Years ago I consulted with the producers of a reality TV show where people would select "Mate" (This was before the bachelor and other shows became popular.) They used one of my ideas in their show and had the women smell the sweaty t-shirts of the guys to choose the best smelling guy for them to date.
In my book SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma, I share insights on the four first impression factors—credibility, Likeability, attractiveness, and power. I discuss the various aspects of attractiveness including smell and today I contributed to a magazine article on smell and attractiveness.
Looking for the right smell in your future mate is so interesting because there is a scientific explanation for its importance—the right "scent" is wired to the limbic system. We want mates that would make good babies!
The theory is that women are more attracted to the scent of men who have immune genes that differ from their own so that if they have children, the babies would be more protected from disease. Specifically, women sniff for men's Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) which is the group of genes that affect the immune system.
So now you know one of the reasons you want your guy to smell good! And if you are a gal who has ever asked for a T-shirt from your boyfriend now you know why, and yes I have done that!!!
1Patti Wood
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
Love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is coming this weekend. And with all the usual options off the cards for most of us (thank you, coronavirus) it looks like a movie night in is one of your best options the big romantic day.
This got the team at Casino.org chatting about romantic movies, as well as iconic kissing scenes that make us swoon – and the ones that make us cringe. What is it about watching characters with zero real connection that makes us curl our toes?
We wanted to analyze which on-screen kisses have the most chemistry behind them, so we decided to take a look at three of the key criteria behind a good kiss, and rate some of the most iconic kisses in film against them.
To do this, we teamed up with Patti Wood, an internationally recognized nonverbal communication and human behavior expert. She has conducted years of research in the field of human behavior, so was the ideal person to help us on our quest to find the best and most awkward kisses.
Patti Wood watched hours of iconic kissing footage and rated them on how ‘fully present’, ‘mutual’ and ‘natural’ they were (descriptions at the end).
Using her expertise, she analyzed body language to determine a score out of five for each category and provided detailed analysis on each of the iconic kisses. We then combined the scores to reveal a ‘total chemistry score’.
Which On-Screen Kisses Really Had The Most Chemistry?
Out of all the couples analyzed, the two that came out on top with the most on-screen chemistry were the iconic Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger.
After 32 years of living in a “permanent state of spinsterhood” Bridget finally found her prince charming in one of the most iconic on-screen kisses of all time.
We all love that moment in the movie, but why exactly is that?
As well as the fact you’ve been rooting for Bridget throughout, Patti Wood explains that it’s also got a lot to do with their body language:
“When they kiss, there is lovely “presentness” if I can make up a word. We actually see them go from being aware they are on the street and being watched to blocking all that out so it’s only the two of them.”
“It goes back and forth on who is initiating and doing the work to make the kiss happen but when they kiss he wraps his arms around her, and she again crosses space to go to him, stands on her tip toes and throws her arms around him.”
“It’s the perfect combination of tender sweetness, and then they get hungry for each other. I love how they linger together in the embrace. It indicates symbolically that this kiss will escalate into more and that they will stay with each other.”
So as our expert explains, it’s all about the way the two were present, the back and forth, the embrace, the type of kiss and how it developed.
That’s a whole lot of stuff going into one kiss – no wonder it’s so iconic.
Category One: Fully Present
As mentioned, the analysis was broken down into three main categories. The first one was ‘fully present’ and was scored out of five.
Patti Wood explained that fully present means that both people are focused on each other and that the rest of the world melts away or disappears.
She used her expertise to analyze body language in the scenes to assess just how into the kisses the characters really were.
There was a tie of four front-runners when it came to being fully present in their big kissing scenes: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Brokeback Mountain, The Notebook, and When Harry Met Sally.
The couples in the scenes were able to ignore any chaos which might have been surrounding them, to fully focus on their partner during the kiss.
Let’s dig deeper into Patti Wood’s analysis to see the behavioral signs that made the couples’ kisses a winning or losing moment in this category.
Brokeback Mountain (5/5)
“The rest of the world doesn’t matter, made even more obvious by his wife seeing them kiss and them being oblivious to it.”
