Be careful what you read about body language

I'm a recent convert to Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com) and was encouraged by Social Networking authority 'Mr Jurassic' - Chris Norton of Dead Dinosaur - http://www.deaddinosaur.co.uk/ - to install and manage my 'tweets' more successfully. I've done this and think the application is great - searching for key words and having access to more resources than I care to wish for. Cheers Chris, much appreciated.

It's been very, very interesting reading some of the articles flying around on 'body language' and how your physiology - stance, gestures and movements - are viewed/interpreted by the receiver of your communication. But what is highly innacurate are the generalisations made by some trainers about what they term 'closed styles' including 'aggressive, defensive, nervous and bored'. (See full article here)

I'm going to look at a few points made by the author of the post and make my own comments next to them to justify why they are potentially innacurate and over-generalised.

Closed aggressive body language
Hands on Hips - Might be a comfort thing/preference for that person
Legs too wide - Compared to what and how wide is too wide?
Eyeballing / Staring out - The persons 'attention direction'* is clearly focussed on the other person

Closed defensive
Crossed arms/legs - could be cold in the room
Poor eye contact - The persons 'attention direction'* could be 'scattered'

Closed nervous
Dry throat - might have a cold/throat issue you are unaware of!

Closed bored
Yawning - could be a parent with a 'new born' who is very tired - doesn't mean they are bored!!


It goes to show that the text books and authors of such material, need to account for 'the context' and the individual 'programmes' we run as human beings in communication contexts. These 'meta-programmes' refer to our personal 'strategies' we deploy in situations like face-2-face communication. Examples being how we are motivated, convinced, take action to name a few.

*Attention Direction refers to the amount of 'attention' a person gives during communication. A person may focus wholly on the other, on themselves or to and fro (scattered). On that basis its innacurate to say a person is 'eye balling' in an aggressive way if their AD programme is 'others' focussed. On the other hand, to say someone is defensive when they may have a scattered or 'self' AD programme is again, innacurate.

So. The message here is very clear. Classifying a person as open or closed, aggressive or defensive by their body language can be dangerous. What has to be taken into account is the context and their personality, not just thier physiology!