We Can Read Others' Body Language, But Not Our Own

My favorite "research translation" site, BPS Research Digest, reports a new study that provides an interesting counterpoint to yesterday's post about how, after seeing just 30 seconds of video of teachers (with the sound off), research subjects were able to predict the evaluations given by students who had these same teachers for 16 weeks.  This study by Wilhelm Hoffman and his colleagues found that, although outside observers can detect personality characteristics by watching a videotape of others, when people watch videotapes of themselves, they don't detect these characteristics.  In other words, because of some kind of cognitive blindspot or "egocentric bias" we are able to decode others' nonverbal behavior, but not our own.  As BPS summarizes:

The key question was whether seeing their non-verbal behaviour on video would allow the participants to rate their personality in a way that was consistent with their earlier scores on the implicit test. Long story short - they weren't able to. The participants' extraversion scores on the implicit test showed no association with their subsequent explicit ratings of themselves, and there was no evidence either that they'd used their non-verbal behaviours (such as amount of eye contact with the camera) to inform their self-ratings.

This research is part of a long line of studies that show people can be remarkably clueless to their own behavior and how others perceive them. As I have written here before, if this research is valid, it means that you -- as a leader or follower -- should come to grips with the fact that others' perceptions of your actions are probably a lot more accurate than your own.  It seems we are all, to some degree, living in a fool's paradise. 

Check-out the BPS story and you will see that this may happen, in part, because "One answer could lie in cognitive dissonance - the need for us to hold consistent beliefs about ourselves. People may well be extremely reluctant to revise their self-perceptions, even in the face of powerful objective evidence."  In other words, we don't decode data about ourselves very well because our brains some "defend" against challenges to our sense of self. We believe what we believe about ourselves, evidence be dammed!

This helps explain a lot of things, for example why the Zogby survey a couple years ago found that over one-third of American's reported being bullied at work and yet less than 1% ever ever reported bullying others.

P.S. The reference is Hofmann, W., Gschwendner, T., & Schmitt, M. (2009). The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self- and observer-inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues. European Journal of Personality, 23 (4), 343-366

Comments

[Burcu Felekoglu]

Bob,
Thanks for this post. This reminded me the Johari Window concept which is a graphic model of awareness in interpersonal relations developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in the 1950s. Their model has four quadrants: open, blind, hidden and the unknown. I think it is a handy conceptual model to understand how behavior, feelings, and motivation known to self and known to others (which is the open quadrant) constitute the basis for interaction between people as these are commonly understood.

I thought this might be of interest to people who find your post interesting.

P.S. More about the Johari Window can be found in Luft, J. (1984) Group Processes-An introduction to group dynamics. Mayfield Publishing Company, Palo Alto.

Kind Regards
Burcu

[jeffrrogers.wordpress.com]

Bob,

Interesting topic and one I believe applies to everyone. In my opinion people usually have a higher opinion of their selves than others do. This trait is ingrained in their personality, along with defensive mechanisms, from the competitive environments we all are part of in our daily life. Being aware of others' opinion of you and being able to be critical of yourself could definitely go a long way in both your professional and personal life.

I recently read an article from the Wall Street Journal that relates this subject and to my life as an MBA student; check it out of you have time:

http://www.business.unr.edu/faculty/simmonsb/badm720/wsjmbaskills.pdf

-Jeff

[David Hinde]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for a great post. Not so much thanks for introducing me to yet another great Blog, the BPS, how I’ll ever read all these blogs I’m subscribed to I don’t know!
I do a lot of executive coaching work, and one of the approaches we use is to try and make people more aware of their behaviour using various exercises. Once they are truly aware of how they are acting it is fairly easy to get them to change their behaviours. From my own experience I would say the affect of cognitive dissonance varies from person to person. Some people seem very able to take on new ideas about their personalities and behaviours and some do not. The easier it is for people to do this, the quicker they are to learn.
There’s a lot of interesting ideas about increasing people’s self awareness in Tim Gallwey’s great series of books on sports and business development, The Inner Game series
Kind regards

Dave

[John Caddell]

Bob, I remember playing golf once and watching a guy lining up his shot in the fairway up ahead. "Oh, no! That guy has no chance!" I thought--he was aimed directly at the woods to his left, instead of toward the green, and of course that's where his shot went.

When I reached the same fairway, I carefully lined up, and hit the ball in the exact place the other guy had. What was easy for me to see in others was hidden from myself.

It's very difficult to rise above one's own self and view our actions from the outside. If I could just figure out how to do that, not only would I be a better manager, I'd also improve my golf game!

regards, John