CMN 122 Exam #1

What is communication?

Communication is the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning.

* That is, communication occurs whenever a person attempts to send a message or whenever a person perceives and assigns meaning to behavior.

Successful Communication (sent w/ intent)

Occurs when a person intentionally sends a message

Miscommunication (sent w/ intent)

Occurs when a person intends to send a particular message, but the receiver interprets the message incorrectly

Attempted Communication (sent w/ intent)

Occurs when a person intends to send a message, but no one receives it

Accidental Communication (sent w/o intent)

Occurs when a person attaches the right meaning to another person’s unintentional behavior

Misinterpretation (sent w/o intent)

Occurs when a person attaches the wrong meaning to an unintended behavior

Unattended Behavior

Occurs when a behavior goes unnoticed by the receiver

What are the four different approaches/perspectives for what counts as communication?

1. Source Perspective
2. Receiver Perspective
3. Message Perspective
4. Process-oriented Perspective

Source Perspective

Communication occurs when a person intends to send a message and another person attends to that message

* As long as the message is directed toward a receiver, the message is considered to be sent with the intent
* Only includes messages that fall under successful communication and miscommunication in the figure

Receiver Perspective

Based on the idea that behavior is communication as long as someone attaches meaning to it, regardless of whether the behavior was displayed with or without intent

* Successful communication, miscommunication, accidental communication, and misinterpretation all count as forms of communication

Message Perspective

Specifies that nonverbal communication occurs when people exchange messages that have common social meanings

* Behaviors qualify as communication if they meet at least one of the following criteria:
* Typically sent with intent
* Usually interpreted as intentional
* Or they have shared meaning with a particular relationship, group, or culture
* Idiosyncratic (unique) behaviors do not count

Process-oriented Perspective

Includes all of the forms of communication shown in the figure except for unattended behavior

* Successful communication, followed by miscommunication and accidental communication, are the best examples of communication
* Attempted communication and misinterpretation are also important to study because they can influence the overall pattern of communication

What three characteristics affect what counts as communication?

1. Whether or not the sender intends to send a message
2. Whether or not the receiver pays attention to and interprets the message
3. Whether the receiver's interpretation is accurate

What are the functions of nonverbal communication?

* Creating Impressions and Making Judgements
* Sending Relational Messages
* Expressing Emotion
* Deceiving and Detecting Deception
* Sending Messages of Power and Persuasion

Creating Impressions and Making Judgements

Physical appearance and kinesics are especially important in creating impressions because they are often noticed first

Sending Relational Messages

Use nonverbal behaviors to tell others how you feel about them

* Also, evaluate the nonverbal communication of others they try and figure out how they feel about you
* You can show others that you like them, are similar to them, and trust them
* Can also use it to define a relationship as formal or informal, and as a task related or socially oriented
* Immediacy cues
* Nonimmediacy

Immediacy principle

Predicts that people will approach individuals, situations, and objects they like and will avoid or move away from those they dislike.

Immediacy Cues

Communicate liking through behaviors such as smiles, close distances, touch, gaze, and forward lean

Nonimmediacy Cues

Functions to create distance and cut off communication

* Maintaining large distances, leaning and looking away from someone, and engaging in defensive posturing signals that you are unavailable for communication and possibly dislike someone

Expressing Emotion

The facial expressions made when one is feeling primary emotions is universal and is interpreted similarly

* Although often the expression of both basic and blended emotions are done freely and spontaneously there are times when you want to control (or manage) your emotional expression

What are the primary/basic emotions?

* Happiness
* Fear
* Anger
* Sadness
* Disgust
* Surprise

What are emotional blends?

Occur when more than one basic emotion is experienced at the same time, are expressed more subtly, and are therefore more difficult to recognize

What are some examples of emotional blends?

* Disappointment: a blend of sadness and surprise
* Jealousy: often a blend of anger and fear

Deceiving and Detecting Deception

Two kinds of nonverbal cues typically co-occur during deception: strategic and nonstrategic behavior

* According to the leakage hierarchy, some nonverbal behaviors are harder to control than others during the deception process
* Leakiest = the voice and the lower body channels
* The face and upper body are easier to control
* Very difficult to detect deception

Strategic Behavior/Cues

Used to try to hide the fact that they are deceiving

* When people are deceiving they know that one of the behaviors of deceivers is to look away so they look at you straight in the eye more

Nonstrategic Behavior/Cues

The behaviors that deceivers cannot control

* “Leak” negative emotion
* When deceivers are looking you straight in the eyes their smiles could be false looking or their voices might sound shaky which is leaking their feelings of anxiety

