Posts Tagged ‘body language’
How to talk with your hands
June 28th, 2011
It was a July day in 1975, and Judge Rudolph T. Randa’s municipal courtroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was packed. As the defendant stood before sentencing, the judge asked if he had anything he wanted to say on his own behalf.
Needing to use his hands to speak his piece, the defendant automatically pulled them from his pockets … where he’d been holding up pants that were four sizes too big. His trousers fell to the floor. No underwear. Thus the defendant’s unplanned statement was to moon the crowded courtroom.
The poor man quickly pulled up his pants as the spectators tried to smother their snickers. But with the guard’s admonishment to “keep your hands in your pockets,” he probably found it even more difficult to come up with appropriate words for his circumstances.
A recent study conducted at the University of Birmingham in England found that talking with your hands triggers mental images that helps people solve complex problems involving spatial visualization. In other words, people who use their hands when talking find it easier to put things in mental order. Other studies have found that people tend to view those who talk with their hands as more warm, agreeable, and energetic … and those who don’t as more cold and calculating.
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Leave a positive impression
August 5th, 2010
My parents didn’t get off to a great start.
He was a technician working in a shop that sold and repaired radios and televisions, and she came in to buy a small radio for her boyfriend. Because the boyfriend was in the military, she had to give his full name for the shipping label. Part of the young man’s given name was … Elsie. My dad had an aunt named Elsie. He was very amused. Mom, not so much.
They met again when my dad came into the fountain where my mom worked a second job as a soda jerk. The first meeting had been somewhat out of character for both of them. Typically, he was more reserved and she had a better sense of humor. Things began to go more smoothly after their second encounter … for everyone but Elsie.