Many years ago I was traveling with two buddies toward the Florida Keys when we stopped at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino to try our luck at gambling. I decided to sit down at a low stakes poker table to apply my newly learned skills at a game called Texas Hold’em. I sat quietly, suppressed my usual friendly banter with the players sitting next to me, and folded my cards often when someone bet on their hand which I assumed was better than mine. I remember being dealt an off suit K and 3 for my pocket cards (which was nothing to get excited about) but no one raised before the flop so I called the minimum big blind to see how I would do on the flop, which was three open cards for everyone to use. To my wonderful surprise, the upturned cards were two kings and a 3, giving me a full house with two more cards to go! Since I was one of the first to bet or check at the nine person table I used my limited knowledge of disguising the strength of my hand by checking to the next player. Usually, with a family pot (a hand where everyone at the table has called) someone is likely to bet either because they have matched at least one of the open cards on the table or because they assume no one caught a good hand and they want to bluff and make believe they have a strong hand. In this case, however, no one did. After the next card was revealed, my turn to bet or check came with no one adding any money to the pot. Thinking I would be crafty playing with what appeared to be seasoned poker players, I bet the minimum amount so as to not scare away any or all of the other players and to build the pot of chips for a bigger bet at the end. To my dismay, everyone immediately folded. I had won the minimum amount with a hand that could have brought me a very large amount of money. Chalking it up to bad luck I turned to the player on my left and asked him in jest if it was that obvious that I had a big hand. He smiled and told me it was! “How did you and likely all the others players know,” I asked? Well, for one when the flop was revealed you immediately sat up straight in your seat as if something had caught your attention. You were more attentive as the players each checked their hands and you kept looking at your chips, a sign that you likely have a betting hand. There were more but I only remember those.
So there I was, thinking that since no one could see my cards, all I had to do was wait for a good hand to clean up. It was then, that I learned that while knowing the odds and probabilities of poker hands is a major factor, reading the other players definitely matters in playing winning poker.
I’ve always had a fascination with body language. According to the Oxford dictionary, body language is “the process of communicating non-verbally through conscious or unconscious gestures and movements.” Sustaining an equanimous demeanor despite losing, winning, bluffing, or betting with a strong hand relegates only good math and luck to those who can play well against you. Thus the term “poker face.” A skill and behavior I continue to practice but find very difficult to achieve.
Of course poker “tells” such as talking during a hand, looking at your chips, becoming quieter than usual, covering or touching your face during a hand are subjective and are never a sure thing. As with reading people at work or in public, they are only indicators that might yield helpful information.
Last night Teresa and I went to dinner with a couple she had met last year but, except from what I heard spoken about then, they were people I did not know. So, before we went, I decided to think about the kinds of body language behaviors that might give me some additional information about them beyond what they said about themselves. They both stood straight and walked easily into the restaurant. They embraced us each and immediately began to make conversation. They spoke quickly and inserted lots of humor in the early parts of our introductions. They both answered our questions and followed up with questions of us. We truly enjoyed our evening together.
As I looked back over the evening, a few “tells” about them came to mind. I realized that I enjoyed their company not just by our verbal conversation but by the way they leaned in when we spoke, their warm and welcoming eye contact, and by the way they held themselves in a comfortable and confident manner. They were huggers, as am I, and a hug often conveys an intimacy and vulnerability that adds to my willingness to connect.
Except for this experience, I don’t prep myself to look for body language when i meet people. But I do often ask myself afterwards why I liked my time with someone and often come up with a behavior or two that was nonverbal and likely subconscious that contributed to our positive interaction.
Are there any such tells that you find helpful when being with other people?
“Body language is a very powerful tool. We had body language before we had speech, and apparently, 80% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words.” –Deborah Bull (English Baroness, dancer, writer, and broadcaster)
Panto-Mine
Panto, short for pantomime, is usually a production that expresses intent without speech. This is the first word that came to mind when reading Hen’s piece about body language. Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about the importance of “tells”, until reading about Hen’s Texas Hold-em experience.
So, true to form, I did an internet search to survey the subject of non-verbal cues. One site indicated that there are eleven varieties of body language that you can observe. These involve:
- Facial expression
- Body proximity
- Gestures
- Ornamentation: style, color, etc.
