Test #3: Facial Expression, Vocalics (Paralanguage), & Kinesics (Movement/Gesture)

Prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize faces, including one's own. Often known as "Face Blindness."

Sometimes, you're born with it, or sometimes, something happens, like a head injury.

People with this condition still get on just fine because they can recognize many other characteristics--just not faces!

Facial Recognition Technology

Imperfect technology with difficulty identifying people of color, especially women

Affect Display

Interpreting emotions through facial expressions impacts social interactions.

Sometimes, people on the spectrum have difficulty with this.

For example, recognizing someone is angry at the moment, so you know better than to ask them for a favor.

Evolutionary/Genetic Perspective

Facial expressions are linked to DNA because emotions are universal.

Paul Ekman's S.C.A.D.F.I.S.H.

S - Sadness
C - Contempt
A - Anger
D - Disgust
F - Fear
I - Interest
S - Surprise
H - Happy

Paul Ekman traveled all over the world studying this.

External Perspective

Instruction from Others: Being directly instructed by others. For example, being told how to act during church.

Social Learning: Observing others. For example, if you're at a funeral of someone you didn't know, so you're not really sad, but everyone else is, you will probably put on a sad face.

Meltzoff & Moore (1977)

Discovered that babies are terrific mimics. They observe their surroundings and imitate things even though they don't understand them.

Babies would stick out their tongues when someone stuck it out to them. Long before infants UNDERSTAND emotions, they SENSE emotions.

They can pick up on the mood of the caregiver. They learn that the mood they're sensing and the facial expressions they're seeing are related.

Facial Expression Management

Adapting facial expressions to suit social contexts and interactions

Masking

Hiding true emotions by displaying a different emotion deemed appropriate.

Example: pretending to like a gift you think is crap.

Micro-flash

Subconscious messages about true feelings are unintentionally displayed.

We often cannot mask fast enough, and a micro-flash will occur.

Intensification

Exaggerating emotions to meet social expectations or interactions.

For example, your 5-year-old niece draws you a picture. You feel positive about it, but it is NOT the work of art that you work it up to be. "Oh my GOSH, YOU made this? YOU HAVE TALENT! I'm gonna put this on my fridge and...!"

Neutralization

Suppressing emotions to appear completely neutral, like in poker.

De-intensification

Toning down emotions to match the situation, avoiding overexpression.

For example, you just got the job you worked really hard to get. You calmly tell them thank you, and then after hanging up the phone, you shout out in joy and call up all your loved ones to tell them the great news.

Affect Blends (Compound Facial Expressions)

Experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously, reflected in facial expressions.

For example, feeling happy and scared on a rollercoaster ride--you might be smiling, but have wide, terrified eyes.

Audience Effects

Behavioral changes in response to the presence of others, affecting emotions.

This is why a laugh track is used.

Facial Emblems

Gestures or expressions conveying specific meanings, like winking or kids sticking out their tongues to say, "I don't like you!"

Emblems can have DIFFERENT meanings in DIFFERENT cultures.

Facial Expressions: Spontaneous or Based in Social Purpose?

Alan Fridlund: "Facial expressions are ALWAYS enacted to serve a social purpose." To deceive other people. This is considered an advantage to survival, whether right or wrong.

Ross Buck: "Facial expressions are BOTH Deliberate and Spontaneous." Ross thinks that sometimes it's to serve a purpose, and sometimes it is spontaneous.

Real Smile vs. Fake Smile

While truly smiling, the eyes are squinted due to the obicularis oculi muscle.

The length of the smile tends to tip people who know you well off whether it's fake or real, although the real length can be different between people.

Fake smiles are created by DIFFERENT PATHWAYS. Someone with a stroke could be unable to fake smile with both sides of the face, but ABLE to smile for real using both sides of the face. Or, vice-versa.

Internalizers

Someone who is very hard to read. This is someone who holds their emotions very close inside--it might be conscious or how they're wired.

Externalizers

If they have an emotion, it gets expressed, and everybody within a country mile can tell what that emotion is.

