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Telling fact
Several species of apes and monkeys lower their eyebrows as a dominance threat signal. It's the same with humans. Source: The Book of Tells by Peter Collett |
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Faking it This deeper understanding of how tells work together makes it clear that it is difficult to fake your body language. Producing one dominant tell, like a palm-down handshake, is unlikely to convince somebody that you're a strong person if your posture is slumped, you don't make eye contact and you stumble over your words. Everything about you contributes to what you communicate. Some politicians adopt power tells when they rise to the top but still carry some of their old body language habits with them. These tells of a more bashful youth can sometimes undermine the new projection of authority. Freud believed that: 'He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.' In fact, that's not entirely true. Whether or not you can fake your body language seems to depend on how comfortable you are about doing it. Actors fake tells for a living. So do politicians. Likewise, in a recent experiment, sales personnel were found to be able to tell either lies or the truth without significant changes in body language. What is likely is that adopting the tells of confidence, for instance, can actually increase your confidence as you see other people changing their reaction to you. Or adopting the tells of flirting is one way of etting people know you're interested. Faking it is certainly possible but it needs competence, a comprehensive approach and a decided lack of conscience! Practice makes perfect. Page | 1 | 2 | |
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