An NDSU psychology faculty member will discuss human reaction to body language at the November Science Café.
Benjamin Balas, assistant professor of psychology, is scheduled to present “Reading the Mind from the Body,” Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m. in Stokers Basement of the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo. The event is free and open to the public.
According to Balas, gestures, posture and other forms of body language communicate a wide range of social signals to people around us. A growing body of recent work suggests that surprisingly “thin slices” of behavior – brief presentations of images or video – support inferences about personality traits and the nature of social interactions. This includes judgments about leadership potential, teaching effectiveness, sexual orientation and other characteristics.
“But how accurate are the inferences we make about other people in the blink of an eye? Do body language experts really know what they’re talking about? Above all, how do we use visual information to draw conclusions about social variables? I’ll discuss what we know about how social vision works in sparse, psychophysical settings and complex real-world environments,” Balas said.
Balas joined NDSU in 2011. He earned a doctorate in brain and cognitive sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Attendees must be 21 or older or accompanied by a parent or guardian. For more information, contact Keri Drinka at keri.drinka@ndsu.edu or 701-231-6131.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.