The study of bodily movements, including posture, gestures, and facial expressions, is called kinesics, a word derived from the Greek word kinesis, meaning “movement.” Some popular books purport to teach you how to “read” nonverbal communication so that you will know, for example, who is sexually aroused, who is just kidding, and whom you should avoid. Nonverbal communication, however, is more complicated than that. Interpreting the meaning of nonverbal communication is partly a matter of assessing the other person’s unique behavior and considering the context. You don’t just “read” another person’s body language; instead, you observe, analyze, and interpret before you decide the probable meaning.
Assessing another person’s unique behavior means that you need to know how that person usually acts. A quiet person might be unflappable even in an emergency situation. A person who never smiles may not be unhappy, and someone who acts happy might not actually be happy. You need to know how the person expresses emotions before you can interpret what his or her nonverbal communication means.
To look more deeply into interpreting nonverbal communication, let us consider the work of some experts on the subject: Albert Mehrabian, Paul Ekman, and Wallace Friesen.
Mehrabian (1971) studied nonverbal communication by examining the concepts of liking, status, and responsiveness among the participants in communication situations.
• Liking is expressed by forward leaning, a direct body orientation (such as standing face-to-face), close proximity, increased touching, relaxed posture, open arms and body, positive facial expression, and direct eye contact. For example, look at how a group of males acts when drinking beer and watching a game on television, or watch newly matched couples in the spring.
• Status, especially high status, is communicated nonverbally by bigger gestures, relaxed posture, and less eye contact. Male bosses sometimes put their feet up on their desks when talking to subordinates, but subordinates rarely act that way when talking to their boss.
• Responsiveness is exhibited by movement toward the other person, by spontaneous gestures, by shifts in posture and position, and by facial expressive- ness. In other words, the face and body provide positive feedback to the other person.
Ekman (1993, 1997, 1999a, 1999b) and Ekman and Friesen (1969) categorized movement on the basis of its functions, origins, and meanings. Their categories include emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, and adaptors.
Emblems are nonverbal movements that substitute for words and phrases. Examples of emblems are a beckoning first finger to mean “come here,” an open hand held up to mean “stop,” and a forefinger and thumb forming a circle to mean “OK.” Be wary of emblems; they may mean something else in another culture.
Illustrators are nonverbal movements that accompany or reinforce verbal messages. Examples of illustrators are nodding your head when you say yes, shaking your head when you say no, stroking your stomach when you say you are hungry, and shaking your fist in the air when you say, “Get out of that substitute for words and phrases. These nonverbal cues tend to be more universal than many in the other four categories of movement.
Affect displays are nonverbal movements of the face and body used to show emotion. Watch people’s behavior when their favorite team wins a game, listen to the door slam when an angry person leaves the room, and watch men make threatening moves when they are very upset with each other but don’t really want to fight.
Regulators are nonverbal movements that control the flow or pace of communication. Examples of regulators are starting to move away when you want the conversation to stop, gazing at the floor or looking away when you are not interested, and yawning and glancing at your watch when you are bored.
Adaptors are nonverbal movements that you might perform fully in private but only partially in public. For example, you might rub your nose in public, but you would probably never pick it.
Finally, Ekman and Friesen (1967) determined that a person’s facial expressions provide information to others about how he or she feels. Consider the smile. Findings are overwhelming that the person who smiles is rated more positively than the person who uses a neutral facial expression. Indeed, you are more likely to be offered a job if you smile (Krumhuber, Manstead, Cosker, Marshall, & Rosin, 2009). Ekman developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression. (Now commercialised — see http://www.paulekman.com/
Perhaps a more provocative finding is that people are more likely to attend to faces that are angry or threatening than they are to neutral facial expressions. When adults were presented with multiple faces, including some that appeared threatening, they were more likely to attend to the angry faces than they were to others. Recently it was shown that children have this same bias and they observed angry and frightened faces more rapidly than they did happy or sad faces (LoBue, 2009). This response to threatening stimuli may have evolved as a protective means to help people avoid danger.
