SMOKING GESTURES Smoking is an outward manifestation of an inner turmoil or conflict and has little to do with nicotine addiction. It is one of the displacement activities that people in today’s high-pressure society use to release the tensions that build up from social and business encounters. For example, most people experience inner tension while [...]

TERRITORIAL GESTURES People lean against other people or objects to show a territorial claim to that object or person. Leaning can also be used as a method, of dominance or intimidation when the object being leaned on belongs to someone else. For example, if you are going to take a photograph of a friend and [...]

The next time you attend a social function or go to a place where people meet and interact, take note of the number of people who have adopted the identical gestures and posture of the person with whom they are talking. This ‘carbon copying’ is a means by which one person tells the other that [...]

Historically, lowering the height of one’s body in front of another person has been used as a means of establishing superior/subordinate relationships. We refer to a member of Royalty as ‘Your Highness’, whereas individuals who commit unsavoury acts are called ‘low’. The protest rally speaker stands on a soapbox to be higher than everyone else, [...]

Have you ever had the feeling that someone to whom you are talking would rather be elsewhere than with you, even though he or she seems to be enjoying your company? A still photograph of that scene would probably reveal the following: (1) The person’s head is turned towards you and facial signals such as [...]

TABLE SEATING POSITIONS Strategic positioning in relation to other people is an effective way to obtain co- operation from them. Aspects of their attitude toward you can be revealed in the position they take in relation to you. Mark Knapp, in his book Non-Verbal Communication in Human Interaction, noted that, although there is a general [...]

POWER PLAYS WITH CHAIRS Have you ever been for a job interview and felt overwhelmed or helpless when you sat in the visitor’s chair? Where the interviewer seemed so big and overwhelming and you felt small and insignificant? It is likely that the interviewer had cunningly arranged his office furnishings to raise his own status [...]

Communication through body language has been going on for over a million years but has only been scientifically studied to any extent in the last twenty years or so; it became popular during the 1970s. By the end of this century it will have been ‘discovered’ by people throughout the world and I predict that [...]