- David Robson*
- BBC WorkLife
July 10, 2022, 08:31 03
Credit, Getty Images
Like many people, public speaking used to fill me with anxiety. I’m a writer and I’m much more comfortable expressing myself in writing than on stage.
But interestingly, I found that the feeling of fear itself is perfectly bearable. What worried me was the way people would take my nervous energy that slight sway in the voice, that unconscious biting of the lip…
I thought I would be severely judged for any nonverbal signal that revealed my lack of confidence. I was concerned about my fear a double concern that made the event even more frightening.
You may have experienced this before an interview or an important work meeting with your boss. And the more you try to suppress your feelings, the stronger they become.
But a surprising new study concludes those concerns may be unfounded. Jamie Whitehouse, a researcher at Trent University of Nottingham, UK, has shown that visible signs of stress are often positive and people tend to like and treat us kindly.
If that’s true, we don’t have to worry about maintaining a calm, listless expression as much as we do when we’re playing poker, knowing that people will appreciate our emotional authenticity.
magnanimous monkeys
Whitehouse’s interest in stress is based on the theory of evolution.
Stress is typically accompanied by a series of internal physiological changes that help us prepare the body for a challenge. A racing heart, for example, helps oxygenate the body and brain, allowing us to react faster.
It’s easy to see why these changes are the result of customization. Many primates also exhibit characteristic “repression” behaviors when stressed such as nervously scratching their skin. This type of behavior doesn’t seem to serve any apparent purpose in dealing with the situation causing the discomfort. Why did evolution make them do this?
One possibility is that this behavior helps smooth out social interactions with the group.
Primate groups are often complex, with alliances between their members and established hierarchies. Encountering a potentially hostile person can be a major source of stress.
Denial behaviors can act as subtle signals that show this discomfort and reduce the risk of unnecessary confrontation. Finally, for those of higher rank, the most arrogant rivals may be those who most need a lesson in humility — and not necessarily those who are already excited.
In 2017, Whitehouse found initial evidence supporting this idea. Observing a group of 45 rhesus monkeys in Punta Santiago, Puerto Rico, he concluded that the monkeys tended to scratch themselves more nervously when they were among higherranking individuals and relative strangers with whom they were not already strong had social relationships. As a result, this seemed to change the nature of the interaction, with the other monkey exhibiting gentler behavior.
Inspired by this discovery, Whitehouse set out to see if human stress signals could also shift individuals’ responses in our favor—perhaps with empathic responses.
In addition to the skinscratching exhibited by other primates, humans have many subtle behaviors associated with fear, including touching their face and hair, twisting their mouths, licking their lips, and biting their nails. All of them could indicate our sense of vulnerability and evoke friendlier reactions from others.
To find out if that’s true, Whitehouse’s team first asked 23 study participants to take the “social stress test,” an anxietyinducing routine that requires participants to undergo a fake job interview with a presentation demonstrating for three minutes why they are ideal candidates and a mental arithmetic spot test.
Another 133 participants were then asked to rate videos of the fake interviews, with questions about each person’s apparent stress level and how much they liked the people they were seeing. In parallel, psychologists counted how often the participants showed nonverbal signs of stress.
As expected, those who rated the videos were able to predict respondents’ levels of stress, apparently based on these characteristic nonverbal cues. More importantly, these perceptions influenced—for the better—the assessment of how comfortable respondents were. The more respondents showed signs of stress, the more compelling they seemed to viewers of their videos.
“This tells us that these behaviors are not just meaningless byproducts of stress, but actually have communicative functions,” says Whitehouse.
Credit, Getty Images
caption,
Our body language can reveal our stress levels, but it can also benefit us.
Red face
Whitehouse’s study is consistent with experiments examining the effects caused by someone blushing with embarrassment.
Many people are uncomfortable with their shame being presented so openly — but like the nervous facial expressions studied by Whitehouse, our red faces can actually improve how we are perceived by others.
One example is the recent study by Christopher Thorstenson, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. In a series of experiments, Thorstenson presented images of embarrassed people with captions describing uncomfortable social situations.
The researcher then asked the participants about people’s reactions. For example, “You think these people are lying which face looks more embarrassed?” and “These people are apologizing for cheating on a test which apology seems more sincere?”
Thorstenson found that a slightly flushed face increased participants’ shame and sincerity ratings and made it more likely that the person would be forgiven of the transgression. “It signals pacification to others,” he says.
And unlike other nonverbal cues like facial expressions, a red face can’t just be faked. Therefore, it is considered a sign of honesty, which in turn makes you more likeable.
Whether you’re biting your lip nervously or beaming like a sign, it might be worth showing some emotional authenticity.
unnoticed signals
Leah Mayo, a professor at the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University in Sweden, was intrigued by Whitehouse’s findings. Her research has examined the characteristic facial expressions associated with stress, and she hypothesizes that people’s responses to our nonverbal cues are contextual.
For example, when someone is giving a lecture or presentation, the reasons for our nervousness are obvious and this knowledge of the situation leads to the other person feeling more empathy. “In that case, you could get a protective reaction,” she agrees.
But the reaction may not be the same when someone in the office sees us frowning and shaking with no idea where our concerns are coming from, Mayo says. In these situations, observers can easily mistake signs of stress for hostility or anger, and we may need to explain them further so they can read the cues properly.
Of course, we must be careful not to generalize this research too generally. But Whitehouse hopes his study can provide at least some relief for people who are nervous before a presentation or an interview, which is the specific context of his study.
“One nice takeaway from this research is that sometimes it’s okay to be stressed and looking,” he says. “You don’t have to be constantly trying to suppress your stress.” As long as you can still spread your knowledge and expertise, you won’t be severely punished for showing your nerve.
If you allow your feelings to be more transparent, you may also find that the experience feels less scary. Whitehouse points to a separate study that found that people who are more open about their stress tend to overcome that discomfort faster than those who hide their anxiety.
He suggests that changing the behavior of others might provide a helpful mechanism. “Producing stressful behaviors can evoke a more cooperative response, which in turn can lead to individuals recovering from stress much faster.”
There is also strong evidence that how we think about stress can determine its consequences. People who find fear stimulating tend to perform better on difficult tasks than those who fear the emotion and find it fundamentally disabling. Acknowledging the social value of fear can be one more reason to take a slightly more positive view of our discomfort.
I have certainly found that this attitude can be helpful in my public speaking. As I learned to accept my nervousness before lectures, I stopped feeling anxious about my anxiety.
The result has been that I can now focus more mental energy on the message I want to convey, with the assurance that my audience will respond with more human warmth than I could have imagined.
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