CMN2132X – Non-Verbal Communication : Chapters 1-2

CHAPTER 1

• The function of communication is the creation of meaning

• The functional significance of non-verbal communication is related to:

o The purposes for which meanings are communicated (information, persuasion, etc.)

o The accuracy with which meanings are communicated (i.e. facial communication = more potential than tactile communication)

o The efficiency with which meanings are communicated (the time and effort required for the communication of meanings)

• 6 Reasons why Non-Verbal Communication has great functional significance

o They’re determinants of meaning (better than verbal communication) in interpersonal contexts

o Only 30-35% of the world’s communication = verbal

o 93% of the total impact of a message is carried non-verbally

o 2/3 of communicated meaning is done non-verbally

o Non-Verbal characteristics primarily determine the emotional meaning of one’s world

o Non-Verbal cues are more relied upon when determining the emotional state of someone

• Non Verbal Communication can provide us with insight about emotions like:

o How sensitive communicators are about emotional expressions

o The kinds of emotional expressions that can be correctly identified

o The specific nature of incorrect identification of emotions

o The degree to which communicators attend to the emotional meaning of a total communication

• The nonverbal portion of communication conveys meanings and intentions that are relatively free of deception and distortion

• Non-verbal communication is aren’t usually under the sustained and conscious control of the communicator

• Non-Verbal Cues

o convey a communicator’s real meaning/intent as well as suggest what the communicator thinks of us

o can reveal deception as well as conceal it

o are usually taken with more importance when verbal and non-verbal cues conflict (actions speak louder than words)

o serve a meta-communicative function which is inseparable which is indispensable in attaining high-quality communication

o are the primary meta-communicative function in interpersonal communication

o represent a much more efficient means of communicating than verbal cues (people want to communicate more in less time)

o represent the most suitable vehicle for suggestions (ideas and emotions are more effectively communicated indirectly than directly

• Gestural Adaptors: Non-verbal behaviours of the encoder that operate out of awareness and are unintentional

• Nonverbal Communication comprises of 3 major interacting systems & subsystems:

o The visual communication system

The major source of nonverbal meaning

Made up of 3 subsystems:

• Kinesic: Defined by its own subsystems of facial expressions, eye behaviors, gestures, and posture

• Proxemic: Defined by the use of space, distance, and territory for purposes of communication

• Artifactual: Starts with the appearance of our face and body and includes all of the options communicators may use to modify their appearance

o The auditory communication system

In the auditory system there are 9 different sound attributes. Which are susceptible to our conscious control, combine to give communicators’ vocal cues their distinctive quality (loudness, pitch, rate, duration, quality, regularity, articulation, pronunciation and silence)

Vocal cues serve 3 important functions:

• Impression management function

• Emotion function

• Regulatory function

o The invisible communicational system

The invisible communicational system’s subsystems are:

• Tactile, olfactory(smell) and chronemic(time perception) communication

o Tactile = touching each other to communicate meanings

• Tactile messages can be seen, olfactory and chronemic can’t

• Tactile messages can often communicate powerful meanings in the absence of any illumination and that the decoder of tactile messages relies on cutaneous(skin) receptors rather than eyesight to decode them

• Nonverbal communication channels differ with regard to:

o The speed with which they can transmit signals

o The ability of the channel to separate its own signals from those of other channels

o How accurately meanings are communicated through the channel

o The effectiveness with which the channel communicates emotional information

o The effectiveness with which the channel communicates factual information

• Nonverbal communication rarely happens in the absence of verbal communication

• Burgoon’s 5 propositions on the interrelationships between verbal/nonverbal communication

o Adults rely more on nonverbal cues than verbal cues when determining “social meaning”

o Children attach more meaning to verbal rather than nonverbal cues before puberty

o Adults rely more on nonverbal cues when verbal and nonverbal cues conflict or are inconsistent

o The function of a given attempt to communicate tends to determine whether the communicator will rely on one or more kinds of nonverbal or verbal communication or nonverbal communication

o Individual communicators consistently exhibit a preference for either verbal or nonverbal communication as a source of information, although the situation or context determines the preference of some communicators

