The Definitive Book of Body Language (20 page)

Dr. Ken Cooper also studied touch frequencies in a number of countries and recorded the following results for touches per hour: Puerto Rico, 180; Paris, 110; Florida, 2; London, 0.

From our research and personal experience, here's a ready reckoner of places where it's acceptable to touch or not:

When it comes to inadvertently offending other cultures, Americans usually take first prize. As mentioned, most Americans don't have a passport and believe the rest of the world thinks like them and wants to be like them. Here's a picture of George W. Bush using the signature gesture of the Texas Longhorn football team, of which he is a supporter. The index finger and little finger represent the horns of the bull and this football gesture is recognized by most Americans.

Showing this American football gesture
is a jailable offense in Italy

In Italy, this gesture is known as the “cuckold” and is used to tell a man that other men are screwing his wife. In 1985, five Americans were arrested in Rome for jubilantly dancing and using this gesture outside the Vatican following the news of a major Longhorns win in the U.S.A. Apparently the Pope was unimpressed.

People do business with people who make them feel comfortable and it comes down to sincerity and good manners. When entering a foreign country, concentrate on reducing the broadness of your body language until you have the opportunity to observe the locals. A simple way to learn and understand cultural body-language differences is to record several foreign films and replay them with the sound off, but don't read the subtitles. Try to work out what is happening, then watch again and read the subtitles to check your accuracy.

Cultural misinterpretations of gestures can produce embarrassing results and a person's background should always be considered before jumping to conclusions about the meaning of his or her body language and gestures.

If you regularly travel internationally, we recommend Roger Axtell's
Gestures: Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World
(John Wiley & Sons). Axtell identified over 70,000 different physical signs and customs globally and shows you how to do business in most cultures.

“Napoleon in His Study” by Jacques-Louis David, 1812,
showing the French leader in his famous pose—did he really
have a peptic ulcer or was he just having a good time?

A human hand has twenty-seven small bones, including eight pebble-shaped bones in the wrist that are laced together by a network of ligaments and dozens of tiny muscles to move the joints. Scientists have noted that there are more nerve connections between the hands and the brain than between any other parts of the body, and so the gestures and positions we take with our hands give powerful insights into our emotional state. Because our hands are usually held in front of our body, these signals are easy to see and most of us have several trademark hand positions we continually use. For example, mention the
name Napoleon and everyone will describe a man with his hand tucked into his waistcoat, his thumb pointing upward, and will probably volunteer a theory or tell rude jokes about why he did it. These include: he had a stomach ulcer; he was winding his watch; he had a skin disease; that in his era it was impolite to put your hands in your pockets; he had breast cancer; he had a deformed hand; he kept a perfumed sachet in his vest that he'd sniff occasionally; he was playing with himself; and that painters don't like to paint hands. The real story is that in 1738, well before Napoleon's birth, François Nivelon published
A Book of Genteel Behavior
describing this posture:
“… the hand-held-in was a common stance for men of breeding and manly boldness, tempered with modesty.”
When Napoleon saw the painting he said to the artist, “You have understood me, my dear David.” So it was a gesture to convey status.

The history books show that Napoleon did not have this gesture in his regular repertoire—in fact, he didn't even sit for the famous painting that featured it—the artist painted him from memory and added the gesture. But the notoriety of this hand gesture highlights how the artist, Jacques-Louis David, understood the authority that the position of the hand and thumb would project.

For thousands of years, the level of status people held in a society would determine the priority order in which they could hold the floor when speaking. The more power or authority you had, the more others would be compelled to stay silent while you spoke. For example, Roman history shows that a low-status person could be executed for interrupting Julius
Caesar. Today, most people live in societies where freedom of speech flourishes and usually anyone who wants to put forward an opinion can do so. In Britain, Australia, and the U.S.A. it's even permissible to interrupt the president or prime minister with your opinion or to give a condescending slow handclap, as happened to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2003 during a television discussion on the Iraqi crisis. In many countries, the hands have taken on the role of “punctuation marks” to regulate turn-taking in conversation. The Hands Raised gesture has been borrowed from the Italians and French, who are the biggest users of “hand talking,” but it is still rarely seen in England, where waving your hands about when you speak is seen as inappropriate or poor style.

In Italy, the order of talking is simple—the person with his hands raised has the floor and does the talking. The listener will have his hands down or behind his back. So the trick is to try to get your hands in the air if you want to get a word in and this can be done either by looking away and then raising them or by touching the other person's arm to suppress their hand as you raise yours. Many people assume that when Italians talk they are being friendly or intimate because they continually touch each other, but in fact, each is attempting to restrict the other's hands and take the floor.

In this chapter we'll evaluate some of the most common hand and thumb gestures in widespread use.

Watching how a person summarizes a discussion giving both points of view can reveal whether they have a bias one way or another. They usually hold one hand palm up and articulate
each point and then give the opposing points on the other hand. Right-handed people reserve their favored point of view for their right hand and left-handers favor their left.

Using hand gestures grabs attention, increases the impact of communication, and helps individuals retain more of the information they are hearing. At the University of Manchester in England, Geoffrey Beattie and Nina McLoughlin conducted a study where volunteers listened to stories featuring cartoon characters such as Roger Rabbit, Tweetie Pie, and Sylvester the Cat. For some listeners, a narrator added hand gestures such as moving the hands up and down quickly to show running, a waving movement to demonstrate a hair dryer, and arms wide apart to show a fat opera singer. When the listeners were tested ten minutes later, those who had seen the hand gestures had up to a third higher response when recalling the details of the stories, demonstrating the dramatic effect hand gestures have on our recall ability.

In this chapter, we'll examine fifteen of the most common hand gestures you're likely to see every day and we'll discuss what to do about them.

Recently a friend visited us at home to discuss our forthcoming skiing holiday. In the course of the conversation she sat back in her chair, smiled broadly, rubbed her palms together rapidly, and exclaimed, “I can hardly wait!” With her Raised-Palms-Rub she had told us nonverbally that she expected the trip to be a big success.

Showing positive expectancy

Rubbing the palms together is a way in which people communicate positive expectation. The dice thrower rubs the dice between his palms as a sign of his positive expectancy of winning, the master of ceremonies rubs his palms together and says to his audience, “We have been looking forward to hearing our next speaker,” and the excited salesperson struts into the sales manager's office, rubs his palms together, and says excitedly, “We've just received a big order!” However, the waiter who comes to your table at the end of the evening rubbing his palms together and asking, “Anything else, sir?” is nonverbally telling you that he has expectancy of a good tip.

The speed at which a person rubs their palms together signals whom he thinks will receive the positive benefits. Say, for example, you want to buy a home and you visit a real estate agent. After describing the property you want, the agent rubs his palms together quickly and says, “I've got just the right house for you!” In this way the agent has signaled that he expects the results to be to
your
benefit. But how would you feel if he rubbed his palms together very
slowly
as he told you that he had the ideal property? He'd seem sneaky or devious and you'd get the feeling that he expected the results to benefit him, not you.

Salespeople are taught to use the Palm-Rub gesture when describing products or services to prospective buyers, and to use a fast hand action to avoid putting buyers on the defensive. When a buyer quickly rubs his palms together and says, “Let's see what you have to offer!” it signals that he's expecting to see something good and might buy.