Jonathan over at the Seduction Labs blog has frequently interesting and well-researched posts on the subjects of communication, manipulation and body language. We will discuss the seduction and pick up community and their relevance to communication at a later post.
Jonathan is a disbeliever when it comes to body language. I came across his blog when someone linked to me at the post above. Although I mostly buy into his way of thinking, I believe he is a skeptic in nature. While his posts are indeed smart and well written, his insistence on disproving body language in absolute terms makes him biased in a fashion I find distracting from his informative posts.
One of his main tenets is that so-called body language "experts" try and portray this occupation as a science. It isn't. He further states that these experts are there to sell body language as the fad of the month (my wording). I agree on that as well.
These "experts" speak of body language as a science. From my experience, while it can be researched scientifically it is not a science. There is quite a bit behind nonverbal communication, reading it and interpreting it. Not reading too much into it by over-analyzing is where things get tricky, but that's a discussion for another time.
The philosophy of science is an interesting and complex subject, but in short, according to Newton, Hume and Popper, based on repeatable experiments you deduce a rule which best fits the facts, until it is disproved with an example with doesn't fit, and then it is replaced/supplemented with a new, more accurate one.
Body language as portrayed by these experts simply does not meet that criterion. While claiming close to absolute rules, they very comfortably jump to quote Freud when things don't add up: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".
While some nonverbal cues and signals are universal, most are situation and person dependent. One must establish a baseline for a person and then use body language as an extra sense, adding taste and efficiency to communication rather than replacing it.
While I agree with the sentiment behind Freud's very astute quote, it is being abused.
Once you encounter a situation a rule does not cover, the rule can not be kept as-is. Ignoring the new information and using Freud as an excuse is basically asking for suspended disbelief, and we have enough of that from Hollywood.
Body language is real, but let's look at it with the right perspective:
1. People do give impressions of emotions. I rather look at it as gestures and tone, for example, rather than an aura or emphatic telepathy.
2. While not all gestures apply to everybody, people do communicate with their bodies.
3. If people did not communicate with their bodies, others still deduce about what they may be communicating based on their body language.
4. Body language does indicate, to a varying degree, our state of mind and feelings in a closed feedback loop (you smile when you are happy. You are happy when you smile).
In his post linked to above, he points to a paper "Decoding Women’s Sexual Intent" (Coreen Farris, Coreen Farris, Teresa A. Treat, Richard J. Viken, and Richard M. McFall, published April 2008 in Psychological Science). While he brings good ideas to the table, in my opinion he is misreading the paper which clearly states these signals are there, just not being interpreted well... But we can discuss that on another occasion. :)
I strongly recommend reading Jonathan's posts, but I'd really like to hear more of what he finds does work when it comes to body language.
One example which he shared, is on the difficult subject of lie detection. Lie detection is very intriguing and the history behind it alone can keep me alert for hours. In this post Jonathan doesn't cover much of how the methods he sees as inferior work and fail, but he does mention an interesting pscyhological alternative: Reality monitoring theory.
Among others, he bases himself on A. Vrij (Aldert Vrij, but he is an academic). This is very telling as to the quality of the research and his posts.
Pinky.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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2 comments:
I feel I should thank you for a kind, and rather more balanced than normal assessment and review of Seduction Labs; it's certainly a lot more intelligent that the usual "I can't believe what you’ve written - therefore you suck" missives I've seen.
Of course, it's only fair to make a couple of small corrections: Seduction Labs is more of a mutual learning academy than part of the so called seduction and pick-up community or just a blog. In fact, it might be fair to say that the site is the antidote to the seduction and pick-up community, since many of the people I regularly communicate with are dropouts from the aforementioned association; often feeling that the aggressive macho bluster, continual self-aggrandisement and repeated sales pitches for various bizarre courses, amongst other things, runs counter to the ideals needed for pick-up, dating and relationships. Some of these contacts are even generous enough to suggest new ideas, and occasionally even take the time to submit their own articles.
Now, Seduction Labs sub-headlines itself 'the method of science; the craft of seduction', which has lead a few people to forget that it's also possible to have an art lab as well as a science lab. Seduction is certainly closer to an art form than a science, but to proclaim Seduction as an art in its own right seems rather arrogant to my mind – On the other hand, if I look at art information, I'll learn about colour, shade, perspective and tone etc. none of which really teaches me very much about creating my own pictures. So, being someone from a scientific background, I find a craft analogy better suits the purpose, because if I look at information on pottery, basket weaving, glass blowing, stone masonry etc. I end up having learning something useful that I can put to practical use, rather than often pompous talk about how wonderful certain artists are, and the history of the times in which they lived. Thus, we come to the third (and most fun) idea behind a laboratory, which is to say, stuff gets tested.