• Nonverbal cues usually reinforce/supplement information provided by the spoken word, they also provide specific kinds of information that can’t be obtained from speech communication

• Functions of Nonverbal cues

o Providing information

Can inform both the encoder and decoder

Since nonverbal communication is done while we are unaware, it can be a quite accurate information source

Can inform about one’s self-image, social identity, attitudes, and behavioural tendencies, self-assurance and responsiveness etc.

o Regulating interaction

Ex. Instead of saying “Shut up John, I want to talk” using nonverbal cues like more frequent eye contact, nodding, saying “mmm hmm” and “yeah” to signal you want to speak is more socially acceptable and polite

o Expressing emotions/intimacy

Nonverbal communication is the primary medium for communicating emotions

Successful communication requires a sensitive reading of, and response to the feelings, moods and emotions of those we communicate with

o Allowing metacommunication (communicating about communication)

Metamessages in the form of nonverbal cues help the communicator in both assessing the intent and motivation of the message sender and in determining the precise meanings of verbal messages

Metacommunication (in a nonverbal context): The use of nonverbal messages to qualify, complement, contradict, or expande verbal or other cues

• This is particularly apparent when someone is giving off conflicting messages

o Controlling social situations

When one individual tries to influence/change the behaviour of another individual (usually takes the form of persuasion)

The social control function of nonverbal communication is centrally involved in carefully calculated efforts to enhance on e’s status, power, and dominance; to provide selective feedback and reinforcement and to deceive

o Forming and managing impressions

Impression management is a form of social control (this will be discussed in further chapters)

• None of these functions of nonverbal cues are mutually exclusive

• Nonverbal communication can reveal how a person feels about themselves and also how they feel about the other person they’re communicating with

CHAPTER 2

• The human face is the most important source of emotional information & primary site for communication of emotional states

• Emotion: A complex but temporary psychological state involving psychological, experiential, and behavioural changes

• The categoric perspective: The human face, at any given moment transmits one dominant type of meaning, often associated with such affective states as happiness or anger, the meaning transmitted facially is believed to have a single referent that will stand out in the mind of the decoder (the decoder will use a single categoric label to describe the dominant facial meaning that is displayed)

• Tomkins’ Classes of Facial Meaning

o Tomkins uses sets of labels to identify the eight classes of affective information that he contends can be communicated by facial expressions:

Interest-Excitement

Enjoyment-Joy

Surprise-startle

Distress-Anguish

Fear-terror

Shame-Humiliation

Contempt-Disgust

Anger-Rage

o The first “label” in the pairing/set is a low-intensity manifestation of the “class” of facial meaning and the second label in the pairing represents a high intensity counterpart

• Ekman & Associates’ Classes of Facial Meaning

o Ekman said that face is capable of communicating 7 basic classes of meaning:

Happiness

Surprise

Fear

Anger

Sadness

Disgust/Contempt

Interest

o Ekman and associates believe these basic classes of meaning are universal

• Contempt is the newest universal nonverbal gesture, in facial expression research, and contempt now represents the seventh universal facial expression across cultural variations

• FAST (the Facial Affect Scoring Technique)

o FAST breaks down the face into 3 areas:

Brows & Forehead

Eyes, Lids & Bridge of the Nose

Lower Face (Mouth)

o Different parts of the face better illustrate certain emotions than the others

• The Dimensional Perspective: The face displays not one dominant meaning but a number of dimensions of meaning; the face is multidimensional

• Osgoode’s Semantic Differential

o Facial communication involves the following factors:

Pleasantness

Control

• Represented by specific emotions like annoyance/disgust rather than amazement/excitement

Intensity

• Using emotions like rage/scorn/loathing rather than boredom/quietness/complacency