Sending Messages of Power and Persuasion

Nonverbal messages exercise social control

* Such messages can be used to control people and events, establish power, or dominate others
* Powerful people touch others more than they are touched and look at others less than they are looked at (except when staring down at someone)
* Have control over time and territory
* Also, take up more space than less powerful people, and environments can be used to control people by structuring interaction
* Ex: Classroom setting
* Used to persuade others
* Ex: smile and touch friends when trying to get them to do something for you

Study #1 - Black vs. non-black uniforms

* Method: Shown color slides showing the jerseys, etc. of various NFL and NHL teams then rated the uniforms
* Results: Black uniforms were rated as more malevolent than non-black uniforms

Study #2 - Analyzing penalty records

* Method: involved analyzing penalty records from the NFL and NHL over a 16-17 year period
* Results: statistical analyses revealed that teams with black uniforms were penalized more than teams with non-black uniforms
* Also showed that when the colors switched from non-black to black uniforms the number of minutes they spent in the penalty box increased

Study #3 - Fans or referees rating defensive teams actions

* Method: knowledgeable football fans or refs. were shown one of two videos depicting a scrimmage
* The defense wore white in one and black in another, the offense always wore red in both
* Then rated actions of defense
* Results: both fans and referees were more likely to rate the defensive team’s actions as illegal and aggressive if they were wearing black

Study #4 - Ranking games when alone vs. in a group w/ black or white uniforms on

* Method: Groups of 3 participated in an experiment “competition”,
* Each was asked individually to choose and rank 5 games from a list of 12 that they would like to play (varied in levels of aggression
* They were then outfitted in either black or white uniforms
* The three subjects re-ranked their game preferences as a team rather than as individuals
* Results: After the groups were outfitted in their uniforms those in black chose more aggressive games as a group than they had as individuals.
* White did not show an increase in aggressive choices

Overall findings from the four studies

* All this goes to show how the color of one’s uniform can induce such a shift in a person’s identity
* However not all wearing dark clothing is innocent, some people do choose to wear black on purpose (to intimidate)

Illustrators

Those acts which are intimately related on a moment-to-moment basis to speech

* Usually augment what is being said verbally and are used with awareness and intentionality

How is illustrator frequency related to a person’s mood and conversational role?

* When a person is demoralized, discouraged, tired, unenthusiastic, concerned about the other person’s impression, or in a non-dominant position in a formal interaction and setting, the rate of illustrators is less than is usual for that person
* Negative feelings = fewer illustrators
* With excitement, and enthusiasm about the topic or process of communication, when in the dominant role in a formal interaction, or in a more informal interaction where there is little concern about the impression being conveyed more illustrators are used
* When difficulty is experienced in finding the right words, or when feedback from the listener suggests he is not comprehending illustrators increase
* Can fill pauses and maintain a person’s speaking turn
* Serve a self-priming function, helping the speaker past an awkwardness in their speech or thought, and accelerating the flow of her and his ideas

How is eye gaze related to Machiavellian tendencies?

* People occasionally reveal increased eye-to-eye contact while being deceptive
* Those with high Machiavellian tendencies increased their direct eye contact after being accused of cheating as if to project an image of innocence
* Those with low Machiavellian qualities tended to avert their gaze, being less able to conceal their shame

Functions of Eye Gaze

* Social Position
* Positive vs. Negative Emotions
* Willingness to Relate
* Women vs. Men
* Cultural Factors
* Synchrony of Speech
* Character Traits

Social Position

Persons in positions of leadership tend to gravitate toward locations where they are the visual focus of attention

* Ex: Head of the table

Positive vs. Negative Emotions

* Positive emotions (delight, surprise, or interest) are associated with increased gaze
* Negative emotions (horror or disgust) are associated with gaze aversion
* High anxiety = eye movements are deployed in an avoidant manner, with shorter eye fixations and shifts of gaze away from threatening areas
* Pupils enlarge when people look at things they like

Willingness to Relate

A person’s decision to look back into the eyes of someone who is already looking at him is one of the principal signals by which one denotes a willingness to begin an encounter

* Ocular engagement reflects human engagement

Women vs. Men

* Women tend to look at their conversational partners somewhat more than men
* Also appear to engage more readily in mutual gazing, while men show a greater tendency toward one-way (“stolen”) glances

Cultural Factors

Culturally prescribed norms of visual engagement exert a profound effect on gazing patterns

* Some groups are taught to avoid eye contact while others emphasize intense eye contact as evidence of sincerity and interest

Synchrony of Speech

* Listeners glance more frequently than talkers
* Gaze aversion among talkers is more pronounced during periods of unfluent speech
* To limit distracting sensory input while difficult verbal production is in progress)
* Patterns are believed to assist conversationalists in synchronizing their speech by supplementing auditory info with an interchange of facial expression and body kinesics

Character Traits

* A direct gaze is more likely to be returned by a person with aggressive and assertive character traits
* Extroverts also tend to exchange eye contact more readily than introverts
* Hysterics have been found to avert their gazes more often than obsessives when confronted by a sexually evocative stimulus
* People with a high degree of eye contact are judged to be more friendly, natural, self-confident, and sincere
* Those with little eye contact are perceived as cold, defensive, evasive, submissive, or inattentive

Why does nonverbal communication play an important role in our interactions with others?

