ボディランゲージの解釈
But also, that's not what we're here for.
Anyway, rant, rant.
No, I see where it's coming from.
And how, I think especially as you as an American, as a foreigner,
you might have found yourself in a space where your norm does not align with the rest of the room's norm,
and you unintentionally created an impression that you didn't plan to,
and you might have had to negotiate that in a certain way,
both in a pretty harmless way, but can be a frustrating way as well, I can imagine.
But that's such a... this really warrants a nuanced approach,
because I really like what you said about how if you get distracted by
quote-unquote body languages, you could be missing out of the whole point of having this conversation at all.
And it's like a body language quote. I'm gonna put quotes around body language everywhere now.
By default. It's not a language I think we agree, but like, yeah.
But I feel like if you focus too much on the body language,
and it's a quick sort of easy way to latch on to as a signifier, right?
And like you said, a lot of us don't have...
What's the... I learned the technical term for this. It's called negative capabilities, I think.
It's basically a space to withhold judgment.
Like, a lot of us are uncomfortable withholding the judgment.
Yeah, okay. All right. I don't know the term, but I think I know what you're getting at. Yeah.
And if you can sort of like quickly ascribe meaning or impression or tones
of the other person based on how they present themselves,
it kind of removes that anxiety of like, who is this person, right?
Because a lot of us find it uncomfortable to not be able to judge it.
And the judgment can be misleading,
but it's still more comfortable to have sort of a conclusion to jump to
than to withhold that and be like, hold on, what is the point here?
Or like, hey, he really looks like XYZ, but I'm just gonna hold that thought for a second
and actually try to listen to what he's trying to say.
I think that's not very easy for many of us.
Definitely not.
And also, I think it's particularly difficult if you're not exposed to
a lot of people with a lot of different communication style.
You know, if you have been exposed to relatively monotype people
of similar cultural background, body language background, so to say,
your judgment might indeed be accurate enough, right?
Because, you know, you have lived in the shared context for long enough
and you can kind of get each other.
You have to remember, as soon as you're talking to someone out of the shared context,
or maybe even if you live in the same shared context,
you might want to look at them in a different eye once in a while.
And it's really important.
And I think if you have had enough experience of being sort of pleasantly surprised,
pleasantly betrayed, sort of, by the initial impression that you made in your head, right?
Then I think enough of that experience makes you question your own judgment and be like,
maybe I should hold on for a sec, right?
But if you don't have a lot of that impression or a lot of that growing up,
it's very easy to see he is wearing this and therefore he must be X, Y, Z.
Or like, this person is standing in such and such way,
and therefore this person must be mean, you know?
Yep, 100%.
I think I want to, like, capture that.
And then I want to say it again for the people that aren't listening.
So anxiety over ambiguity, holding that, right?
That sort of, I've made a judgment, but I'm not landing the judgment on this person.
Until I hear what they have to say, you know that, right?
Yes, psychologically, we might have automatic biases filtering in,
but holding it and trying to pause that is going to help you to actually hear
and communicate with this person.
And that's the only way to do it, especially if you're stepping outside of those, like,
singular, bubbled, not necessarily a bad thing, depending on where you are.
But, like, if you're in within a bubble and you know everybody's tactics,
now you're getting closer to understanding everybody's individual traits,
but they all just happen to be more similar.
But that's one situation.
判断のプロセス
It's really, I think, that desire for there to be no anxiety over a situation,
that you might make those decisions.
And for the people that do it, it's really obvious.
It's, like, really obvious when somebody has, like,
you just did that and that's what happens, right?
Like, I saw this and that person is this.
Or I saw that and that person now means this or something, right?
It's clearly settling, it's bypassing any type of uncertainty for them.
And it's making it feel comfortable.
This is, and I won't separate myself from this, right?
This is for, it's what people do with a lot of things,
especially ones that we don't have the energy or time or bandwidth to hold,
is we bypass it, right?
I've made my decision.
I looked at that thing.
That thing gave me the flags that I'm used to.
I went right to the end because I don't have time to,
you know, nitpick and, like, detail it.
So it's human, but it is definitely a huge concern, let's say,
if you're really trying to communicate with other people to start.
Right, right.
I think a lot of the times this kind of quick judgment
is out of our, like, flight or flight response, fight or flight response, right?
