Nonverbal Cues

Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart and bought at $25 Timex watch with a black band. I love it.
I have a son-in-law who regularly buys and sells Rolex watches on ebay. One of my
students recently carried this pocketbook that caught my eye because of its giraffe
design. When I complimented her on it, she said it was a Dooney & Burke and that it cost
$240. Hmmm.  I always buy my bags from TJ Maxx and even then, I check for the little
red sticker that says “clearance.” I drive a Toyota Camry instead of an SUV. 

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to think about your own “object language”
and speculate a bit about what your clothing, jewelry, hairstyle, hair color, shoes, use of
cosmetics (or not), etc. tells the world about you. It’s easy to look at other people
and “read” them, but what about you? What does your appearance tell the world?

Nature or Nurture?

One of the most important issues in psychology is the nature/nurture one. Am I who I am because of my unique combination of genes and chromosomes, or is it more because of my environment? Is it DNA, or is it life in the USA as compared to life in Cambodia? While pondering this question for the umpteenth time, I came across two cute examples in Pierce Howard’s The Owner’s Manual to the Brain:

 

1. Two monozygotic twin girls were separated at birth and placed in homes far apart. About four years later, researchers interviewed the adoptive parents of each girl. Shauna’s parents said, “She is a terrible eater—won’t cooperate, stubborn, strong-willed. I can’t get her to eat anything unless I put cinnamon on it.” The parents of Ellen said, “Ellen is a lovely child—cooperative and outgoing.” When the researcher asked about her eating habits, they said, “Fantastic—she eats anything I put before her, as long as I put cinnamon on it!”

 

1. Two monozygotic twin boys were separated at birth and placed in homes far apart. They were interviewed 27 years later. Both had turned out to be obsessive-compulsive neatniks, scrubbing their separate homes frequently and constantly picking up and making things neat and clean. When they were asked to explain their compulsion for neatness, on attributed it to his reaction to an adoptive parent who was a slob, while the other attributed it to his upbringing by an adoptive parents who was a neatnik!

 What do you think about this issue? For starters, look at yourself and share some of your behaviors or predispositions that you might have inherited. Then again, you might have picked them up from a parent, a peer, or a television show.