they perceive reality) and proceed.
This is perhaps easier said than done. Nonetheless, the skill of entering other people's realities is perhaps the most important communication skill of all. But because of the difficulties, it is helpful to examine carefully how people build and live in their reality in several steps.
Reality Statements
It is a great problem that the human senses, the only means for people to perceive physical reality, cannot be relied on to accurately do so.
You feel the earth beneath your feet as steady and unmoving (except in earthquakes or other extraordinary occurrences). On the other hand, according to the scientific consensus, it is rapidly spinning as it travels through space at a speed of many thousands of kilometers per hour.
People have to deal with the disconnect between what their senses tell them vs what the scientific consensus tells them. One way of dealing with this awkward situation is to construct a set of statements about 'reality'.
These include uncontroversial propositions such as:
'Water is a liquid.'
'People need oxygen to breathe.'
As well as seemingly contradictory statements such as:
'The earth is stable beneath my feet.'
'The earth is spinning as it travels through space at great speeds.'
There are also personal reality statements:
'It's fun to drink beer.'
'I look better in blue than in red.'
People treat social reality in the same way and there is a category of general reality statements about life as lived on a day to day basis.
'Poland is in Europe.
'Work is no fun.'
When a group has enough reality statements in common, you have a culture. Much of the uneasiness of 'culture shock' comes from having to interact with people who appear to be operating under a very different set of reality statements.
Not all reality statements apply to all areas of life however. People also have to accept small sets of auxiliary reality statements that only apply to one particular part of life.
The general rule is "It's wrong to kill another human being." But soldiers can only function in combat by temporarily accepting the conflicting reality statement 'It's necessary to kill as many human beings of a specified kind as possible'. Outside of combat a soldier sets aside the combat reality statement and abides by the first statement.
Constructed Realities
People understand fiction, fairy tales and television dramas because they are willing to give up their knowledge of the real world for a while. Certainly movie audiences realize at some level that the man who was just shot is not really hurt.
But it is necessary to suspend that knowledge and assume that his death was real to understand the movie. It would be alarming if someone asked why the man's wife was weeping when the man is unharmed and isn't her real husband anyway.
When you agree to believe in the worlds you see on film and read about in books, you are accepting constructed realities. What you may not realize is that many other constructed realities exist as well. But instead of watching or reading them, people live inside these constructed realities. These are realities made up of reality statements and held together by metaphors.
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