This feature was first published in July 2023 in My Mensa Weekly, our exclusive newsletter for Mensa members. Find out more about becoming a Mensa member here.
How can you tell when someone is lying? Why is a hand on the shoulder considered a comforting gesture? Here we briefly explore the nuances of body language, and the huge role it plays in how we communicate with each other.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of… body language!”
So says evil sea witch Ursula in Disney’s Little Mermaid (1989)… and she’s not wrong. She may be saying it for ulterior motives, but there’s no doubt that the way you move your body, either deliberately or involuntarily, communicates more than words ever could. In fact, a famous study concluded that 55% of meaning is communicated via body language1, and only 7% through what we actually say. It certainly explains why we might get a ‘gut’ feeling about someone we’ve barely spoken to, or the discomfort we feel when someone is too close.
Researchers such as Gabriel Grayson2 consider body language to be a mixture of innate, learned and hybrid movements. For example, we blink without even thinking (innate), but we develop the ability to wink to convey meaning (learned). Crying (hybrid) is something we do naturally, but that we learn to connect to certain social situations.
Of course, we learn to communicate using our bodies from the moment we are born. Babies respond to certain facial expressions from a very early age, and it is not uncommon for young pre-speech children to use hand gestures to communicate their needs. Many experts also believe that physical communication predates verbal language by hundreds of thousands of years2.
In the business world, in particular, mastering the art of reading body language is considered a skill – you only have to google ‘body language courses’ for thousands of options. If you have ever done any public speaking, you have no doubt been given advice such as “stand up straight”, “maintain eye contact with your audience” or “avoid crossing your arms”.
However, as you may have experienced yourself, body language doesn’t always translate across cultures. The firm handshake encouraged by certain confidence masterclasses, for example, may be considered aggressive in Turkey and parts of the Far East3. If you shake your head in South Asian countries, you may simply be showing that you’re paying attention to the speaker4. In Germany, conveying the number ‘1’ is done with the thumb – unlike in the US and UK, where we raise our index finger – yet a ‘thumbs up’ in some Islamic countries is considered a vulgar sexual signal5.
The numerous theories about the link between autism and the challenges of reading body language – few of which have consensus – could tell us a little about how people interpret non-verbal cues. As a ‘spectrum condition’, autism affects people in different ways, but some* autistic people may find it difficult to interpret body language6 leading to challenges in everyday communication.
Some research has linked this to autistic people’s tendency to “focus on small, local details of body movement…rather than the motion of the body as a whole”7, or to “process information locally, rather than globally”8. It is interesting to note, however, that a non-verbal autistic person, even if unable to interpret body language themselves, may use non-verbal gestures to communicate with others.
One thing is for certain: the expression and interpretation of body language is complex, depending on where in the world you are, or how ‘neurotypical’ your conversational partner is. Perhaps most fascinating is the fact that we are never fully in control of what we communicate – however many courses we study. After all, the ‘Power Pose’ may have worked for Wonder Woman – but for a certain political party, it led only to ridicule…
*A 2015 study found that autistic children could be as capable of reading emotion through body movements as their peers – it was facial expressions and eye contact that posed more of a challenge9.
Body language: some further reading
An introduction
Autism
Cultural differences
References
1.https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-the-7-38-55-rule-to-negotiate-effectively
2.https://people.howstuffworks.com/body-language.htm
3.https://virtualspeech.com/blog/cultural-differences-in-body-language
4.https://www.fluentu.com/blog/body-language-in-different-cultures/
5.https://www.businessinsider.com/body-language-around-the-world-2015-3
6.https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/what-is-autism
7.https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autism-impedes-ability-to-read-body-language/#ref1
