Body language experts are trained to look for groups of behaviors. Often, certain behaviors such as crossed arms could just mean the subject is cold. It is also hard to judge someone's body language after you have just met them; it is much better to compare their behavior to the "baseline" of their normal behavior. That is because certain behaviors are not innate but learned unconsciously from parents, relatives, close friends, and is also dependent upon regional culture. If you want to learn about body language, you should spend a lot of time practicing watching several different people and finding groups of behaviors that signal their respective moods before you start to start to make inferences with confidence. It is helpful to watch people from different cultures or different classes so that you may see how much variation there is. Otherwise, decisions made with little knowledge and practice is actually harmful because your inferences will likely be wrong. "You should never cross your arms again" may be good advice, but only because you can then guard yourself from people that overestimate their powers of observation.
Good point. For example, I tend to lean forward (with forearms on the table) out of respect. It shows I'm interested but I can see how it could be misconstrued as a nervousness, or 'low-power'.
But isn't giving respect low-power? If you're the alpha, others give you respect, and you do as you please. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but respect is a form of deference. Deference is low-power.
I disagree. If you're the alpha, others give you respect, but this doesn't imply that you can't show respect to others. Respect is not only a form of deference. It is also a form of understanding.
I know what you mean, but given the context of a job interview, by definition[1] you are in a lower power position.
I agree with sibling comments, though, that respectfulness is not mutually exclusive with alpha-ness. And if in general you are a respectful person, a high-power posture will probably not impact their opinion of your respectfulness too much.
[1] Assuming you really want the job and unless you are a hot shot who is gracing them with your willingness to work for them.
Although you're partially right, I wouldn't say you are necessarily in a lower power position. They want to hire you (assuming you are up to snuff) just as much as you want to be hired. Assuming an "equal-power" position shows you believe you are capable of filling the role, and deserve it. It also suggests you would be perfectly okay with NOT getting the job if it doesn't work out.
I've gone into every job interview I've had with the attitude that I'm a hot shot who is gracing my employer with my willingness to work for them[1]. I've gotten offers at about 50% of them, which means that I've turned down more companies than have turned down me.
Confidence really does work. If you sincerely believe in your abilities, it's much easier to convince others to believe in them.
[1] This is not mutually exclusive with respect or humility. It's quite possible to believe you have a lot to offer your employer while also believing they have a lot to offer you, and then the job interview process is just a matter of negotiating the right fit.
Interesting. Whenever I see aggressive confidence in an interviewee, I immediately think Dunning-Kruger because statistically it's by far the most likely cause. Either way it's down to empirical evidence though.
Anyway, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I tend to intentionally give off a pretty neutral vibe and rarely worry about flunking an interview. (I chalk it up to mad skillz rather than body language though.)
One could also argue that your willingness to quickly diagnose an individual coping with a traditionally high-anxiety situation (interviewing) with trendy cognitive bias issues calls your ability to recognize your own weaknesses into question.
I don't think a job interview puts you in a lower-power position by definition, though I admit that there does seem to be a lot of social conditioning to make people believe this is always true.
The power dynamics depends a lot on the specific market conditions at a given point in time. If demand is low and supply is high, you do have a power disadvantage, but its just as possible to see the reverse where the employer is at a disadvantage.
The typical HN reader is more likely to be familiar with the latter than the former. Not because we are all hot shots, but because our industry is presently in high demand and has a low supply of labour.
Power is the ability to coerce through action or threat of action on those issues that you care about or in certain spheres of influence.
So, no, this doesn't mean constant domination. But that's largely due to the fact that the powerful won't generally expend their resources on issues they don't care about. As soon as you disagree or oppose them on an issue that they do care about, though, they will try to dominate you.
EDIT> Also, a person may have power within one sphere, but not another. A classic mistake is not realizing who you're dealing with / what the realities of the situation are.
> But that's largely due to the fact that the powerful won't generally expend their resources on issues they don't care about.
