Posture
Posture or a person's bodily stance communicates a variety of messages. Posture can be used to determine a participant’s degree of attention or involvement, the difference in status between communicators, and the level of fondness a person has for the other communicator, depending on body “openness”. Studies investigating the impact of posture on interpersonal relationships suggest that mirror-image congruent postures, where one person’s left side is parallel to the other person’s right side, leads to favorable perception of communicators and positive speech; a person who displays a forward lean or decreases a backward lean also signifies positive sentiment during communication.
There are many different types of posture. Some of these postures include: slouching, towering, legs spread, jaw thrust, shoulders forward, and arm crossing. These nonverbal behaviors can indicate feelings and attitudes toward another person.
Posture can be situation-relative. “A nineteen-year-old college student from New York will use different postures than a Mid-western housewife, and a construction worker in the state of Washington will use different postures than a salesman in Chicago Another example of posture being situational on more of a daily basis can be described in Driver’s book: “Four situational norms of posture would be, Flirting, where the norm is 60% eye contact, Job Interview with a relaxed and open body language, Business Negotiation where the norm is leaning back while steeping and Buying a Car where most have hands on hips with feet more than ten inches apart.”
Read more about this topic: Nonverbal Communication
Famous quotes containing the word posture:
“If one’s posture is upright, one has no need to fear a crooked shadow.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The Dada object reflected an ironic posture before the consecrated forms of art. The surrealist object differs significantly in this respect. It stands for a mysterious relationship with the outer world established by man’s sensibility in a way that involves concrete forms in projecting the artist’s inner model.”
—J.H. Matthews. “Object Lessons,” The Imagery of Surrealism, Syracuse University Press (1977)