Body Language vs.

Negotiating

Sumbiosis / Thinkpieces 1
Content
• Key considerations ................................................................................................ 3
• Kinds of non‐verbal messages .............................................................................. 4
• Impact of verbal and nonverbal messages ........................................................... 5
• Reading body language ......................................................................................... 6
• Controlling body language .................................................................................... 8
• Controlling and reading:
– Facial expressions .......................................................................................................... 9
– Eye movements ............................................................................................................. 10
– Gestures ........................................................................................................................ 11
• Lying and detecting lies ........................................................................................ 12
• Mutual influence .................................................................................................. 13
• Mimicry ................................................................................................................ 14
• Body language and culture ................................................................................... 16
• Sources .................................................................................................................. 17

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Key Considerations

• We communicate far more information to other people than is

conveyed by our words alone.
• Much of this communication is less than fully conscious. Many
behaviors are not deliberate, nor are we aware of performing
them. Likewise, while we are all affected by the behavior of
others, we do not fully appreciate how it shapes our own
perceptions and emotional state.
• When people talk together, the content of what they say
usually corresponds to the tone of their voice, the posture and
gesture. When they feel that there is a discrepancy between
verbal and nonverbal messages, most people tend to give
more weight to the nonverbal cues.

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Kinds of Nonverbal Behaviors

• Facial expressions
• Eye movements
• Physical gestures
• Paraverbal cues (tone of voice, pitch, emphasis, inflection,
volume, rate of speech, pronunciation)
• Posture
• “Personal space” (i.e.: a portable territory with invisible
boundaries that expand or contract depending on the situa‐
tion; individuals carry it around with them constantly and
position themselves in conversation in a way that will
maintain it)

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Impact of Verbal and Nonverbal Messages

• A person can convey varying degrees of impact by simulta‐

neously using words, facial and vocal expressions, posture,
and gesture.
• Experimental results have led to the following equation 1:
Total impact = 7% verbal impact + 38% vocal impact + 55 facial impact

• If the facial expression is inconsistent with the words, facial

expression will dominate and determine the impact of the
total message. Or if the vocal expression happens to
contradict the words (e.g. sarcasm), the former determines
the total impact.
1This equation regarding the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages was derived from experiments dealing with
communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like‐dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these
equations are not applicable!
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Reading Body Language: In General (1)

• The challenge to reading the internal thoughts and feelings of

other people is not the lack of evidence. The problem is its
abundance. Micro‐expressions, gestures, posture and tone of
voice are part of a cascade of information that comes forth
whenever we interact.
• Negotiators do not have a lot of time to discern subtle
meanings; they have to interpret extremely quickly the signals
sent by their counterparts, while needing at the same time to
be creative, persuasive, etc.
• Negotiators must therefore be mindful of broad patterns of
behavior and not futilely try to interpret each and every
signal.

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Reading Body Language: In General (2)

Negotiators who (...) manage to look for and listen to nonverbal

cues have a distinct advantage in dealing with other people.
They are more likely to know when a «yes» means real commit‐
ment to a deal and when it is said with reservation; they can
distinguish real threats and promises from those which are only
bluster; and they can spot confusion and unspoken anger, and
thus diffuse difficult situations and build trust. People thus
skilled at reading nonverbal communication may do it intuitively,
but they do not have some special ESP [1]. They are simply alert
to behaviors that the rest of us often overlook or misinterpret.

Wheeler / Nelson, p. 2

[1] ESP: Extrasensory perception is the purported ability to acquire information by paranormal means
independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience.

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Controlling Body Language: In General

• We should do what we can to project ourselves positively, but

we should steer clear of stagy gambits and mannerisms. Most
are of questionable value. Our own discomfort at trying to be
someone else will likely leak out and undermine our
credibility.
• Facial expressions can certainly reveal special emotions;
however, the intensity of those emotions show more in body
language. It is quite easy to keep the expression of special
emotions and attitudes on one’s own face under control and
thus to hide them. However, such feelings (mostly the nega‐
tive ones) have a tendency to move towards our hands and
feet, because we obviously have more difficulties in keeping
them under control.

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Controlling and Reading: Facial Expressions

• Even though strong biological and social forces trigger

nonverbal behavior, people actually can mask their feelings
rather well. In fact, the very act of covering them up may serve
to dampen them.
• While we may exercise significant self‐control, however, hints
of emotions can leak out in what is called “micro‐expressions”.
These are fleeting, involuntary, and often unconscious facial
expressions that occur when emotions stimulate correspon‐
ding facial muscles. People can be trained to recognize signals
that may last only a tenth of a second.

