Читать книгу Power Cues - Nick Morgan - Страница 21

We haven’t always understood the importance of this second conversation. Not so long ago, scientists didn’t study the gestures with which we humans accompany speech because they were considered meaningless and obviously less interesting than so-called “emblems”—gestures with specific meanings, like the peace sign or the upraised middle finger.

So scientists studied emblems and downplayed the importance of gestures, because they didn’t consider them to be as thoughtful and important as those few gestures every culture has that are really hand signals—a kind of code.⁵

That approach hobbled scientific progress for most of the twentieth century, but researchers finally shook it off and came at gestures from the opposite direction: that they can have meaning, just not the same sort of coded meaning as words.

Now we understand that gestures actually precede conscious thought and can even shape and guide it.⁶ So important is gesture that we find it hard to communicate if we are unable to gesture.⁷ Try speaking for any length of time with your hands tied behind your back, either literally or figuratively. You’ll find it surprisingly difficult.

Gestures are an essential part of the communications process, because they signal directly from your unconscious to everyone’s else unconscious mind what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, and what you’re intending toward those other people.

The first thing we want to know when we see people coming toward us is, are they friend or foe? We unconsciously evaluate their stance, their posture, where they’re putting their hands, and what they’re doing with them, in order to ascertain with astonishing speed whether we’re about to get a punch or a kiss.⁸

There are two essential points here. The first is that you’re always signaling, and so is everyone else, about your intentions and feelings. The second point is that most of the time you don’t pay conscious attention to all those signals—either the ones you’re putting out or the ones others are sending to you. Your unconscious mind handles all that.