Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact (oculesics), body language (kinesics), social distance (proxemics), touch (haptics), voice (paralanguage), physical environments/appearance, and use of objects. When communicating, we utilize nonverbal channels as means to convey different messages or signals, whereas others can interpret these message.[1] The study of nonverbal communication started in 1872 with the publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. Darwin began to study nonverbal communication as he noticed the interactions between animals such as lions, tigers, dogs etc. and realized they also communicated by gestures and expressions.[2] For the first time, nonverbal communication was studied and its relevance questioned. Today, scholars argue that nonverbal communication can convey more meaning than verbal communication.[3]
In the same way that speech incorporates nonverbal components, collectively referred to as paralanguage and encompassing voice quality, rate, pitch, loudness, and speaking style, nonverbal communication also encompasses facets of one's voice. Elements such as tone, inflection, emphasis, and other vocal characteristics contribute significantly to nonverbal communication, adding layers of meaning and nuance to the conveyed message.[4] However, much of the study of nonverbal communication has focused on interaction between individuals,[5] where it can be classified into three principal areas: environmental conditions where communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviors of communicators during interaction.
Nonverbal communication involves the conscious and unconscious processes of encoding and decoding. Encoding is defined as our ability to express emotions in a way that can be accurately interpreted by the receiver(s). Decoding is called "nonverbal sensitivity", defined as the ability to take this encoded emotion and interpret its meanings accurately to what the sender intended. Encoding is the act of generating information such as facial expressions, gestures, and postures. Encoding information utilizes signals which we may think to be universal. Decoding is the interpretation of information from received sensations given by the encoder. Culture plays an important role in nonverbal communication, and it is one aspect that helps to influence how we interact with each other. In many Indigenous American communities, nonverbal cues and silence hold immense importance in deciphering the meaning of messages. In such cultures, the context, relationship dynamics, and subtle nonverbal cues play a pivotal role in communication and interpretation, impacting how learning activities are organized and understood.
Clothing[edit]
Clothing is one of the most common forms of non-verbal communication. The study of clothing and other objects as a means of non-verbal communication is known as artifactics[35] or objectics.[36] The types of clothing that an individual wears convey nonverbal cues about their personality, background and financial status, and how others will respond to them.[9] An individual's clothing style can demonstrate their culture, mood, level of confidence, interests, age, authority, and values/beliefs.[37] For instance, Jewish men may wear a yarmulke to outwardly communicate their religious belief. Similarly, clothing can communicate what nationality a person or group is; for example, in traditional festivities Scottish men often wear kilts to specify their culture.
Aside from communicating a person's beliefs and nationality, clothing can be used as a nonverbal cue to attract others. Men and women may shower themselves with accessories and high-end fashion to attract partners interested. In this case, clothing is a form of self-expression where people can flaunt their power, wealth, sex appeal, or creativity.[37] A study of the clothing worn by women attending discothèques, carried out in Vienna, Austria. It showed that in certain groups of women (especially women who were without their partners), motivation for sex and levels of sexual hormones were correlated with aspects of their clothing, especially the amount of skin displayed and the presence of sheer clothing.[38]
The way one chooses to dress tells a lot about one's personality. The University of North Carolina studied how undergraduate women chose to dress and their personality types. The study showed that women dressed "primarily for comfort and practicality were more self-controlled, dependable, and socially well adjusted."[39] Women who did not like to stand out in a crowd typically had more conservative and traditional views and beliefs. Clothing, although non-verbal, tells people what the individual's personality is. The way a person dresses is typically rooted in deeper internal motivations such as emotions, experiences, and culture.[40] Clothing expresses who they are or who they want to be that day. It shows other people who they want to be associated with and where they fit in. Clothing can start relationships because they clue other people into the wearer.[39][40]
When it comes to the clothing that they wear, nonverbal communication with gangs is very common. Gang members typically wear 2–3 colors to signify that they are representing a particular neighborhood. Baseball caps and hats with specific gang names and initials, worn backwards, tilted, in certain colors, etc. bandanas worn around the head, shoulders, arms, or legs. Gang members frequently dress in hip-hop-inspired fashions, such as oversized pants worn below the waist (also known as "sagging"). Colored belts, colored shoes, and colored bandanas are all utilized as identifiers. Group colors and clothing are commonly used to represent affiliation.
Distance[edit]
According to Edward T. Hall, the amount of space we maintain between ourselves and the persons with whom we are communicating shows the importance of the science of proxemics. In this process, it is seen how we feel towards the others at that particular time.[45] Within American culture Hall defines four primary distance zones: (i) intimate (touching to eighteen inches [0–46 centimetres]) distance, (ii) personal (eighteen inches to four feet, [0.46–1.22 metres]) distance, (iii) social (four to twelve feet [1.22–3.66 metres]) distance, and (iv) public (more than twelve feet [3.66 metres]) distance. Intimate distance is considered appropriate for familiar relationships and indicates closeness and trust. Personal distance is still close but keeps another "at arm's length" and is considered the most comfortable distance for most of our interpersonal contact, while social distance is used for the kind of communication that occurs in business relationships and, sometimes, in the classroom. Public distance occurs in situations where two-way communication is not desirable or possible.[45]
Vocalics[edit]
While it may seem contradictory, vocalics plays a very important part in nonverbal communication. Things like tempo, volume, inflection, pauses, and pitch all communicate emotion and attitude without using specific words. Vocalics also have emblems, or sounds with clear meaning, like saying “burr” when you are cold or “hmm” when you are thinking about something.[59] These are not specific words, but noises that further convey a person’s message. These sounds are often accompanied by another nonverbal cue.