People who express their emotions tend to be healthier. This is correlation, NOT cause-and-effect.

William James

"Actions SEEM to follow feeling, but really, actions and feelings go together; and by regulating the ACTION, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the FEELING, which is not."

If you want to feel happy, but you don't feel it, FAKE IT! There is a BOATLOAD of research that indicates this is correct, albeit imperfect.

Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988):

Wanted to test William James' theory.

Had people read cartoons while holding a metal rod in their mouth. They would either hold it with their teeth, so they were smiling, or with their lips.

Overwhelmingly, the people who "smiled" during it rated the cartoons to be funnier.

Facial Expressions and Judgments:

When defendants look sad or distressed, they're more likely to be found either NOT guilty or judged less harshly if they were guilty/judged harsher.

Facial Expression and Helpfulness:

A study was done. People who were smiled at by a stranger were far more likely to help someone who dropped their groceries right after, than those who were not smiled at.

Facial Expression and Sex/Gender:

Women smile more by 40%. In an average day, the average female is 40% more likely to smile than males.

This is because of the way that we've been socialized. Females/feminine communicators are expected to express emotion.

Angry Faces - Hansen & Hansen (1988):

They created composite photographs where one face is not like the others in its grouping. They wanted to find out what people are better at identifying--happy faces or angry faces. People picked out angry faces faster because it's a survival instinct.

Vocalics (Paralanguage)

This has to do with your voice, but it is STILL nonverbal! Nonverbal does not equal nonvocal

Nuances in your voice can convey information separate from the actual words being used.

Vocal Qualities

Changes in your voice which have the ability to convey information.

-Volume
-Tempo
-Inflection

When you win 10,000 from the scratch off lottery, you're going to be super loud and excited and fast-talking.
Let's say you get super bad news immediately after-your family trip is canceled. Your voice qualities will CHANGE.

Vocal Qualifiers:

When we have a change in our voice for ONE word or ONE phrase- like if you bolded/underlined/italicized something.

"DON'T forget grandpa's birthday is NEXT THURSDAY!"

Vocal Characterizers:

Laughing/giggling/sighing/moaning

Vocal Segregates

1. Sounds: are just sounds, but we treat them as if they were words.

"Uh huh" "Yo" "Ahh"

Over time, if a segregate is used in the same way by enough people, it will become a word.

2. Words: are actual words, but are used as sounds. It's a word used as a sound as a filler. People will pepper their language with words, without trying to convey the value of it.

Using the word "like" as every third or fourth word. It's a filler, not meant to MEAN "like."

Accent

How people pronounce things. Might be related to a particular region, like the Southwest of the United States, or a smaller region, like a city, or a household.

- People tend to have very strong emotional reactions to accents, whether positive or negative.

Accents: Sexy or Not?

There was a study done. All women subjects listened to male actors speak in either a Southern or British accent. They asked the women listening who was sexier, and they almost UNIVERSALLY said British.

They flipped the study around, with all male subjects. Almost every man said women with a southern accent was sexier.

Dialect:

When people use different WORDS to reference the same things.

- "Pop" versus "soda" versus "coke" depending on the region.
- Somebody's use of dialect can sometimes make us guess where someone is from.

Paralanguage & Judgments

We will make judgments and assumptions about other people's intelligence, level of education, wealth, and more JUST based off their voice. SO often, we're wrong. BUT, it doesn't stop us from reaching those conclusions anyways!

We have to process so much in a day that we tend to make shortcuts like this--doesn't necessarily mean it's racist, it's just making sense of the world.

Paralanguage & Learning: Monotone

How monotone a professor is as well as their speaking rate can change the comprehension of a student. (Understanding/remembering)

The more monotone, the less they will comprehend.

Paralanguage & Learning: Speaking Rate & "Lag Time"

Most people speak 100-150 words per minute.

As the speed of the instructor increases, comprehension of the students goes up. But, it hits a break point. For men, after 230 words per minute, comprehension starts to fall. For women, it's 270 words per minute.

