What the Shoulders Say About Us
The most ignored area of our body
communicates elegantly if we will but observe.
I remember as a child my mother
saying, stand up straight, shoulders back, chin high. What I didn’t realize was
that she was telling me this because of what I was communicating to her with my
posture and shoulders. I was nonverbally saying, “I am having a bad day because
my friends can’t come out and play.” Perhaps she learned it from her mother or
perhaps from her classical training in ballet, but she instinctively read my
body language and used that to communicate back to me. Who knows perhaps this
was my first lesson on nonverbals of the shoulders, in any case, it has served
me well ever since. I say that because as I look back over my life there hasn’t
been a day that I haven’t used the information from the shoulders to help me
understand others.
While most of the literature on body
language is inordinately fixated on the face, I think it worthwhile to consider
what the shoulders can reveal about us. It is rare that the shoulders are
mentioned in the nonverbal literature and when people are asked about the
topic, they just shrug their shoulders, and that is the irony of it. The
shoulders are there, very prominent, they hold up our clothes, they shape what
others think of us, they reveal our health and emotions, and they assist us in
communicating, yet most people ignore them.
Morris, the famous zoologist, and
David Givens, the famous anthropologist , have talked about how wide muscular
shoulders, as found on the statue of David, represent strength and virility. It
is also something the Greeks particularly valued, as shown in their kouros
statues with “V” shaped young men. There is probably a genetic component to
this as Morris argues that we associate positive attributes to males who have
that mesomorphic “V” look (wide shoulders narrow hips), we see on athletes.
Perhaps this explains why women swoon when soccer player David Beckham takes
off his shirt. Here the shoulders are communicating health and vitality and
from an evolutionary perspective, as David Givens would say, there would be
biological advantages to selecting mates with these features.
We are so subconsciously attracted
to this “V” shape so much so that men’s jackets are purposefully padded on the
shoulders to insure that we achieve this shape. I once heard a tailor telling a
client that he could add extra padding to the shoulders if he wished: a hint
the man should have taken since he was unfortunately pear shaped.
The
shoulders communicate vitality but they can also communicate dominance and
hierarchy. Over my career I have interviewed a lot
of criminals and I always made it a point to ask how they assessed their
victims before they acted out. Over and over three things stood out, how their
victims looked (frail, weak, not athletic), their overall situational awareness
(never go after someone who sees you first), and their arm swing (vigorous arm
movement or passive subdued). And so to a criminal, our own intra-species
predators, as Robert Hare would call them, how the shoulders look is a key
factor for those who seek to prey on us. As one psychopath said to me, and this
was very telling, “silverbacks don’t go after silverbacks, they go after
everything else.” Good point.
No
matter what branch of the military you observe, one things stands out: their
shoulders say look at me, I am a leader; follow me. This is part of
establishing hierarchy, but it is also how we demonstrate respect. This is
especially so at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider at the Arlington Cemetery,
where pride and respect is reflected in the posture and the shoulders of those
who tirelessly guard those tombs. Even during hurricanes those dedicated
soldiers, ramrod straight, shoulders back, communicate that they value the
solemn sacrifice of others. You can’t do that by slouching the shoulders and so
here is a simple behavior that communicates so much.
Shoulders
help us to communicate respect and reverence, but they also help us to
communicate happiness and joy. Belly dancers in
Beirut shimmy their shoulders as do Samba dancers in Bahia, a world away to
communicate sensuality and joy. Dancing around the world celebrates the human
spirit and invariably it involves the shoulders. After all, what would carnival
in Brazil be like without shoulders moving rhythmically?
As
with dancing, shoulders reveal what is in the heart and mind very effectively.
So much so that they can even be used to gauge depression. Years ago a well known forensic
psychiatrist in the Washington, DC area gave me some valuable insight. He said,
“Many of the patients I see are depressed and even before they open their
mouths I can see it in their shoulders – slumped and weighty – you rarely see
any movement.” And he was right of course.
Over
the years I have dealt with individuals who have been diagnosed as clinically
depressed. In each of those cases I could certainly see shoulders that didn’t
defy gravity, shoulders that lacked spontaneous movement, shoulders seemingly
weighed down by the weight of their malady. And while a child coming home from
school may demonstrate slumped shoulders for a few minutes or hours, the
clinically depressed may be like this for months or years. In time, if not
corrected, it shapes how they are perceived.
Without
realizing it, everyday we use the shoulders to communicate nonverbally what we
think. When someone asks us, “Which way is it to the freeway?” and we
immediately shrug the shoulders, elevating them quickly and emphatically, this
is our way of saying, “I really don’t know.” Nothing more needs to be said
either here or in Borneo; it is a universal gesture. If we decide to
answer that question verbally we will most likely simultaneously shrug our
shoulders also to potentiate the message without realizing it. We do it because
it emphasizes what we are saying. This quick gravity defying behavior (lifting
up or shrugging of the shoulders) positively reinforces what was said. We have
greater confidence in others when we see the nonverbal confirmation of the
verbal message.
Over
the years, after doing thousands of interviews, one of the things that I
observed, which unfortunately had not been written about in the literature, was
how the shoulders betrayed those who lacked confidence or who were outright lying. I found that when people
are unsure of what they are saying or they lack confidence, their shoulders
tend to reflect that uncertainty. As they answer a question, they will say
something such as, “I am positive he wasn’t here yesterday,” and as they do so,
you see the shoulders or perhaps just one shoulder rise up slightly or slowly.
This muted or slow inching up of the shoulders says, subconsciously, I lack
confidence in what I am saying.
Clinicians
have found this useful when they talk to patients and ask, “Are you going to
take your medications as I have instructed?” and they answer back with a slight
shoulder rise, they know something is up. As one primary care doctor told me,
“invariably they don’t want to come out and say what is on their mind: they
don’t like taking that medication or it causes them a
stomach upset. So rather than speak up they answer with a shoulder up or
slightly raised.” For the caring clinician this serves as a great opportunity
to ask, “What is your experience with this drug and has it caused you
problems?” Observing the shoulders as they inch up should serve as a starting
for even more questions to determine what are the issues.
The
shoulder rise, is not indicative of deception (there is no single behavior
indicative of deception) and it must not be construed that way but rather as an
indicator of lack of confidence. It should serve as a warning that the person
does not fully back up what they are saying. For example, if a manager asks,
“Will this get done by Tuesday?” and the person answers “Yes,” but that one
shoulder rises slowly as they answer, there are issues. My next question to
would be, “What could interfere with this getting done?” And that is when you
hear, “Well, I have two kids that are sick right now and . . . ,” and you
realize that is why they subconsciously did that
behavior. As I said in my book Louder Than Words, “the body reveals what
the mind conceals.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201205/what-the-shoulder
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