Infants heavily rely on nonverbal vocalics to communicate their needs. As caregivers talk with their baby, the baby can pick up intonation as well start to mimic and use it themselves.[59] As they go on, babies can pick up more and learn how to develop their own voices and vocalics.
Furthermore, in a study highlighted by Pearce and Conklin, they found that changing the vocalics of an audio recording of the same speech gave different results of liking. When the speaker gave his speech as more conversational instead of dynamic, he was deemed more trust worthy.[60]
Vocalics can heavily influence communication through its many different cues.
Across cultures[edit]
Overview[edit]
While not traditionally thought of as "talk," nonverbal communication has been found to contain highly precise and symbolic meanings, similar to verbal speech. However the meanings in nonverbal communication are conveyed through the use of gesture, posture changes, and timing.[61] Nuances across different aspects of nonverbal communication can be found in cultures all around the world. These differences can often lead to miscommunication between people of different cultures, who usually do not mean to offend. Differences can be based in preferences for mode of communication, like the Chinese, who prefer silence over verbal communication.[62]: 69 Differences can even be based on how cultures perceive the passage of time. Chronemics, how people handle time, can be categorized in two ways: polychronic which is when people do many activities at once and is common in Italy and Spain, or monochronic which is when people do one thing at a time which is common in America.[63]: 422 Because nonverbal communication can vary across many axes—gestures, gaze, clothing, posture, direction, or even environmental cues like lighting—there is a lot of room for cultural differences.[64]: 8 In Japan, a country which prides itself on the best customer service, workers tend to use wide arm gestures to give clear directions to strangers—accompanied by the ever-present bow to indicate respect. One of the main factors that differentiates nonverbal communication in cultures is high and low-context. Context relates to certain events and the meaning that is ultimately derived from it.[65] "High-context" cultures rely mostly on nonverbal cues and gestures, using elements such as the closeness of the kind of the relationships they have with others, strict social hierarchies and classes and deep cultural tradition and widely known beliefs and rules. In contrast, "low-context" cultures depend largely on words and verbal communication, where communications are direct and social hierarchies are way less tense and more loose.
Genetics[edit]
"In the study of nonverbal communications, the limbic brain is where the action is...because it is the part of the brain that reacts to the world around us reflexively and instantaneously, in real time, and without thought."[43] There is evidence that the nonverbal cues made from person-to-person do not entirely have something to do with environment.[9]
Along with gestures, phenotypic traits can also convey certain messages in nonverbal communication, for instance, eye color, hair color and height. Research into height has generally found that taller people are perceived as being more impressive. Melamed and Bozionelos (1992) studied a sample of managers in the United Kingdom and found that height was a key factor in who was promoted. Height can have benefits and depressors too. "While tall people often command more respect than short people, height can also be detrimental to some aspects of one-to-one communication, for instance, where you need to 'talk on the same level' or have an 'eye-to-eye' discussion with another person and do not want to be perceived as too big for your boots."[9]
Movement and body position[edit]
Kinesics[edit]
Kinesics is defined as movements, more specifically the study of our movements involving our hands, body, and face. This form of nonverbal communication is powerful in the messages it sends to those witnessing them. The term was first coined by Ray Birdwhistell, who considered the term body language inaccurate and instead opted to explain it as nonverbal behaviors stemming from body movement. Research around this behavior provides some examples, such as someone casually smiling and leaning forward, as well as maintaining eye contact to radiate a non-dominating and intimate demeanor. In contrast, someone leaning back, a stoic facial expression, and no to little eye contact could emit an unfriendly and dominating demeanor.[85]
Additional research expresses that eye contact is an important part of nonverbal communication involved in kinesics, as longer and appropriate levels of eye contact give an individual credibility. The opposite is said for those who do not maintain eye contact, as they are likely to be deemed distrustful. More eye contact was also found to be related to higher levels of likability and believability from those people interacted with. A real-life example of this is through service workers, in a study it was found that those workers who welcomed customers with smiles seemed like warmer individuals than those who did not smile. Customers reported that those without smiles and open body movements, such as waving or handshaking, were lacking warmth and deemed less friendly.[85]
Clinical studies[edit]
Principles[edit]
From 1977 to 2004, the influence of disease and drugs on receptivity of nonverbal communication was studied by teams at three separate medical schools using a similar paradigm.[99] Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Yale University and Ohio State University had subjects observe gamblers at a slot machine awaiting payoffs. The amount of this payoff was read by nonverbal transmission prior to reinforcement. This technique was developed by and the studies directed by psychologist Robert E. Miller and psychiatrist A. James Giannini. These groups reported diminished receptive ability in heroin addicts[100] and phencyclidine abusers,[101] contrasted with increased receptivity in cocaine addicts. Men with major depression[102] manifested significantly decreased ability to read nonverbal cues when compared with euthymic men.