Explaining why something isn't true doesn't suddenly make it true. Yes. Powerful people know better than to constantly dominate. That's why the popular psychological pseudoscience of "alpha behavior" is smoke and bullshit.
High-power behavior? Having the self-assurance to exhibit low-power behavior when they feel like it. Low-power behavior? Attempting to exhibit high-power behavior when they don't have what it takes to back it up.
See how this gets circular and pointless very, very fast?
This kind of article doesn't address the issue known as Chesterton's fence [1]. If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution? Why do we have such strong ingrained impulses to assume them in the first place? "Experts" need to give a very, very convincing answer to this question before urging us to abandon such poses.
Anecdotally, I've often been with groups of engineers where everyone was assuming "low power" poses. The discussion seemed to flow more constructively in such circumstances; it was as though everyone admitted that they didn't know the right answers. They felt free to submit very rough ideas because everybody else was just as ignorant and not in a position to shoot them down. Enter a "confident" program manager, however, and the group quickly devolved into silence and/or banalities; everyone felt reluctant to express opinions that they didn't feel completely certain about.
I am female. My behavior is frequently interpreted by other people as extremely aggressive, attention mongering and so on. (Edit: I suspect a lot of it would be interpreted differently if I were male and it would be less of an issue.) It has gotten me loads of extremely negative attention. I have spent many years trying to learn to fly under the radar and deflect attention. This problem began very early in life with being an excessively cute, sunshiny child and continued with being viewed as a beautiful young woman (which came with perks like being raped and told it was my fault for being too beautiful to resist).
There are serious downsides to getting attention. Faking confidence when you do not have it and also do not have the ability that it implies can bring real trouble. I still want to figure out how to get traffic for my websites because I think that is my best hope for financial success but I have put a great deal of effort into learning to deflect attention away from me personally. I hope that if my work ever does garner good attention those lessons will stand me in good stead. Lots of celebrities have been seriously burned at some point and had trouble understanding why they were no longer darlings of the public eye. I got to go through that on a much smaller scale. My hope is that it will pay dividends some day when it matters more.
" Lots of celebrities have been seriously burned at some point and had trouble understanding why they were no longer darlings of the public eye. I got to go through that on a much smaller scale"
After all it seems that you are afraid of loosing attention. Attention flood may be as undesirable as a drought. But if you have an unusual capability it would be unwise to not use it to your advantage, that is, unless you have money enough to pay for marketing and promotion while you stay away from the public eye.
I am not afraid of losing attention. I have a healthy respect for the very real danger that comes from negative attention. There is nothing neurotic about that. I have a medical condition which makes a normal job a big problem for me. My best bet for success is via the internet. Traffic is necessary to make money. That is a simple objective reality having nothing to do with my feelings, personal baggage, yadda.
Usually it helps when you learn to consiously (on demand) get yourself into a more relaxed state/mood internally. I found that when I am in the relaxed state, this really smoothes some rough edges in how people perceive myself.
Thanks. My past has a variety of influences, including abuse and medical impairment. I have addressed quite a lot of my personal issues. Getting this back to the topic of body language, for me, I think eye contact was a big factor. I wrote about that here:
Are you trying to say you get a lot of attention and don't like it/can't handle it and thus you think being subordinate (low power poses0 is the answer to not being able to cope with things? Come on your argument is that if you fail at something you get burned? There's nothing truer to to life except that we're going to be uncomfortable in it for a long time, but it's easy to ignore if you choose. I understand not wanting to draw attention to yourself, that's a personal thing and a choice only you can really make, but saying "it hurts, I don't want to fly any higher" is never going to change reality, and I think it's sad that someone is posting about life is "forcing" them to do something they don't seem to want.
I didn't say anything like that. You can read remarks by anyone in the public eye about the fact that there is a very real downside to it. For some people the cost is more of a problem than for others. I was simply agreeing with the OP that the situation is not as cut and dried as "dominant behavior good, low status/submissive/nondominant behavior bad."
