YOUR BODY LANGUAGE SHAPES WHO YOU ARE

Questions for speaking

 Why do you think body language is important?

 How do you use body language in your daily life?
 How does body language help you to communicate?
 How does your native culture use body language? What kind of body language do you use at school? What are some
examples of body language that boys use? Women? Boys? Girls? Children?
 What actions are threatening?
 What actions are friendly?
 What actions are not allowed?
 How does eye contact differ from your native country to some other cultures?
 How can you misinterpret someone's body language?
 Do you try to use body language when you communicate in English?

Fill in the gaps – listening (8 minutes)

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So ……………………………….. offering you a free no-tech life hack, and all it requires of you is this: that
you change your posture for two minutes. But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now do a little
audit of your body and what you're doing with your body. So how many of you are sort of
……………………………………? Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, maybe wrapping your
ankles. Sometimes we hold onto our arms like this. Sometimes we spread out. (Laughter) I see you. So I
want you to …………………. to what you're doing right now. We're going to come back to that in a few
minutes, and I'm hoping that if you learn to tweak this a little bit, ………………………………..the way
your life unfolds.
00:58 So, …………………………….. with body language, and ………………………………. in other
people's body language. You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) — an awkward
interaction, or a smile, or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink, or maybe even something
like a ……………………………..
01:22 Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10. This lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the
President of the United States. Here comes the Prime Minister -- No. (Laughter) (Applause)
01:38 Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or …………………….a handshake, can have us talking for weeks and
weeks and weeks. Even the BBC and The New York Times. So obviously when we think about nonverbal
behavior, or ……………………………… -- but we call it non-verbals as social scientists -- it's language, so
we think about communication. When we think about communication, we think about interactions. So what
is your body language communicating to me? What's mine communicating to you?
02:04 And ………………………………. that this is a valid way to look at this. So social scientists have
spent a lot of time looking at the effects of our body language, or other people's body language, on
………………... And we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language. And those
judgments can predict really ………………………. like who we hire or promote, who we
………………………………... For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University, shows that
when people watch 30-second soundless clips of real physician-patient interactions, their judgments of the
physician's niceness predict whether or not that physician will be sued. So it doesn't have to do so much with
whether or not that physician was __________________, but do we like that person and how they
interacted? Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton has shown us that judgments of political
candidates' faces in just one second predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes, and
even, let's go digital, emoticons used well in online negotiations can lead to you claim more value from that
negotiation. If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right?
03:19 So when we think of non-verbals, we think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the
outcomes are. We tend to forget, though, the other audience that's influenced by our non-verbals, and that's
ourselves. We are also ………………………… by our non-verbals, our ……………… and our
………………………. and our physiology.
03:37 So what non-verbals am I talking about? I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach at a
…………………….. business school, so it was…………………… that I would become interested in power
dynamics. I became especially interested in nonverbal ……………………………… and dominance.
03:56And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? Well, this is what they are. So in the
…………………………., they are about expanding. So you make yourself big, you ……………., you
………………………., you're basically opening up. It's about opening up. And this is true across the animal
kingdom. It's not just limited to primates. And humans do the same thing. (Laughter) So they do this both
when they have power sort of chronically, and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment. And this
one is especially interesting because it really shows us how universal and old these expressions of power are.
This expression, which is known as pride, Jessica Tracy has studied. She shows that
………………………….. with sight and people who are congenitally blind do this when they win at a
physical competition. So when they …………………………….. and they've won, it doesn't matter if
they've never seen anyone do it. They do this. So the …………….. up in the V, the …………….. is slightly
lifted.
04:55 What do we do …………………………………? We do exactly the opposite. We close up. We wrap
ourselves up. We make ourselves small. We don't want to bump into the person next to us. So again,
………………………………………….. thing. And this is what happens when you put together
…………………………………………….. So what we tend to do when it comes to power is that we
complement the other's non-verbals. So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make
ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them. ………………………………………...
05:24 So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom, and ……………………? I notice that MBA students
really ………………………………………… non-verbals. So you have people who are like caricatures of
alphas, really coming into the room, they ………………………………… of the room before class even
starts, like they really want to occupy space. When they sit down, they're sort of spread out. They
………………………… like this. You have other people who are virtually ……………… when they come
in. As soon they come in, you see it. You see it on their faces and their bodies, and they sit in their chair and
they make themselves tiny, and they go like this when they raise their hand.
06:03 I notice a couple of things about this. One, you're not going to be
surprised. ……………………………. gender. So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than
men. Women feel chronically less powerful than men, so …………………………………….
06:19 But the other thing I noticed is that it also seemed to be related to the extent to which the students
were participating, and how well they were participating. And this is really important in the MBA
classroom, because participation counts for half the grade.
06:33 So business schools have been struggling with this ………………………………. You get these
equally qualified women and men coming in and then you get these differences in grades, and it seems to be
partly attributable to participation. So …………………………………………, you know, okay, so you have
these people coming in like this, and they're participating. Is it possible that we could get people to fake
it and would it lead them to participate more?
06:57 So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley, and I really wanted to know, can you fake
it till you make it? Like, can you do this ……………………………………. and actually experience a
behavioral outcome that makes you seem more powerful? So we know that our non-verbals govern how
other people think and feel about us. …………………………... But our question really was, do our non-
verbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves?
07:24 There's some evidence that they do. So, for example, we smile when we feel happy, but also,
…………………………………. by holding a pen in our teeth like this, ……………………………….. So it
goes both ways. ………………………………., it also goes both ways. So when you feel powerful, you're
more likely to do this, but it's also possible that when you _____________ to be powerful, you are more
……………… to ……………………… feel powerful.
07:57 So the second question really was, you know, so we know that our minds change our bodies, but is it
also true that our …………………………? And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful, what am I
talking about? So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings and the sort of physiological things that
……………………………………. and feelings, and in my case, that's hormones. I look at hormones. So
what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless look like? So powerful people tend to be,
………………………….., more ………………….and more ………………., more
…………………... They actually feel they're going to win even at games of chance. They also
…………………………… to think more abstractly. So there are a lot of differences. They
…………………………... There are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people.
Physiologically, there also are differences on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance
…………………., and cortisol, which is the stress hormone. *******

1. Hack A. Expand
2. Wrapping B. Difficult/uncomfortable
3. Tweak C. Extensive
4. Awkward D. Solicited
5. Wink E. Curving/bending
6. Claim F. Progress/emerge
7. Fake G. Cover, enclose (rodear)
8. Hunching H. Adjust/improve
9. Spread out I. Result
10. Unfold J. Conjecture
11. Contemptuous K. False
12. sweeping L. Blink (eye movement)
13. Outcome M. Access sth illegally
14. Lead N. knock lightly
15. Give away O. Reveal
16. Inferences P. Guide
17. Sued Q. Insulting/arrogant
18. Bump into someone R. Demand