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Controlling and Reading: Eye Movements

• Research indicates that speakers who themselves maintain eye

contact while making a request achieve a higher rate of
compliance than those who break their gaze.
• Many people also regard eye contact (more specifically, the
lack of it) as an indicator of a person’s credibility, but
surprisingly, this belief is contradicted by research. There are
many benign reasons why someone might avoid steady eye
contact. Some are personal - e.g.: shyness or a lack of
confidence - while others are social or cultural.
• As a general rule, one should be cautious about reading too
much into others’ eye behavior.

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Controlling and Reading: Gestures

• Gestures result from a complex mix of what we are physically

feeling in the moment and what we think (scratching one’s
nose may indicate disagreement, but may also be an indication
of an itchy nose!). They also reflect the expressive norms that
we have grown up with.
• Upon his arrival at a meeting with Richard Nixon in 1973,
Leonid Brezhnev raised his arms high in a way that many
Americans interpreted to be the gesture of a brash victor,
when the Soviet leader meant to signal open friendship.
• Behavioral changes over the course of a meeting may be
significant however (e.g.: when a previously animated person
becomes more subdued).

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Lying and Detecting Lies

• Four factors enhance the ability to lie without getting caught:

prior practice or experience in telling similar lies; lack of guilt
about lying; confidence in being able to deceive successfully;
natural ability to deceive.
• Experiments on behavioral lie detection have indicated that
observers can detect a communicator's lies with above‐chance
accuracy, and that detection accuracy may be enhanced when
observers pay special attention to certain vocal and body‐
movement cues. Observer's accuracy in detecting attempted
deception is usually better than chance, though not very high:
When the chance level of deception‐detection is 50%, actual
accuracy typically is about 55%; it usually does not exceed
60%.

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Mutual Influence

What we think, feel, and do is inextricably bound up with the

corresponding thoughts, feelings, and actions of our
counterparts. Specifically:
• Our own physical behavior both influences and reflects the behavior of
people with whom we interact.
• That behavior not only manifests our internal feelings; it also affects our
emotional state.
• Our emotional state, in turn, shapes how we perceive people and issues in
the negotiation process.

Decoding nonverbal communication thus is not a matter of

translating isolated gestures. A far more interesting process of
mutual influence takes place.
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Mimicry

• In conversation, people tend automatically and continuously

to mimic and synchronize their movements with the facial
expressions, voices, postures, movements, and instrumental
behaviors of others.
• Actions are not all that are passed from one person to the
other. Feelings migrate just as powerfully because of the
constant interplay between physical and emotional states. For
example, studies have shown that when strangers are seated
facing each other in silence, within a minute or two, the most
expressive of the them transmits his or her mood to the others
– without a word being spoken!

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Mimicry (cont.)

• The transfer of feelings is important because they color how

we see the world. Aristotle himself observed that “feelings are
conditions that cause us to change and alter our judgments”.
• The negative attitude of one member can leak over to others
in a group, and stifle their creativity. By contrast, researchers
have found that an upbeat environment fosters mental effi‐
ciency, making people better at taking in and understanding
information, at using decision rules in complex judgments and
being flexible in their thinking.

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Body Language Vs. Culture

• Facial expressions are not learned behaviors, specific to

particular social environments and cultures.
• Expressions for basic emotions such as happiness, sadness,
anger, fear, surprise and disgust are universally recognized.
Wherever on the earth, when shown photographs of men and
women making a variety of distinctive faces, people agree on
what those expressions mean.
• Cultures, however, may have different norms dictating who is
permitted to show which emotions, to whom, and when.

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Sources

• Peter J. DePaulo, Bella M. DePaulo, Can Deception by Salespersons and Customers Be Detected Through
Nonverbal Behavioral Cues?, Journal of Applied Psychology, 1989, 19, 18, pp. 1552‐1577

• Malcolm Gladwell: The Naked Face – Can you read people’s thoughts just by looking at them?, The New
Yorker, August 5, 2002 (a)

• Friedrich Glasl, Konfliktmanagement – Ein Handbuch für Führungskräfte, Beraterinnen und Berater, Verlag
Paul Haupt, Bern / Verlag Geistesleben, Stuttgart

• Albert Mehrabian: Silent Messages, Wadworth Publishing Company, Inc., Belmont, California

• Michael A. Wheeler, Dana Nelson: Nonverbal Communication in Negotiation, Harvard Business School,
Note, Product Number 9‐903‐081 (b)

(a) http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm

(b) http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=903081&referral=2340

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