Topic: Stories
The first theories of body language were written in the early 1970's. It gained a lot of popularity and soon everybody was trying to play an "armchair-psychologist" by guessing if their conversation partner is telling the truth, whether he or she is hostile towards them or perhaps even secretly in love with them. Their hobby was based on the thousands of help-yourself-books that were published since then, which educated people on how to read the body signs of your counterparts during conversations.
Earlier on I thought that people will probably soon develop a way of behaviour where they won't move their hands anymore, trying to keep their heads straight and stand and sit like robots, because they would try to hide their real emotions. Well, I was wrong.
Instead of that, people invented mobile phones and internet. Nowadays we hardly see the other part of the communication act, since he or she is talking/typing to us on the other end of the line. Therefor we can't use our learned or subconscious skills anymore that help us interpret the instinctive reactions of our conversation partners.
On the one hand, this development is good in a globalized world; it helps to avoid misunderstandings between different cultures (e.g. different meaning of nodding and shaking the head in the West and the East). But on the other hand, lots of positive messages, creative synergy and a feeling of "human touch" are missed as well.
P.S. During writing this column, I touched my nose, rubbed my chin twice, leaned back on my chair several times, played with my hair, smiled couple of times and shrugged my shoulders. What do you think about this column now, when you can interpret my message through these body signs?
