In battle for nonverbal dominance at U.S.-Russia summit, Putin was the clear winner, experts say.
By William Wan
July 17 at 10:54 AM
Carrie Keating was almost slack-jawed with amazement by the end of President Trump’s news conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin Monday. Keating has studied the nonverbal gestures of politicians for three decades, but she found the performance between the two men on the stage nothing short of incredible.
“Whoever made the arrangements, they so clearly favored Putin. You saw him do almost every dominant behavior you could stage in social science lab study,” said Keating, a psychology professor who studies charisma and leadership at Colgate University.
Keating quickly ticked off more than a dozen nonverbal assertions of dominance by Putin — including Putin’s agile hop onto the podium (vs. Trump’s lumbering walk), Putin’s animated gestures and the way he often disregarded the audience when speaking.
But the key victory for Putin was the fact that he spoke first and spoke the longest, she said. In research conducted in her lab, she said, in groups of strangers, the person in the group who spoke first and longest almost always ended up having the most influence during subsequent problem-solving tests or exercises.
“In that way Putin was absolutely dominant. He spoke for so long at the beginning, just going on and on while everyone else, including Trump, had to wait on him,” Keating said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/07/17/in-battle-for-nonverbal-dominance-at-u-s-russia-summit-putin-was-the-clear-winner-experts-say/?utm_term=.375f8902fa88