As you’re familiar with the work of Karl Popper, you'll be aware that knowledge progresses by falsification of incorrect ideas. So, if you interpret things in a strict Popperian sense, then we can never really know anything; we just accumulate more and more evidence that things we think are true actually do seem to be true, whilst one falsification cancels or causes a theory to be rethought. Similarly, on a smaller scale, applying a "Hacker perspective" is also about using what works, and disguarding what doesn't (albeit still an excellent perspective, if you don't mind me saying).
So, the default position of science is scepticism; that is keeping an open mind, and not dismissing things before they've been fairly tested (otherwise it’s just nihilism). In the case of body language, I've had quite a number of very poor experiences, which failed to prove its existence, despite persistent insistence from people claiming to be experts... Sticking with a theme of Seduction, one of the snippets these experts keep telling me, repeatedly, is that apparently holding your drink in front of you is "Defensive body language" (whatever that means) and, supposedly, for a girl to spot you doing this will be as throwing a bucket of cold water over her passions.
If there’s truth in this, it's certainly worth knowing, but if it’s incorrect then I have far better things to be keeping my thoughts upon whilst I'm interacting with a lady. However, I'm all for trying out theories, so, testing this out: I find that I can't see any differences whatsoever in the reaction of the person I'm talking to if I hold my beverage in front of me or put it on a table far out of bodyline. Likewise, studying other gentlemen in social settings, it seems to me that most people with drinks actually hold them in front of themselves most of the time, and I certainly haven’t noticed hordes of women running away disgusted. Thus, the next step is to ask a few women... all of which generally take the opinion that I must be out of my mind to give credence to such an idea, although they do note that a broken bottle or glass used as a weapon could be "defensive", but isn’t really in the spirit of what body language claims to be about.
Ok, so, I'll return the favour to the people who felt they were helping me out; and report back my findings, since they took the trouble to donate their wisdom to me in the first place, pointing out that I can't detect any effects, and women think this drink idea is a bit silly. But nope, they aren't giving up easily, apparently now it's subconscious but they just (conveniently) forgot to mention this earlier. So it seems, according to these self-taught experts, they can now claim 1) I'm not looking hard enough, and 2) women don't even consciously know that their being turned off.
Perhaps because you don’t have a product to sell, I’m more prepared to detail experiences, and confess how frustrating I’ve found dealing with body language ‘experts’ in the past. So, with body language moving from the physical to the invisible, my mind starts to think these people are often as slippery as snake oil. But, as someone from a scientific background, I'm a trained observer, and I know similar people who will do me a favour and watch me speak to women if I’m prepared to keep them in drinks. Can they see any difference in reaction to how I hold a drink? Apparently I drink more if I hold a drink than if I keep in on a table, but they don’t see any adverse reactions from me, her or even nearby people.
So, back to the body language experts, "If this subconscious physical repulsion claim is true but can’t be seen, how do _you_ know it exists?" They still claim they can see it... Although, it later transpires they claim to see auras, psychic energy and various other supernatural manifestations (this seems to be a repeated theme I come across), and they maintain, my small team is still not looking hard enough. All frustrating, quite irritating and rapidly seeming more like a religion than anything else; with the alternative being that body language experts are born with naturally superior eyesight to the rest of the population, although this somewhat defeats the idea of body language being teachable.
Now, I dislike being taken for a fool, and I could probably retell numerous other experiences where self-taught body language experts have had me chasing my tail looking for something that doesn’t exist, telling me that I must try to disprove them, even though this is logically impossible; or telling me that things just needs to be taken on faith.
So, I started to look at this the other way around, and I ask myself, suppose this body language stuff does exists, someone would be using it to some advantage, right? Well, the bulk of it seems to crop up in either a business context or a dating/relationships context... Neither of which is renowned for looking into things especially deeply, and I suppose if you've just started a new relationship, it doesn’t really make a whole heap of sense to abandon your new lover because their body language didn’t come up to scratch. However, looking at authors of body language books, PhDs and doctorates abound... In fact more so than many other pop-psychology subjects, yet there are no _accredited_ qualifications one can obtain in body language. Which should ring alarm bells immediately; and sure enough, if one gives more than a cursory glance at the qualifications of authors of body language books, we see that where information is available, many of these people obtained their qualifications from the "Your life experiences are worth more than a post graduate education" degree mills that keep spamming the net.
