Recognizing Details and Controlling Ideas (10 marks)
Your Name: ____Janaya Zdrill_________
When you read, listen to, or view a selection critically, you are looking beyond your initial reaction to see what other messages are in the selection. Use the chart below to analyse the details from the TED Talks video you have chosen for this assignment. Respond to each section in complete sentences and increase the size of the boxes where necessary.
Title: You Body Language Shapes Who You Are
Speaker: Amy Cuddy
Date of TED Talk: June 2012
Audience: What group of people would benefit the most from hearing this lecture?
The group of people who would benefit the most from hearing this lecture would most likely be people who are interesting in body language. More specifically, people who are intrigued by what certain body language tells us about a person who the situation they are in. Small indications such as whether or not somebody is making eye contact when they are speaking to you can show whether or not they are interested in what you have to say to them. Furthermore, people who are interested in learning about what body language can communicate would most likely benefit from hearing this lecture.
Message: What was the speaker’s thesis (main point)?
Amy Cuddy’s main point or thesis of this lecture is how body language can change how we feel about ourselves or how we feel about others.
Supporting Details: List at least three supporting arguments the speaker uses to support his/her thesis.
One supporting argument Cuddy uses to support her thesis is power dynamics. She relates this to winning competitions. For example, if you were competing in a race and you’re the first to arrive at the finish line, the likeliness that you raise both your arms up and look up to the sky is very possible. When you feel like you have power, you want to occupy the space around you and grasp the power. On the other hand, when somebody feels powerless, they tend to do the opposite. They make themselves appear smaller by keeping their arms to their sides or being hunched over. Also, when people are acting powerful towards us, we tend to do the opposite and make ourselves seem powerless compared to them. We don’t mirror them, we do the exact opposite.
Another argument that Cuddy used was being able to fake power we want to feel. She asks the question “do out nonverbal govern how we thing and feel about ourselves?” She argues that some evidence does show this. For example, when you feel powerful, you’re more likely to “strike a pose” or life your hands in the air and occupy the space around you. But, when you want to pretend to feel powerful and strike a pose or lift your hands in the air, you are more likely to feel powerful as a result of pretending. So Cuddy’s argument is “faking it until you make it”.
Also, Cuddy also argued how body can influence your mind, and therefore your outcomes. She showed the audience the experiment of posing in either a dominant or a passive pose for two minutes. The evidence showed that the people who posed in a dominant pose had higher testosterone levels and low cortisol levels, meaning that their confidence was higher than those who were doing the passive pose. This shows us that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel. It also shows that our bodies change our minds. ETHOS is a speaker’s ability to build credibility, establish himself/herself as an expert, and/or convince the audience members that the speaker has their best interests at heart. How does this speaker build ethos? Feel free to also refer to the speaker’s profile information from the ted.com webpage to build on your answer.
Amy builds ethos by having exhibited professionalism and confidence in her lecture. Cuddy is currently a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, where she studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments affect people from the classroom to the boardroom.
PATHOS is an appeal to emotions (everything from
