Non-verbal communication

Here's another cartoon on non-verbal communication (others can be seen HERE & HERE):

A commentator likely to keep his job

The other day, in discussing the analysis of videotaped behaviour, I compared the analyst's challenge as being similar to that of a sports commentator - in that, if a commentator's description regularly fails to match what viewers saw for themselves, he or she is unlikely to stay in the job for very long.

Little did I realise that such a gem of an example would crop up so soon. If you didn't hear it, it's well worth listening to Geoffrey Boycott's rant about the fall of a key England wicket on the first day of this year's first test match against Australia.

Boycott has been commentating on cricket ever since he retired from the game. On this evidence, and especially if you saw Pietersen's 'daft shot', I think he'll manage to hold his job down for a quite a few more years.

You can listen to him HERE and see what you think.

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.