Nonverbal Communication Notes

Chapter 7: Nonverbal Communication Skills

  • Nonverbal communication: Encompasses all behaviors beyond written or spoken language that create meaning. This includes facial expressions, body language, gestures, eye contact, and vocal cues.

  • Crucial for interpersonal relationships: Vital for forming, maintaining, and managing relationships, often conveying emotions and attitudes more effectively than words.

  • Interpreting cues and expressing feelings: Involves accurately interpreting nonverbal signals and expressing one's own feelings nonverbally.

  • Establishing/maintaining relationships: Essential for initiating interactions, building rapport, and sustaining relationships.

  • Digital communication: Includes elements like word count, response time, capitalization, and spelling in online interactions.

  • Importance: Constant, unavoidable, and significantly affects others' perceptions.

  • Primary communication of feelings: The most immediate way to convey emotions and attitudes, revealing relational dynamics.

  • Albert Mehrabian's research:

    • 7% of emotional meaning is communicated verbally.

    • 55% through facial expressions.

    • 38% through vocal cues.

    • 93% nonverbally overall.

  • Believability: More believable than verbal messages because they are harder to fake.

  • Contradictions: Cause confusion, creating uncertainty and mistrust.

  • Detecting deception: People detect lying through response time, eye contact, posture shifts, pauses, smiling, speech, and pitch.

  • Managing verbal messages: Nonverbal cues manage, reinforce, regulate verbal messages, and bolster emotional meaning.

  • Adaptation: Interaction adaptation theory explains adjustments to behaviors based on signals during interactions.

  • Interactional synchrony: Unconsciously mimicking behaviors creates a sense of connection and rapport.

  • Role in relationships: Plays a major role in relationships, influences first impressions, and is essential for comfort and stress reduction.

  • Alcohol's impact: Alcohol consumption negatively impacts nonverbal communication, impairing accurate signaling and interpretation.

  • Long-term relationships: Require a deep understanding of each other's nonverbal patterns.

  • Relationship satisfaction: Changes are signaled through nonverbal behaviors like decreased eye contact and less frequent touch.

Body Movement and Posture

  • Kinesics: The study of movement and gesture, including meanings and functions in communication.

  • Quasi-courtship behaviors: Signal interest.

    • Readiness: Tensing muscles, standing straight.

    • Preening: Enhancing appearance.

    • Positional cues: Using posture to be noticed.

    • Appeals to invitation: Moving closer, exposing skin.

  • Liking: Open body position, forward lean, relaxed posture.

  • Warmth: Direct facing, smiling, eye contact, less fidgeting.

  • Coldness: Less eye contact, smiling, fidgeting, turning away.

  • Categories:

    • Emblems: Gestures with understood meanings.

    • Illustrators: Complement or contradict verbal messages.

    • Affect displays: Communicate emotion.

    • Regulators: Control communication flow.

    • Adaptors: Manage personal needs.

Eye Contact

  • Functions:

    • Cognitive: Provides clues to thinking.

    • Monitoring: Assesses others' behavior.

    • Regulatory: Invites or discourages interaction.

    • Expressive: Conveys emotions.

  • Likelihood: More likely if you like/love the person, are listening, discussing pleasant topics.

  • Relationship satisfaction: Linked to higher relationship satisfaction with a spouse.

Facial Expression

  • Primary display: The face is the primary display of emotions.

  • Contextual smiling: Smiling behavior is contextual.

  • Interpretation: Accurate interpretation requires understanding thoughts, feelings, and context.

  • Primary emotions: Six primary emotional categories: surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness.

  • Contagious expressions: Expressions are contagious.

  • Genuine vs. forced smiles: Genuine smiles are more fleeting.

  • Microexpressions: Reveal true emotions.

Vocal Cues

  • Communication: Communicate emotions and manage conversations.

  • Inference: Pitch, rate, volume, and quality infer personality, power, and credibility.

  • Emotional expression: Easily identifiable through vocal cues.

  • Intimacy: Indicate intimacy levels and relationship nature.

  • Conversational turns: Signal conversational turns.

  • Silence: Communicates as much as speech.

Space

  • Cultural regulation: Culturally regulated; violations feel alarming.

  • Edward T. Hall's proxemics:

    • Intimate: 0-1.5 feet (close relationships).

    • Personal: 1.5-4 feet (family/friends).

    • Social: 4-12 feet (group, professional).

    • Public: >12 feet (public speaking).

  • Variability: Based on liking, status, size, gender, room size, and culture.

Territory

  • Definition: How animals/humans use space/objects to communicate occupancy/ownership.

  • Territorial markers:

    • Leaving a notebook to save your spot.

    • Posting signs at the borders of property.

    • Signs, locks, and electronic security systems.

  • Personal space: Marked by physical barriers or body language.

Touch

  • Strangers: Touch between strangers causes discomfort because it is associated with intimacy.

  • Intimacy: Increased touching signifies intimacy.

  • Inference: People infer affection/power from cues.

  • Variation: Need/tolerance varies by family/culture.

  • Unwanted touch: Unwanted touching = sexual harassment.

Appearance

  • Influence: Influences perceptions significantly.

  • Attractiveness: Attractive individuals are perceived as more credible, happier, popular, sociable, and prosperous.

    • Body shape/size perceptions:

      • Heavier/rounder: Older, old-fashioned, less attractive, more talkative, good-natured.

      • Thin: Ambitious, suspicious, uptight, tense, negative, less talkative.

      • Muscular/fit: Better looking, taller, adventurous.

  • Clothing: Communicates how you want to be treated.

Improving Nonverbal Interpretation

  • Observation: Observe context.

  • Clusters: Look for clusters of cues.

  • Baseline: Consider baseline behavior.

  • Culture: Be aware of cultural differences.

  • Intuition: Use intuition and experience.

  • Cues to look for:

    • Immediacy cues: Liking/pleasure.

    • Arousal cues: Responsiveness/interest.

    • Dominance cues: Power/status.

  • Effective Strategies:

    • Consider cues in context.

    • Look for clusters of nonverbal cues.

    • Consider past experiences.

  • Compare expectations with observations.