Engaging in Nonverbal Communication

 nonverbal communication can be as powerful as or more powerful than

words.
 Facial expressions can express love, suspicion, competitiveness, sorrow,
interest, anger, and hatred.
 Body postures can convey relaxation, nervousness, boredom, and power.
 Physical objects can symbolize professional identity, personal
commitments, and lifestyle.

Principles of Nonverbal Communication

 Nonverbal communication includes all aspects of communication other
than words.
 gestures and body language,
 includes how we utter words (inflection, volume), features of environments
that affect meaning (temperature, lighting), and objects that affect
personal images and interaction patterns (dress, furniture).
 accounts for 65 to 93 percent of the total meaning of communication

Nonverbal Communication Is Ambiguous

 We can never be sure that others understand the meanings we intend to
express with our nonverbal behavior.
 ambiguity of nonverbal communication also arises because meanings
change over time.
 nonverbal communication is learned and guided by Rules.
 These rules reduce the ambiguity of nonverbal communication by telling
us what certain behaviors are understood to count as (constitutive rules)
and when and where certain behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate
(regulative rules).

Nonverbal Behaviors Interact with Verbal Communication

 Communication researchers have identified five ways in which nonverbal
behaviors interact with verbal communication
 nonverbal behaviors may repeat verbal messages.
 nonverbal behaviors may highlight verbal communication as when youuse
inflection to emphasize certain words
 nonverbal communication may complement, or add to, words
 nonverbal behaviors may contradict verbal messages
 we sometimes substitute nonverbal behaviors for verbal ones.

Nonverbal Communication Regulates Interaction

 Nonverbal communication can organize interaction between people
 Nonverbal cues, more than verbal ones, tell us when to speak and keep
silent.
 Although we’re usually unaware of how nonverbal actions regulate
interaction, we rely on them to know when to speak and when to remain
silent.
Nonverbal Communication Establishes Relationship-Level
Meanings
 relationship level of meaning defines relationships between
communicators.
 Nonverbal communication can be powerful in expressing relationship-level
meanings
 communication scholars call nonverba lcommunication “the relationship
language” because it so often expresses how people feel about one
another
 We use nonverbal communication to convey the three dimensions of
relationship-level yet depends on the rules of their cultures:

Responsiveness
 We use eye contact, inflections, facial expressions, and body posture to
show interest in others
 In formal presentations and casual conversations, we signal interest by
holding eye contact and assuming an attentive posture.
 To express lack of interest, Westerners tend to avoid or decrease visual
contact and adopt a passive body position or turn away from the other
person. Members of Asian cultures are less likely to overtly express lack
of interest.
 Harmony in people’s postures and facial expressions may reflect how
comfortable they are with each other and how much they support each
other
 In a cohesive team, many nonverbal behaviors typically signal that
members are responsive to one another.
 In less cohesive groups, nonverbal behavior shows less responsiveness.

Liking
 Nonverbal behaviors are keen indicators of whether we feel positive or
negative about others.
 particular social groups in still more specific rules. For example, women
generally sit closer together and engage in more eye contact and more
friendly touching than men do

Power
 We use nonverbal behaviors to assert dominance and to negotiate status
 Space also expresses power
 A widely understood regulative communication rule is that people with
status or power have the right to enter the space of people with less
power, but the converse is not true.
 Similarly,more-powerful people are more likely to touch others,interrupt,
and approach more closely than less-powerful people
Silence, a powerful form of nonverbal communication, can also be a means
of exerting control.
Silence accompanied by a glare is doubly powerful in conveying disapproval.
In a number of Native American cultures and some Asian cultures, silence
signals mindful attentiveness.
Nonverbal Communication Reflects Cultural Values
 nonverbal patterns reflect rules of specific cultures
 most nonverbal communication isn’t instinctual but is learned in the
process of socialization.
 a highly individualist culture in which people want private spaces, and we
resent and sometimes fight anyone who trespasses on what we consider
our territory. We want private homes, and our own rooms.
 In more collectivist cultures, people tend to be less territorial.
 Orientations toward time are less rigid among other cultural Groups
 Patterns of eye contact also reflect cultural values.

