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Outlining the impact that positive body language can have on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour is at the heart of this module. Mainly, looking at the scientific evidence and how it relates to your sporting performance. But firstly, lets introduce you to some important body language terms and concepts.
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Awareness
“I have worked on my body language in the past, but as I didn't see any instant results, I disregarded the concept pretty quickly."
This is a fairly common response when the subject of body language is raised with an athlete. However, athletes need to understand that implementing a psychological strategy is not a fool proof way of ensuring instant perfect performance. A strategy like body language is best understood in regards to improving your performance on average, over time, but not every time.
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Athletes often disregard methods such as body language because they do not notice any conscious change to their mentality or performance. However, research has shown that it's possible for behavioural changes to occur, even without ones conscious knowledge.
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In a study conducted by Riskind and Gotay (1982), participants were assigned to an upright (positive body language condition) or slumped (negative body language condition) seated posture for a period of around 3 minutes, before being asked to complete 4 puzzles (2 puzzles were impossible to solve). The results showed that the participants who sat in the upright position were more likely to persist and spend additional time trying to solve the impossible puzzles, compared to the participants who adopted the slumped posture.
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What was also interesting about this finding, is that the participants didn't report any conscious change to their feelings, e.g., they didn't feel more confident, determined, or competent in their ability to complete the task. So even though they didn't feel any difference on a conscious level, the change in posture did actually produce a behavioural change, i.e. an increase in motivation to complete the task.
Gains in performance can sometimes be too small to see over a short period of time, but any gain when added up over a long period (e.g. over the course of a season) can make a significant difference. Hypothetically, if displaying positive body language improved your performance by 1% (on average), would you notice this improvement? Probably not, but would you want it?
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Perhaps a better way for athletes to judge whether body language has an influence on their performance, is to implement a systematic way of measuring their performance (e.g. using personal worksheets), and/or to examine the scientific evidence on the subject.
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Non verbal communication
Communication can be divided into verbal and non-verbal language. Body language (can include facial expressions, postures, eye movement, and gestures) refers to the conscious and unconscious NON-VERBAL signals we use to communicate our feelings.
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It’s thought body language plays a significant role in our everyday communication, even more so than verbal language. Dr. Albert Mehrabian, who completed a number of studies on non-verbal behaviour in the 1960/70s suggested up to 55% of the way we communicate is conducted via body language!
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Positive vs negative body language
When displaying emotions our body language acts like a shop window to our feelings. E.g., looking at the picture below, it's pretty obvious that the athletes are in a positive state of mind.
The positive aspect refers to the display of body language that reflects positive feelings such as happiness, confidence, enthusiasm, and excitement. Smiling, puffing your chest out, holding your head up, and having your shoulders up and open are all behaviours typically associated with positive body language.
Whereas negative body language reflects negative feelings such as sadness, anger, and depression. Athletes displaying negative body language such as frowning, head shaking, hunching of their shoulders, and hanging their heads down, typically indicate that they are unhappy, disappointed, and stressed.
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It's in our DNA
Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) completed a study looking at how congenitally blind (blind from birth), and seeing athletes, reacted to victory and defeat. Athletes, who were competing in the judo event of the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games, were photographed repeatedly for 15 seconds directly after the completion of the match. The footage was then analysed to determine the types of body language displayed.
The researchers discovered that after victory, both blind and seeing athletes displayed proto-typical expressions of pride, i.e. arms raised above their head, mouth open, head tilted up, and with an expanded chest. After a loss, a shared similar response was also found, i.e. slumped shoulders, head tilted down, and a narrowing of their chests. These findings suggest that the body language we display to indicate pride and shame, is a trait we are born with, as congenitally blind athletes couldn't have learned these behaviours from watching others.
Further evidence to support the 'DNA' theory, was found in the discovery of cultural differences in how athletes respond to losing. The display of body language associated with shame after a loss was weaker for sighted athletes from individualistic cultures (e.g. Europe and North America), in comparison to athletes from collectivistic nations (e.g. Japan, China, and South Korea). Collectivistic societies tend to emphasise the needs of the group over that of an individual, whereas within an individualistic society the tendency is the reverse. However, no cultural differences were found for the congentially blind athletes in how they responded to defeat.
It was suggested the discrepancy was due to cultural norms, i.e. the display of shame is undesirable within individualistic societies where personal strength and a high quality life is valued. Whereas athletes from collectivistic societies have a lower need to suppress shame, as it is seen as an appropriate response in regards to failure.
Sighted athletes would grasp these cultural norms by watching how others show or suppress their emotions, and learn which behaviours are deemed appropriate. However, congenitally blind athletes would be less aware of these expectations, and thus more likely to display innate ('DNA') responses - which is exactly what the results showed.
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Dominance
I recall watching a young unknown golfer playing in a small pro-am event in New Zealand. I remember it well as I was watching him warm-up and thinking, who is this guy? He walking around like he owned the place (e.g. displaying dominant body language), even though he probably wasn't even ranked in the top 10 at the event. From memory, I don't think the player was close to winning the event at any time, but because of his demeanour I long remembered the player. In the coming years, he improved immensely, forged himself a successful career on the world stage, winning 5 tour events and being ranked near the top 100 players in the world.
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The act of making yourself big can be seen throughout sport. E.g., when a tennis player wins an important point, or a golfer makes a putt, or when an athlete crosses the line in first place, they often show a display of dominance by exhibiting an 'expansive' posture.
This behaviour can be seen in sports fans too, when a rugby team scores a try, or football teams scores a goals, the fans often raise their arms to celebrate in unison.
Body language that depicts power, pride, and dominance is typically displayed through expansive postures, essentially poses that make the body seem larger. In contrast, a lack of dominance is characterised by inward and closed postures that make the body seem smaller.
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An evolutionary purpose
Scientists believe non-verbal displays of dominance serve a functional purpose within the animal
kingdom. Within a social group there can be limited access to essential resources such as food, shelter, and mates. Fighting is one method to establish the pecking order of who gets access to what, but this can cause injury. The constant need to fight would be a problem. To avoid this situation, a hierarchy can be formed via communication instead.
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For example, when two animals confront each other they may display dominant body language (e.g. a chimpanzee holds his breath until its chest bulges) in the attempt to show each other who is more likely to win a fight. Consequently, to avoid possible injury, one of the animals may choose to submit as they don't think they would win, and as such the hierarchy is formed without any necessity to fight, and life can continue in relative harmony.
Thus, dominant body language can be used to intimidate the opposition into submission. This could explain why humans (who share similar DNA with a number of animals) display dominant body language in times of conflict or competition. A great example of this in sport, is the stare-down before a boxing match, where boxers seemingly try to assert their authority and intimidate their opponents.