- Interest markers
- Eye gazes
- Self-soothing activities, like neck rubbing
- Haptics – touching
- Blocking – like touching ears, eyes, mouth
- Emblems – common gestures, like ‘thumbs-up’ (or others)
- Paralanguage: pitch, tone, cadence
Wow – that’s a lot to process! I’m too lazy to focus on all of this. Plus, I’d probably send all the wrong body signals while trying to notice or decode these behaviors while interacting with other folks. Yet, we all engage in this communication – receiving and broadcasting cues – in a subconscious way.
I think that a lot of the body language we process is both culturally endued, as well as idiographic. Culturally endued, because we are embedded in a society that recognizes common signals like greeting behaviors. Idiographic, because as individuals, we have been conditioned to react to certain triggers.
For example, my mother was a sweet and loving person, but very anxious. She also had profound hearing loss. During a conversation, her body language and particularly her facial expression could change unexpectedly. It was difficult to know if she was reacting to what she heard (or thought she heard) – or whether it was initiated by an impinging anxious thought. I’d guess that Hen would declare such signals as a tells – and he’d be right. However, the cause of the tell would be difficult to ascertain: her cards, current conversation, misheard noises or discussion, past memories, or future concerns. I think my Mom would have been a tough person to play poker with, due to a plethora of tells, which could mean many different things!
At one time, I was responsible for management training in an organization. Two of my instructors went to a neurolinguistics course and came back believers in delving into body language. Eyes flashing left meant combing for solutions; flashing right meant looking for excuses. Really? Mirroring became a popular behavior in meetings – that is, adopting the body posture and gestures of the person you were conversing with in order to promote a positive connection. They lean in, you lean in; they cross arms, you cross arms, etc. Now, I don’t disagree that a certain amount of mirroring fosters intimacy, but the intentionality of the behavior became too obviously disingenuous. It was a short-lived program.
Hen asks what body language signals are important to each of us: I look for posture that says ‘hanging loose’ vs. ‘holding tension’. There might be excellent reason for either of those postures, but the signals lead to different conversations. I also look for eye crinkles – wrinkles around the eyes that accompany a true smile. That’s my two sense!
At the Door by David Wagoner from poetrysoup.com
All actors look for them-the defining moments
When what a character does is what he is.
The script may say, He goes to the door
And exits or She goes out the door stage left.
But you see your fingers touching the doorknob,
Closing around it, turning it
As if by themselves.
The latch slides
Out of the strike-plate, the door swings on its hinges,
And you’re about to take that step
Over the threshold into a different light.
For the audience, you may simply be
Disappearing from the scene, yet in those few seconds
You can reach for the knob as the last object on earth
You wanted to touch.
Or you can take it
Warmly like the hand your father offered
Once in forgiveness and afterward
Kept to himself.
Or you can stand there briefly, as bewildered
As by the door of a walk-in time-lock safe,
Stand there and stare
At the whole concept of shutness, like a rat
Whose maze has been rebaffled overnight,
Stand still and quiver, unable to turn
Around or go left or right.
Or you can grasp it with a sly, soundless discretion,
Open it inch by inch, testing each fraction
Of torque on the spindles, on tiptoe
Slip yourself through the upright slot
And press the lock-stile silently
Back into its frame.
Or you can use your shoulder
Or the hard heel of your shoe
And a leg-thrust to break it open.
Or you can approach the door as if accustomed
To having all barriers open by themselves.
You can wrench aside
This unauthorized interruption of your progress
And then leave it ajar
For others to do with as they may see fit.
Or you can stand at ease
And give the impression you can see through
This door or any door and have no need
To take your physical self to the other side.
Or you can turn the knob as if at last
Nothing could please you more, your body language
Filled with expectations of joy at where you’re going,
Holding yourself momentarily in the posture
Of an awestruck pilgrim at the gate-though you know
You’ll only be stepping out against the scrim
Or a wobbly flat daubed with a landscape,
A scribble of leaves, a hint of flowers,
The bare suggestion of a garden.
Do You Hear What I See?