You know, if I see someone in, like, a dark alley holding a knife
and I'm the only person on the same alley, I better run the other way.
And that's a quick judgment I made.
And maybe this person...
Maybe he just wanted to sell you knives.
I don't know.
Right, right.
Or, like, maybe this person just bought a brand new, you know, knife.
And they're just testing it out in the alleyway, you know?
And, like, he's just, like, really excited.
I don't know.
Just having a good time, you know?
Right.
You know, I'm just talking extremes here, but, like, basically...
Yeah, I know, but, yeah.
And there are times like that that would, like, save you a life.
But, like, many times that also misleads us and also...
And I also think, because this is such, like, a lizard brain part of us, right?
Like, it's, like, such a deep and, like, a very almost, uh...
Uh, what do you call it?
The...
Primal?
Primal, yes.
Yeah, very primal part of our brain.
Yes, we're syncing.
And, yeah, it's such a deep, deeply primal part of us.
Primal part of our brain that, like, you know, we kind of forget that that's our default mode.
And remembering that that is our default mode, I think, is number one step.
To, like, realize that we would do anything to remove uncomfortableness of not judging yet.
Yeah.
And this, I think, is basically why critical thinking is so hard.
Because it asks you to, like, hold on a sec, let's look at it the other way, right?
Or, like, hold on a sec, is it too good to be true, right?
And a lot of the things like that is difficult cognitively
because we're so wired at the primal level to, like, jump to the conclusion so hard.
And...
But, yeah, I think being aware of it helps.
And then also exposing yourself to, like, what I just said about
exposing yourself to these mini experiences of being surprised,
like, realizing, hopefully in, like, a less harmful way that,
oh, I was wrong about this person.
And then enough of that experience, I think, should give you a little break
before you hit the gas on, like, jumping onto the conclusion.
Or at least give you a bit more buffer time to, like, think for a second
rather than jumping to the conclusion.
Because, yeah, I mean, like, I am not an exception to this either.
I do, like, I mean, actually a lot of people tell me that I'm judgy.
But, like, I just, my face is judgmental, all right?
Look, there's an instinct.
I like, we can come back to how people call you judgy in a second.
But the, like, the extreme, right?
Where you took it with a knife bit is, I think, is crucial.
Because sometimes in a case where you're just, like, you know,
oh, I am in a meeting and I'm thinking this other person is just all high and mighty
because they're, like, you know, sitting a little bit more open, right?
Than I happen to be.
Yeah.
That's not the same, right?
It's like the severity is not the same, right?
ボディランゲージと批判的思考
So in that moment, yeah, they might be a little cocky, right?
But is that a problem right now, right?
Is it that they're doing that?
Or is it that what they're saying and what they are doing as, like,
their actions throughout the time here is something that might be problematic?
I mean, sometimes people have a very, sometimes people's, like, sort of
how their nonverbal expression of themselves
don't match their verbal expressions of themselves.
Yes.
And so if you just jump on to this nonverbal part
of all of the body language cues that they're giving, if you just focus on that,
then you miss out on the verbal expression of what they're saying and vice versa as well, right?
So as a whole, I think these are both data, I guess, that we can collect about the other person
and that specific situation, right?
And again, this is another quick conclusion jumping that we often do is, like,
you extrapolate from one instance and decide this person must be like this all the time.
And then that's just simply not the case.
Yeah, it's just not.
But we do that all the time to this, like, I mean, to other people, you know?
And she's grumpy one time and now she's always grumpy.
Yeah, yeah, that's, oh my god, yeah.
I mean, there's, never mind the gender problem, right?
With that in terms of, like, the way that they make assumptions.
Because, like, you know, man versus woman type thing in the workplace.
But it just gets magnified, right?
You're starting from the baseline.
It gets magnified.
And because all of this is coming from our internalized biases, our implicit biases.
And so many of this are helping us jump to these conclusions.
And sort of the only sort of way to avoid jumping to the conclusions.
And if we're jumping to conclusions, we're frequently wrong about it too.
And it is to take time.
It is simply to not jump, but maybe take a step.
And then see if that's, like, you know, really the case.
And then see, take another step, right?
Like, that's the only way to stop us from jumping to a wrong conclusion.
