Table Of ContentRETHINKING BODY LANGUAGE
Challenging all of our old assumptions, Rethinking Body Language builds on the
most recent cutting-edge research to offer a new theoretical perspective on this
subject that will transform the way we look at other people. In contrast to the
traditional view that body language is primarily concerned with the expression
of emotions and the negotiation of social relationships, Geoffrey Beattie argues
instead that gestures reflect aspects of our thinking but in a different way to
verbal language. Critically, the spontaneous hand movements that people make
when they talk often communicate a good deal more than they intend.
This ground-breaking book takes body language analysis to a whole new
level. Engagingly written by one of the leading experts in the field, it shows how
we can detect deception in gesture–speech mismatches and how these
unconscious movements can give us real insight into people’s underlying
implicit attitudes.
Geoffrey Beattie is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University. He is the
author of 20 books and over 100 journal articles, and was awarded the Spearman
Medal by the BPS in recognition of outstanding published work in psychology.
He has presented a number of television programmes and was also the resident
on-screen psychologist for 11 series of Big Brother, specialising in body
language and social behaviour.
RETHINKING BODY LANGUAGE
__________________________________
How Hand Movements Reveal Hidden Thoughts
Geoffrey Beattie
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Beattie, Geoffrey.
Rethinking body language: how hand movements reveal hidden
thoughts / Geoffrey Beattie. – 1 Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-53888-6 (hb) — ISBN 978-0-415-53889-3 (softcover)
1. Body language. 2. Gesture—Psychological aspects. 3. Hand. I. Title.
BF637.N66.B4297 2016
153.6′9—dc23
2015034712
ISBN: 978-0-415-53888-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-53889-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-88018-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Joanna
by Florence Production, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
This book is dedicated to
Emeritus Professor Alan North,
former Vice-President and Dean of
the University of Manchester,
and valued friend.
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: a new perspective on an old problem
2. Two separate languages?
3. Where the action is
4. ‘A remarkable biological miracle’
5. Images in the hands, images in the mind
6. Different vehicles of meaning
7. Gestures and the frustrations of everyday life
8. Speech is only half the story
9. Who or what the hands portray
10. How our eyes are drawn to the gestures of others
11. ‘The gesture limits itself intelligently to what matters’
12. Manipulating the salience of individual elements to see how gestures
respond
13. How metaphoric gestures affect us
14. Putting iconic gestures into TV advertisements
15. How iconic gestures can leak the truth
16. Unconscious gesture can leak unconscious attitude
17. Concluding remarks
References
Index
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a continuation of some ideas which I first developed in Visible
Thought, published by Routledge in 2003. Since that time I have continued to
actively research this area of how gestures articulate our thoughts alongside
speech, and this book describes much of this new, and hopefully exciting,
research. The book thus necessarily owes a great deal to my fellow researchers,
and the co-authors of the various published empirical papers, and I would like to
thank very publicly Brian Butterworth (who supervised my PhD at the
University of Cambridge), Rima Aboudan (who did a PhD with me at the
University of Sheffield), and Jane Coughlan, Heather Shovelton, Judith Holler,
Jamie Ross, Kate Webster, Doron Cohen and Laura Sale (all PhD students,
research assistants or research fellows at the University of Manchester). Doron
and Laura started off as gesture researchers but became experts in deception! I
would also particularly like to thank Laura McGuire (working with me now at
Edge Hill University) for everything basically. All of my co-researchers have
made very significant contributions to the work I report here. I have tried to tie
this body of empirical work together, in order to demonstrate why the
spontaneous hand movements generated in talk are so significant.
I would also like to single out a number of academics in particular for special
thanks. I have been inspired throughout my academic career by the imaginative
and creative thinking of David McNeill, now Emeritus Professor at the
University of Chicago, whom I regard as both a mentor and a friend. He is the
inspiration behind much of the work I do in this area. I would also like to thank
Professor Marcel Danesi from the University of Toronto and Editor of
Semiotica. Both of these academics have been incredibly supportive of my work
and this support has been invaluable, especially over the past few years. Alan
North (to whom this book is dedicated) and Christine Rogers were there when I
needed them, and I owe them an extreme debt of gratitude.
I am fortunate now to be working in a great university (Edge Hill) that
encourages fresh thinking and allows important ideas to develop and flourish,
and I would like to thank the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Dean of the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, George Talbot, and the Vice Chancellor, John
Cater, for their faith in me from the beginning and their constant, unwavering
support. I think that I can help make Edge Hill University what it aspires to be.
Description:Challenging all of our old assumptions about the subject, Rethinking Body Language builds on the most recent cutting-edge research to offer a new theoretical perspective on this subject that will transform the way we look at other people. In contrast to the traditional view that body language is pri
