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Quiz - Focus: Aggressive Upstart VS Established Power - Joy Sasa's Quick, Shallow Breath
I was taking the first quiz of Module 1, which showcases the power dynamics in a scene of the movie Godfather II.
In the video at 52 seconds, Joy Sasa seemed to take a quick, shallow breath during Michael Corleone's confrontation with him.
Would this be a sign of submissiveness?
Quick reply from mobile:
No, I wouldn't consider that a sign of submissivness. At most, it would be a sign of nervousness.
There is an overlap between the two, but they're not the same.
In this scene Sasa is trying his best to avoid showing any sign of submission. He also avoids signs of warmth which, considering he was in the office of the then most powerful player, should have been a warning sign for Michael.
Since overall he is coming across as very in control and calm, that quick breath ends up looking like an incongruent signal.
When people only see one discordant sign when all the other signals go in the same direction, they tend to think it's "strange", but they don't change the meaning of the whole interaction.
Thank you for the breakdown.
This is insightful. Especially not to confuse nervousness and submissiveness.
Would this mean that we should ignore incongruent signals going in one direction if the broader social interaction suggests another direction?
I think I tend to be overly suspicious of people with incongruent signals, but these signals sometimes don't mean anything in the broader social context.
Appreciate your analysis.
I wouldn't say to ignore it.
They can be an important giveaway of someone who has learned to control himself, or has learned how to convey a certain image, but then that incongruent signal can be the sign of how they're truly feeling.
Not always, so don't jump to conclusions, but it's an important signal to keep in mind and "file away" in your mind.
Incongruent signals can also be the sign of sociopaths.
Some of them learn to function normally, but then there are some situations where they don't know what "normal" behavior is, they don't know what others expect of them, and they send out some "strange" signals.
One example is in a recent adventure of mine that I described in "the baddest bitch ever".
She looked confident and in control, she had all the nonverbal expressions of the high class woman -just a bit overdone-. But then, when it came to intimacy and staring into someone's eyes without saying anything, she'd look away or say something off-color. It was a situation in which she didn't know how to act, so she sent out a lot of signals that were very incongruent with her usual demeanor.
