Second paragraph of third chapter:
As a species we are strongly imitative and it is impossible for a healthy individual to grow up and live in a community without becoming infected with its typical-action patterns. The way we walk and stand, laugh and grimace, are all subject to this influence.
This is the third of three books on human behaviour which I read over the last few months and am writing up this week. This one was recommended to me by Sir Graham Watson, and I got it as part of my belated birthday spending of Amazon vouchers.
It’s the 2002 update of the 1977 book Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviouris interesting to see how some gestures can mean quite different things in different countries – in some places the beckoning gesture that I use, moving my hand towards me, actually means “go away”; my daughter’s habit of telling us not to bother her by pushing her open hand towards us is amusing here but extremely rude in Greece. But I felt that of the three books I’ve written up here this week, I possibly learned least from this. (Must go back and re-read The Naked Ape