Does your body language tell people your social status around equality ? Well according to this piece I came across from the Association for Psychological Science it does.
Socioeconomic status (SES) is determined by a number of factors such as wealth, occupation and schools attended. Socioeconomic status (SES) influences the food we eat, hobbies we participate in and can even have an impact on our health. People with an upper socioeconomic status (SES) background can often be accused of flaunting their status, for example, the types of cars they drive or how many pairs of Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Bruno Magli, they have in their closet. It is easy to guess someone's Socioeconomic status (SES) based on their clothing and the size of their home, but what about more subtle clues?
Psychologists Michael W. Kraus and Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to see if non-verbal cues (that is, body language) can indicate our socioeconomic status (SES).
To test this idea, the researchers videotaped participants as they got to know one another in one-on-one interview sessions. During these taped sessions, the researchers looked for two types of behaviours: disengagement behaviours (including fidgeting with personal objects and doodling) and engagement behaviours (including head nodding, laughing and eye contact).
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that nonverbal cues can give away a person's socioeconomic status (SES). Volunteers whose parents were from upper socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds displayed more disengagement-related behaviours compared to participants from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. In addition, when a separate group of observers were shown 60 second clips of the videos, they were able to correctly guess the participants' socioeconomic status (SES) background, based on their body language.
The researchers note that this is the first study to show a relation between SES and social engagement behaviour. They surmise that people from upper socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds that are wealthy and have access to prestigious institutions tend to be less dependent on others. "This lack of dependence among upper socioeconomic status (SES) people is displayed in their nonverbal behaviours during social interactions," the psychologists conclude.
What do you think?
Does it matter?
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