heartharmony.com.au

Have you ever wondered about the difference between rich people and poor people (and not just their bank accounts).

As freelance writers, our team thinks about this all the time when we look at marketing to different groups of people. Which is why this report from the Scientific American this week fascinated us.

You see there has been a scientific study that analysed if people can tell a person’s wealth, socio economic status and mother’s education level just by watching their body language.

What they found was based on just a few short moments of watching non-verbal cues, people could accurately predict all of these things.

Fans of “Lie to Me” will love these findings!  Rich people are generally ruder and less engaged listeners.  When someone else is talking they self groom more, fidget more and doodle more than poor people (and yes this applies to women as much as men).

Poor people show greater engagement such as affirmative head nods, smiles, good natured laughter, eyebrow raises and gazes to the partner).

This raises a whole lot of interesting marketing questions. For TV ads the actors may need to reconsider their subtle body cues if they are to play “out of type”. It also may need people who want to gain wealth by hanging around wealthy people to lose some of their less engaging behaviour in order to fit in.

Me – I will just be watching all of my interactions even more closely to see if this works in my world and not just in the lab on captive uni students (how well I remember those days back in first year Psychology – being called human lab rats and required to participate in a number of  studies each year in order to pass the course).

What do you think – are rich people ruder than poor people?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writers