If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution? Why do we have such strong ingrained impulses to assume them in the first place?
Humans are social animals. In the human social structure, followers are just as important as leaders.
Indeed, I suspect in some cases it's advantageous to keep your head down, rather than be viewed as a challenger (and get to fight the ranking silverback).
From the perspective of primate social structures, the "low power" poses are incredibly important. For a male chimpanzee who doesn't have the physical strength or social clout to defend himself, adopting a submissive posture in the presence of higher ranking male can mean the difference between being tolerated and being beaten up. In a modern environment, I would hope that your boss would not beat you up for adopting a dominant posture, but it does raise the question about whether or not these can lead to an aggression or submissive behavior from other people in meetings. It might be wiser to neutral pose.
Crouching, having your arms crossed etc. doesn't mean "don't beat me up". Sure, you might not be completely confident, but there's a long way from there to submissive. And, as I mentioned above, is it necessarily such a good social signal to fake confidence all the time?
I was discussing their possible evolutionary origins. Hopefully being beaten up is not a possibility in your meetings, but we evolved in an environment where it was until very recently. The whole point of the original article is that such behavior is often unconscious.
Crossed arms is an interesting case because I don't think it's a submissive behavior in other primates. It probably is more indicative of boredom, which is probably also not what you want to signal in meetings. I don't really consider myself a dominant or submissive person, but in the past I think my posture and demeanor radiated distraction and boredom. This isn't very inspiring for the rest of the team. I read an article similar to the one there that inspired me to clean up my act.
Noboyd's saying it's defensive, exactly, but I think it is unambiguously a signal that you don't have social ambition in the given context, which makes you unoffensive but also uninteresting.
>This kind of article doesn't address the issue known as Chesterton's fence [1]. If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution?
That's not hard to explain: most of the selection power of evolution worked in the ancestral, hunters-n-gatherers environment, which covers most of the timespan when anatomically-modern humans lived. Selection modes changed significantly in the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but evolution works too slowly to align our biology ideally with the new environment (plus the local optimum problem).
Therefore, it's not uncommon for people to interpret their surroundings by the ancestral mind, even the basis for those "mental adaptations" no longer exist. Indeed, exploiting the difference is the basis for advertising and all other manners of social manipulation. And it's why Snickers bars taste so damn good but are so bad for you.
An especially relevant divergence on this topic is in meetings: the kind of things that were genetically optimal among a caveman tribe are very far from the processes that generate productive meeting outcomes. For example, your mind is constantly feeding you rationalizations for why something that happens to benefit you personally, will also benefit the group, even and especially when that is utterly false.
So ... I think the appropriate response to claims like the article's, on "Chestertonian" grounds, would be more along the lines of, "If this is so smart, why ain't you(r acolytes) rich?" That is, if people can easily switch to something so much more advantageous, why can't you just as easily prove it with working examples of people you've converted, rather than idly theorizing?
Chesterton is talking about social institutions and social change, not unconscious acts and biological evolution.
His principle doesn't apply at all here. He's asserting that every long-standing social institution very likely came to exist to serve some purpose, so if one says we should scrap institution X because it's useless, it's likely one is wrong. This has nothing to do with man's biological evolution. In fact we have a myriad of "bad features" (congenital diseases, disabilities, cancer) that have survived evolution.
I've read and others have read all these things about body language.
Sometimes I play around, in meeting when chatting about boring stuff. I do stuff on purpose. I assume different poses and notice how others react.
The funny thing is, I've caught one of the other guys at work he was doing the "on purpose assume a power pose" maneuver. It was the "extend the fingers and then touch the fingers of both hands together". What made if funny to me is that he was doing it so awkward, he didn't feel confident and it wasn't natural. Yes I thought to myself, I probably look the same when I do my power pose or cycle through the fake "lower power" poses.
