Friday, November 7, 2014
Does our body control us?
The book I mentioned in class today is What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide
to Speed-Reading People by Joe Navarro. In this book, Navarro details what he
knows about the human body and body language. The biggest takeaway point from
this book is: How we think we act outwardly may not be the best indication of
what we actually feel on the inside. If a murderer is confronted with evidence
regarding a murder case, then the murderer can try to deny the claims until the
cows come home. However, this is a pretty cognitive function. When looking at limbic and emotional
responses, humans really don’t have much control over any ticks which
may give up the truth (mainly because limbic functions are primitive and control acts such as fear and aggression).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
To respond to your first question of "why bother entering relationship for long periods of time without meeting face-to-face," I think that the people involved may not see that as necessary for the beginning of their relationship. On Catfish, the people often believe they know who they are talking to through the person's facebook account. But oftentimes the facebook account is filled with pictures of someone else. People are entering into these relationships desperate for love, willing to believe anything that this seemingly beautiful person tells them. Of course, at some point they will want to meet face-to-face and I think the reaction to that proposal can say it all.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to the second questions, I do believe we have little control over our body. There are many physical reactions that we cannot control, like crying after hearing someone died or sweating when being accused of something that you did, in fact, do. And while emotions may be able to give away secrets, that is helpful when looking at trying to catch rapists and murderers. So while they may seem bothersome in the moment, our bodies are only naturally reacting to a stressful situation which internally calms our body down.
People enter in relationships without meeting face-to-face out of convenience and habit in today's society. I think it is only going to get worse as the youth grows up because they won't know relationships without technology. An example of a cyber relationship is on Catfish the girl thought she was talking to a male model but it was really a 40-year old man, I think she asked for it and it was foolish of her. People who understand the negatives of a cyber relationship know to stay away, its those who are ignorant that enter into them.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the question about not having control over our body, I truly don't think we do. Lie detectors are a great example of how we don't. That is why the FBI uses these devices when necessary because it has been proven that, as Akshay said, our bodies cannot hide our emotions.
Its not so much that the body is trying to defy us and that we are trying to defy the body. Our bodies simply go about doing whatever they are trying to do in the way that we are programmed to do those things. We, the limbic system specifically, tries to change the way our bodies do things, thinking that it has control over how those things are done. This leads to confusion and results in something like a tell when we lie.
ReplyDelete