An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields
If not used properly, gestures and body language can be distracting and detract from the message of your speech.
Learn to hone your speaking skills by channeling nervous energy into purposeful movement by watching this helpful video below from Toastmasters, a world leader in communication and leadership development.
Click here to view the embedded video.
To learn more about gestures and nonverbal behavior, take a look at our “The World of Gestures” webinar recording!
Wouldn’t you want to know the negotiation secret to closing the deal or securing that lucrative contract? Now new research out of Harvard University suggests your best weapon may be your facial expressions.
In a new paper entitled “The Commitment Function of Angry Facial Expressions” published in Psychological Science, Harvard University psychology post-doc Lawrence Ian Reed suggests that angry facial expressions seem to boost the effectiveness of threats without actual aggression.
Reed and colleagues Peter DeScioli of Stony Brook University and Steven Pinker of Harvard University conducted an online study of over 870 participants who were told they were playing a negotiation game.
As described in an article on Science Daily, during the study, participants acting as the “proposer,” would decide how to split a sum of $1.00 with another participant, the “responder.” Each person would receive the specified sum if the responder accepted the split that was offered, but neither person would receive any money if the responder rejected the split.
Before making their offers, each proposer was shown a threat that supposedly came from the responder. In reality, the responder was played by the same female actor, who was instructed to create specific facial expressions in the video clips. One clip showed her making a neutral expression, while another showed her making an angry expression.
The clips were accompanied by a written demand for either an equal cut of 50% or a larger cut of 70%, (which would leave only 30% for the proposer).
After they saw the threat, the proposers were asked to state their offer.
The data revealed that the responder’s facial expression did have an impact on the amount offered by the proposer, but only when the responder demanded the larger share.
That is, proposers offered more money if the responder showed an angry expression compared to when they showed a neutral expression, but only when the responder demanded 70% of the take.
Facial expression had no influence on proposers’ offers when the responder demanded an equal share, presumably because the demand was already viewed as credible.
Interestingly, proposers offered greater amounts in response to angry facial expressions compared to neutral expressions even when they were told that they belonged to a “typical responder,” rather than their specific partner.
The researchers claim this works because genuine facial expressions of emotions are hard to fake. Since it’s difficult to fake your emotional expression, people unconsciously assign that more importance than what you’re actually saying. “We pay attention to what people ‘say’ with their faces more than what they say with words,” Reed says.
“The effectiveness of the threat depends on how credible it is,” he says. An angry expression makes a threat more credible because people intuitively think it’s genuine. Whoever you’re negotiating with is more likely to think you’ll follow through on taking your business elsewhere or walking away on a job offer if your words are delivered with the look you’d give a person with a cart full of groceries in the express checkout lane.
Courtesy of StockVault
Enjoy some fun & interesting facts on various social issues. The Boston Globe took the time to compile these short but very interesting insights on why we like what we like and do what we do!!
Trusting Faces:
How long does it take us to judge the trustworthiness of a person we just met? According to the article, science and brain scans apparently not long. In fact the article mentions that within 33 milliseconds , we have already decided if we initially trust a person just by judging their face.
The Empowerment & Music:
Listening to music can make people think and act like they are more powerful; according to researchers who tested this theory in several experiments. The findings shown that people were inclined to think more abstractly, want to be the one to go first more often and want more control.
Racism & Prison Policy:
According to the article, America incarcerates much more of its population in comparison to the rest of the world. Research from Stanford University noted that our toughness on crime may be driven by racism. In one of Stanford’s experiments, white California voters were less likely to sign a petition to weaken California’s three-strikes law after viewing a series of mug shots of which 45% were black men, compared to viewing a series of mug shots of which 25% were black men. In another experiment, white residents of New York City were significantly less willing to sign a petition against the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy after being told that the prison population was 60% black, compared to 40% black.
Money Buries Emotions:
Many know the saying money doesn’t buy happiness and according to this report, money doesn’t buy any emotions either. In multiple experiments, people who were exposed to pictures or words related to money subsequently thought it was less desirable to express emotions, expressed less anger in a customer complaint, expressed less emotion after watching a comedy movie, judged emotional expressions in public (but not in private) to be more intense, and were less interested in interacting with someone who displayed an emotional expression.
Do You Have Some Interesting Facts You’d Like Share?