Int.Congress Non Verbal Communication & Body Language

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1st European Congres Non Verbal Communication

With BODYSYSTEMICS we enter the world of the non-said… a method to decipher the unspoken delivered by bodily movements, a tool in daily life.

The program of the congres – Turin, Italy – 18 & 19 march 2017

 Saturday, march 18th 2017

9.00 Registration

9.15 Welcome: Emilio Chiodo, Consulente Medico legale del Tribunale Ordinario di Torino, Criminologo clinico

9.30 Rabah Aiouaz and Rudy Lanza: introduction to the Congres

10.00-10.30 Yacine Aiouaz – Switzerland: Presentation of Bodysystemics

10.30-11.00 Robert Tanner (President de l’Association Suisse des Spécialistes en Language Non-Verbal): Digisystemics 

11.00-11.15 Pause

11.15-11.45 Rudy Lanza – Italie: Relations entre le language du corps et la morphotypologie 

11.45-12.15 Axel Osouf – France: Evoquer le langage non verbal dans un spectacle comique 

12.15-14.00 Pause

14.00-14.30 Rossano Renzi – Russia: Les plus célèbres acteurs de cinéma, sont ils tous aussi vraiment les meilleurs? 

14.30-15.00 Naara Borao – Spain: La communication non verbal des tempéraments 

15.00-15.30 Sabine Raimondi – France: Mise en évidence d’items spécifiques aux enfants atteints d’autisme par la méthode Bodysystemics 

15.30-15.45 Pause

15.45-16.15 Cyril Bachy – Switzerland: Voir la schizophrénie d’un oeil non verbal 

16.15-16.45 Gérard Stokkink – Holland: Musique de film et le langage du corps: le non verbal traduit en musique 

16.45-17.15 conclusion & closure

More on: bodysystemics: the congres

Non verbal Communication

Correct interpretation of bodily movements helps us to better understand the other. We all look at our interlocutor noticing messages of the body comparing with what the person is saying.

We decipher messages observing bodily movements during an interview. One of them is touching (or scratching) the face or body. These signs of suppressed emotions expressed by the body are movements which we can hardly avoid making.  We constantly make movements when we’re engaged in communication and often do not say what we think.

The body shows what we do not say aloud. It is an abundant source of information since it never learnt to lie. The individual’s involvement in a conversation also depends on your own attitude. Distortion of your own attitude may make you to believe what you see.  A person who doesn’t complies our own norms may be judged easily for a liar.

Bodily movements are indicators worthy of close attention. The body reveals what the mind really thinks. Lets’ take an example (picture): two totally different emotions, one side is sad, the other happy. The right side shows expressed sadness, the left side shows the felt emotion.

© Gerard Stokkink – Dutch expertise center body language

body language and politicians

Hands, the tentacles of our brain often express what we think or mean in the context of our words, congruent or not.  Gestures  express our mood or support our words. Some are cultural determined, others to stimulate the brain (memory)

Assertiviteit en lichaamstaal

Assertiviteit.

Lichaamstaal bij babies

Lichaamstaal bij babies: gedraag je ‘s niet!

Exchange in the interaction

We look at each other while in interaction and  adapt and react permanently to nonverbal messages in the contact of the conversation.

When you think that an idea presented to you is a bad idea, you can still say: ” what a great idea ! ” and raise your eyebrows with a smile on your face. Meanwhile everyone knows that you found it a bad idea.  We don’t think about the nonverbal message when we react, so does the other. Others can only react to your words, but they respond to the nonverbal. Without the nonverbal we miss an important second level of communication: the general meaning of the communication.

In fact some forms of autism are identified by the fact that people are unable to decode nonverbal messages of their interlocutors. Some people are disabled when part of the message, thus the general meaning of the communication, is missing.

From a numerical point of view, all academic research on nonverbal interaction show that the nonverbal is more important than the verbal. These background studies are not contradicted, yet the object of disagreement lies rather in its interpretation.

People saying that the non verbal is not so important often reduce the action between words and movements of the body saying we understand each other even if we do not move… (!)

If one stops to move they are right. Gestures are related to speech and thus co-verbal. This dimension of nonverbal communication is most known and observed but it’s not the most interesting.

