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Body Language: Pride & Shame

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Forbes reports on nonverbal universal reactions of pride and shame that are controlled by the limbic brain. The article was written by Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, author of The Silent Language of Leaders and president of Kinsey Consulting Services

Scientists Dr. Jessica Tracy and Humintell Director Dr. David Matsumoto studied the behaviors of judo matches at the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  30 countries, including Algeria, Taiwan, Ukraine and the United States competed in those games.

The research report stated that body language of blind and sighted athletes showed the same patterns.  The conclusion is that congenitally blind individuals could not have learned the nonverbal aspects of pride and shame from watching others, these displays of victory or defeat are likely to be innate biological responses that have evolved over time.

The limbic brain is most responsible for value judgments and plays a key role in all nonverbal communication.   Emotions are the key forces behind decision-making. Forbes points out that our logical processes are often only rational justifications for emotional decisions.

A few examples of the limbic brain in action:  An employee spots a friend and immediately her eyebrows raise and her eyes widen in recognition, a team-member reacts to distressful news by caving in his upper body and lowering his head.  All of these nonverbal responses can be seen whether you are in Sao Paulo, Singapore or San Francisco.

 What are your comments on the immediate reaction of sighted and blind athletes? 

Practice Makes Perfect…Liars

A new study in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Science found that after only  20 minutes of practicing their cover story, liars could respond just as quickly and easily to lies as to the truth. Moreover, they were no more likely to slip-up on falsehoods than on the truth.

Xiaoqing Hu,  co-author of the study and psychology doctoral candidate at Northwestern University said, ” After a short time of training, people can be very efficient at lying.  The difference between lying and being honest has been eliminated after the training.”

LiveScience reports that lying takes a lot of brainpower!!  It requires holding contradictory information in mind (the truth and the lie), while inhibiting the urge to tell the truth. “Lying is a difficult, because honesty is the default communication mode,” Hu told LiveScience.

Past studies have shown that lying without any practice is much more difficult to hide.  This study, however, takes into account that many criminals practice their lies a lot before they begin telling them.

Researchers had volunteers answer various ‘Is this true of you?’ questions for several different facts.  The researchers measured their response time and accuracy.  Then participants were asked to practice lying by pressing yes when it should be no and vice versa.

After over 200 trials, which is approximately 20 minutes of practice,  the liars were indistinguishable from the truth -tellers on accuracy and response time.

 ”But in the real world, after a crime, there is usually a delay between the crime and the interrogation,” giving the criminal a chance to practice their falsehood, Hu said.

What do you think about practicing lies ?
Do you think that practice helps you lie better ?

Tearless Emotions

David Coleman | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Did you know? 

There is no scientific basis that animals can weep as humans do.  Years of observations still do not show if chimpanzees can cry in response to emotions.

Many animals shed tears in response to pain or use tears as a protective device – to keep their eyes moist and free of bacteria, but it is not clear if they can illicit tears due to empathy.  Crying due to empathy seems to be unique the human condition. 

The New York Times reveals that after a few month of birth tearful crying, for humans, becomes a form of communication and ‘begins to serve interpersonal purposes:  the search for comfort and pacification.  As we get older, crying becomes a tool of our social repertory: grief and joy, shame and pride, fear and manipulation.

More recently, we’ve learned from neuroscience that certain brain circuits are activated, rapidly and unconsciously, when we see another in emotional distress. In short, our brain evolved circuits to allow us to experience empathy and compassion, which in turn made civilization possible.

There are many interesting facts and insights into tearful crying, which this article points out one it that tears seem to be the only body fluids that do not evoke feelings of disgust.  There’s no real surprise that women not only cry more frequently men but they cry more intensely too.

Men tend not to try and explain their tears but apologize for them instead.  Men are more likely than women to cry when their core identities- as providers and protector, fathers and fighters are questioned.

Sadness and grief are the main reasons that people report crying, but many people also report feeling happier after crying.  It seems to relieve tension and provides a “catharsis” of bad feelings – ‘Crying disrupts speech, which is why we choke up and weep this suggest to linguist and anthropologists that emotional crying evolved before prepositional language, perhaps explaining why tears communicate states of mind and feelings that are often so difficult to express in words.’

Read the entire article for more detailed and enlightening information.

 What are your thought on crying? Does the article and science have it right or are they missing something ?