Research on bodily movement today includes considerations of how our bodies and minds work together. Although we have known for some time that bodily movement has some basis in the brain and in our neurological functioning, a new focus combining these areas has shown promise. Choreographers, neuroscientists, and psychologists have joined together to study body and mind. This kind of collaboration between dancers and scientists may allow new discoveries that were not possible when people from these areas worked independently (McCarthy, Blackwell, DeLaunta, Wing, Hollands, Barnard, Nimmo-Smith, & Marcel, 2006). The future is bright for additional creative discoveries.
Facial expressions are important in conveying information to others and in learning what others are feeling. Bodily movement and orientation adds to that information by suggesting how intense the feeling might be. When you are able to observe and interpret both facial expression and bodily movement, you gain a fuller understanding of the other person’s message.
Physical Attraction
Beauty, it has been noted, is in the eye of the beholder. However, some research has suggested that particular characteristics—bright eyes, symmetrical features, and thin or medium build—are generally associated with physical attraction (Cash, 1980; Kowner, 1996). Moreover, such characteristics may not be limited to our culture but may be universal (Brody, 1994).
Physical attractiveness affects many aspects of our lives. The influence of physical appearance begins when we are young. By age 4, children are treated differently based on their physical appearance by their day-care teachers (Cash, 1980; Langlois & Downs, 1979). When children misbehave, their behavior is viewed as an isolated, momentary aberration if they are physically attractive, but as evidence of a chronic tendency to be bad if they are unattractive. These patterns continue throughout childhood and adolescence (Knapp & Hall, 1992).
Physical attractiveness generally leads to more social success in adulthood. Women who are attractive report a larger number of dates in college. Attractiveness may be affected by skin tone and hair color. Swami, Furnham, and Joshi (2008) found that men clearly prefer brunettes over blondes, and slightly prefer women who have light skin tones. Both women and men who are attractive are seen as more sociable and sensitive (Knapp & Hall, 1992).
Do people change their view of mate preferences over time? Eastwick and Finkel (2008) found that men ideally desire a physically attractive mate while women ideally desire a mate who has strong earning prospects. In real-life potential partners, women and men did not evidence these preferences or differences. Stereotypes may exist in abstract thinking about potential mates, but they do not appear to be realized in actual behavior.
The “matching hypothesis” suggests that women and men seek others who are of similar attractiveness. Lee, Loewenstein, Ariely, Hong, and Young (2008) recently demonstrated this consistent finding, although they did find that men were more oblivious to their own physical attractiveness in selecting a woman to date while women were keenly aware of their “physical attraction quotient.” They also asked whether less attractive people delude themselves when they are dating less attractive people with the sense that they are more attractive than others view them. They found that this is not the case. People have a fairly objective sense of their own, and their partner’s attractiveness.
Similarly, people who are obese are less likely to have physically attractive partners than are people of normal weight. Body type is not the only factor in mate selection; obese people are seen as more attractive if they have good educations, good groom- ing, and more attractive personalities. Nonetheless, similarity in body type remains the strongest predictor in mate selection among these qualities (Carmalt, Cawley, Joyner, & Sobal, 2008).
Physical attractiveness affects both credibility and one’s ability to persuade others. Attractive people receive higher initial credibility ratings than do those who are viewed as unattractive (Widgery, 1974). Women have more success in persuading the opposite sex when they are attractive than men have in persuading the opposite sex when they are attractive, but attractive women find that this effect dissipates as they grow older (Davies, Goetz, & Shackelford, 2008). When two attractive women interact, they compete dynamically for status which suggests that they feel that they have more social status or interactional power as a result of their physical beauty (Haas & Gregory, 2005).
Space
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1966) introduced the concept of proxemics — the study of the human use of space and distance —in his book The Hidden Dimension. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeNGSZK01Hs&feature=related
This researcher and others, such as Werner (1987), have demonstrated the role space plays in human communication. Two concepts considered essential to the study of the use of space are territoriality and personal space.
