Body Language and Mind Introduction Body language reveals

Body Language and Mind
   Good morning, everyone. In today’s lecture, I’d like to focus on how our body language reveals who we are. We’re really fascinated with body language and particularly interested in other people’s body language. You know, we’re sometimes interested in an awkward interaction, or a smile, or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink or handshake. So what kind of body language am I talking about? [1] I’m interested in power dynamics, that is, the nonverbal expressions of power and dominance.
   And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? Well, this is what they are. [2] In the animal kingdom, nonverbal expressions of power and dominance are about expanding. So you make yourself big, you stretch out, you take up space, and you’re basically opening up. And, and humans do the same thing. So they do this when they’re feeling powerful in the moment. And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us how universal and old these expressions of power are. For example, when athletes cross the finish line and they’ve won, it doesn’t matter if they’ve never seen anyone do it. They do this. So the arms are up in the V sign, the chin is slightly lifted. [3] But what do we do when we feel powerless? We do exactly the opposite. We close up. We make ourselves small. We don’t want to bump into the person next to us. And this is what happens when you put together high and low power. [4] So what we tend to do when it comes to power is that we complement the other’s nonverbals. What I mean is if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don’t mirror them. We do the opposite.
   I’m watching this behavior in the classroom, and guess what I have noticed? [5] I noticed that MBA students really exhibit the full range of power non verbals. They get right into the middle of the room before class even starts, like they really want to occupy space. When they sit down, they’re sort of spread out. They raise their hands high. You have other people who are virtually collapsing when they come in. As soon as they, I mean other people, come in, you see it. You see it on their faces and their bodies, and they sit with their chairs and they make themselves tiny, and they will not fully stretch their arms when they raise their hands. I also noticed another interesting thing about this. [6] It seems women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men. I mean, women are more likely to make themselves small. Women feel chronically less powerful than men, so this is not surprising.
   The second question concerns our minds. [7] We know that our minds change our bodies, but is it also true that our bodies change our minds? And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful, what do I mean? I’m talking about thoughts and feelings and the sort of physiological things that make up our thoughts and feelings, and in my case, that’s hormones. I look at hormones. So what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless look like? [8] Powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly, more assertive and more confident, more optimistic. They actually feel that they’re going to win even at games of chance. They also tend to be able to think more abstractly. They take more risks. [9] So there are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people. Physiologically, there are also differences on two key hormones: one is dominance hormone, and the other is stress hormone. What we find is that powerful and effective leaders have high dominance hormone and low stress hormone. What does that mean? That means power is also about how you react to stress.
   Once, we did an experiment. We decided to bring people into the lab and run that little experiment. These people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses. We for two minutes say, "You need to do this or this. " And we also want them to be feeling power. [10] So after two minutes, we will ask them, "How powerful do you feel?" on a series of items, and then we give them an opportunity to gamble. Before and after the experiment, we take their samples of saliva for a hormone test. That’s the whole experiment.
   And this is what we have found. Risk tolerance, which is gambling, what we find is that when you’re in the high-power pose condition, 86% of you will gamble. When you’re in the low-power pose condition, it’s down to only 60% , and that’s a pretty significant difference. [11] Here’s what we find on dominance hormone. From their baseline when they come in, high-power people experience about a 20% increase, and low-power people experience about a 10% decrease. So again, two minutes, and you get these changes. [12] Concerning stress hormone, high-power people experience about a 25% decrease, and the low-power people experience about a 15% increase. [13] Once again, two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, confident, or really stress-reactive, and, you know, feeling sort of shut down. And we’ve all had that feeling, right? So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.
   So, power posing for a few minutes really changes your life in meaningful ways. [14] When I tell people about this, that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me, "I don’t believe that. It feels fake. " Right? So I said, "Fake it till you make it. " I’m going to leave you with this. Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation, for example, a job interview, for two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator, or at your desk behind closed doors, and say to yourself, "That’s what I want to do. " [15] Configure your brain to do the best in that situation. Get your dominance hormone up and get your stress hormone down. Don’t leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn’t show them who I am. Leave that situation feeling like, oh, I really managed to say who I am and show who I am.
   To sum up, today, we talked about the nonverbal expressions of power and dominance and the strong effects of the change of behavior. I suggest you try power posing which is simple but will significantly change the outcomes of your life. OK. Next time, we are going to discuss the social functions of body language.