We now know that certain thoughts are formed in deep areas of the brain and emerge to consciousness few tens of seconds later.  The body reacts even before we are aware of it. The other sometimes feels our anxiety before we are aware of it.

Our discourse is packed with impressions and thoughts about the other person when we are in conversation.  When you talk to a person who does not understand you,  you’ll realize this immediately making you rephrase your words even before the person tells you that he did not understand.  100 % is related to body language, not saying that words are not important…

non verbal communication

Non verbal communication and body language are sometimes used as synonyms but they’re not. Language doesn’t mean communication as body language is not the same as nonverbal communication.  Don’t look for your nonverbal language because it follows you like a shadow! It is what you are and what you do or do not whether you move or not.

Your body language tells a rich story about yourself. Because it has its own language you recognize a close relative on his or her approach in the fog from distance, even in a crowd.  Non-verbal communication is linked to the interaction: the exchange within the communication. Gestures are important because they punctuate, strengthen, qualify or even contradict what we say with words.

For specialists, tone, timbre, intonation, volume is also called ‘non verbal communication’. Paul Watzlawick once said: “You can not avoid to communicate”, to make clear that whatever we do and whether we like it or not, we constantly send messages out… Unless you place yourself in the role of a dreamer unaware someone’s looking at you. You have non verbal language but not non verbal communication, an important detail.

Gestures: communication based on the nonverbal.

Gestures are linked to the relationship. Have you ever noticed that when you’re alone and you think, you hardy make gestures? You make gestures in a situation of communication.  The human body does nothing for nothing and every time it spends energy it is for a reason: restoring balance between thought and words.

Unconsciously, a listener takes into account the actions of a speaker who’s actions give color and depth to his speech. If you tell your partner “the sky is blue”, your facial expression and the nature of your action will enable him to understand what you mean, even if it is raining. Your action is associated with the expression of your face expressing the message. With gestures people tune in on each other both emotionally and cognitive.

Gerard Stokkink teaches bodily communication at E.L.N.

de ‘taal’ van de tong in lichaamstaal

de ‘taal’ van de tong in lichaamstaal.

gebaren en lichaamstaal

wat maakt lichaamstaal universeel? gebaren en lichaamstaal.

Secrets of Body Language

Secrets of Body Language.

How to spot a liar?

Liars want you to believe they tell the truth. Focusing on signs of vigilance and control instead of looking for the identification of emotions. Why? Common sense suggests that a lying person is not at ease. But a liar knows that if he looks uncomfortable he will be taken for a liar. Better is to look confident! The same for the eyes: a liar will look more in the eyes of his interlocutor to prove he tells the truth! (Kassin and Fong, 1999)

A liar will prevent, or slow down his actions: no area of ​​the brain is directly involved in the production of emotions. In order to mislead his questioner a liar uses brain areas involved in the control of words, gestures and the control of attention. Observed on MRI are the anterior cingulate cortex, the superior frontal gyrus, left premotor cortex and parietal areas of the cortex that are active in the production of lies. (Langleben et al, 2002)

The liar must always compare his lies with the truth to construct a plausible discourse. And as he must handle many thoughts at the same time his body stiffens, spite of himself. It is also impossible to relax completely because the areas responsible for monitoring and control of speech gestures are directly related and connected to each other. Control over the body can be spotted on ex: the key areas of hands and eyes. They become very visible when the person stops to lie and relaxes (Leal and Vrij, 2008).

Decoding a lie observing movements of the body is promising! The body did not learn to lie: we observe authenticity or controlled behavior and recognize a lie or verify when a person is telling the truth… If the existence of a lie can not be argued by the evidence of body language in court of justice, good observation and accurate questioning is the guide to further paths. Non verbal clusters indeed helps the questioner to bring the respondent on the road of concrete elements at moments of well observed blockage or control.

Gerard Stokkink, former lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (HvA) and director of Expertise Center Body Language in the Netherlands

 

emotie

emoties voelen is deze zichtbaar maken in lichaamstaal

amygdala and body language

When something stressful happens, or you start thinking about something stressful, within seconds a part of your brain called the amygdala tells your body to release stress hormones.