• Territoriality refers to your need to establish and maintain certain spaces as your own. In a shared dormitory room the items on the common desk area mark the territory. For example, you might place your notebook, pens and pencils, and PDA on the right side of the desk and your roommate might place books, a cell phone, and a laptop on the left side. While the desk
is shared, you are each claiming part of the area. On a cafeteria table the placement of the plate, glass, napkin, and eating utensils marks the territory. In a neighborhood it might be fences, hedges, trees, or rocks that mark the territory. All are nonverbal indicators that signal ownership.
• Personal space is the personal “bubble” that moves around with you. It is the distance you maintain between yourself and others, the amount of space you claim as your own. Large people usually claim more space because of their size, and men often take more space than women. For example, in a lecture hall, observe who claims the armrests as part of their personal bubbles.
Hall (1966) was the first to define the four distances people regularly use while they communicate. His categories have been helpful in understanding the communicative behavior that might occur when two people are a particular distance from each other. Beginning with the closest contact and the least personal space, and moving to the greatest distance, Hall’s categories are intimate distance, personal distance, social distance, and public distance.
• Intimate distance extends from you outward to 18 inches, and it is used by people who are relationally close to you. Used more often in private than in public, this intimate distance is employed to show affection, to give comfort, and to protect. Graves and Robinson (1976) and Burgoon (1978) note that use of intimate distance usually elicits a positive response because individuals tend to stand and sit close to people to whom they are attracted.
• Personal distance ranges from 18 inches to 4 feet, and it is the distance used by most Americans for conversation and other nonintimate exchanges.
• Social distance ranges from 4 to 12 feet, and it is used most often to carry out business in the workplace, especially in formal, less personal situations. The higher the status of one person, the greater the distance.
• Public distance exceeds 12 feet and is used most often in public speaking in such settings as lecture halls; churches, mosques, and synagogues; courtrooms; and convention halls. Professors often stand at this distance while lecturing.
Distance, then, is a nonverbal means of communicating everything from the size of your personal bubble to your relationship with the person to whom you are speaking or listening. A great deal of research has been done on proxemics (see, e.g., Andersen, Guerrero, Buller, & Jorgensen, 1998; McMurtray, 2000; Terneus & Malone, 2004). Virtual environments allow researchers to study the human use of space in relatively unobtrusive ways (Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall, & Loomis, 2001). Sex, size, and similarity seem to be among the important determiners of personal space.
Gender affects the amount of space people are given and the space in which they choose to communicate (Ro’sing, 2003). Men tend to take more space because they are often larger than women (Argyle & Dean, 1965). Women take less space, and children take and are given the least space. Women exhibit less discomfort with small space and tend to interact at closer range (Addis, 1966; Leventhal & Matturro, 1980; Snyder & Endelman, 1979). Perhaps because women are so often given little space, they come to expect it. Also, women and children in our society seem to desire more relational closeness than do men.
Your relationship to other people is related to your use of space (Guardo, 1969). You stand closer to friends and farther from enemies. You stand farther from strang- ers, authority figures, high-status people, physically challenged people, and people from racial groups different from your own. You stand closer to people you perceive as similar or unthreatening because closeness communicates trust.
The physical setting also can alter the use of space. People tend to stand closer together in large rooms and farther apart in small rooms (Sommer, 1962). In addition, physical obstacles and furniture arrangements can affect the use of personal space.
The cultural background of the people communicating also must be considered in the evaluation of personal space. Hall (1963) was among the first to recognize the importance of cultural background when he was training American service personnel for service overseas. He wrote:
Americans overseas were confronted with a variety of difficulties because of cultural differences in the handling of space. People stood “too close” during conversations, and when the Americans backed away to a comfortable conversational distance, this was taken to mean that Americans were cold, aloof, withdrawn, and disinterested in the people of the country. USA housewives muttered about “waste-space” in houses in the Middle East. In England, Americans who were used to neighborliness were hurt when they discovered that their neighbors were no more accessible or friendly than other people, and in Latin America, exsuburbanites, accustomed to unfenced yards, found that the high walls there made them feel “shut out.” Even in Germany, where so many of my countrymen felt at home, radically different patterns in the use of space led to unexpected tensions. (p. 422)
Cultural background can result in great differences in the use of space and in people’s interpretation of such use. As our world continues to shrink, more people will be working in multinational corporations, regularly traveling to different countries and interacting with others from a variety of backgrounds. Sensitivity to space use in different cultures and quick, appropriate responses to those variations are imperative.