Interest

• Mehrabian said that facial communication consists of 3 dimensions of meaning:

o Evaluation

o Potency or status

o Responsiveness

• Frijida and Philipszoon’ 4 dimensions of facial meaning:

o Pleasant/Unpleasant

o Naturalness/submission

o Intensity of expression/control of expression

o Attention/Disinterest

A follow-up study was done by Frijida who found 2 others “Understanding/amazed” and “simple/complicated”

Chapter 3

• Exhibited Eye Behaviours

o Eye Contact

Two People looking at each other, but not necessarily eye-to-eye

o Face Gaze

When you are looking at someone else’s face

i.e. looking at the face of your cashier in the cafeteria as you pay for your food

o Eye Gaze

When our gaze is focused directly upon a person’s eyes (it’s more intense than a face gaze)

i.e. Looking into your man’s eyes when he’s telling you where he was last night to see if he’s lying

o Looking

A person looking in the direction of a person’s face (can also refer to seeing an object)

i.e. a child looking for his mom in room, or a child looking for the ball that he dropped (but looking up at people’s faces to look for it)

o Mutual Gaze

Two people gazing at each other’s faces

i.e. a lawyer gazing at the witness on the stand and the witness returns the gesture to the lawyer

o Mutual Eye Contact

When two people look into each other’s eyes

i.e. COUPLES

o Gaze Avoidance

Intentional avoidance of eye contact

i.e. Not looking at ya mamma when she’s about to beat you

o Staring

Persistent Gaze or look that occurs regardless of the other person’s reaction

o Gaze Omission

Unintentional failure to make eye contact with another person

i.e. classmates having trouble looking at you when you speak

o Gaze Aversion

The movement of your eyes away from your interaction partner’s eyes

i.e. if you lowkey stole someone’s money and are ashamed to look at them when in a group of friends

o Eye blinking

A nervous gesture that often has a negative association; the number of times your eyelids close per unit of time

o Eye-flutter

The number of times your eyeballs exhibit slight but discernable horizontal and vertical movements per unit of time

o Pupil Size

The average size of the diameters of a person’s pupils

o Gaze Following

When someone looks where another person has just looked

• Measured eye behaviours (5 types of gaze variables most frequently measured)

o Frequency

Number of times an individual looks at a conversational partner

o Total Duration

The number of seconds a communicator looks at a particular interaction partner

o Proportion of time

Percentage of total interaction time that a communicator spends looking ar or away from an interaction partner when engaging in a particular kind of communication, that is, speaking or listening

o Average Duration

Mean or average duration of glances directed at and interaction partner

o Standard Deviation of glances

Average duration of glances that provides information regarding variability in length of single glances

• Functions of Eye Behaviours

o Indicate degrees of attentiveness, interest, and arousal

o Help initiate and sustain intimate relationships

o Influence attitude change and persuasion

o Regulate interaction

o Communicate emotions

o Define power and status relationship

o Assume a central role in impression management

• Functions of the Eyes:

• The Attentive function

o Eye serve an attention function, they signal a readiness to communicate

o Eye behaviors reflect the degree of mutual interest, gain attention and reflect a person’s level of interest

o Pupils communicate:

The attentiveness & interest of the listener

The pleasantness of the communicator’s current object of attention

• The Persuasive function

o To persuade someone and appear credible, one must sustain eye contact while speaking and while being spoken to by the person they’re trying to persuade

o Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of Persuasion:

2 routes to persuasion:

• Central Routes (when explanation/elaboration is high)

• Peripheral Routes (when explanation/elaboration is low & nonverbal communication is more prevalent & sought out)

o Direct Eye contact is apt to have a beneficial impact on both the communicator’s perceived competence and the communicator’s trustworthiness

i.e we generally assume that individuals who look directly at us know what they’re talking about and are being honest with us, but when they avert their eyes when they talk to us, we’re likely to see them as less trust worthy/credible/competent/persuasive