Women have been conditioned to meet others' needs. So, it makes sense that they could pay better attention to fast speaking.

(Curvilinear Relationship: Positive correlation, hits a peak, then negative correlation: looks like an arch)

"Lag Time" --Refers to the difference between how quickly the person is speaking and how quickly you can process the information. Why is it when someone is speaking so slowly that our comprehension of information is so low? There's too much time to think between words! You miss information because it's coming too slow! If somebody speaks 230 words per minute, you'll pick up on that and pay more attention!

Compressed Speech:

Advertisement time costs a lot of money, so they record it and put it in the advertisements faster, and people can still understand it!

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Volume

Moderation is going to have your highest success rate when it comes to persuasion. Too loud--we feel like we're being yelled at. Too quiet--we're irritated we're struggling to hear.

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Rate/Speed

People tend to be most persuaded by those who speak slightly faster than normal. Maybe 175 - 200 words per minute. This makes us believe they're competent. If they talk too fast, they're trying to stop us from thinking about it.

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Pitch (Inflection)

Monotone kills in a persuasive environment. There needs to be lots of highs/lows and variation.

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Articulation

How carefully people pronounce things. Generally speaking, we value careful articulation when it comes to persuasion. We do not like lazy articulation.

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Fluency

America really values fluency in a speaker. This is why we use vocal segregates. We want things to flow smoothly.

Paralanguage & Persuasion (McCroskey's Six Vocal Qualities): Pause

Has to be well-placed. A pause is when a person stops speaking for a brief period. Maybe a couple of seconds.

Pauses

Pauses are relatively short--maybe 1 to 3 seconds.

Silences

Silence is much more prolonged. Sometimes planned, oftentimes not. Occur when someone loses their train of thought.

Unfilled Pause

If somebody loses their train of thought in the middle of a sentence, it is an unfilled pause.

We want to fill that pause, so we had an "um" or "uh."

Hesitation Silence

A classmate of yours goes up to the room to begin their speech, and then suddenly, their mind just goes on vacation. They're standing like a deer in headlights. People don't know what comes next. Usually happens because of anxiety.

Psycholinguistic Silence:

This is when you're silent because you're thinking about what you're going to say. People around the world tend to feel differently about this. In America, we're not as tolerant of this because we confuse a psycholinguistic silence with hesitation silence.

Interactive Silence:

When the silence is actually the message. This could be negative or positive. Let's say you and your s/o argue, and they give you the silent treatment. By doing so, they're letting you know how upset they are with you. Some can be positive, though. You and the love of your life, staring into each other's eyes, not saying anything, but that's more than fine. You're just happy to be with them.

Kinesics

The study of body movement, posture, orientation, gestures, etc.

Structural Approach:

Basic Premises:
-ALL communication is part of a "highly structured" system of rules, intentionally created by humans in order to share meaning.
-At first, these rules may be hard to understand. However, once we figure it out, it's easier moving forward.
-ALL human behaviors are learned socially.
-NO arbitrary movements, therefore, each movement "contains or possesses" meaning.

-Birdwhistle (the most well-known structuralist on the planet) believed that nonverbal behaviors can be broken down into smaller bits of meaning, just like language. He also believed that we can learn the "structure/system of meaning" of nonverbal behavior by "zooming in" and examining each tiny movement individually.
---They created their own lexicon for each of these teeny, tiny movements.

*Not all structuralists believe that Birdwhistle was completely right!
-Dittman believed that nonverbal behaviors and movements were more continuous. He believed the structure is NOT like language. Many movements have no "meaning" at all unless accompanied by other movements. The structure/system can be best analyzed by "zoning out" and seeing how one movements leads to the next.

External Variable Approach:

Basic Premises:
-Behaviors DON'T "contain" meaning. For example, an infant holding up the middle finger.
-The meaning of any behavior lies outside of, or is external to, the behavior itself.
-Meaning resides in the minds of those who engage in, or witness behavior. Therefore, the meaning of any behavior is variable.

Emblems

Gestures are known as emblems. Typically, movements of our hands or arms.