Types of Nonverbal Behaviors

1. Kinesics (face and body motion)
 Kinesics refers to body position and body motions, including those of the
face.
 Body postures and gestures may signal whether we are open to
interaction.
 Our faces are intricate messengers. Our eyes can shoot daggers of anger,
issue challenges, express skepticism, or radiate love. The face is
particularly powerful in conveying liking and responsiveness
2. Haptics (touch)
 Haptics is a term for nonverbal communication involving physical touch.
 Many communication scholars believe that touching and being touched
are essential to healthy life
 Research suggests some general sex differences in touching behavior.
Compared to men, women are more likely to engage in touch to show
liking and intimacy, whereas men are more likely than women to use
touch to assert power and control
3. Physical Appearance
 Based on physical qualities, we may make inferences about others’
personalities.
 Although these associations may have no factual basis, they can affect
personal and social relationships as well as decisions about hiring,
placement, and promotion.
 Appearance is a more significant concern for girls and women than boys
and men because it is more central to how women are judged.
 This general cultural standard for attractiveness is modified by ethnicity
and socioeconomic class.
 Physical appearance includes physiological characteristics, such as eye
color and height, as well as ways in which we manage, or even alter, our
physical appearance.
4. Olfactics (smell)
 Olfactics (from the word olfactory, which refers to the sense of smell) is a
term for odors and scents—or, more precisely, our perception of them.
 “scientific study of the human olfactory system is in its infancy”
 scents we choose to wear can be personal signatures.
 olfaction is the first of our senses to develop and that it remains the
quickest—we register and respond to smells faster than to sights or
sounds.
 smells are processed in the brain’s ancient limbic system where emotional
memories are stored.
Body odors produced by pheromones, the sex-specific chemicals our bodies
produce, may affect sexual attraction.
Male sweat contains a pheromone derived from progesterone, whereas
female sweat contains a pheromone linked to estrogen
Heterosexual men and women respond to the pheromones of the opposite
sex with increased activity in the hypothalamus, which is linked to sexual
behavior.
5. Artifacts
 Artifacts are personal objects we use to announce our identities and to
personalize our environments.
 We also use artifacts to express cultural and ethnic identities.
 Artifacts may also be used to announce professional identity. stripes,
medals, and insignia signify rank and accomplishments.
 We also use artifacts to defi ne settings and personal territories
 “identity claims,” which give signals about how we want others to perceive
us and also remind ourselves of who we are
6. Proxemics and Personal Space
 Proxemics refers to space and how we use it. every culture has norms
for using space and for how close people should be to one another.
 Space also announces status, with greater space and more desirable
space assumed by those with higher status in a culture.
 “The space of minorities and poor people is often invaded and
contaminated, but the territory of more affluent citizens is respected”
 How people arrange space may reflect closeness and desire, or lack of
desire, for interaction.
7. Environmental Factors
 Environmental factors are elements of settings that affect how we feel,
think and act.
 A recent study found that color affects cognitive functions. Red stimulates
accuracy, recall, and attention to detail whereas blue stimulates creativity
 public places use environmental factors to influence mood and behavior,
we choose colors, furniture arrangements, lighting, and other objects to
create the atmosphere we desire in our home.
8. Chronemics (perception and use of time)
 Chronemics refer to how we perceive and use time to define identities
and interaction.
 We use time to negotiate and convey status
 slowest pace of life is in countries that have warm climates while the
fastest pace of life is in countries with colder climates
 We replace things as soon as faster versions become available
 The length of time we spend with different people reflects the extent of our
interest in them and affection for them.
 In general, we spend more time with people we like than with those we
don’t like or who bore us.
 Chronemics also involves expectations of time, which are infl uenced by
social norms
9. Paralanguage (vocal qualities)
 Paralanguage is communication that is vocal but not actual words.
 includes sounds, such as murmurs and gasps, and vocal qualities, such
as volume, rhythm, pitch, and inflection.
 Vocal cues signal others to interpret what we say as a joke, a threat, a
statement of fact, a question, and so forth.
 Effective public speakers modulate inflection, volume, and rhythm to
enhance their presentations.
 We use vocal cues to communicate feelings
 depending on the context, sighing may communicate empathy, boredom,
or contentment.
 Research shows that tone of voice is a powerful clue to feelings between
marital partners.
 Our voices affect how others perceive us. To some extent, we control
vocal cues that influence image.
 Most of us know how to make ourselves sound apologetic, seductive, or
angry when those images suit our purposes.
 Our ethnic heritage and identification influence how we use our voices.
 Paralanguage also reflects gender.
 Socioeconomic level influences pronunciation, rate of speech, and accent.
10. Silence
 silence, which is a lack of communicated sound.
 Although silence is quiet, it can communicate powerful messages.
 Silence can convey contentment when intimates are so comfortable they
don’t need to talk.
 Silence can also communicate awkwardness
 The silencing strategy may also surface later in life. We sometimes
deliberately freeze out others when we’re angry with them
 Audiences sometimes shout down speakers they dislike;
 Like other forms of communication, silence—and what it means—is
linked to culture.

