A. Pre-viewing

Before watching a video about how people’s body positions influence both others and their own brain, familiarize yourself with the following entries:

1. prejudice - an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge
2. nonverbal - not using spoken language
3. dominance - more important, strong, or noticeable than anything else of the same type
4. primate - a member of the most developed and intelligent group of mammals, including humans, monkeys, and apes
5. chronic – (especially of a disease or something bad) continuing for a long time
6. congenitally - describes a disease or condition that exists at or from birth
7. heckle - to interrupt a public speech or performance with loud unfriendly statements or questions
8. quicksand - deep wet sand that sucks in anyone trying to walk across it
9. cortisol – is a steroid hormone; It is released in response to stress
10. "high-power" poses - expansive and open postures, for example, standing with hands on hips and feet spread
11. “low-power” poses - contractive and closed postures, for example, wrapping arms around torso, crossing ankles, lowering chin
12. competence - the ability to do something well
13. mediate - to talk to two separate people or groups involved in a disagreement to try to help them to agree or find a solution to their problems
14. fraud - the crime of getting money by deceiving people
15. impostor – a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others

B. Comprehension

Watch the video and answer the following questions about the people in the video

1. The speaker is a …
   1. physiologist.
   2. sociologist.
   3. social philologist.
   4. social psychologist.
2. I study prejudice, and I teach at a competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics.” ‘inevitable’ describes something which is…
   1. unexpected.
   2. necessary.
   3. certain to happen
   4. difficult to get rid of
3. According to the speaker, what do we do when we feel powerless?
   
   arms up
   close up
   lift our chin
   pretend we can’t see anyone
   wrap ourselves up
   make ourselves small
   
   Correct! Sorry!Try again!
   Check Show Answer
4. “What we tend to do when it comes to power is that we complement the others’ non-verbals. So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller.”
   To ‘complement’ means…
   1. to show praise or admiration for something
   2. to complete or enhance by providing something additional
   3. to make something seem larger, better, worse, etc than it really is
5. “…if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them. We do the opposite of them.”
   What does ‘to mirror’ mean in the above context?
   1. to look up to
   2. to deal with
   3. to be similar to
6. “You are, you know, you're looking at your notes, you're hunching up, making yourself small.”
   To ‘hunch’ means…
   1. to show praise or admiration for something
   2. to complete or enhance by providing something additional
   3. to make something seem larger, better, worse, etc than it really is

C. Using vocabulary

Complete the following sentences using the words in the box. Use the correct grammatical form of the words

• prejudice
• dominance
• chronically
• congenitally
• heckle
• competence
• mediate
• inevitable
• complement

1. He claims that prejudice against homosexuals would cease overnight if all the gay stars in the country were honest about their sexuality.
2. The music complements her angelic voice perfectly, creating a breath-taking love song of all time.
3. The accident was the inevitable consequence of carelessness.
4. Music Company, Sony, profited from the dominance of CDs during the 80s when superstars like Michael Jackson sold millions of CDs each year.
5. Richards exploded when the two black audience members apparently began to heckle him.
6. School students are chronically sleep deprived. They are always sleepy during the morning classes.
7. Poor Alison is congenitally deaf so she is unable to appreciate the beauty of music.
8. Her competence as a teacher is unquestionable because she is experienced and well-learnt.
9. The two government representatives have succeeded in mediating an end to the war.

D. Verb-noun collocation

1. A collocation is a group of words or terms that occur together more frequently than synonyms of the same words. In the left column below are some collocations consisting of a verb plus a body part, match them with the attitudes and emotions they express, consult a dictionary if you are not sure about the meaning of the verbs:

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2. Please complete the following sentences by selecting the appropriate options which fit their contexts.

1. Peter was so irritated by the idea that he simply curled/ shrugged/ rolled his eyes to show dissatisfaction.
2. Mr. Johnson was furious when he saw his expensive watch was broken. He stamped his feet/ head/ fists  in frustration.
3. He scrunched up his eyes/ face/ fists when he heard his enemy won the competition.
4. It's not enough for us to stand by and stamp/ wring/ clench our hands - we've got to take action.
5. Don't you roll/ curl/ wring your lip at me, young Miss! I know you are frustrated and angry but so am I!
6. She lifted/ banged/ hung her head the moment the judge ordered to send her to jail. She finally felt shameful about her act.
7. Alice crunched/ clenched/ clutched her fists and get ready for a fight.
8. “Where’s Amy?”- “I don’t know,” Sharon shrugged her shoulders/ lips/ face .

Transcription - TED talk by Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

[03:44] I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach at a competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics. I became especially interested in nonverbal expressions of power and dominance. And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? Well, this is what they are.So in the animal kingdom, they are about expanding. So you make yourself big, you stretch out, you take up space, you're basically opening up. It's about opening up. And this is true across the animal kingdom. It's not just limited to primates. And humans do the same thing. (Laughter) So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically, and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment. And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us how universal and old these expressions of power are. This expression, which is known as pride, Jessica Tracy has studied. She shows that people who are born with sight and people who are congenitally blind do this when they win at a physical competition. So when they cross the finish line and they've won, it doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it. They do this. So the arms up in the V, the chin is slightly lifted. What do we do when we feel powerless? We do exactly the opposite. We close up. We wrap ourselves up. We make ourselves small. We don't want to bump into the person next to us. So again, both animals and humans do the same thing. And this is what happens when you put together high and low power. So what we tend to do when it comes to power is that we complement the other's nonverbals. So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them. We do the opposite of them. [05:28]

[13:46] What do you do before you go into a job interview? You do this. Right? You're sitting down. You're looking at your iPhone -- or your Android, not trying to leave anyone out. You are, you know, you're looking at your notes, you're hunching up, making yourself small, when really what you should be doing maybe is this, like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes. So that's what we want to test. Okay? So we bring people into a lab, and they do either high- or low-power poses again, they go through a very stressful job interview. It's five minutes long. They are being recorded. They're being judged also, and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal feedback, so they look like this. Like, imagine this is the person interviewing you. So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled. People hate this. It's what Marianne LaFrance calls "standing in social quicksand." So this really spikes your cortisol. So this is the job interview we put them through, because we really wanted to see what happened. We then have these coders look at these tapes, four of them. They're blind to the hypothesis. They're blind to the conditions. They have no idea who's been posing in what pose, and they end up looking at these sets of tapes, and they say, "Oh, we want to hire these people," -- all the high-power posers -- "we don't want to hire these people. We also evaluate these people much more positively overall." But what's driving it? It's not about the content of the speech. It's about the presence that they're bringing to the speech. We also, because we rate them on all these variables related to competence, like, how well-structured is the speech? How good is it? What are their qualifications? No effect on those things. This is what's affected. These kinds of things. People are bringing their true selves, basically. They're bringing themselves.They bring their ideas, but as themselves, with no, you know, residue over them. So this is what's driving the effect, or mediating the effect. So when I tell people about this, that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me, "I don't -- It feels fake." Right? So I said, fake it till you make it. I don't -- It's not me. I don't want to get there and then still feel like a fraud. I don't want to feel like an impostor. I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm not supposed to be here. [16:03]