I attended the CIPD's HRD conference yesterday and listened to a very interesting discussion on the use of body language in deciphering our true feelings by Professor Geoff Beattie, Head of School and Dean of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester better known for his role as resident psychologist on all five of the 'Big Brother' series.
It was interesting to me to see that when we lie, we can be given away by decreasing our iconic messages. While our language is used to convey our lie the fact that we may stop using our body language to the extent we may usually do so can give us away. A clip shown by Beattie, shows Tony Blair in a recent pre-election photo shoot with a young girl on his knee, appealing to women voters. Blair says to the group of ladies that bringing up his children was the hardest thing he'd ever done but then brings his hands down to rest on his lap, while saying this.
According to Beattie, this indicates he is lying. I'd like to hear your views on what you think of this - imagine the doors that can be opened if HR could read body language!
Annie Hayes
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I totally agree with Godfrey's comments and remember when I was first involved in interview training of the difficulties of highlighting the diffences between one culture and another regarding body language. The classic example is proxemics - if you have ever visited Italy you will often see a British holiday maker backing away from an Italian, whose comfort zone is much closer than that of most British people.
Like other pop psychology versions of deeper science, reading body language is easy to do at a superficial level, but very difficult to do with any certainty. This is probably why it will never "stand up in court" or be used as a formal HR evaluation tool.
Subconsciously, we express ourselves with body language and read it in others all the time. When we try to either express or read overtly, that's where we can get into trouble.
In the Blair example, for instance, he might well have been lying. Or he might have bungled a conscious effort to appear sincere, which is quite different.
About thirty years ago I had the scary experience of seeing a master at work. This guy was a clinical psychiatrist who had published THE academic books on body language at the time. (He had been called in by the UN, who were having problems figuring out which area of Indochina to repatriate Viet Nam war refugees to; he could tell to within fifty miles where a person grew up just by looking at them). His ability to tell people about their socio-economic background, personalities of each parent, health history, and social attitudes just from watching them walk three steps had people migrating nervously to the back of the room.
The best everyman's guide to body language is still Peoplewatching by Desmond Morris. It's not deep, but it's a lot of fun.
Godfrey Parkin
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http://www.mindrise.com
Just picking up on this; we use a good handbook of investigative techniques, although I don't think it is openly available.
This does covers how to read body language and when you see video of interviews by experts, they are interesting to see how they obtain results by using body language.
I use reading body language all the time in teaching cctv operation, where cctv staff see members of the public acting in all manner of ways. Trying to pre-empt bad behaviour is quite fun really.