Welcome to the world of non verbal communication! Look at this picture and what is the first thing that comes into your mind? Are you judging his facial expression? His hand gestures? Or you just dislike him from the way he looks? All thoughts like these all fall under your cognitive appraisal of a person which determines your perception of an individual. Such thoughts about someone might be greatly influenced by self serving biasness and most of the time we are wrong about someone because of the fundamental attribution error that is innate in all of us. For those who dislike him or just cant stand his guts, this individual here is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who is about to annouce his resignation as prime minister. The press chose this picture for dileberate reason so as to invoke readers like us emotions and associations when we see such hand gestures and facial expressions. From the way i see it, the press probably wanted to show or potray the helplessness and frustration of his resignation. A sign of throwing in the towel i guess after being accused of battle graft allegations. The usage of such provoking pictures with strong physical gestures is reciever orientated communication where the receiver will attach meaning to non verbal cues like body language. From a single pciture like this, once can observe that there are actually many channels of communication involved like for example body movements, facial expression etc. Whatever media that is involved, even in our daily lives, we use multiple channels of communication knowingly or unknowingly.Within the context of interpersonal communication, we use both verbal and non verbal cues to engage, deliver and develop relationships with others.
So just a careful warning to all, sometimes your body language and facial expression betrays the words that come out from your mouth to another individual hence think before you talk and bring along a portable mirror just to keep those twtiching eye browns in check! :P
3 comments:
Hmm I agree that there are many forms of communication i.e. body language, gestures, tone of voice etc. But I don't think we can infer from this picture the Prime Minister's helplessness. That might be stretching it a little...however, if it was a youtube video of him announcing his resignation, that would be a different story altogether.
Nice entry, Amos! I sense humor in it=)
Communication does not only consist of verbal but also non-verbal cues. These non-verbal cues would be of facial expression, body languages and tone of voice. Thus, when someone talks we would take note of first the facial expression. It is easy to spot if someone is lying by the look on his or her face. Though, not all the time when we pressume is what is it. Still, i would say that the bigger aspect of communication lies on non-verbal cues.
Now that you mention it, he does look a bit helpless here. I do agree that giving a single picture will not give us a totally accurate picture.
When I first saw the picture, I thought that he was merely tired. Well that is sorta related to helplessness so you do have a point there.
Well, he does have a lot of things going on. From graft allegations to his handling of the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war, I guess it gets tiring to have a more errr.... optimistic expression.
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