Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

By david schwerin

October 14, 2015

How can changing your body language change your communication?

We’re going to watch one of my favorite TED Talks with Amy Cuddy. As always, use this technique to focus first on listening:

1) First, watch the whole video without subtitles (practice your listening!). Try to answer the questions below. It’s okay to watch a little bit one day, then more the next, etc.

2) use the transcript to answer the questions and clarify your understanding

3) watch the talk with subtitles to see how well you’ve understood.

First, what is your body language right now? How do you feel?
2’09 What has most research on nonverbal communication focused on? Give an example of an experiment.
3’20 Who is the “other audience” influenced by our nonverbals?
3’49 What is Amy Cuddy especially interested in?
7’22 What is the main question she wants to ask?
8’07 What is her secondary question?
8’47 What is the physiological difference between high power and low power people?
11’07 Describe the experiment that they did and the results
12’42 What are the applications for these results? In other words, how is this useful?
13’58 What was the second experiment they did?
15’05 What affects the evaluation of the speech? The content or the form?
16’01 What was Cuddy’s personal experience with “fake it ’til you make it”?