Non-verbal communication and height

Charles Crawford's blog has alerted me to some intriguing news about image-management in Moscow, that looks as though it was a cunning plan to make President Obama (6'1'') look uncomfortable sitting in a very low chair alongside Prime Minister Putin (5'7").

As you can see from the picture I posted a few weeks ago, President Sarkozy certainly has no qualms about rising to the same height as President Obama, even if it does mean standing on a box.

But, though we may know less about what image-handlers get up to in Russia than in the West, it shouldn't be thought that it's anything new. I have newspaper clippings from the Reagan years with reports from Moscow that Gorbachev was having smiling lessons, presumably to compete with the cheerful countenance of the Great Communicator in Washington.

A while back, I expressed surprise that the Republicans had taken such a risk as to nominate a candidate (McCain) who is six inches shorter than Obama - because there's some research suggesting that the most powerful predictors of success in US politics are height (the taller the better) and a record of sporting achievement (the sportier the better).

I've also suggested that, at least since the television age began, baldness may be a disadvantage for male politicians.

So no one should think that, just because I think that some of the claims about the importance of body language have been grossly over-stated, I don't think it matters at all. But I do think there are some difficult methodological problems in being more precise about it, however much agreement there may be between Messrs Putin and Sarkozy on the question of height.

How to use video to study body language, verbal and non-verbal communication

If you've been following the recent debate about some of the more outrageous claims about non-verbal behaviour and body languge (e.g. HERE and HERE), you may have been wondering why I think that so much research in this area falls short of the methodological constraints associated with the approach of conversation analysis.

There’s a long version, that has to do with the theoretical debates taking place within sociology during the 1960s–70s that I certainly don’t intend to get into here.

There’s also a much shorter version that has to do with the way conversation analysis offered a viable alternative for any researcher with doubts about sociology’s heavy reliance on surveys and official statistics, psychology’s equally heavy reliance on artificially contrived experiments and linguistics’s use of invented examples, and/or denying that there’s any point at all in looking at how language actually works (e.g. Chomsky).

What conversation analysts did was to move away from the previously dominant hypothetico-deductive model of science towards a much more inductive alternative of the kind that had given birth to ethology in biology/zoology.

This was made possible by what I believe will eventually recognised as having been as important for our understanding of talk and interaction as the invention of the telescope had been for understanding astronomy: by the late 1960s, high quality audio and video recording technology meant that anyone could record real everyday talk, put it under the microscope and study it at a level of detail that had never before been possible. And the first people to do so were the founders of conversation analysis.

When I wrote Our Masters’ Voices (1984), I was aiming at more general readership than the professional academic community of sociologists, psychologists and linguists. But I still thought it necessary to say at least something about the observational methodology that had made the findings possible.

The most important elements of this approach to observation were that (a) the researcher’s claims are severely constrained by what’s there in the empirical data (so you can’t just speculate, say whatever you like or make it up), and (b) any claims that you do make can be checked out by anyone else who has access to the same data (which is about as powerful a form of verification as there is anywhere else in the social and behavioural sciences).

The following refers to speeches because that's what the book was about, But I still believe, as I did then, that the methodology can be used to study pretty well any data on human interaction and communication that’s been recorded on audio or video tape:


Once a speech has been recorded, it can be studied with all the advantages that television viewers of an action replay of a sporting incident have over those who actually saw it happening live. Unlike them, television viewers get a chance to look at it again and again. Finer points that may have been missed the first time around are brought into sharper focus as the action is replayed, slowed down, or frozen for even closer inspection.

While footballers and spectators may know who scored a goal, they often have no more than a vague impression of the events leading up to it. By contrast, viewers of the action-replay can track the sequence as it unfolds and see exactly how the different actions were organised and combined to produce the goal. They are therefore in a far better position to understand how a particular move worked than those who saw it only once.

All this applies equally to the study of any other form of human behaviour that can be preserved on video tape, including the behaviour of politicians. If, for example, the saying of something which results in applause is to the orator what scoring a goal is to a footballer, then action replays can be put to work in a similar way by looking to see how the words, gestures and other bodily movements combined together to produce the desired response.

Another well known feature of the action replay is also crucially important for the way the observations can be read and evaluated. Replays of sporting incidents are almost always accompanied by more commentary from the commentator(s) on the events we are seeing again, the object of the exercise being to supply a more detailed and informed analysis.

But viewers can also see the sequence of events just as well for themselves, and are therefore in a position to draw their own conclusions about what actually happened. This means that they can also judge the adequacy or otherwise of the commentator's description and analysis.

If the commentator’s claims about how the event occurred are out of line with what the viewers saw, the television company's switchboards will be jammed within minutes. And, if a sports commentator persists in making excessively personal, subjective or eccentric observations about what he (and everyone else) is seeing, he’s unlikely to hold down his job for very long.

Is the 'Daily Telegraph' borrowing from blogs?