They have a direct Verbal Translation: used to substitute for language. For example, flipping someone off.

They're intentional, generally known within a group, culture-specific, and context-specific.

Referent-related Illustrators

Referent-related Illustrator: For example, "I went fishing, and I caught a bass that was this big."
--When you hold your hands to show how big it was, people will get it.
--If you don't use the illustrator, people will be confused.
--If you use the illustrator without any words, people will be confused.

-Attitude-Related Illustrators:

Shaking your head in disappoint when saying you saw a new movie you didn't like.

Illustrators:

A movement that depends a LOT on language. The illustrator doesn't mean anything without language.

We are CONSCIOUS of these. They are INTENTIONAL.

Punctuation Illustrators:

When you're talking about something that makes you angry, and you hit a table at the end of your sentence, almost as if it's an exclamation point. Or, when listing things tapping each finger as though they were bullet points.

Interaction Illustrators:

Designed to help control the flow of who is talking/listening during conversation. For example, if you're speaking, and someone looks like they might interrupt you, and you hold up a hand to show them you're not done.

Regulators:

To regulate something means to control it. Regulators control who is speaking and who is listening during a conversation.

We tend to engage in these SUBCONSCIOUSLY.

These are also referred to as "Turn-taking behaviors."

*These are all UNCONSCIOUS. We are not AWARE that we're engaging in these behaviors. It's imperfect and not universal. If you're in a different culture, you may use regulators somewhat differently.

Regulators: Turn-Yielding Behaviors

To give someone else a turn. When you're a speaker, and you want the other person to take the baton, we tend to...

1. Lean slightly forward
2. Look more directly at the other person
3. Our voices have a rising/falling inflection
4. We tend to stop speaking

All of these things tend to queue the other person to take the floor.

Regulators: Turn-Maintaining Behaviors

If you're speaking, and you don't want to let the other person butt in, we tend to...

1. Talk faster/louder
2. Divert our gaze slightly away

Regulators: Turn-Requesting Behaviors

If somebody is going ON and ON and ON, we tend to...

1. Audibly inhale (taking a breath in such a way that the other person can hear you taking a breath)
2. Nod their head quickly (as if to say yeah yeah yeah, I get it I get it I get it, shut the hell up)
3. Stutter-start: start to talk and then stop

Regulators: Turn-Denying Behaviors

If somebody wants us to add, but we have nothing to say, we tend to...
1. Slowly nod
2. Just look at them

Interaction Synchronicity:

When you have a Bluetooth speaker and your phone, you have to pair them. But once they're paired, they're synced, and information effortlessly flows from one to the other. It kind of works this way with people.

We tend to establish a rhythm of give and take. It's like an unspoken social rhythm.

Ramifications of a Lack of Interaction Synchronicity:

Intercultural Ramifications: we may not use our regulators in quite the same way. It may be hard to pick up theirs, and they may have a hard time receiving ours. These interactions can be frustrating/confusing/irritating, because we're not able to achieve this synchronicity that we take for granted.

-There's a lot of empty space/talking on top of each other. Sometimes, we walk away feeling unsettled about this individual from another culture, because we projected our
negative feelings of the interaction onto that person.

-Sometimes, we feel negatively about whole groups of people because of this.

Matching Behavior: Mirroring

"Mirroring": when you move your body to be the same way as someone else's body. This tends to happen with people we feel positively about.

-Usually conscious, but can be unconscious

Matching Behavior: Motor Mimicry

"Motor Mimicry": your roommate isn't very coordinated. They come home with a piece of art and want to hang it up on the wall. They grab a hammer and nail and go to hit the nail, and hit their hand. Then, you GRIMACE too, even though you only witnessed it.

Or, if you go to a high school friend's wedding, and then you're feeling super excited about it. When you look over, you see the father of the bride, who's smiling and crying at the same time. As you see this, before you know it you're crying, too, even though just a minute ago you were excited. Their emotions leap over to us and we mimic their behavior.

-Subconscious. Unintentional.