* Research suggests 60-65% of social meaning is derived from NVB


* Adults often interpret messages by relying more on nonverbal cues
* People rely more on NV communication to send positive and negative messages to relational partners
* Particularly important when expressing emotion, forming impressions, and communicating relational messages 


* Seen as more believable than verbal messages

Which communication channels do people consider when interpreting messages? Which channels are important?

* People often pay more attention to the visual channel (facial expressions and body movement) than to the verbal channel
* Vocal channel (including voice tone, pitch, and volume) is also important
* Relational partners rely heavily on the voice when sending and interpreting messages

Definition of Nonverbal Communication (Guerrero et al.)

“Involves all messages other than words or language, including aspects of the voice, body movement, facial expression, space, time, smell, and the environment

Sender

The person doing the behavior

Feedback

The behaviors that indicate we are paying attention

What are the channels of nonverbal behavior?

* Kinesics
* Appearance and Adornment
* Vocalics
* Contact Codes
* Time and Place Codes

Kinesics

All about body movement and how are we using our body to communicate nonverbally

* Gestures, body postures, facial expressions (communicate emotions), eye contact (study of eye contact = oculesics), etc.

Appearance and Adornment

* Physical appearance (clothes (status, accessories (backpack, laptop, etc)
* The size of our body (being taller or shorter)
* The shape of our body
* Hair length, hair color, absence of hair),
* Odor is how the body smells

What is the study of smell?

Olfactory Communication

Vocalics

Not the words we are saying but how we say the words (talking loud, quiet, fast, slow, changing pitch), and as we change our voice it can change our meaning

What is paralanguage?

The study of vocalics

Contact Codes

Include how we utilize space

* Do we allow people to invade our personal zones?
* How do we occupy space - do we choose to take up less space?

What is the study of space?

Proxemics

Touch

* Touching others communicates nonverbally
* Ex: rubbing someone’s back, giving a hug or kiss, aggression, parent and children holding hands


* Touch has to occur in the intimate zone of proxemics, there cannot be distance

What is the study of touch?

Haptics

Time and Place Codes

The way that we use time can communicate nonverbally

* Different cultures will approach time differently
* Monochromic vs polychronic cultures

Monochromic Cultures

* Linear and do things one at a time
* They use it to structure their lives

Polychronic Cultures

* Other entity that exists but they don’t structure their lives around it
* They will multitask

What is the study of time?

Chronemics

What are the three benefits of studying nonverbal communication?

1. It will improve your accuracy in understanding others


1. Will ensure that you do not do anything offensive
2. It will improve your own ability to communicate info and persuade others


1. Will ensure consistent messages are being sent both verbally and nonverbally
3. It will enable you to make a more effective self-presentation


1. You can choose nonverbal behaviors to highlight or conceal things to make a more favorable impression

What are the aspects of meaning in nonverbal behavior?

* Intention (encoding): What are people’s intentions when they emit this behavior?
* Perception/interpretation (decoding): How do receivers of this behavior interpret it?
* Interactive: Are the behaviors that have a reliable behavioral effect on others
* Shared encoding-decoding: are there behaviors whose meaning senders and receivers consistently agree on?

What does it mean when a behavior is called interactive?

If there are consistent reliable responses for why this behavior is happening then this would be classified as an interactive behavior

External Conditions

Often influenced or grounded in the context, this will likely change the difference in communication

* Ex: Going to see family and giving them a hug vs. going to see Gary May
* Will tell us what nonverbal communications behavior in relation to the verbal

Relationship to the Verbal

What is the nonverbal communications behavior in relation to the verbal

Awareness

Many times we are aware of our behaviors but sometimes we are unaware

* Ex: getting accused of rolling our eyes when we think we didn’t but probably did (unaware)

Intent

Is it deliberate, or are we doing it on purpose, other times they don’t happen deliberately but they happen

* We can do something intentionally and be aware of that (shaking someone’s hand)
* Can do behavior unintentionally and be aware of them (professor gestures throughout the lecture unintentionally but is aware)

Feedback

The behavior we do to indicate that we are paying attention (nodding head, etc.)

