Body Language in the Digital Era

Scientific research on non-verbal communication began with the 1872 publication of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Every day we respond to thousands of non verbal cues which include postures, facial expression, eye gaze, gestures, and tone of voice.  Remember when your wife asks you after that little familial tiff, if you are angry and you almost scream back at her and say NO I AM NOT ANGRY.  Often meaning you really are.

 Great strides were made in understanding non-verbal communication since the 70s –  countless workshops that told you, body language and non-verbal cues constituted about 65% of all communication. You then used all these techniques for example when you made a presentation to large and small audiences.  It didn’t matter what you said if your body language wasn’t right.

 How Texting  impacted Body Language

 So what happened to the world after mobile telephony and the Internet? Email, SMS, Whatsapp, and various other forms of verbal communication or texting as the main medium almost seem to have threatened to take away the human touch completely from one to one communication. You may argue that video is big, but I am talking about daily  conversations of which text forms a large part. 

 Types of Non-Verbal Communication

• Facial expressions are responsible for a large part of non-verbal communications. Anger, sadness, fear and happiness are all communicated through facial expressions.
• Gestures like waving, pointing and even looking at the watch to say you are getting late
• Paralinguistics which is about vocal communication and includes tone of voice, loudness, inflection and pitch
• Posture which included hand-crossing and leg-crossing
• Proxemics which is personal space that people have and which varies by culture. See the queue at the bustops in Britain and you will know what I mean. They are all at least a metre from each other while waiting in a queue.  Some  cultures for example have a much smaller personal space.
• Eye gaze which can communicate a range of emotions interest, attraction and hostility
• Haptics where you touch a person to add to the emotion of whatever you are saying. A hand over a shoulder, a handshake etc.

The Power of the Smile 

The face which is known to have 42-43 muscles has always been a key part of all communication. The smile contributes to a large component of body language. A smiling expression is known to release happiness chemicals (serotonin and dopamine triggered by the left frontal cortex) which improve the overall mood. In addition, smiling also increases your charisma. And smiles are universally regarded as friendly.

I guess in the early days of the digital era we couldn’t be as expressive as we wanted to, because text was devoid of the human emotion that body language gives us.

 The Emoticon Revolutionised Modern Communication

 The arrival of the emoticon however became our substitute for incorporating body language into text. You will notice that most expressive people tend to use the emoticon more than the less expressive people. So does the emoticon have the same effect as a real smile?  Apparently yes.  A study at Australia’s Flinders University found that the pattern of brain activity triggered by looking at an emoticon is fairly similar to when someone sees a real smiling human face.  The like button on Facebook, the dislike sign, everything that we use to make our communication richer is actually substituting body language in one way or another in one to one communication where we use text as the main medium.

Recent Example of Body Language 

Hillary Clinton's hand-to-heart gesture

The American Presidential Election is another great example of putting body language to use.   Since the Hillary Clinton non-believers are largely known not to trust her, it has been noticed that Mrs Clinton has been using a hand-to-heart gesture and she did that many times during the recent Democratic Convention.  

Its a gesture she has not used in her past campaigns. At the Democratic National Convention, when she took the stage to a wild applause, she cued the audience on how grateful, moved and humbled she felt by putting her hand to her heart  4 times during her speech.   Its going to be a challenge to find the digital equivalent of the hand to heard gesture but no doubt someone will come up with something.

 So what is the Future of Body Language?

 Telepresence is going to pose an even bigger challenge to body language than before because you are going to be displayed full size and larger than life.   If you are a leader and think that you can hide behind a screen you are probably mistaken. Leaders are going to be interacting  with other people face-to-face with even more frequency, even if those interactions are going to be mediated by a screen. The visual technology revolution is going to make body language more important than ever before. So all that knowledge and research on body language is going to come in more useful than ever for most corporate leaders in the future.  So thank you Charles Darwin for having started this all!

Connect with me on Twitter