• The Intimacy function

o Gender affects eye behaviour (men break gazes more than women)

o Gazes and Glances are the way that couples cue each other in times of maintenance, distress, joy, sadness, or happiness

o Nonverbal Echo: When one partner in a relationship returns a look, glance, gaze, or eye contact in a similar fashion

• The Regulatory Function

o Eye behaviors alert the decoder that encoding is occurring and continuing by signaling the encoder whether listening and decoding are occurring, and by indicating when the listener is to speak (AKA it tells people when to shut up when you want to talk, so you don’t have to say “Bob, don’t interrupt me again”)

• The Affective Function

o The eyes can symbolize affect(ion), the look in someone’s eyes can signal the beginning of a relationship or the end of one

o When you want to determine the intensity on someone’s emotion, you can look at their pupils, they enlarge when someone’s experiencing a positive emotion and contract when they’re experiencing a negative emotion

• The Power Function

o Averted and downward eye contact can be seen as weakness or submission

o Intense eye contact can be seen as power or strength

o Visual Dominance Ratio:

The percentage of looking while speaking relative to the percentage of looking while listening

People with a high visual dominance ratio are perceived as more powerful than communicators who are relatively high in status/power

• The Impression Management Function

o Eye behaviors can be used to integrate, deceive, dominate, suggest that one is extroverted, and avoid other human beings

o The longer eye contact we have with people, the greater self-esteem we are perceived to have

o Eye behavior is linked to gaining compliance with people, especially at home, work, school, church, etc.)

If you make a lot of eye contact people are more likely to comply to whatever you’re asking of them

• Impression management: conscious control over selected eye behaviours

o Much of the information communicated by someone’s eyes operates out of their open level of awareness & is beyond their ability to consciously

Chapter 4

• Bodily clues vary with their usage and code employed as well as the functions they serve

• Bodily clue usage has 2 significant questions:

o Was the communicator aware of exhibiting a specific kinds of bodily clue?

o Was the bodily clue used with conscious intent to communicate a particular kind of information?

• 3 Basic Codes of bodily clues:

o Arbitrary Codes

Signaling rooted in symbolism that means something to the user, but isn’t fixed in time/space

• i.e. a hand raised to greet someone (the raised hand isn’t directly related to what It signifies; can be dictated by culture, time, etc.)

o Iconic Codes

Carries a clue about the meaning due to its appearance

• i.e a woman wearing high heels to appear taller/a man wearing a toupee so people think he has hair (BUT HE DON’T HA)

o Intrinsic Codes

The natural system we inherit at birth, rather than learn

• i.e. recognizing someone by their facial features, hairstyle, body shape, etc.

• Nature & Classification of Bodily Cues

o Emblems: bodily clues that have a direct verbal translation consisting of a word or two & have a precise meaning that’s known by most members of a given culture

i.e. Thumbs up = good job

o Illustrators: Used to emphasise/enhance what’s being said & reinforce/de-intensify the perceived strength of emotions being experienced by the communicator

i.e. saying yes while nodding your head

o Affect Displays: Bodily clues that signal the kind of emotion one is experiencing

i.e. holding your hand out of the blue

o Regulators: Bodily clues used by interactant to exercise a mutual influence over the initiation, length and termination of spoken messages (usually used with a low level of awareness and intensity)

i.e. nodding when you want to speak

o Adaptors: Adaptive functions to satisfy bodily needs (can signify discomfort, nervousness)

i.e. scratching your head, fixing your tie, clearing your throat

• 3 types of meaning of nonverbal/implicit communication

o Approach metaphor

o Arousal activity metaphor

o Power metaphor

These 3 metaphors suggest the full range of meanings that ccan be communicates by nonverbal means

• Updated 3 types of meaning of nonverbal messages

o Like-dislike

o Assertiveness-unassertiveness

o Power-powerless

• Gestures vs. Postures

o 3 basic units of bodily movement

Point

• Nonverbal equivalent of trying to make a point in a discussion (may be seen as a gesture)

