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Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts

Hillary’s smile.

Hillary’s smile.

A couple things stood out am I don't think the smiling worked very well for her it looked inappropriate. I was honored by her composure. As a female she couldn't get mad we don't view anger the same way that we do man. She stayed calm and even through most of the debates. His circling and staying close to her did not affect her. As scary as it looked us.

I definitely think that know if she smiles or she doesn't smile it's a no-win situation for her let me send you a little piece as I've done several years of research on :-
It was often a female cover smile women smile to cover their anger men often smile to cover their sadness
It was often a female cover smile women smile to cover their anger men often smile to cover their sadness
What was admirable,  dare I say amazing,  is that n the context of those attacks she remained, for the most part calm centered and focused on speaking. 

One way to put this in perspective is to imagine how a man in terms of gender based stereotype might have been able to or might have responded. I think there would've been quite a bit of screaming and yelling and pointing.













Patti Wood, - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.
     

Clinton and Trump, beyond words: What the handshakes, smiles, grimaces, finger-pointing and sniffles revealed

Clinton and Trump, beyond words: What the handshakes, smiles, grimaces, finger-pointing and sniffles revealed

Douglas Quan
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016
It is often said that for voters, picking a leader has less to do with policy positions and more to do with who you would be most comfortable inviting for dinner. With that in mind, the National Post asked four body-language experts to assess Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s debate performance: Diane Craig, president of Corporate Class, Toronto; Mark Bowden, president of TruthPlane, Toronto; Dave Matsumoto, a psychology professor at San Francisco State University and director of Humintell; and Patti Wood, president of Communication Dynamics, Atlanta.
The handshake
Mark Bowden: Trump gets the advantage position by coming in on the audience’s left side, which means his handshaking hand is forward to the camera, which should make his arm bigger. But Clinton does a countermeasure by extending her arm out so he has to withdraw his arm back closer to his body.
Diane Craig: Trump put his hand on her back; that’s a sign of superiority when you do that.
Facial expressions
DC: Trump has this natural pout when he listens. Both corners of his mouth go down, like when a child is pouting. I don’t know if it’s because he’s used to getting his way. Another thing he does is his eyebrows go down. It’s a definite sign of anger, frustration. Clinton smiled a lot — almost too much. I felt that some of her nervous energy was going into her smile. The amount of smiling she did was betrayed from time to time with deep sighing. It’s a little more difficult to read her facial expressions because of her eyebrows — nothing’s moving. I was trying to watch, it’s like frozen in time.
MB: We saw a look of contempt, a one-sided frown from Trump, and an eye roll when Clinton said she prepared for the evening and ‘I prepared to be president.’ She pretty much had one signature gesture, which was her smile. For the most part, it was effective and well-executed.
Dave Matsumoto: Looking away and rolling his eyes were unmoderated to some extent. So Trump has more of a perception of genuineness. There’s less question about what he’s feeling, whereas Clinton has the same pasted expression throughout, a controlled expression, pursing her lips. Much of the time, her smile was asymmetrical. People might interpret it as a smirk and her laughing off of responses feeds into a perception she’s standoffish.
Patti Wood: Trump has a broad emotional range. He typically gets very happy and smiles a lot, and then he goes all the way to extreme anger. Broad emotional range actually creates likability in candidates. Clinton does not have broad emotional range and that works against her.
Other gestures
MB: Trump’s got some classic gestures that we’ve become used to. He does that OK gesture with his thumb and index finger, and swaps it for the L shape. It’s a precision gesture, he’s detailed. Then his hands squeeze together like a mechanical monkey that plays the cymbals. We also saw the ‘You’re fired’ pointing gesture. Whether we like him or not, at least we’re getting the brand.
PW: He typically has broad high gestures and lots of weapon-like gestures — pointing, jabbing, stabbing, slicing. You only saw the first edges of those so in that way he didn’t look as powerful as he typically does.
DM: Clinton shrugged when asked if she would support the outcome and the will of the people. To me, I don’t know whether that was intentional or not. Probably not. A shoulder shrug raises doubts about the credibility of what she’s saying. It’s typically interpreted as doubt or uncertainty.
Oddities
MB: What was different with Trump this time was the sniff, the big in-draw of air up the nostrils. We hadn’t noticed this before with him. It’s suggesting he’s under more pressure, in that fight or flight area, he’s out of his usual comfort zone. When he talked about his tax returns, he adjusted his microphone. That would be an indicator he’s showing more anxiety. He needs to start adjusting or augment his environment to feel safer or in control.
The split screen
MB: In the split screen, the camera was having to come in closer on Clinton in order to fill the frame; she’s obviously got smaller shoulders than Trump. So her face is always bigger on the screen. It causes her to look more powerful. She was a lot stiller too. Her gestures were more in the frame, so we could see more of her hands, whereas Trump’s gestures were outside of the frame. Good choice of Clinton wearing that block red. That’s aggressive.
DC: That red suit was not an accident, it speaks power. It’s a very structured jacket. There’s nothing distracting about what she wore. Also, Trump makes a lot of noises with his facial expressions when she speaks. He’s so expressive. Even though he doesn’t say anything, it’s noisy. It’s almost like he’s interrupting when she speaks.
PW: Something more subtle that I found interesting is though he said that Clinton did not have stamina, she showed even emotion and continuous solid ground throughout the debate. He started out yelling and gesturing, but about 45 minutes in you saw him gesturing less and grimacing more and placing his weight on his arms on the podium. If you look subtly at the musculature of his face, it pulled down toward the end of the debates, showing fatigue.
The takeaway
DC: Clinton seemed to be more in control of her emotions. When we talk about presence, being in control of emotions is critical. I think it made us more confident in her. She did look presidential, there’s no question about it.
MB: On the whole, the president we’re looking for is the one who can handle pressure. I go for Clinton on that, for sure. Who looked the most presidential? She did. Calm and assertive.
DM: Trump showed he was an emoting human. She showed she was a standoffish, arrogant person. If you watched that debate without words, that’s the impression people would come off with. Many people will see it as an advantage; the president should be above immediate, transient reactions on the spur of the moment. Whereas some people will think he was more genuine and showed more empathy to what the common people are like.
PW: Clinton couldn’t do the full range of things men do: she couldn’t grimace, couldn’t growl. That smile was bizarre in some cases, but I would’ve coached her to do the same thing. It’s a forced choice. She was masterful in how calm and composed she was.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.
     