Guidelines for Effective Nonverbal

Communication
Following these two guidelines should reduce nonverbal misunderstandings
in your interactions.
Monitor Your Nonverbal Communication
 monitor your nonverbal actions to more clearly communicate your
involvement and interest in conversations.
 Paying attention to the nonverbal dimensions of your world can empower
you to use them more effectively to achieve your interpersonal goals.
Interpret Others’ Nonverbal Communication Tentatively
 Although popular advice books promise to show you how to read
nonverbal communications, no surefire formula exists.
 It’s naive to think we can decode something so complex and ambiguous.
 We can never be sure what a particular behavior means to specific people
in a particular context
 Because nonverbal communication is ambiguous and personal, we should
not assume we can interpret it with precision.
 An ethical principle of communication is to qualify interpretations of
nonverbal behavior with awareness of personal and contextual
considerations.
Personal Qualifications
 Generalizations about nonverbal behavior state what is generally the case.
 They don’t tell us about the exceptions to the rule. For instance, although
eye contact generally is a sign of responsiveness, some people close their
eyes to concentrate when listening.
 Because nonverbal behaviors are ambiguous and vary between people,
we need to be cautious about how we interpret these behaviors.
 A key principle is that we construct the meanings we attach to nonverbal
communication. A good way to keep this in mind is to rely on I-language,
not you-language
 Youlanguage might lead us to inaccurately say of someone who doesn’t
look at us, “You’re communicating lack of interest.” A more responsible
statement would use I-language to say, “When you don’t look at me, I feel
you’re not interested in what I’m saying.”
 Using I-language reminds us to take responsibility for our judgments and
feelings.
 In addition, we become less likely to make others defensive by
inaccurately interpreting their nonverbal behavior.
Contextual Qualifications
 Like the meaning of verbal communication, the significance of nonverbal
behaviors depends on the contexts in which they occur.
 We are more or less formal, relaxed, and open depending on context.
 Immediate physical settings are not the only factor that affects nonverbal
communication.
As we have seen, all communication reflects the values and understandings
of particular cultures.
We are likely to misinterpret people from other cultures when we impose the
norms and rules of our culture on them
This suggests that we have an ethical responsibility not to assume that our
rules
and norms apply to the behaviors of others.
Ethical communicators try to adopt dual perspective when interpreting others,
especially when they and we belong to different cultures.

Summary

Nonverbal communication is symbolic and functions to supplement or

replace verbal messages, regulate interaction, reflect and establish
relationship-level meanings, and express cultural membership. These five
principles of nonverbal behavior help us understand the complex ways in
which nonverbal communication operates and what it may mean.
 We discussed ten types of nonverbal communication, each of which
reflects cultural rules and expresses our personal identities and feelings
toward others. We use nonverbal behaviors to announce and perform our
identities, relying on actions, artifacts, and contextual features to embody
what our culture has taught us is appropriate for our gender, race, class,
sexuality, and ethnicity. Because nonverbal communication is ambiguous, we
construct its meaning as we notice, organize, and interpret nonverbal
behaviors that we and others enact. Effectiveness requires that we learn to
monitor our nonverbal communication and to exercise caution in interpreting
that of others.

Key Concepts

Artifacts - are personal objects we use to announce our identities and to

personalize our environments.

chronemics - refer to how we perceive and use time to define identities and
interaction.

environmental factors - are elements of settings that affect how we feel,

think,
and act.

Haptics - is a term for nonverbal communication involving physical touch.

Kinesics - refers to body position and body motions, including those of the
face.

nonverbal communication - n includes all aspects of communication other

than words.

Olfactics - is a term for odors and scents—or, more precisely, our

perception of them.

Paralanguage - is communication that is vocal but not actual words.

physical appearance - Based on physical qualities, we may make inferences

about others’ personalities.

Proxemics - refers to space and how we use it.

Silence - is a lack of communicated sound.