What I've found recently is I feel like I think better when I scrunch into a position like this. I don't know why, and it's not like my own scientific study.
Maybe it's just like going into an isolated place like a shower helps me think better, this type of position seems to as well. I'll cross my arms, and even scrunch my shoulders over. It might even look like I'm in pain.
But how many times have you also seen someone say "Let me think", and they might cross one arm over their chest to hold the other arm at the elbow so that arm can rub their head and cover their eyes.
So this thesis about these poses being better for power, and confidence is interesting. But I'm curious if there's a lot of usefulness from both.
The fun part is watching people actually try to control their body language in reality. You can try, but if you aren't feeling what that "power pose" is broadcasting, you'll just look like an idiot to anyone even remotely paying attention.
You aren't going to gain leadership by leaning back and spread eagling in a business meeting. You're going to gain it by being an actual leader and doing stuff that adds value to an organization.
> The fun part is watching people actually try to control their body language in reality. You can try, but if you aren't feeling what that "power pose" is broadcasting, you'll just look like an idiot to anyone even remotely paying attention.
The article describes a scientific (?) experiment that goes counter that intuition.
What I've noticed after years of trying to hack my emotional give-away, is that it's really hard to fake being confident when you're nervous, especially around people who know you for a while.
However, when dealing with people who don't know you, you can easily fake being important or nobody, for a short period of time. This is not always useful, and could backfire (especially if you are "elevating" your power), but I've found some limited scenarios where altered first impression gives you an edge.
I sort of agree. I find that avoiding bad sorts of physical signals is definitely useful, but consciously instantiating new signals in a convincing way is (surprisingly) very difficult.
That said, there are a few people who are really good at this stuff. One technique is based more on directly altering your mood rather than consciously positioning your body, and some people just seem better able to manipulate their mood than others.
There's some overlap between leadership and not caring too much what others think.
The stereotypical brash alpha-male behaviours aren't necessarily affected. They can stem from just not even considering for a moment that you're not entitled to succeed, or to do as you please. While this can be annoying, it's also magnetic.
Several years ago one of the universities (University of Maryland College Park) had an almost official motto: "Act like you know". It does work, surprisingly, to a substantial degree.
First, what does it mean that these poses, these concepts ("power" as the desirable mode of relating to your coworkers for example) and even the key hormone we are meant to incite are so gendered? The poses are more essentially masculine than they are powerful. Have you ever seen a woman naturally with in the arm-around-the-chair pose, hips slunk forward and chest back? It would look quite unusual I think. As an employer, I'm not sure I want to select for testosterone (and I don't think I have so far). But maybe there is more to it.
Second, does it matter that attention is zero-sum? I would suggest that to ve convincing the author doesn't need to merely argue that body language manipulation is helpful, but that it is more helpful than, say, listening carefully, or preparing that much more for an interview, or even studying and thinking about human psychology more directly. You can only keep track of so many dimensions at once, and I'm not sold on the idea that I would benefit from privileging this dimension. Maybe I would, but that case hasn't been made for me yet.
I took burlesque dance lessons for a while. There was some time spent discussing posture and its use; I learnt some ways of standing that would make me look confident and sexy. There were some strong similarities to these "power poses" - but trust me, they were very, very feminine.
As a great practical guide to reading and applying body language, I'd recommend "What everybody is saying" by Dave Navarro. Guy used to do body language analysis for the FBI afaik, and then wrote a book about it.
Concerning the body language tips the article recomends, I think everyone except arms crossed behind head is covered for in the book. Arm akimbo, crossed legs, etc.
As a personal tip, I'd give the thumbs up. No, like actually stretch your thumbs out when you walk around or talk to people, and leave them out of your pockets. It's ok to put the rest of the hand in, but the thumbs stay out.
Ahh, and if you're arguing, even if you want to, don't start undressing yourself, no matter how angry you are. 2 people arguing and taking jackets and shirts off usually means business you don't want to be part of neccesairily.
