Allan Pease - Body Language | Page 3

communica tion is done non-verbally.
Most researchers generally agree that th e verbal channel is used primarily for
conveying information, while the non-verbal channel is used for negotiating
interpersonal attitudes, and in some cases is used as a substitute for verbal messages.
For example, a woman can give a man a ‘l ook to kill’; she will convey a very clear
message to him without opening her mouth.

Regardless of culture, words and movements occur together with such
predictability that Birdwhistell says that a well-trained person should be able to tell
what movement a man is making by listening to his voice. In like manner, Birdwhistell
learned how to tell what language a pe rson was speaking, simply by watching his
gestures.
Many people find difficulty in accepting that humans are still biologically animals.
Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a ha irless ape that has learned to walk on two
limbs and has a clever, advanced brain. Like any other species, we are dominated by
biological rules that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. The
fascinating thing is that the human animal is rarely aware of his postures, movements
and gestures that can tell one story while his voice may be telling another.
PERCEPTIVENESS, INTUITION AND HUNCHES
From a technical point of view, when ever we call someone ‘perceptive’ or
‘intuitive’, we are referring to his or her ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues
and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we
have a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’ that someone ha s told us a lie, we really mean that their
body language and their spoken words do not agr ee. This is also what speakers call
audience awareness, or rela ting to a group. For example, if the audience were sitting
back in their seats with chins down and ar ms crossed on their chest, a ‘perceptive’
speaker would get a hunch or feeling that hi s delivery was not going across. He would
become aware that he needed to take a diffe rent approach to gain audience involvement.
Likewise, a speaker who was not ‘per ceptive’ would blunder on regardless.
Women are generally more perceptive than men, and this fact has given rise to what
is commonly referred to as ‘women’s intuiti on’. Women have an innate ability to pick
up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accu rate eye for small details.
This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and\
why,
conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man’s eyes without his realising it.
This female intuition is particularly evident in women who have brought up young
children. For the first few years, the mother relies solely on the non-verbal channel to
communicate with the child and this is beli eved to be the reason why women often
become more perceptive negotiators than men.
INBORN, GENETIC, LEARNE D AND CULTURAL SIGNALS
Much research and debate has been done to discover wh ether non-verbal signals are
inborn, learned, genetically transferred or acquired in some other way. Evidence was
collected from observation of blind and/or deaf people who could not have learned non-
verbal signals through the auditory or visual channels, from observing the gestural be-
haviour of many different cultures around th e world and from studying the behaviour of
our nearest anthropological rela tives, the apes and monkeys.
The conclusions of this research indicate th at some gestures fall into each category.
For example, most primate children are born with the immediate ability to suck,
indicating that this is either inborn or ge netic. The German scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt
found that the smiling expressions of childre n born deaf and blind occur independently
of learning or copying, which means that thes e must also be inborn gestures. Ekman,
Friesen and Sorenson supporte d some of Darwin’s original beliefs about inborn
gestures when they studied th e facial expressions of people from five widely different

cultures. They found that each culture used the same basic facial gestures to show
emotion, which led them to the conclusion that these gestures must be inborn.
When you cross your arms on your chest, do you cross left over right or right over
left? Most people cannot confidently describe which way they do this until they try it.
Where one way feels comfortable, the other feels completely wrong. Evidence suggests
that this may well be a genetic gesture that cannot be changed.
Debate still exists as to whether some gestures are culturally learned and become
habitual, or are genetic. For example, most men put on a coat right arm first; most
women put it on