Nonverbal Communication:
Messages beyond Words
Chapter Summary
•Characteristics of Nonverbal Communication
•Influences on Nonverbal Communication
•Gender
•Culture
•Types of Nonverbal Communication
•Summary
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•A nonverbal communication is a message expressed in
non-linguistic means.
•Nonverbal Skills are Important
•Nonverbal skills are strong predictors of popularity,
attractiveness, and socio-emotional well-being.
•Good nonverbal communicators are more persuasive.
•Nonverbal sensitivity is a major part of “emotional intelligence.”
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•All Behavior Has Communicative Value
•Can you just stop communicating?
•If someone were observing you now, what messages would you
be communicating?
•We’re always sending messages.
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Nonverbal Communication Is Primarily Relational
•Nonverbal communication and identity management
•You behave differently around different people.
•What are you trying to say?
•“I’m friendly.” “I’m attractive.” “I’m happy.”
•How many different ways can you greet a person?
•Each way says something different about you.
•Nonverbal Communication Conveys Emotion
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Nonverbal communication conveys emotion.
•Try to express the following nonverbally:
•You’re tired.
•You’re in favor of capital punishment.
•You’re attracted to another person in the class.
•You think prayer in schools should be allowed.
•You’re angry at someone in the room.
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Electronic communication allows us to show emotion.
•E-mail and Instant Messages can be misunderstood.
•To solve this problem, programmers developed emoticons.
•Can you identify the electronic emotion?
:-)
Happy
:-(
Frown
:-D
Big Smile
:-I
Indifference
;-)
Wink or Grin
:-)~
Tongue out or teasing
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Nonverbal Communication Serves Many Functions
•Repeating
•Act out what you say. You may point in the direction.
•Complementing
•Matching your nonverbal with verbal communication
•Substituting
•Offering nonverbal reactions in the place of verbal responses
•If someone asks, “What’s up,” you may just shrug.
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Accenting
•Adding emphasis through nonverbal gestures
•Regulating
•Nonverbal communication used to control a conversation
•Drawing out the last syllable
•Vocalized pauses
•Contradicting
•Sending mixed messages
•Looking very upset while screaming, “I’m not angry!”
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Deceiving
•The most common clue to detecting deception is leakage.
•Changes in person’s normal behavior
•Body clues are more likely to give away the deceiver.
•Science shows that most people have a 50/50 chance of detecting
deception accurately.
•Though not always the case
•Liars sustain more eye contact and fidget less.
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Characteristics of Nonverbal
Communication
Nonverbal Skills
•Nonverbal Communication Is Ambiguous
•Safeway clerks object to service with a smile policy.
•Many of the patrons thought the clerks were flirting with them.
•What does a kiss mean?
•Some people have a more difficult time reading emotions.
•Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NVLD)
•Reading facial expressions, tone and other cues is more difficult.
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Influences on Nonverbal
Communication
Gender
•Cultural norms distinguish male and female traits.
•Women
•Make more eye contact in conversation
•Are more vocally expressive
•Interact at closer distances
•Men
•Are more likely to lean forward in conversation
•Require more personal space than women
•Tend to stand at an angle when communicating
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Influences on Nonverbal
Communication
Gender
•While sex and culture have some effect on communication
styles, they’re not as dramatic as one might expect.
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Influences on Nonverbal
Communication
Culture
•Nonverbal gestures can have different meanings.
•The “OK” Gesture
•In American culture, it means affirmation.
•In France and Belgium, it means you’re worth “zero.”
•In Greece and Turkey, it’s a vulgar sexual invitation.
•Americans are comfortable conducting business at about four feet,
while people from the middle east stand much closer.
•Eye contact varies depending on your culture.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Body Movement
•Body Orientation
•The degree to which we face the person we’re communicating with
•You can learn a lot from observing people’s body orientations.
•Posture
•It tends to be the least ambiguous form of nonverbal
communication.
•Based on posture observation, you can tell a great deal about a
person’s mood.
•You can apply the same theory to social situations:
•Are people laughing? Are they rigid? How do they look?
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Body Movement
•Gestures
•Illustrators
•Movements that accompany speech but do not stand on their own
•Emblems
•Deliberate nonverbal communication that has a precise meaning
•Adaptors
•Unconscious bodily movements in response to the environment
•Manipulators
•Signs of discomfort or showing your unease in a situation
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Face and Eyes
•Researchers have found that there are at least eight
distinguishable positions of the eyebrows and forehead.
•Facial expressions tend to happen quickly.
•Though most expressions are lost, it is possible to identify
the most common.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Face and Eyes
•Expressions that happen quickly are known as
microexpressions.
•Difficult to detect
•Can be the best way to identify emotion
•Eyes can express positive and negative emotions.
•Even the pupils of our eyes communicate.
•Pupil size depends on the interest in the item being viewed.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Voice
•Paralanguage
•Nonverbal, vocal messages
•The way a word is spoken can give the word many meanings.
•Disfluencies
•Stammering, use of “uh,” “um,” and “er.”
•These can do a great deal to confirm or contradict your message.
•Young children tend to respond to paralanguage.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Voice
•Sarcasm is one form of paralanguage.
•Say the next three examples literally then sarcastically:
•“Thanks a lot!”
•“I really had a wonderful time on my blind date.”
•“There’s nothing I like better than lima beans.”
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Touch
•Touch can communicate many different messages.
•Touch plays a powerful role in the way we respond
to each other and how they view us.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Appearance
•The influences of physical attractiveness begins early.
•Preschoolers identify attractive people as friendly, whereas
unattractive counterparts are seen as mean or not nice.
•Evaluation
•Working both ways, teachers who see students as attractive are
more likely to give them better grades, and students who see
teachers as attractive are more likely to give higher evaluations.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Appearance
•Clothing
•Clothing is another means of nonverbal communication.
•People who wear certain clothes often gain persuasiveness.
•Certain occupations can be determined by clothes.
•Pedestrians were more likely to return dropped coins to individuals
dressed in “high status.”
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Physical Space
•Each of us carries a bubble.
•This bubble determines our comfortable communication zone.
•When this bubble is invaded, we become pressured.
•Certain cultures develop different bubbles.
•You must choose a communicating distance based on the receiver.
•Territoriality
•While your bubble may change, your territory stays the same.
•We tend to grant people with higher status more territory.
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Types of Nonverbal
Communication
Time
•Chronemics
•The study of how humans structure time
•Monochronic
•Emphasizing punctuality, schedules and completing tasks on time
•Polychronic
•Flexible schedules with multiple tasks pursued at the same time
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Nonverbal Communication:
Messages beyond Words
Chapter Summary
•Characteristics of Nonverbal Communication
•Influences on Nonverbal Communication
•Gender
•Culture
•Types of Nonverbal Communication
•Summary
Looking Out, Looking In
12th Edition
25