So, it’s no wonder that nearly all the body language books keep repeating the same tired old 7%-38%-55% mistake, despite the author of the original report pointing out on his website, for everyone to see, that his research has been taken out of context. The 'experts' can't even be bothered to do their own research... Again, I could probably write a small book about all the other ‘mistakes’ and oversights these so called ‘experts’ make, as they try to disguise quackery as science, or dredge up long discredited ideas from Victorian times, such as identifying criminals from facial characteristics (Lombroso etc.), all for the sake of lining their pockets.
That said, and before I become too boring and tiresome, I'll emphasise that as someone arguing for body language, it's really your responsibility to prove that there are benefits to the subject; and if you can produce a cogent argument for aspects of body language that may have practical use (especially with regard to pick-up, dating or relationships), I'd certainly be pleased to learn more, and quite possibly even volte-face, admit I was wrong, and advise others of the benefits of body language... However, as Carl Sagan aptly noted, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. So, until then, I can only report body language information as I’ve experienced it.
Anyway, since you asked nicely, I think there are two way to look at body language: (a) either people are physiologically communicating to people around them some characteristic, such as when you see a smiling person, you intuit that they are communicating 'happy', from which you infer that they are approachable, nice, friendly, helpful etc. (although you can’t really be 100% sure they aren't being deceptive, since we've all heard the expression ‘putting on a brave face’), versus some other state with a myriad of different attributes attached to it. Or (b) they're leaking a communication that gives away their true state unknowingly; with perhaps the stories of Milton Erickson identifying that a man had been in prison from they way he stood, or a woman being pregnant from rosacea, as good examples.
In case (a), this is rather boring stuff, rather like me saying that tomorrow morning will be light, at the end of the week my employer will pay me, and at the end of the month I'll be sent a bunch of bills to pay. It's a valid prediction of the future, but as always in predicting the future, you want to hear about a mysterious stranger, rather than stuff that makes you say "well yeah, duh, that’s bloody obvious”.
In case (b), this is more interesting, and a bit like the observations of Sherlock Holmes, but this is semi-permanently-fixed information, and unlike the over-inflated claims of the body language books, I'm still not going to be able to detect when a women decides to sleep with me, or even if a business contact has decided not to do business with me, simply from the way they’ve altered their facial expression or repositioned their appendages.
Thus, the closest thing I've seen to what you might describe as body language would be the work of Paul Ekman, who studied facial micro-muscle movements. The only problem here is that much like professional lie detection, it requires specialist equipment (in this case a high-speed video camera) since the movements are only a fraction of a second in length, and much too fast to be seen by the unaided eye.
In fact, lie detection seems to be a perfect proving ground for a body language expert to demonstrate any scientific validity in their field, since lying/truth-telling is pretty much black and white, whereas sexual attraction or even just liking has a number of shades of grey that would cloud the examination with prolonged debate about whether someone was displaying mild interest vs. slight liking or serious interest vs. a love crush.
Moving slightly away from body language, NLP practitioners talk about something they call Calibration, but this is more personal; I suppose the easiest way to describe it would be to use the example of a Poker tell. Thus, if, for example, you and I play Poker, and I notice that you rub your earlobe every time you get a good hand, I can use this information to my advantage. Likewise, you and I might converse, and while you tell me the shocking story of how your beloved pet kitten was run over by a steamroller, you'll notice my reaction as I display signs of being shocked and alarmed. Thus, if later on, I exhibit these signs again, you now have information about my internal state at that moment.
However, this is very specific information that won’t aide me winning Poker hands against any other players, and neither will you be able to intuit when someone other than myself becomes shocked and alarmed; unless you repeat the same calibration process described above, for another person.
I think that’s about the extent of my knowledge of non-verbal communication, perhaps a slightly oversized comment to your article, but certainly nowhere near enough to even form the basis of a book(let).
Jonathan, I apologize for taking so long to reply to you. I've had some distractions and you can see I didn't post in a while.
I'd be happy to chat with you if you can leave send me your email address.
Thanks,
Pinky.
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