This is the actual definition of "cargo cult" behavior.
It's getting cause and effect backwards because you don't understand their relationship, and trying to imitate the effect in the futile hope that it will cause the cause.
People who sit all relaxed like that do so because they have power. They don't have power because they sit like that, and sitting like that will not magically confer power to you.
I took burlesque dance classes for a while. One of the things taught in this class was how to look confident, because projecting confidence is also pretty damn sexy.
Curiously enough, as I started learning these postures and using them, I found myself becoming a lot more confident. This was not something anyone told me to expect; it just sort of happened. It's spread out over a lot of how I move and behave, even when I'm not explicitly turning it on.
You are not a mind riding on top of a body. You are your body. And your body has a lot of weird feedback mechanisms that can be exploited.
If you read the article, they actually do an experiment and show via random assignment that assigning the posture actually causes the outcome (in this case, job interview success).
They didn't show the mechanism, but they did in fact show the direction of causality.
This is great stuff as long as you like people who breath their own exhaust.
As soon as you encounter someone who is not speaking the same language, there will be great confusion. Usually, this means anyone from outside of MBA/Marketing/ or other art-of-BS type disciplines.
It describes a number of exercises where one actor takes the role of a superior and the other an inferior. The techniques are quite effective for the intended audience.
I would quote from it but I had a paper copy and it's really only worth running through once a decade for a non-actor interesting in the physical aspect of acting.
I know that body language and customs are different, but I wanted to point out that in some Asian cultures, arm-crossing is done as a sign of respect, especially towards elders. It's a source of confusion and amusement for older people when the Western-integrated young people get angry.
That said, one should keep an eye out for more than just nonverbal cues, as telling as they may be.
Perhaps you are unconsciously responding to the "power move"? I had a boss who would routinely show up late to sales calls _we_ were making. We were the salesmen; we'd show up 10 minutes late. He said it was classic power strategy. Make them think they're waiting on you. I was pissed, back then. Today, I'm less incredulous and wonder if he was on to something.
I feel like this is one of those instances where, once everyone knows about it, everyone does it, and everyone knows why you're doing it. Therefore, it eventually becomes ineffective (perhaps there is a name for this phenomenon). If I keep seeing books/blog posts/news segments on "power poses" then every interviewee starts putting their feet on my table, surely I'll notice. It's the body language version of a buzzword.
I believe that we humans can also detect fake and unnatural body language.
What I don't like about is when people try to be impressive and poses a fake and unnatural body language to convey a certain scenario or meaning.
Body language is all about the meaning of the messages they convey and the GENUINE emotion they are experiencing.
It should not be faked, for the purpose of conveying a meaning or a make believe scenario.
It should begin with the message itself, it should begin with the actual emotion itself.
- Focus first on having a meaningful means of being confident, before you actually become, convey and exudes great confidence.
- Focus first on having a meaningful message, before actually forcing people that you have a meaningful and convincing message.
Winners have a genuine emotion for winning, so they actually have a real winning body language. It is not fake, and it is very convincing, and people will be drawn by the same emotions the winner is experiencing via the winner's genuine body language.
I have encountered several people doing unnatural body language, they want people to believe that they are confident speakers but their message is so unconvincing, it does not gel and it is really annoying and is painful to watch.
1) As far as interviews are concerned (or any dialogue) mirroring might get you further than power -- eg: when your interviewer crosses his/her arms, you might gain an advantage doing the same - whatever the "power poses" theory says. I suppose it is like language: Short, conscience sentences might be "powerful" or "commanding" -- but that alone doesn't make for effective prose in all cases. No communication without context.
2) Sitting in a room for two minutes, relaxing, convinced that you're doing a "power poise" -- might elevate your hormone levels. I'm sure screaming a battle cry, or doing a haka would work to. Not sure if it is just the poise in itself that helps with the levels. Would be interesting to do a reverse test: tell people that a "low power" position is actually a "power position" and vice versa -- and redo the experiment. I highly doubt we've got strong evolutionary ties to sitting with our feet up on a swivel chair.