Touching
Tactile communication (Haptics) is the use of touch in communication. Because touch always involves invasion of another person’s personal space, it commands attention. Touch is a powerful means of communication (Aguinis, Simonsen, & Pierce, 1998; Fromme et al., 1989). Usually, touch is perceived as positive, pleasurable, and reinforcing. The association of touch with the warmth and caring that began in infancy carries over into adulthood. People who are comfortable with touch are more likely to be satisfied with their past and current lives. They are self-confident, assertive, socially acceptable, and active in confronting problems.
Touch is part of many important rituals. In baptism the practice can range from as little as a touch on the head during the ceremony to as much as a total immersion in water. Prayers in some churches are said with the pastor’s hand touching the person being prayed for. In some funda- mentalist Christian churches, the healer might accompany the touch with a mighty shove, right into the hands of two catchers. Physician Bernie Siegel (1990) wrote the following in his book on mind–body communication:
I’d like to see some teaching time devoted to the healing power of touch—a subject that only 12 of 169 medical schools in the English-speaking world deal with at all... despite the fact that touch is one of the most basic forms of communication between people.... We need to teach medical students how to touch people. (p. 134)
Religion and medicine are just two professions in which touch is important for ceremonial and curative purposes.
Touch varies by gender (Lee & Guerrero, 2001). The findings relating touch with gender indicate the following:
• Women value touch more than men do (Fisher, Rytting, & Heslin, 1976).
• Women are touched more than men, beginning when they are 6-month-
old girls (Clay, 1968; Goldberg & Lewis, 1969).
• Women touch female children more often than they touch male children
(Clay, 1968; Goldberg & Lewis, 1969).
• Men and their sons touch each other the least (Jourard & Rubin, 1968). • Female students are touched more often and in more places than are male
students (Jourard, 1966).
• Males touch others more often than females touch others (Henley,
1973–1974).
• Males may use touch to indicate power or dominance (Henley, 1973–1974).
On the last point, to observe who can touch whom among people in the workplace is interesting. Although fear of being accused of sexual harassment has eliminated a great deal of touch except for handshaking, the general nonverbal principle is that the higher- status individual gets to initiate touch, but touch is not reciprocal: The president might pat you on the back for a job well done, but in our society you don’t pat back.
Further, both co-culture and culture determine the frequency and kind of non- verbal communication. People from different countries handle nonverbal communication differently—even something as simple as touch (McDaniel & Andersen, 1998). Sidney Jourard (1968) determined the rates of touch per hour among adults rom various cultures. In a coffee shop, adults in San Juan, Puerto Rico, touched 180 times per hour; while those in Paris, France, touched about 110 times per hour; followed by those in Gainesville, Florida, who touched about 2 times per hour; and those in London, England, who touched only once per hour. North Americans are more frequent touchers than are the Japanese (Barnlund, 1975).
Touch sends such a powerful message that it has to be handled with responsibility. Touch may be welcomed by some in work or clinical settings, but it is equally likely that touch is undesirable or annoying. Certainly touch can be misunderstood in such settings (Kane, 2006; Lee & Guerrero, 2001; Strozier, Krizek, & Sale, 2003). When the right to touch is abused, it can result in a breach of trust, anxiety, and hostility. When touch is used to communicate concern, caring, and affection, it is welcome, desired, and appreciated.
Vocal Cues
Nonverbal communication includes some sounds, as long as they are not words. We call them paralinguistic features —the nonword sounds and nonword characteristics of language, such as pitch, volume, rate, and quality. The prefix para means “along- side” or “parallel to,” so paralinguistic means “alongside the words or language.”
The paralinguistic feature examined here is vocal cues—all of the oral aspects of sound except words themselves. Vocal cues include
• Pitch: the highness or lowness of your voice.
• Rate: how rapidly or slowly you speak.
