Visible Thought

by Geoffrey Beattie

Are you saying one thing whilst your hands reveal another?

Are you influenced by other people's body language without even knowing it?

Darting through examples found anywhere from the controlled psychology laboratory to modern advertising and the Big Brother TV phenomenon, official Big Brother psychologist Geoffrey Beattie takes on the issue of what our everyday gestures mean and how they affect our relationships with other people. For a long time psychologists have misunderstood body language as an emotional nonverbal side effect. In this book Geoffrey Beattie ranges across the history of communication from Cicero to Chomsky to demonstrate that by adding to or even contradicting what we say, gestures literally make our true thoughts visible. A unique blend of popular examples and scientific research presented in language that everybody can understand, Visible Thought is an accessible and groundbreaking text that will appeal to those interested in social psychology and anyone who wants to delve beneath the surface of human interaction.

Geoffrey Beattie is the official Big Brother psychologist and Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Manchester. He is a recipient of the Spearman Medal awarded by the British Psychological Society for 'published psychological work of outstanding merit'.

Genres: Psychology

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2003

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

an amusing incite into gestures and hand movement but it could've been much better,
I recommend it as a short read to start your journey into non verbal behavior studies.

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only ever watched the first series of Big Brother and that was because my flatmate at the time never had the tv on any other channel. I was somewhat sceptical about reading this book and it took me a lot longer to get through because I essentially found it boring. I am interested in body language and there were a couple of interesting points made, however the majority of this book consisted of long descriptions of various gestures and responses to them. I found it quite repetative and feel it came to the conclusions most of us know by instinct, you get more information out of speech if you see as well as hear. I would not recommend this book to people unless they were obsessed with Big Brother or fancied a snooze.

[Semiophrenic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lengthy discussions on the history of gesture studies and related philosophical texts. Most examples come from the reality show Big Brother House, which I thankfully have not seen. Beattie cannot praise David McNeill enough - most of this book appears as a tribute to him. Compared to other popular body language writers, though, he makes incredible advances - exposes (instead of blindly following) the Mehrabian myth, but he does partake of the long tradition of quoting that single sentence by Edward Sapir on gestures.

[Rashad Raoufi]

its gripping read a t time,s well laid out so that i combines popular examples with critical exmanination of scientific and scholarly studies.