Matching Behavior: Meshing

"Meshing": Meshing is even less common. It typically only occurs between individuals who have a high degree of rapport. Like, spouses, siblings, best friends. This is when the two individuals will be engaged in the convo, talking about something emotionally charged, and both people are doing the EXACT same change in their nonverbal behavior at the SAME moment. It's at the SAME MOMENT.

For example, siblings are talking about their parents who got in a car accident. As their talking, their bodies do the same movements. From outsiders, it looks like synchronized swimmers. But those individuals aren't aware of it.

-Subconscious, unintentional.

Emotional Contagion:

Our emotions leap from one of us to the next relatively easily.

Affect Displays:

Tell us how someone feels.

-Emblems: (gestures) that also let us know how someone is feeling
-Postures: when people are feeling positive emotions, they tend to sit more upright. When people are feeling depressed/scared, they tend to slouch and look down.
-Proxemics: how close or how far you are from others. Generally speaking, when people are feeling positive emotions, they tend to approach other people at closer distances. When they feel negative emotions, they prefer a greater distance.

*These all CAN be affect displays, but don't have to be.

Adaptors:

Behaviors that people engage in when they're nervous or bored. You could make an argument that they actually serve a practical purpose. You could argue that you chew on your nails because they stay short and don't get in the way. But that's not the case.

Self-Adaptors:

Self-adaptors: doing something to yourself. Biting your nails. Twirling your hair. Pulling your lips' skin off.

Object-Focused Adaptors:

Object-focused adaptors: spinning your rings on your finger. Sliding a pendant around on a chain. Tapping your pencil.

Alter-Directed Adaptors:

Alter means other. When you're in the presence of another person who makes you stressed out or bored, you may do things like: crossing your arms to create a barrier between yourself and this other person, change your standing position so you could make a quick getaway if you'd need to.

Body Orientation:

Where we are facing--where our shoulders are squared to.

Posture & Body Orientation: Direct Orientation

Directly facing someone else to show them respect. Posture should be upright. This is a cultural thing. In other cultures, this may be inappropriate.

Posture & Body Orientation: Parallel Orientation

Side-by-side. Oftentimes, a romantic couple will sit on the same side of the booth rather than across from each other. It's more relaxed and playful. However, if one of them said, "we have to talk," they'd probably sit across from each other for a serious conversation.

Posture & Body Orientation: Expansion & Shrinkage

Male lions have a huge mane to look big, male peacocks have huge tail feathers to look big. Male human beings kind of do the same thing. Men puff out their chest/throw back their shoulders/walk with their arms away from their bodies/carry things away from their bodies, man-spread, etc.

Women have been socialized differently--they're taught to take up less space. They carry things close to them, take smaller steps, cross their legs at the knee, etc.

-If we see a female engaging in expansion/a male engaging in shrinkage, we tend to apply meaning to that, even if it's inaccurate. We make assumptions about their sexuality, and more.

Posture & Body Orientation: Inclusion & Exclusion

Imagine you have a friend that wants you to come over on Saturday for a party. You say you can't, you're working. They say to come anyway, it's fine it'll be after you're working. As you're walking into the party, if you're walking in alone, it may BOTHER you. Everybody there is already broken up into groups. You're floating around, hoping you'll get invited into join a huddle. People will NONVERBALLY signal to you if they want you to join them or not.

-If they want you to be included, they'll create space for you to walk into.
-If they don't want you to be included, you'll take up more space in order to tighten up the gaps so they signal exclusion.

Posture & Body Orientation: Influence of Status

How much power somebody has affects all of this. If someone has more power, you will face them standing upright and directly. If somebody has less power than me, I might not change my posture at all or assume something more relaxed.

Posture & Body Orientation: Liking & Disliking

Doesn't have to mean romantic/sexually, but can. When people like each other, what they tend to do is lean towards each other. They tend to touch each other more. They tend to mirror each other more. When people dislike each other, they do the opposite--they lean back, turn a bit away from the other person, look at phones/watches/other things, etc.