Are the Presidential Candidates Bullies?

Are the Presidential Candidates Bullies?
Patti Wood MA, CSP
Body Language Expert

Are the Presidential Candidates Bullies? Do you see verbal and body language bulling in the presidential debates and the race? Bullying is defined as making threats, rumors or attacking someone physically or verbally.  If we laugh, clap and repeat with humor when someone is making bulling remarks I think we are condoning bullying.

The candidates have bullied each other and in this article I will list specific things that they do.  Listen to and watch the candidates and imagine a child on the playground saying those things to your five year old. How would you feel? How would you feel if someone said those things about you? Watch the debates with your children and have them count and point out the attacks and jabs.  Stop the recording and talk about what you have seen and ask them their feeling and state yours!

Donald Trump - We see him punctuating almost every sentence with a strong gesture. His attacking, bulling gestures include, finger points that look like stabbing, chops that look like axing and arm sweeps that look like sword moves. In debates he slices, dices and chops the other candidates to pieces.  His weapon like gestures, combined with his growls, scowls and grimaces and loud yelling make him a fearsome bully. This combined with big head and jaw and height and dare I say it, big hands unfortunately make him look like the biggest bully on the playground and unfortunately make him look like the most powerful candidate. He looks like, at least to our primate limbic brains, the aggressive alpha male candidate. A little extra bulling power comes from his normally low, growly voice.  In the analysis of the Debates from the past hundred years the candidate with the lowest voice won. Lower tones in the voice are formed by a larger larynx. Trump is the lion roaring and that sound is scarier and wins over a “nice” candidate. If he’s on the screen, and we’re looking at several other people too, his bulling, his loudness, his gestures, and his expressions all draw our attention straight to him. We can’t take our eyes off a fight, and we look at the person we perceive as winning the fight with more frequency. We don’t look as long at the victim. Our brains make us look to where we see the most threat to us!