Position

• When several points are combined, there is a position

• Position = marked by a gross postural shift involving at least half the body

o i.e. a discussant leaning toward the person on the opposite side of the table

Presentation

• Consists of the totality of one person’s positions in a given interaction

• Can take several minutes to several hours

o Gesticulation: situations where one or more of our bodily movements are interacting with our verbal utterances

o 2 main types of gestures: deictic & representational

Deictic = i.e. holding an object to be seen by others or using your arm or finger to indicate a desired object

Representational: gestures that carry both representational as well as fixed semantic content (i.e. nodding yes, or no with your head)

o Body acts: readily observable movements with a definite beginning and end (could occur in any part of the body or simultaneous ones

o Body Positions: A lack of movement for a discernable period of time (2+ seconds) with any body part

o Posture can express the desire to increase, limit or avoid interaction with another individual

o 3 types of postures:

Type 1

• Postural Orientation: an individual communicates inclusiveness or non-inclusiveness (you want to increase or avoid interaction with someone & are showing it with your posture)

Type 2

• The individual assumes vis-à-vis/parallel bodily orientation

• Conveys a desire to communicate with the entire group rather than just certain individuals in it

Type 3

• Postural Orientation: the individual assumes a congruent/incongruent posture, and if you assume a posture similar to theirs, you’re communicating that you feel the same way (i.e. being bored in class)

o Postural mirroring: Assuming the same posture as your interaction partner

• Major Communicative Functions of Bodily Cues

o Bodily cues frame communicative interaction and help synchronize it

o Bodily clues serve 4 functions, they communicate:

Attitudinal information

Highly personal information about a communicator’s personal state

Intensity of emotions being experienced

Relational information

• Functional & dysfunctional Uses of Bodily Cues

o Bodily clues that communicate a sense of openness/confidence are seen to be desirable, defensiveness & nervousness are not

• Nonverbal Indicators of Liking vs. Disliking

o Indicators of Liking:

Forward leaning head during encounters

Body and head orientations that directly face the other individual

Open-Body positions

Affirmative Head Nods

Moderate amounts of gesturing and animation

Close interpersonal distances

Moderate body relaxation

Touching

Initiating and maintaining eye contact

Smiling

Postural Mirroring

o Indicators of Disliking

Indirect bodily orientations

Eye contact of short duration

Averted eyes

Unpleasant facial expressions

A relative absence of gestures

Bodily rigidity

Visual Inattentiveness

Closed Bodily Posture

Incongruent Postures

Bodily tension

• Nonverbal Indicators of Assertiveness and Unassertiveness

o Assertiveness

Nonverbal and verbal components of the message used consistently

Relaxed gestures and postures with a forward lean preferred

Firm but not expansive gestures

Sustained eye contact, although staring should be avoided

Illustrator gestures and vocal inflection used to emphasize key words and phrases

An appropriately loud voice

Touching used when appropriate

o Unassertiveness

Nervous gestures such as hand-wringing and lip licking

Clutching the other person as the assertive remark is made

Out-of context smiling

Hunching the shoulders

Covering the mouth with the hand

Wooden posture (aka rigid body)

Frequent throat clearing

Deferentially raised eyebrow

Evasive eye contact

Pauses that are filled with non-fluencies (aka “um, uh, like”)

• Nonverbal Indicators of Power & Powerlessness

o Power

Relaxed posture

Erect rather than slumped posture

Dynamic and purposeful gestures

Steady and direct gaze

Variation in speaking rate and inflection

Variation in postures

Relative expansiveness in postures

The option to touch/stare/interrupt/approach another person closely

o Powerlessness

Body tension

Excessive smiling

Continuous Visual Attentiveness while others are speaking

Looking down frequently

Arriving early for parties

Sitting in the 11 o clock position at the conference table

Exhibiting distracting Foot movement

Not exposing the soles of your shoes

Assuming closed postures

Elevating your eyebrows frequently

Never touching another individual