Unaware of Body Language

Another area to add to my recent fascination with the conscious mind’s obliviousness is body language, or non-verbal communication. How we position ourselves in space, the way we move our eyebrows, and the tone of our voice are all important factors in our communication, but they are factors that we usually don’t have a lot of control over. In some instances, like formal job interviews or conversations we know are important, we can be more aware of our body language and focus in on these external cues that we don’t always notice, but in most conversations we usually just attend to the spoken word, and let the non-verbal communication flow below the surface (I want to note that the three examples of body language that I mentioned don’t even scratch the surface of all our non-verbal communication).

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson write the following in their book The Elephant in the Brain, “We’re generally aware of the overall gist of one another’s body language, but we often struggle to identify the specific behaviors that give rise to our impressions.” From an evolutionary standpoint, according to the authors, it seems strange that our brains should be consciously ignorant of the information conveyed through non-verbal communication. It would make sense for our powerful brains to be attuned to any form of communication between humans to give us an extra edge in successfully moving through the world. Why we would not develop these skills seems counter-intuitive.

“Humans are strategically blind to body language,” they write, “because it often betrays our ugly, selfish, competitive motives.” Our non-verbal communication, and that of our friends, allies, family members, and competitors can reveal the sub-text behind the text. It can give away our true feelings or convey sentiments that cannot be stated out loud. By knowing but not knowing what is being transmitted through non-verbal communication, we express a message without being guilty of directly stating what we were trying to communicate. It gives us a powerful tool for sending messages in a covert manner with plausible deniability built in. This can help us and others get things done, but it also serves as an additional layer of protection with our interlocutors and outsiders. This is part of the reason that Simler and Hanson argue that we evolved strong non-verbal communication cues but did not evolve a conscious mechanism for identifying and picking up on them in many cases.