In some subjects tested for ability to read nonverbal cues, intuitive paradigms were apparently employed while in others a cause and effect approach was used.[103] Subjects in the former group answered quickly and before reinforcement occurred. They could not give a rationale for their particular responses. Subjects in the latter category delayed their response and could offer reasons for their choice. The level of accuracy between the two groups did not vary nor did handedness.[104]
Obese women[105] and women with premenstrual syndrome[106] were found to also possess diminished abilities to read these cues. In contradistinction, men with bipolar disorder possessed increased abilities.[107] A woman with total paralysis of the nerves of facial expression was found unable to transmit or receive any nonverbal facial cues whatsoever.[108] Because of the changes in levels of accuracy on the levels of nonverbal receptivity, the members of the research team hypothesized a biochemical site in the brain which was operative for reception of nonverbal cues. Because certain drugs enhanced ability while others diminished it, the neurotransmitters dopamine and endorphin were considered to be likely etiological candidate. Based on the available data, however, the primary cause and primary effect could not be sorted out on the basis of the paradigm employed.[109]
Child comprehension[edit]
An increased emphasis on gestures exists when intonations or facial expression are used. "Speakers often anticipate how recipients will interpret their utterances. If they wish some other, less obvious interpretation, they may "mark" their utterance (e.g. with special intonations or facial expressions)."[110] This specific emphasis known as 'marking' can be spotted as a learned form of non-verbal communication in toddlers. A groundbreaking study from Carpenter et al. in the Journal of Child Language has concluded that the act of marking a gesture is recognized by three-year-olds but not by two-year-olds.
In the study, two and three-year-old toddlers were tested on their recognition of markedness within gestures. The experiment was conducted in a room with an examiner and the test subjects, which for the first study were three-year-olds. The examiner sat across from each child individually, and allowed them to play with various objects including a purse with a sponge in it and a box with a sponge in it. After allowing the child to play with the objects for three minutes, the examiner told the child it was time to clean up and motioned by pointing to the objects. They measured the responses of the children by first pointing and not marking the gesture, to see the child's reaction to the request and if they reached for the objects to clean them up. After observing the child's response, the examiner then asked and pointed again, marking the gesture with facial expression, as to lead the child to believe the objects were supposed to be cleaned up. The results showed that three-year-old children were able to recognize the markedness, by responding to the gesture and cleaning the objects up as opposed to when the gesture was presented without being marked.
In the second study in which the same experiment was performed on two-year-olds, the results were different. For the most part, the children did not recognize the difference between the marked and unmarked gesture by not responding more prevalently to the marked gesture, unlike the results of the three-year-olds. This shows that this sort of nonverbal communication is learned at a young age, and is better recognized in three-year-old children than two-year-old children, making it easier for us to interpret that the ability to recognize markedness is learned in the early stages of development, somewhere between three and four years of age.
Boone and Cunningham conducted a study[111] to determine at which age children begin to recognize emotional meaning (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) in expressive body movements. The study included 29 adults and 79 children divided into age groups of four-, five- and eight-year-olds. The children were shown two clips simultaneously and were asked to point to the one that was expressing the target emotion. The results of the study revealed that of the four emotions being tested the 4-year-olds were only able to correctly identify sadness at a rate that was better than chance. The 5-year-olds performed better and were able to identify happiness, sadness and fear at better than chance levels. The 8-year-olds and adults could correctly identify all four emotions and there was very little difference between the scores of the two groups. Between the ages of 4 and 8, nonverbal communication and decoding skills improve dramatically.
Comprehension of nonverbal facial cues[edit]
A byproduct of the work of the Pittsburgh/Yale/Ohio State team was an investigation of the role of nonverbal facial cues in heterosexual nondate rape. Males who were serial rapists of adult women were studied for nonverbal receptive abilities. Their scores were the highest of any subgroup.[112] Rape victims were next tested. It was reported that women who had been raped on at least two occasions by different perpetrators had a highly significant impairment in their abilities to read these cues in either male or female senders.[113] These results were troubling, indicating a predator-prey model. The authors did note that whatever the nature of these preliminary findings the responsibility of the rapist was in no manner or level diminished.
The final target of study for this group was the medical students they taught. Medical students at Ohio State University, Ohio University and Northeast Ohio Medical College were invited to serve as subjects. Students indicating a preference for the specialties of family practice, psychiatry, pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology achieved significantly higher levels of accuracy than those students who planned to train as surgeons, radiologists, or pathologists. Internal medicine and plastic surgery candidates scored at levels near the mean.[114]