Body Language
Sometimes it's easy to tell what is on a person's mind by the way they position their body. Facial expressions also give clues as to what other people are thinking. The way a person stands, positions their arms, and smiles can tell a lot about them. Men and women typically have different movements, which mean different things.
People position their bodies in many different ways when standing. The most intimate of them being, face to face, hip to hip (Fenney 102). This is something that usually only men do when they're mad. When conducting an experiment, in which she acted like a man for a day, Susan Fenney stood this way towards a male coworker. He would keep inching away from her. Within five minutes he had done two complete circles (Fenney 102).
Men usually take up more space while sitting down. It is not necessarily because they are bigger; men were raised believing that they have more power then women (Fenney 102). They are also more likely to take an armrest, and least likely to give up a subway seat to a pregnant lady (Fenney 102).
The way men and women greet people is very different. Contrary to popular beliefs, men are more likely to touch women when they greet them, then women are to touch men. Men usually touch people on their upper body, for instance, back-slapping. When Susan Fenney tried this on her boss on her day as a man, he was startled and took a moment to answer her. It is more like women to touch people on the shoulder or arm (Fenney 102).
Facial expressions are great indicators of what is on people's minds. The face has 44 muscles, nerves, and blood vessels, which can twist into 5,000 different expressions (Blum 34). Facial expressions are not always easy to read though. As Dr. Paul Ekman said, "In a sense, the face is equipped to lie the most and leak the most, and thus can be a very confusing source of information" (Blum 34). The face is able to signal emotions in a second, and it is...
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