And to do that, we need critical thinking.
At the very least, there should be a form of, like, getting into what it means to ask
things in that way.
Ask about things in that way.
And because I also think that everybody should have a version of a humanities investigation,
right?
Because I don't think that, like, just jumping into the science territory gives you this
type of ability to pause and consider, right?
No, no.
You know?
And so it's, like, we need people.
It turns out we need to treat everybody as a person.
And that means taking in all of the features of them, understanding that some of them is
going to be a pattern that we see with people a lot.
And sometimes it's going to match exactly.
And sometimes it's going to be a little off.
And sometimes you're just going to have to see how this person is when you're interacting
with them.
And that's really uncomfortable.
So we start to skip it.
And honestly, no judgment for some of it, because we start to skip it so that we don't
have to hold all that anxiety, that ambiguity, that grayness.
It's hard.
And it's discomforting.
It's not a fun thing to hold.
It's stressful to our brains.
Yes.
So, you know, like, just jump in, right?
Jump to the end and you can move on is one approach.
Versus hopefully, and we hope everyone listening, especially the people in the back, are listening
to, you cannot just jump from body language to personality or their intention or their
meaning.
But if you begin to watch somebody and try to understand them on the whole, you might
learn something about them and how that sort of, like, inner person, the things they try
to say, the things they do, the way they act, how they might come together to tell you
about the person.
But that involves a lot of work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I completely agree.
And I think what sort of, like, science version of critical thinking helps you, though, is
that once you do enough of it, I feel like it has basically became my default circuit.
ボディランゲージの理解
So, like, now I suspect everything.
Yeah, yeah, that's fair, right?
I think I hold very much the same, right, even though I've shifted and, like, you know,
balance beamed myself between subjects.
I question everything and I do not trust it up at face value.
That can make general dynamics between other people hard because that's not how everybody
approaches things.
So there is a level of, I think, releasing that in order to, like, be able to communicate
and, like, be with people.
But there is also a real, really, really valuable reservoir to remember that, like,
when you ask the question, you're asking it because you are, like, I want to understand
how this is supposedly actually involved.
That's going to help me learn.
It's going to help this be maybe more effective.
It's going to help me extrapolate better, right?
Right, because, like, when I say I question everything, I don't just question other people.
I question myself, like, my thoughts, right?
And, like, you know, is this me speaking or is this my PMS, right?
Or, like, is this...
Yeah, I mean, is this me, the hormones, the psychic, you know, dopamines?
What is it?
Right, right.
Or, like, am I just a little hungry, you know?
Like, am I sad or am I hungry?
Am I sleepy?
Like, I think these are, like, a lot of the times I find it that I have sort of, over
the course of many years of science training, became sort of, like, a default circuit of
thinking for me.
Those perspectives and experiences of others at the same time.
I think there's probably way more to talk about in here.
So maybe to close out for our listeners, what do we want to say?
That's the last.
I would summarize everything.
We want to say...
We started with body language.
We don't think body language is legit language because it's too individualistic and too situation
specific and it's too inconsistent.
And generally, we agree with the videos and the responses of the video, therefore.
Yeah, and we wanted to share that with everyone here because it's so prominent to be thinking
about body language means this thing, but a lot of it, like you said, it's likely just
anxiety over ambiguity.
It's driving you to jump to a conclusion, right?
So try to hold it a little bit if you want to challenge yourself, you know, to listen
to people, to engage with people in a closer way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's it.
And both the verbal language and the body language can be a source of information to
understand the person you're communicating with because, you know, just only one of is
not the whole picture.
And frequently, people have mismatch of verbal expression and non-verbal expression.
So you got to take in as a whole.
And I think those are the three main points.
エピソードのまとめ
Yeah.
Well, I hope everybody takes something away from this, maybe a reimagining of body language,
maybe a loosening of the strict meanings behind them.
Maybe you even begin customizing your inner circuitry, right?
Sort of the ways in which you think about this.
So, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great.
All right.
Thanks for bringing this reel.
Well, you know, thanks to Alex Falcone and Professor Neil for the reel.
It's cool.
So hope everyone enjoys and, I don't know, try not to steeple your fingers or cross your
arms too much or something.
No, I mean, I mean, think about it.
That's all.
Okay.
All right.
Bye.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