Verbally, Trump has called Cruz, a “loser” and “liar.” He has made cruel remarks about the physical appearance of Carly Fiona such as, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”  He has called a female news correspondent a “bimbo.” He has made ugly attacking remarks about Hillary Clinton, Mexicans and Muslims. In one debate after Hillary was late coming back from a bathroom break he bullied her saying "I thought she gave up," Trump said at the rally. "Where did she go? Where did Hillary go? They had to start the debate without her. Phase II. “I know where she went. It's disgusting. I don't want to talk about it."

Ted Cruz - Though he is a bully he is not the biggest bully on the playground.  Overall his gestures are slightly lower and are more darting and short lived making him appear less forceful and confident than he could be. For example, notice the breadth and length of Trump’s gestures. I am not endorsing Trump, rather you need to know that our primitive limbic brains see the candidate with the most powerful, larger, bigger and long lasting body language cues. So even when Cruz bullies with a statement like, “Let’s say I am a maniac and everyone else on this stage is stupid fat and ugly.” He looks like the sly mean bully not the “in your face” bully how Trump can appear.

Bernie Sanders. He has not always been a bully, He previously has had a warm, genuine smile that is the most likable, believable smile of all the candidates. He also, in the past, shows great integrity in his messaging, that his word message tracks and agrees with his body language and vocal cues. In his Super Tuesday speech he was much more negative in his verbal and nonverbal messaging than I have seen him in his other speeches. He made several sour pursed lip expressions and a few downward turned and tight lipped angry looks and looks of disgust. This was a profound contrast for his iconic warm, smiling and likeable image.  He also yelled a lot. Bullying is contagious and he caught it. When Hillary Clinton rudely interrupted and talked over Sanders in the Democratic debate Sanders yelled, “Excuse me I am talking” while swinging his arm up then striking down and out as if he wanted to bring his hand down on her shoulder to throttle her. His gestures are now often large, forceful and attacking. They often go forward to the screen so he is bulling not just the other candidate, but anyone who is for that candidate.

Hillary Clinton - In one debate she said, “Enough is enough if you have something to say to me say it to me directly, I think it is time to end the artful smear you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks and talk about the issues.” Her request to stop being bullied was seen as bulling and got booed by the audience.
Her gestures are smaller though she does chop and strike out at Bernie and as she talks about Trump. I have talked about how her voice is often weak and raspy and shows great vocal strain. I think the effort to keep her voice in a lower more powerful register and speak loudly is straining it. Unfortunately, that strain sounds to a potential voter like a lack of strength, and perhaps a lack of character. I rather like the anger she is showing in current speeches and television appearances. She needs to be angry to fight and look powerful against Trump’s overriding anger. Look at my blogs on anger to note how we read anger as power. Yep, I am saying that she ramp up her anger, but she should not be a bully.

Gender Differences in Anger - Unfortunately, we perceive women’s anger differently than we do a man’s. Research shows that if a man is perceived as emotional he is considered more credible for getting angry. But when the woman was perceived as emotional, participants became surer of their own opinion, even if they considered the woman credible. As the researchers in one study put it: “When a woman expresses anger, this does not just make her seem less credible, but seems to make assessing her credibility irrelevant.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/people-reward-angry-men-but-punish-angry-women-study-suggests_us_561fb57be4b050c6c4a47743)

In research on emotions men show less emotions except for anger. Research across 37 cultures shows that men and women more accurately display gender-stereotypic expressions– men more accurately express anger, contempt and happiness, while women more accurately express fear and happiness.
How do men and women feel when they get angry, researchers have found that men felt less effective and less instrumental when forced to hold their anger in, whereas women didn't feel nearly as constricted when they didn't express their anger directly. They also found a correlation between expressing one's anger outwardly and being assertive in men, but not in women



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.