“We see a wide range of emotions and body language. We see a hug, a thrust and pushing across a across a great space, a collar hold, a passionate kiss, then they look deeply into each other’s eyes and hold each other to show they love each other before he turns and walks away.
“All saying nonverbally: I desire you, passionately and I love you, but I am denying it.”
The Notebook (5/5)
“Notice how their faces are touching. There is only them, the rest of the world doesn’t matter.”
“Even the reality of the fierce rain pelting them doesn’t affect them.”
The Hunger Games (2/5)
“We see them sit sideways, not turn their bodies fully toward each other and not look deeply into each other eyes. In fact, he avoids eye contact and even looks down.”
Category Two: Mutual
The second scoring system for our kissing criteria was mutuality.
It’s incredible how many kisses in movies are initiated or given by one person making all or most of the effort. The most romantic kisses are those that are mutually given and received.
So out of all our selected iconic kissing scenes, how many of them displayed body language that showed they were one-sided?
Here’s what our body language expert had to say about some of the scenes.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (5/5)
“So good. He comes to find her, but she crosses the divide to come up to his still form. Then he reaches out and draws her in – and even her cat in.”
“I love how they both wrap around each other and push their faces into each other and really smooch together. Look at how her fingers reach out and around him.”
Twilight: Jacob and Bella (1/5)
“I would almost give this a 0, but there is moment before she is repulsed and hits him, where we know she is making a choice and is present for that moment before she makes it.”
Pretty Woman (1/5)
Image: YouTube
“I think that if we are looking again at the initial kiss on her finger to his mouth, it’s all about her giving the kiss.”
Category Three: Natural
The third factor that Patti Wood was assessing was how natural the kisses were.
To score highly here and appear natural, a movie kiss needed to look like it was a real kiss between real people and not overly done or manipulated.
Here’s what she had to say:
Brokeback Mountain (5/5)
“You have the animal passion and ferocity and the tender holding and eye contact. There is not artifice at all. It’s a raw kiss.”
Bridget Jones Diary (5/5)
“Even though it checks the boxes on a Hollywood romantic kiss, the way they look at each other before during and after the kiss and how the kiss change and continue is very much like a real kiss.”
Titanic (1/5)
To us, this kiss just looks SO impractical (hello, sore neck), but Patti Wood noted there is a whole lot more we can analyze in the kiss.
The heavy symbolism takes away from the natural elements of the kiss:
“She is fully vulnerable to him. She actually put her arms out and stands like she is letting herself be crucified – that very heavy religious symbolism – and she could actually die falling off the bow of the ship.”
“In this case she and the audience know that what she is doing physically is risky, and it matches with the relationship and life changing risk she takes in kissing him and not her rich finance and the security of that relationship.”
Methodology & More Information About Patti Wood’s Scoring System:
Fully Present
This means that both people are focused on each other and that the rest of the world melts away or disappears. If there are other people in the scene, the characters are unaware of them or don’t matter.
If there are physical barriers, they overcome them, which makes elements like rain or snow that are overcome in kissing scenes more powerful. Occasionally, the kissers bring nature into the kiss to make it even more exciting and powerful.
It typically means that there is mutual eye contact and the front of the bodies – what I call the body windows of the toes, knees, pelvis, stomach, palms of the hands, neck, mouth, and eyes – are facing the other person and or are touching. There are exceptions, such as when the one kisser is leaning back on the other, like in the Titanic kiss.
Mutual
It’s incredible how many kisses in movies are initiated or given by one person making all or most of the effort. That doesn’t make them less magical on-screen; it’s just a different kind of kiss.
Since I critique the kind of kisses that most would like to be giving and getting, I think a kiss that is mutually given and received is super romantic.
It’s all so interesting as the initiator is seen as having the most power and control. In many movies, the superhero or man or woman with the most power can have the power dynamic changed by another character immobilizing them in some way – by being the initiator.
Mutual kisses mean both people want the kiss, and typically, they both have their mouths the same way inside the kiss. If one is touching or holding the other, the other one is too.
Natural
This means that the movie kiss looks like it is a real kiss between real people, not overly done or manipulated.