3) The point about blind athletes -- so you imply blind people don't have socialized behaviour? Thankfully you don't have to live in an isolation chamber just because you're blind.
Re: #2, My understanding of the experiment is that they simply had people assume poses, and then measured their hormone levels. If they really did tell them up front whether the pose was intended to make them feel powerful, that would certainly be an egregious mistake in the methodology, but that wasn't the impression I had from hearing the TED talk.
Actually, I wonder if you could even pull of that version of the experiment without the participants seeing through it ("No really, shrinking into your chair and looking at the floor is a great display of power!").
I didn't really mean to imply that that's how the experiment was initially performed -- or that there's no correlation between poses and hormone levels.
I was more wondering if the results could be replicated with different poses (and a different context).
Then again, if people already "know" that the poses are (relatively) high or low power (hence are able to "see through" false explanations in an alternative study) -- perhaps the mental state is more important than the actual pose.
I can't locate the reference, but I've read, and observed, that if you want to verify that the person w/ whom you're conversing is paying attention to you, cross your arms: if the other person crosses their arms also, then they're paying attention to you.
Oh God, I can see it now, startup pickup artistry:
"Yeah, I negged that investor twice and then escalated kino, and then popped the termsheet. You're a beginner--try a cold-open with a Paul Graham story and look for indicators of interest."
Great article. If anyone's interested I've got a video course on how to improve your body language. The course is 100% free and you can register at: http://gobodylanguage.com
Hmmm.. With poses you can broadcast your 'negotiation position', but I don't think it's appropriate to try to look like you're on the winner's side if you're not. Makes some sense in some situations like interviews though.
I'm learning taijiquan: one of the key concepts is the alignment of the body posture to allow energy to enter the meridians. Health and emotion are both influenced by posture.
The title of this is complete bullshit!
Did the writer actually read the study hes referencing?
One of the conclusions is that crossed arms is meaningless!
Something I find immensely troubling about these studies is that examples of high status body language are frequently things that I personally find extremely obnoxious or social-norm breakingly rude, to the point that I have often called people out on it.
The feet on the table one, for example. To what extent is that signaling high-status simply because it's a very rude thing to do? Is it implausible that a study might come out one day arguing that picking one's nose or scratching one's arse in front of someone is high-status body language for the reason that it is disrespectful to the other party therefore must signal a confidence in the asymmetry of power?
I know it's not quite the same, but certainly as a teacher if my students don't sit "properly" on their chairs then I'll make clear that is unacceptable. The older they get, the better they should know, and the harsher I'll be. I've even sent students out of the room for it.
In situations where my higher status isn't assumed, the "calling out", however, does not have to be verbal. This picture in particular http://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Screen-... annoys me just to look at it, and reminds me of formal occasions when someone has been sitting like that and I have conspicuously adjusted my own position so I am sitting straight-backed and upright. I can't remember a time when they haven't broken the pose and adjusted their position likewise. Sometimes it might take an uncomfortable moment of silence, but they will break it. Am I adopting higher-status body language than them and they are keeping up? Maybe, but I don't think so - I believe sitting neatly and smartly in response to their pose just makes them (an adult) feel rather silly and they adjust to nullify that feeling. I mean, if you were being interviewed for a job by someone sitting in one of these supposedly "high-status" but actually pretty damn rude positions, you wouldn't think the interview had even begun yet, would you?
Having read other replies in this thread, perhaps I'm wrong, and this means in monkey times (technical term) I'd be the male who beat up the other male for signaling challenging body language - and I doubt I would have lasted long given repeat trials. However, I don't think of it like that. It is simply a matter of respect and etiquette. I'm not the one lying back on my chair or exposing my crotch. "Sit properly!"
