Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma

Coach and corporate consultant Wood (Success Signals: A Guide to Reading Body Language) offers tips on how to effectively use nonverbal skills in such situations as job interviews, sales pitches, telephone calls, and first dates. Beginning with current brain science, she cites research indicating that judgments are made about attractiveness, likability, trustworthiness, competence, and aggressiveness after looking at people’s faces for just a 10th of a second. Surprisingly, nonverbal snap cues have a 76% accuracy rate (though without citations, it’s hard to credit her statement that “there is a genetic link between appearance and personality”), and it can take six months, Wood says, to change an inaccurate first impression. She provides in-depth coverage of such areas as arm crosses (“I have labeled over 50 different arm crosses”), empathy and emotions, eye contact, e-mail formalities, facial expressions, gestures, greetings, handshakes, “matching and mirroring” (mirroring another person’s body language makes them feel comfortable with you), online impressions, and signals that make a woman approachable (men find women who stand with feet close together and toes turned slightly inward unthreatening). Writing with a wide range of lucid observations and insights, Wood offers a valuable addition to the many studies of human behavior. (Oct. 16)