38 I Can Read You Like a Book
Culture is nothing more than accepted social norms for a group.
How do these norms come about? Do groups get together and
vote, or do they simply adopt precedent-setting moves? The an-
swer is somewhere in between because cultures can arise from
small sub-groups, or microcultures, all the way up to humankind. In
terms of our study of body language, the concept of microcultures
includes couples: male-female, female-female, or male-male.
Every group has created norms for what is acceptable. More impor-
tantly, every microculture has created taboos as well. Cultures that
reach across humankind become what I call a super-culture. With
modern media saturation and global product marketing, gestures,
words, and even attitudes can become super-cultural. The words
“okay” and “Coca-Cola” are the two most recognized in the world.
Culture affects every aspect of understanding body language.
It affects how people move, even resulting in fine distinctions
between many so-called universal, involuntary movements, such as
raising eyebrows when you recognize another person. It also
affects how you perceive the message associated with another
person’s body language. Your filters rooted in prejudices of differ-
ent kinds and the way you project meaning took shape as a result of
your culture.
I use a simple model to depict where someone fits within a
culture: the bell curve. The first thing to remember in moving a
person onto the bell curve is that he may be part of many cultures
or microcultures. Similar to members of the Old South’s Ku Klux
Klan, who covered their identities in white sheets, we all carry