My experience of social-norms is informed by growing up in middle class England and spending a long time living in Japan. I accept that in both cultures signaling deep understanding of what is polite is the higher-level currency of status. In other parts of the world, and for lower social strata, I appreciate it can be very different.
Additionally, in the picture I linked, the fact that the first guy is exposing his feet is probably actually more egregious to my sensibilities than his pose. If he were wearing a suit and smart shoes I think I would respect him more and consider the pose acceptable, I suppose in some way "earned". As it stands, there's just something very - and I realise I may be about to lose anyone on my side up to this point - "punchable" about his face...
A final point is that while I find myself in many situations where these displays are considered vulgar, to the point that they counter-signal by betraying a lack of etiquette-knowledge, they do seem to play an important role in the "game" of socialising. I instinctively feel like a "douche" laying my arm across an empty chair next to me or positioning my legs in a way that suggests what is between them is enormous, yet I'll do it anyway when the situation is right and I'll justify it the same way I would "show off" dancing or playing an instrument. But not at work: http://youtu.be/sEtQj9wuqhs?t=42s.
> Am I adopting higher-status body language than them and they are keeping up?
You're playing a secondary game, countersignalling by conspicuously assuming a lower-status pose. You're both aware that you could instead assume their pose and play chicken with them about who will submit first. By "choosing the high road," you're saying that you've noticed the status game in play, and that now their implicit status move has become an explicit status move. And humans have strong norms about the group disapproving of explicit dominance. (See: democracy.) So when the person displaying the dominant behavior realizes they've been "found out", they stop.
Also,
> The feet on the table one, for example. To what extent is that signaling high-status simply because it's a very rude thing to do?
To answer this, consider the converse: to what extent could the fact that it's a rude thing to do be explained by anything other than it being a show of dominance?
In the case of picking one's nose, it can be considered rude because it is a private grooming behavior considered to be not especially hygenic by modern standards. It exposes bits of one's internal "grossness" to others. It would be uncouth even without dominance circuitry.
In the case of putting one's feet up on a table, though, I don't much see what could be wrong with it other than that it's a show of dominance. Perhaps we might be slightly wired to predict that feet are smelly or covered in dirt, but in the modern white-collar work environment this isn't the case--so it shouldn't be rude. And yet it is. So it's a dominance behavior.
(And in the case of scratching one's arse, I'm not quite sure--that doesn't seem dominant to me, but nor does it seem rude. It just seems like an artificial restriction created by some Tough environments[1] to stratify people by "those who can ignore all their bodily urges and pretend they don't exist for longest." This is called etiquette, and is a whole different kind of mating-fitness-signalling--more like birdsong than apes beating one-another up.)
The feet on the table did occur to me as one which I could have the wrong way around and while only "slightly wired to predict that feet are smelly or covered in dirt" may be true (seems unintuitive to me though), I think the perceived discrepancy is cultural as much as anything. I've noticed the ickyness of putting feet on tables is almost universally invisible to Americans, while in Japan it would seem completely unacceptable along with a whole host of other related customs, for example, the taking off of shoes and the special slippers to wear when you use the bathroom. Japanese ask me extensively about UK customs regarding shoes and feet, it's evidently considered a hygiene issue, much like their showering before bathing. In the UK the foot thing is probably a bit of both, varying from person to person, family to family. I was brought up such that I wouldn't ever consider putting my feet up on a table, even when completely alone in my own house. Our trains have signs telling you not to rest your feet on seats, I wonder if US trains do. What you say actually now reduces the offense that I would take if an American put their feet up in front of me. I would think "well for them this isn't considered gross, just a sign of relaxation that at worst is dominance behaviour" and I'd attempt to force myself not to be disgusted by it.
One other thing might be that outhouses were an American innovation[1], imported to other parts of the world later; and thus, of all rural-living subcultures (which are the usual source for a culture's hygenic mores/superstitions, being the most affected by them), rural Americans have had the longest to adapt to not worrying about getting shite on their feet. :)