The amygdala is an almond shaped mass of nuclei located deep within the temporal lobe of the brain. It is a prominent part of the limbic system structure that is involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival. The amygdala is involved in the processing of emotions such as fear, anger and pleasure. The amygdala is also responsible for determining what memories are stored and where the memories are stored in the brain. The amygdala has been implicated in a diverse set of biologically important functions ranging from aversive emotions, through consolidation of memories, to the identification of ethologically relevant stimuli.

Although we all need a little stress to keep us functioning, it becomes a problem when it’s too frequent or lasts too long. Stress is a natural response to fear. Stress places immense pressure on our bodies – immune, adrenal and nervous systems are all affected.

When we feel the pressure, the amygdala tells the body to release adrenaline and cortisol, often called “stress hormones”. These flood your body shutting down the creative problem-solving parts of your brain and slowing down the control over gestures, body movements, digestion, constricting blood vessels, etc. which means your stress is physical, visible, thus measurable and readable.

What to observe and define?

In a stressful situation the body reacts immediately. Natural reactions of the body ( gestures, posture, movements of the hands, …) become visible and therefore measurable. Most common in the observation is speed, tension and contradictions in bodily movements, as defined by Bodysystemics.

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de asymmetrie van het gezicht

de asymmetrie van het gezicht.

Body language facilitates communication

Two experiments about the perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech:  (1) how do visual cues from a speaker’s face to emotion relate to auditory cues, and (2) what is the recognition speed for various facial cues to emotion?

Both experiments reported below are based on tests with video clips of emotional utterances collected via a variant of the well-known Velten method. More specifically, we recorded speakers who displayed positive or negative emotions, which were congruent or incongruent with the (emotional) lexical content of the uttered sentence. In order to test this, we conducted two experiments.

The first experiment is a perception experiment in which Czech participants, who do not speak Dutch, rate the perceived emotional state of Dutch speakers in a bimodal (audiovisual) or a unimodal (audio- or vision-only) condition. It was found that incongruent emotional speech leads to significantly more extreme perceived emotion scores than congruent emotional speech, where the difference between congruent and incongruent emotional speech is larger for the negative than for the positive conditions. Interestingly, the largest overall differences between congruent and incongruent emotions were found for the audio-only condition, which suggests that posing an incongruent emotion has a particularly strong effect on the spoken realization of emotions.

The second experiment uses a gating paradigm to test the recognition speed for various emotional expressions from a speaker’s face. In this experiment participants were presented with the same clips as experiment I, but this time presented vision-only. The clips were shown in successive segments (gates) of increasing duration. Results show that participants are surprisingly accurate in their recognition of the various emotions, as they already reach high recognition scores in the first gate (after only 160 ms).

Interestingly, the recognition scores raise faster for positive than negative conditions. Finally, the gating results suggest that incongruent emotions are perceived as more intense than congruent emotions, as the former get more extreme recognition scores than the latter, already after a short period of exposure.

Pashiera Barkhuysen – Audio Visual prosody in interaction – 3.10.’12 – Tilburg University Holland.

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ELN – Dutch Expertise Center for Body Language

Symbolism of body language

Since the beginning of what we call the human race we decode body language in order to survive. We were born with this capacity, a common heritage that goes beyond the spoken word.  When we try to hide our emotions in order not to reveal ourselves too much we can not avoid the signs of control by the unintentional gestures that belong to the emotion.

Bodysystemics is a methodology in systematical analysis of gestures and facial expressions. When we look at someone’s face we immediately see that the left side of the face is more “talkative” than the right side. The explanation of this phenomenon gives the key to interpret the most eye-catching components. It is also important input in the interpretation of body language: which side of the body makes the act -or gesture.

The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body (and vice versa). However, both hemispheres do not function the same way. The left hemisphere regulates cognitive functions -in particular language, logic, strategy- and ‘scans’ the information rationally. It does not see engagement but rather distance. If a person is involved in a negative communication, the right side of the body will  show vigilance, distance, closure or rejection. The right hemisphere is taking care of our inner world in terms of the relationship, closeness and attention shown in the left side of the face and body with tendency to open up easier in relaxed situations.