That may mean we see a natural progression that builds to the kiss, that may mean that we see the intense passion and the character open up or fling themselves at each other in a primal way.
One of the things that makes a kiss natural is that there is something happening in the silence between the characters.
That may be eye contact or emotion playing on one or the other’s face, or simply a felt tension before, and a release after.
I often watch the kiss without the sound on several times to make sure that the music is not influencing my read of the kiss.
Other Terms
Our expert refers to some of the kisses analyzed as passionate, fiery, sweet, tender, and other adjectives.
Although we know what the words mean, the types of kisses tend to fall into a ‘heat’ or ‘sweet’ category, and there’s a scale of the types in-between.
Below our expert explains more about how it works and where the main differences lie.
Heat
This means that the body language is passionate, so that you can tell that the “kissers” can’t resist each other. That may mean that a passionate kiss goes from still to one or both people moving swiftly across space to be with one another and leaping, clinging, and opening body windows to each other.
This can be seen in the open mouths offered in The Notebook and Breakfast At Tiffany’s kisses – clinging in a primal way.
Sweet
This is when we see a slow pace that allows one person to draw in the other or court to the kiss.
There may be a look then look away eye contact, a touch, or asking for permission before the kiss. Or it could be the initiator watching and waiting until the other is ready before a kiss.
Smiling by one or both characters can make it extra sweet, along with a mutual look at each other in the eyes. I think that the eye-to-eye gaze just before a kiss and/or just after the first kiss is very telling.
Heat tends to come when the intimate eye-to-eye gaze goes to a quick passionate meeting of mouths. The sweet kiss is preceded by one character looking and the other bowing their head, or tilting their head or looking away.
Many of these movie kisses play against the normal eye gaze that preceded the kiss, by having one character close their eyes and trust the other person.
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
I am an expert in Body Language and other Nonverbal Communication, I speak on healing the brain from trauma and I am a singer-songwriter
As a young person, I sang the lyric, to The Five Stairsteps Song, "Ooh Child" "Ooh ooh child things are going to get easier, ooh child things will be brighter." over and over inside my head and out loud when I was troubled by the turbulence and abuse in my home life. The song continues to play in my head, or I find myself softly singing it when I am wrestling with troubles. Both the line and the soft voices of comfort I have another earworm that acts as inspiration and comfort to me by Singer-Songwriter Eliot Bronson in his song "River Runs Dry" he sings, "I don't give up, I've never known why I'll be sailing down the river till the river runs dry." I have talked to Eliot about that song, and he revealed to me years ago that it was his Anthem song as well and it has become the Anthem song of his fans (including me) in the last 49weeks in his virtual concerts on Wednesday nights. There are many "triggers" for earworms, a place where you first heard the song, a person, and more, and for these earworms, stress is my trigger. I am a speaker and a coach, and I teach my clients to find or rediscover "earworms" of comforting, inspiring, and motivating music to help their brains go down the neural pathways to the positive emotions found in the earworms and thus create/recreate the positive physical and emotional state. For example, if I have a client that wants to feel confident as they practice and get ready for a job interview, we find the earworm song that puts them in the emotional state they want to feel and the play and sing it over and over, until finally, they are using it right before their actual interview. It's a technique that has worked very well for my clients and me for many years.
The brain is pretty amazing and when it's stressed/traumatized, the neural pathways can be damaged and music can heal and reform new pathways to healthy and productive feelings and behaviors.
For those readers who are science nerds like me, Music stimulates the hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbent, the mesolimbic dopamine system, and impacts the HPA axis. Evidence also shows that music can stimulate neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. Music can be used as a tool to stimulate these areas to activate neurogenesis and/or neuroplasticity, thereby reconditioning the brain back to healthy functioning. PSTD can destroy neural pathways in the brain and can prevent people with this damaging the pleasure centers in the brain and keep sufferers from experiencing happiness. Music stimulates the growth of neural pathways in the brain so suffers can again experience pleasure.
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
Here are my rough notes for an article I contributed to today on signs of jealousy.