I learned about body language very early in life! I had a cousin, Linda, who was two years younger than I was and tended to be dramatic even at the youthful age of about 4. When she got scolded, her face would wrinkle up, her eyebrows would crinkle above her eyes, she would give one stomp of her foot, fold her arms over her chest, drop her head, and turn around so that her back was to whoever scolded her. Not a word was spoken but the stomping of her foot and the crunched face spoke louder than words. She was not a happy camper! I also remember as a young boy when being called into dinner from the baseball game going on in the street, my mother would be standing at the door, dish towel hanging over her shoulder, arms folded across her chest, right foot tapping in syncopated rhythm. As I ran the bases I was more concerned about her foot than making the base safely. As the moments passed, my mother’s foot tapped more and more rapidly indicating to me and my friends I had to go home NOW. I would hit the base running, never stop and just headed straight for my mother at the door. All the kids knew what that meant. My dad had been a Marine, and patriotism was part of our lives. Every Memorial Day,, 4th of July, whenever there was a parade, my dad, mom and brother would head out for the parade route, usually Northern Blvd in Queens to watch the parade go by. As veterans groups or active duty bands passed by, my brother, myself and my dad had to remove our hats and while still holding the hat placed our hand over our hearts. If we failed to do it immediately all we had to do was look at my dad and his warning eyes gave us the signal to show respect. These body movements and positions never were explained to us but somehow we just knew what we were supposed to do. And if we didn’t understand something, we would crunch up our shoulders, make a stupid face and raise our hands up to our chests with the palms facing skyward, and with a simple shrug of our shoulders express the universal body language signal for, “Huh?”
School was full of body language symbols as well. But because there were kids from all different countries, religions, cultures you had to be astute enough to pick up similarities in order to understand the body language of others. Usually there were just minor variations on the theme. I had a 4th grade teacher who when trying to get an idea across and we just weren’t picking up on it, he would turn his back to the class and with his right palm, he would slap the top of his forehead and allow his hand to continue toward the ceiling. We all knew it was his way of saying, “OY, these kids are thick!” Invariably one of my classmates would imitate his body language from the back of the room and we would have to stifle our giggles because that would bring a different body language vocabulary to the classroom. You didn’t have to be real smart to pick up on the meanings of these movements. We just knew! In junior high school, for the first time we moved from classroom to classroom for the different subjects. We would start our day in homeroom and end the day in homeroom. My homeroom teacher in 9th grade was Mr Montalbaum, who was also my gym teacher. When we returned to homeroom at the end of the day we were kind of loud and shouting across the room to our friends and he had a unique way of getting us to quiet down so he could take attendance or whatever he had to do before dismissal. He wouldn’t yell or bang on the desk or anything. While we were filing back into the room he would very quietly put his right hand pointer finger next to his nose on his face and he would walk around the classroom while we were packing our books and getting our coats. As soon as you saw this, you had to put your right hand pointer finger next to your nose and shut up and take your seat. You did not want to be the last person to do this because if you were you had to get up in front of the room and sing a song to the class. Cruel? perhaps but efficient!
Body language in society is constantly in use. You cannot walk down a street without seeing people using an assortment of words and body movements used to make a point, express a feeling, show affection…. it is used all over. I guess I learned my knowledge of body language early and became quite fluent in it and what opportunities it provided me. I taught elementary school in the same little community school for 35 years, and developed quite a vocabulary of movements and expressions without vocalizations. When I needed my class to come to order (4th, 5th and 6th graders) and they really weren’t focusing on what I wanted, I did a very simple thing that always worked. I would go to the blackboard and begin to write in cursive from RIGHT to LEFT what my message was. For some reason I was always able to write backwards in cursive and when I started doing that they would have a look of amazement on their faces and then the shushing started trying to tell their friends to quiet down. I always thanked Mr Montalbaum for the inspiration to do that in a gentler manner than he used. I am not sure we could exist as a society without the use of body language. How would we ever be able to express our road rage when someone was crawling in front of us on the thruway without the use of our middle finger? How would we be able to flag down a cab without a wave…yelling certainly wouldn’t work. How would a cop directing traffic be able to get his message across without frantically waving his white gloved hand and pointing at you when you didn’t respond! And the best thing about it is that body language is multi- lingual , it is pretty much universal from culture to culture.. Too bad there aren’t more things like body language to bring us all together rather than the misunderstandings and confusion the spoken language leads to. Just sayin’!
Three Old Guys Walked Into A Bar 