Discoveries like the meaning of the hands to the face and body are main keys in the interpretation of body language.  ‘Our hands never go random to the face or the body. Each part of the body is specialized in a certain type of emotion , like it itches under the left nostril when someone is lying. I would itch under the right one if he thinks the other is lying. The symbolism in this kind of gestures of the left or right is like another dimension: the front and backside. Scratching the left backside of your head reflects a deadlock while touching the left forehead rather expresses personal problems’.

The right hemisphere works systematic while the left is analytic. The right hemisphere absorbes visual information and processes it while the left perceives this in a contrary way that conflicts with the right. The paradox is that the more we try to hide our emotions the more visible they are. It is particularly the outside world with whom the two hemispheres show a different relationship.

Example: the area under the nostrils is that of the lie. It itches under the left nostril when someone is lying. But as it itches under the right nostril, it shows us that the person thinks that his interlocutor is lying. For this kind of gestures the left or right means a change of perspective on the same symbolism. In this case the lie: the left concerns himself, the judge  the other.

The hands go in different ways to the face and body due to three different types of moods: Microdemangeaisons (‘itch’) are an expression of inner contradictions, microcaresses (a ‘soft pat’) expressing attention for oneself, and microfixations (of hand or finger) a moment of introspection.

The eyes are involved in relation to ‘time’: if you think about the past, your eyes go to the left and if we look to the right, we think about the future.

The direction of the eyes involved in relation to time is exactly the opposite in the Arab world and middle east. This phenomenon can affect gestures, what  dictates caution in reading and interpreting gestures.

Today it is clear that over 80% of our communication is expressed through body language. We make about six gestures per minute when we talk to someone. There are of course a number of cultural gestures, but they represent a small part compared to the billions of combinations of emotional attitudes.

The body is driven by emotions before there is reason to act for what comes. In case of danger the body already responds before the brain rationally realized the threat. It is therefore possible to visually observe this emotional intelligence.

ELN – Dutch Expertise Center for Body Language

Lichaamstaal: de uitdrukking van emoties.

Lichaamstaal: de uitdrukking van emoties..

reading emotions

Whoever wanted to discover the thoughts or emotions of his boss, friends, love,… will not be fooled, this is not always possible. However… some of us can decipher these elements. It is often possible to conceal emotions but rarely completely hide them. They cause uncontrollable bodily reflexes indeed and clear message for those who can read…

A pragmatic approach using a scientific grid of 2850 assets to decipher a person’s emotions provides the keys to understand what the other says or means. The goal is not to control one’s gestures but rather forget your own body language and focus on your interlocutor in order to improve the quality of mutual understanding between individuals.

Many researchers are interested in non-verbal behavior, gestures, … The underlying assumptions find meaning through the intersection and confirmation of data from the neurobiology and psychology. Today we introduce several variables, absent in earlier studies and new concepts observing bodily reactions  like micro-scratches (the french word is: microdémangeaisons).  Micro-motion appears when unspoken feelings contradict the expressed information. This places bodily movements as essential witnesses of the activity of the mind, illuminating contradictions translated by the body.

Behind an emotion, there is always a movement. 

An emotion that can not be seen does not exist. When we’re not totally authentic, areas of the brain can not be controlled. These areas are interconnected with the body, and the emotions that are “killed” are seen: they simply refuse to cheat.

In everyday life it helps the recruiter or coach to detect discomfort or can be very useful in business to detect doubt at one’s interlocutor or a poker player to decrypt his opponent is bluffing or not …

Some examples …

– Lying causes micro-scratches under the nose. A person lying will struggle to keep his hand touching his nose as he speaks. (Example: Bill Clinton’s speech when he says he never had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky). Another trick finding a liar: it is very difficult to look someone in the eye when you lie.
– Someone who’s cuddling a lock of hair shows that he/she feels comfortable with you.
– A person who thinks and puts his finger under the lower lip is in fully pragmatic reflection, he/she seeks a solution to a problem.
– A person who thinks and puts his finger on the upper lip is full of spiritual reflection, he/she seeks the meaning of something.

Of course, not everything is so simple. The interpretation of a single gesture is not enough. By cons the interpretation of several different gestures gives us a lot of information on what your partner really thinks when we face him.