1. Starring - They look at you with a focused intense gaze. They are reading your every emotion to know how to act. Their gaze is a way to test you and reduce your actions and set boundaries. They may do or say something uncomfortable right before or after the hypnotic gaze to test how you respond. You need
to check in to your feelings and body. If the gaze makes you uncomfortable, afraid, controlled if it seems too intense, too exciting, or dangerous. You can test the “Health” of the gaze by breaking it. Even moving away from there and or getting up and move or leave the room and monitor if your relief. See if breaking the gaze and your partner’s response to the break is overly negative.
2. Controlling your space, and body, time, and choices wanting you to be by their side, in the same room with touching or line of sight, they want to control your body, how you look what you were.
3. Setting “boundaries and other Rules and getting mad when you change them.
4. Breaking Boundaries and Rules -They set boundaries and rules for you, but they break normal human interaction and relationships with you. If someone boundary-breaking note how you feel. For example, if you find yourself freezing in place, that is your body saying you are in danger. Narcissists may mask the intimacy in sweetness or politeness, for example holding hands or putting their arm around you after they have done something that upsets you and makes you very uncomfortable. Are moving into show ownership when you are talking with someone else.
5. Abrupt mood changes and Parent/Adult/ Child role changes. If someone is jealous is not getting what they want they can shift all their nonverbal behaviors in the blink of an eye and transform themselves. For example, if they chastise them or question they can take on all the nonverbal behaviors of an innocent victimized child, with doe-like eyes and softly rounded body language cues. They can also shift into sudden anger.
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
Body language expert Patti Wood spoke to DailyMail.com about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's defense of the nursing home death cover-up
The governor makes gestures that could indicate deception such as hiding his hands and toning down his emotional range
He also makes fist gestures as he speaking about 'lying' and 'misinformation'
Cuomo talks at length around the topic instead of addressing it directly
It is a tactic used by lawyers to sway opinion in their direction
He also cracked a joked moments before addressing the topic to put the audience at ease using his 'broad emotional range'
Cuomo is under increasing pressure over his handling of COVID-19 deaths in the state's nursing homes
He insists his office was always honest about the figures but that it came down to differences in categorization
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has faced fierce criticism in recent weeks over his handling of the data concerning nursing home deaths from COVID-19, which he has tried to battle off through his once-hyped daily press conferences.
According to a body language expert, the media briefings could be giving away more than the governor intends - his arms pressed to his sides and closed fists may indicate Cuomo's deception, his repression of true feelings, and his eagerness to fight off the negative press.
Raising fists at his accusers, using lawyer talk and jokes to seem personable and believable': Body language expert analyzes Raising fists at his accusers, using lawyer talk and jokes to seem personable and believable': Body language expert analyzes Gov Cuomo's behavior as he attempts to defend nursing home COVID death cover-up at his Emmy-winning press conferences
The classic movie, “A Picture of Dorian Gray” it’s a fascinating movie and a great version of short story. As you watch the movie you see how Dorian’s narcissism builds into an obsession about his youth and attractiveness. He must be the center of attention, he must have the women he wants. Note how he preens chest up and high in his clothing and looks in the mirror.
I write and speak on body language and malignant narcissism.
Here is the definition of Dorian Gray syndrome
(DGS) denotes a cultural and societal phenomenon characterized by a man's extreme pride in his personal appearance and the fitness of his physique, which is accompanied by difficulties in coping with the requirements of psychological maturation and with the aging of his body.
The DGS is characterized by a triad of symptoms that overlap, and so combine diagnostic signs of dysmorphophobia, narcissistic character traits, and the immaturity of arrested development, which often are found in paraphilias.[1]
To preserve ephemeral youth, the man afflicted with DGS tends to consume cosmetic products and services, hair-restoration procedures, anti-impotence drugs, and cosmetic surgery; hence, he might resist the psychosomatic and psychodynamic explanations of the syndrome.[2] The term "Dorian Gray syndrome" refers to the protagonist of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), an exceptionally handsome man whose hedonism and excessive self-love proved detrimental to the personal, social, and emotional aspects of his life, and who sought to escape the ravages of time and his own decadent lifestyle by having a supernatural portrait of himself age in his place.
Patti Wood, MA - 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.
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