* Allows us to be both sender and receiver in our transactional model of communication

The type of information conveyed

There are four types: idiosyncratic, informative, communicative, interactive

Idiosyncratic

Usage and meaning are peculiar to the individual

* This does not mean others would not know what they mean but it wouldn’t be consistent among a large percentage of people

Informative

Shared encoding and decoding (i.e., both conversation partners come to same conclusion)

Communicative

Enacted with clear, conscious intention to convey a message

* If it is communicative it will have high awareness

Interactive

Influence or modify another person’s behavior

* Ex: Invading someone’s personal space

Diagram

Figure out what to write…

What are the three sources of behavior?

1. Innate neurological mechanisms (i.e., there are things we were born able to do)
2. Species constant experiences (i.e., when the context of our environment calls for a specific action and we do what makes sense but it is not something we are born with)
3. Learning and socialization (i.e., much of our behavior is learned through socialization, like the middle finger)

Arbitrary

There is no logical reason why the nonverbal behavior means what it means

Iconic (metaphoric)

The behavior we do and the message it communicates have some sort of logical connection (it is not the exact thing we are trying to say but we see aspects of what it is)

* Telephone gesture
* Hands out for driving

Intrinsic

The behavior both represents and is the thing we are communicating

* Ex: Punching someone in the face (this communicates aggression and is aggression)
* Yawning (communicates tiredness and we are tired)

Emblems

Nonverbal behaviors that have a very clear dictionary-like translation

* These often can be used instead of words because the translation is so clear
* Culturally bound

Definition of Illustrators

Nonverbal behaviors that are 100% tied to language always accompany words being spoken and provide a visual representation

* Ex: Big fish gesture

Adaptors

Nonverbal behaviors that we do to manage our emotional arousal

* We do not want to feel overwhelmed or anxious but we also don’t want to be too lowly aroused

Regulators

Nonverbal behaviors we do to control our “traffic signals” or to know when it is our turn to speak

* Ex: Raising a hand or saying wait a minute by holding up a finger

Emotion Displays

We convey a lot of emotions through our nonverbals

* Many of these occur on our faces (disgust, contempt, etc.) but we can do it with our body (clenching fists)

Substitute

We can use nonverbal communication to substitute for the verbal

Ex: Emblems (which have a specific type of translation)

Complement

This suggests our verbal and nonverbal work together to send a more complete message

* This occurs at the same time

Congruent

The verbal and nonverbal are moving together to send the same message

* Ex: The facial expressions of joy combined with a higher pitched voice

Accent

This is used when we want to draw emphasis on the importance of what we are trying to say

* Ex: Gestures, stress with paralanguage, and accent

Regulate

This tells us when it is our turn to speak and when it isn’t

* Ex: When we have the floor we might make a gesture of 1 minute to help control the flow of the conversation

Repeating

The nonverbal will repeat what was said in the verbal after it took place

* Ex: Pointing at the MU after saying "it is over there”

Conflicting

What we are communicating nonverbally and verbally is incongruent

* Ex: Kid saying “ I am not pouting” but clearly is

Do individuals tend to trust the nonverbal or verbal more when the behaviors do not match up?

People trust the nonverbal more

Sarcasm

If someone says “Well… that was pretty smart” the verbal would say that was in fact smart but the nonverbal would state the opposite

Where did the revival of interest in gesture stem from?

* The first book on gestures in the 17th century (believed that language and gestures had similar origins in the brain
* This was rotted in the fact that children slowly learn gestures and language
* The discovery that apes can be taught at least some aspects of sign language
* Koko the gorilla

Gesture

A movement of the body, or any part of the body, that is considered to be expressive of thought or feeling

* Can be done with our head, hands, and feet

What is the difference between “gesture” and “practical actions?”

* Practical actions are movements of the body that are trying to accomplish a practical act (picking up a pencil, unscrewing lid)
* The line is blurry between the two
* Are they doing the practical action in a way that is really embellished? If so it is a gesture
* Andrew Dice Clay cigarette Ex: goes beyond because the actor has a significant way to light the cigarette (exaggerated arm movement (idiosyncratic))
* If it is symbolic then a practical action can take on the role of gestures

What are the 4 types of gestures and their sub-categories?

* Emblems
* Illustrators
* Regulators
* Beats and Batons (Pres. Clinton)
* Adaptors
* Self-adaptors
* Object-adaptors

Beats and Batons

It still, helps to control the flow of conversation but adds rhythm to what we are saying and helps keep the conversation going

* Ex: Bill Clinton: I. Did. Not. Have. Sexual. Relations. With. That. Woman
* Not all Regulators are Beats and Batons

Self-adaptors

Body movements where we engage in self-touching

* Moving our hands through our hair, chewing fingernails, playing with our hair
* Man touching his lip