• Inflection: the variety or changes in pitch.
• Volume: the loudness or softness of your voice.
• Quality: the unique resonance of your voice, such as huskiness, nasality, raspiness, or whininess.
• Nonword sounds: “mmh,” “huh,” “ahh,” and the like, as well as pauses or
the absence of sound used for effect in speaking.
• Pronunciation: whether or not you say a word correctly.
• Articulation: whether or not your mouth, tongue, and teeth coordinate to
make a word understandable to others (such as a lisp).
• Enunciation: whether or not you combine pronunciation and articulation
to produce a word with clarity and distinction so that it can be under-
stood. A person who mumbles has an enunciation problem.
• Silence: the lack of sound.
These vocal cues are important because they are linked in our minds with a speaker’s physical characteristics, emotional state, personality characteristics, gender characteristics, and even credibility. In addition, vocal cues, alone, have a persuasive effect for people when they are as young as 12 months (Vaish & Striano, 2004).
According to Kramer (1963), vocal cues frequently convey information about the speaker’s characteristics, such as age, height, appearance, and body type. For example, people often associate a high-pitched voice with someone who is female, younger, and/ or smaller. You may visualize someone who uses a loud voice as being big or someone who speaks quickly as being nervous. People who tend to speak slowly and deliberately may be perceived as being high-status individuals or as having high credibility.
A number of studies have related emotional states to specific vocal cues. Joy and hate appear to be the most accurately communicated emotions, whereas shame and love are among the most difficult to communicate accurately (Laukka, Juslin, & Bresin, 2005; Planalp, 1996). Joy and hate appear to be conveyed by fewer vocal cues, and this makes them less difficult to interpret than emotions such as shame and love, which are conveyed by complex sets of vocal cues. “Active” feelings such as joy and hate are associated with a loud voice, a high pitch, and a rapid rate. Conversely, “passive” feelings, which include affection and sadness, are communicated with a soft voice, a low pitch, and a relatively slow rate (Kramer, 1963).
Personality characteristics also have been related to vocal cues. Dominance, social adjustment, and sociability have been clearly correlated with specific vocal cues (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956). Irony, on the other hand, cannot be determined on the basis of vocal cues alone (Bryant & Tree, 2005).
Although the personality characteristics attributed to individuals displaying particular vocal cues have not been shown to accurately portray the person, as determined by standardized personality tests, our impressions affect our interactions. In other words, although you may perceive loud-voiced, high-pitched, fast-speaking individuals as dominant, they might not be measured as dominant by a personality inventory. Nonetheless, in your interactions with such people, you may become increasingly submissive because of your perception that they are dominant. In
addition, these people may begin to become more dominant because they are treated as though they have this personality characteristic.
Vocal cues can help a public speaker establish credibility with an audience and can clarify the message. Pitch and inflection can be used to make the speech sound aesthetically pleasing, to accomplish subtle changes in meaning, and to tell an audience whether you are asking a question or making a statement, being sincere or sarcastic, or being doubtful or assertive. A rapid speaking rate may indicate you are confident about speaking in public or that you are nervously attempting to conclude your speech. Variations in volume can be used to add emphasis or to create suspense. Enunciation is especially important in public speaking because of the increased size of the audience and the fewer opportunities for direct feedback. Pauses can be used in a public speech to create dramatic effect and to arouse audience interest. Vocalized pauses—“ah,” “uh-huh,” “um,” and so on—are not desirable in public speaking and may distract the audience.
Silence is a complex behavior steeped in contradictions. To be sure, silence is far better than vocalized pauses in public speaking. Too, silence may signal respect and empathy when another person is speaking or disclosing personal information. One observer notes: “Sometimes silence is best. Words are curious things, at best approximations. And every human being is a separate language.... [Sometimes] silence is best” (Hardman, 1971). On the other hand, silence may signal the dark side of communication. People in power, in dominant cultures, or in positions of authority may silence others. Those with whom they come in contact may be marginalized or embarrassed and feel that they must remain silent because of sexism, racism, taboo, incidents of violence or abuse, shame, or a hostile environment (Olson, 1997).
