magazine issue 2 2008 / Issue 6

The Naked Power: Understanding Nonverbal Communications of Power

• written by Thomas Schubert & Steffen Giessner

Because power is something we often avoid discussing openly, its nonverbal communication is fascinating to lay people and psychologists alike. When directly asked, people interpret many different nonverbal signs as indicating high or low power – unfortunately, these ideas are often exaggerated and misguided. Likewise, social psychologists still have no good understanding of the nonverbal cues to power. This article sheds more light on what is actually underlying nonverbal communication of power. We identify two new insights: First, much of the nonverbal communication of power takes places unconsciously and is hard to control. Second, people use abstract schemas to judge power, and they not only apply these schemas to understanding body talk, but also elements of art, advertisement, and architecture.

Most western societies are egalitarian societies. Because the value of equality is held in high regard, Westerners often dislike to talk about, and thereby revealing, who is in charge, who has more to say than others, and who has power (Hofstede, 2001). This makes the nonverbal communication of power and hierarchies, which is present in all societies, all the more important. Which nonverbal cues are associated with power or powerlessness, and where research on this topic is currently going, is the topic of this article.

Lay People Often Get Power Communication Wrong

Nonverbal communication of power seems fascinating to lay people and psychologists alike. For a recent survey of the literature, Judith Hall and her colleagues located 211 studies conducted between 1937 and 2002, and more have been conducted since (Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). One should suppose that from that many studies, we know already a lot about power. Yet, Hall and colleagues conclude from their survey two uncomforting facts:

1. Lay people probably often see nonverbal communication of power where none is, and over-interpret cues as signalling powereven when they are not diagnostic. For instance, observers interpret smiling, gazing, touching, less pauses, and many other things as indicating power even though Hall and colleagues found little evidence that these signs reliably signal power. Actual relations between power and nonverbal behaviour only existed for more facial expressiveness, more bodily openness, smaller interpersonal distances, less vocal variability, louder voice, more interruptions, and more relaxed sounding voices. Thus, people seem to have somewhat exaggerated views of what communicates power.

2. The studies Hall et al. summarized were very heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory, and we have no good explanations for these contradictions. This indicates that we still know very little about the nonverbal communication of power.

So, the question is: If neither lay people nor social psychologists know all the details about nonverbal communication, how is it that it is actually going so smoothly and effectively? Can we communicate power nonverbally without knowing how we do it? It turns out the answer is yes. New insights into the nonverbal communication of power come from the application of two recent trends in the cognitive sciences. Firstly, a lot of it seems to happen unconsciously, including reactions to it. This may explain why it goes so smoothly, even though actual beliefs about it are often wrong. Secondly, it seems to operate not only with concrete images of how the powerful, or the powerless, behave, but in fact with highly schematized images that are then applied to many things in the environment. In the present article, we will describe some of these recent developments that lift the veil of power'snonverbal communication.

The Automaticity of Nonverbal Power Communication: Portraits, Gaze, and Posture

Let us first investigate how conscious our nonverbal communication of power is. Two recent reviews of nonverbal behaviour in general argued that it largely takes place on automatic, unconscious levels (Choi, Gray, & Ambady, 2005; Lakin, 2006). Two phenomena can serve us as excellent examples because they are unintuitive to most people.

The first example concerns the communication of status by how much of the body in comparison to the face is visible in a portrait. The second example concerns the communication of power by how much one looks at others while speaking. Before you read on, try to think about it: When you look at portraits of persons, do you usually consciously observe how much of the body the portrait depicts in addition to the face? Or, when you talk to your superior, do you consciously register how often he looks at you while he is speaking, compared to when you are speaking? Most people would probably answer that they do that very rarely.