CURRENT PROJECT

The personality of body movements
It has been shown that nonverbal signals play an important role in human communication. The interaction that takes place between leaders and their followers is no exception. Several studies support the notion, that the perception of charisma is predominantly influenced by nonverbal signals. Because people are differently gifted in expressing themselves verbally and nonverbally, there will also be differences in their effectiveness to impress their followers. Nonverbal signals are suspected to convey affective content and manipulate the perceiver of the signals this way. These are the ingredients charisma might consist of.
This will be an explorative study. It aims to show that there is a connection between body movements and personality. But the analysis of the emotional content of nonverbal behaviour will also be of high interest.
For a rating experiment the speaker’s performance during a public speech will be recorded and converted into a moving pattern of dots. Subjects will be invited to assess these animations on scales measuring personality and emotional content. To analyse the quality of the speaker’s body movements Eyesweb will be used. With this program it is possible to determine speed, duration, amplitude and quantity of motion. Neural networks will be trained with the data obtained by movement analysis and the results from the questionnaires. After the training period the neural network can be applied to unknown movement patterns in order to determine personality. Movie clips of historical persons will be investigated with this tool. It will be possible to draw conclusions about the personality of the persons in the movie clip. What is charisma made of and can emotions be communicated by body movements? These questions and similar ones may also be answered.