Three days ago, I ended my post about the words used by Jack Straw to justify his rejection of the Parole Board's recommendation about Ronnie Biggs by referring to:

.. a government that knows a thing or two about being 'wholly unrepentant' about its actions and has 'outrageously courted the media'.

In today's Daly Telegraph, Vicki Woods picks out exactly the same phrases from Mr Straw to make much the same point:

The Parole Board's not unreasonable recommendation this week that Ronnie Biggs should be released on licence was overturned by Jack Straw because Biggs was "wholly unrepentant" and "outrageously courted the media". Sounds like the life and times of Gordon Brown, eh?

In my post on Wednesday, I said that keeping him in prison was pouring taxpayers' money 'down the drain'.

Today, Vicki Woods tells us that releasing him would be 'better value for money'.

Is this just a coincidence, I wonder, or are Daily Telegraph journalists touring blogs like this one to pick up ideas for their coulmns?

If the latter, I'd like the Telegraph (and any other newspaper that might be interested) to know that I'd be more than willing to convert some of my posts into a regular column for them - and that it might even be 'better value for money' than employing the likes of Ms Woods.

More bad news for Gordon Brown

A recent World Public Opinion survey has some interesting results about how Gordon Brown and other world leaders are regarded in the USA and in their home countries when it comes to world affairs.

64% of Americans compared with only 46% of us Brits have 'a lot' or 'some' confidence in Mr Brown 'to do the right thing regarding world affairs'.

In American eyes, this puts him way ahead of other European leaders like President Sarkozy (46%) and Chancellor Merkel (47%), and his 64% would be very heartening for him - if only Americans could vote Labour in next year's general election.

But they won't be able to, and what must make Brown very envious indeed about these numbers is Mrs Merkel's extremely high ratings from the Germans themselves, eight out out ten of whom (82%) have 'a lot' or 'some' confidence in her doing the right thing in world affairs.

Translation and fantasies of global domination

When a book comes out in English, it immediately becomes accessible to 480 million native speakers, which sounds very promising - until you realise that this is only about 7% of the world's population.

So whenever news of a translation deal comes through, it's difficult to keep fantasies about growing global domination and a tidal wave of royalties at bay.

The Spanish edition of Lend Me Your Ears added another 332 million and the Russian version that's now being translated will increase the potential market by another 180 million.

All very promising except that, taken together, these only mean an increase in accessibility of 5% (Spanish) and 3% (Russian) of the world's population, bringing the total up to 15% - a percentage that would be more than doubled if only someone would translate it into Mandarin.

Pious and expensive twaddle from strong man Straw

The following stirring story has just appeared in a headline slot on the BBC website:

The Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole by Justice Secretary Jack Straw. Mr Straw rejected a recommendation by the Parole Board which backed the release of Biggs, 79. Mr Straw said Biggs was "wholly unrepentant" about his actions and had "outrageously courted the media".

So down the drain goes another £32,358 a year of taxpayers' money to keep Biggs in prison, thanks to another enlightened decision of a government that knows a thing or two about being 'wholly unrepentant' about its actions and has 'outrageously courted the media'.

There's no such thing as a boring subject

One of the more memorable lines from the late David Ellis-Jones, with whom I used to teach presentation and communication skills at the Henley Management College, was "There's no such thing as a boring subject; there are only boring speakers."

People often didn't believe him and often don't believe me when I repeat the line. Anyone with similar doubts should have a look at this recent posting from Chris Witt to see what an interesting topic 'bacteria' can be.

One of the least promising subjects I ever heard a presenter talking about was the history of changes in UK retirement pensions. The speaker was Steve Bee of Scottish Life, whom I saw holding an audience of 800+ riveted and entertained by the topic.

He also taught me something new. Although I'd been advocating the use of 'chalk and talk' (i.e. writing and/or drawing stuff up on a blackboard or flip chart as you go along) for years, I also used to enter the caveat that people in big audiences may not be able to see what you're doing.

But Steve Bee used a visualiser, a technologically slicker version of the old blank rolls of acetate on overhead projectors. His only visual aid was a blank sheet of paper, on which he gradually drew an ever more complicated diagram that was not only critical to his general argument, but was also clearly visible on the screen above him - and made me realise that 'chalk and talk' can be as effective with a huge audience as it can be with a small one.

On the subject of 'boring subjects', one of the interesting things on the British political scene in the recent past has been the rising esteem for the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, whose star has risen on the back of his ability to sound as though he's talking more sense about complicated economic and financial topics than most of his competitors.

However boring and incomprehensible such subjects may seem at first sight - or when coming out of the mouths of Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling - Cable talks about them with clarity and authority.

And it's probably no coincidence that, unlike most of his political opponents, he's one of the ever-decreasing number of MPs who actually had a proper job outside politics before becoming a full-time politician.

As chief economist at Shell, making economics intelligible to colleagues who weren't trained as economists must have been a routine part of Vince Cable's everyday working life - that has now, in his 'new' life, become his strongest 'political' asset.http://www.pensionsguru.guru/