Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

CHAPTER SEVEN: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
1. Explain why nonverbal communication is an important and challenging area of study.
2. Describe the functions of nonverbal communication in interpersonal relationships.
1. Summarize research findings that describe codes of nonverbal communication
behavior.
3. Describe three bases for interpreting nonverbal behavior.
4. Formulate a strategy for improving ability to interpret nonverbal messages accurately.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Studying nonverbal communication is important and often undervalued. Nonverbal
messages communicate our feelings and attitudes. Nonverbal messages are more believable and
taken to be more honest than verbal messages. Nonverbal communication plays a major role in
all interpersonal relationships.
Interpreting nonverbal messages can be challenging. When compared to verbal
messages, nonverbal messages are often more ambiguous. Nonverbal messages are continuous
rather than having a clear and distinct beginning and ending. Nonverbal cues, unlike words, tend
to employ multiple channels. Nonverbal messages cannot be accurately understood without an
understanding of the larger culture.
Codifying nonverbal communication is challenging. Researchers have focused on many
elements of nonverbal signals, but eight codes are most common: body movement, posture, and
gestures; eye contact; facial expression; vocal cues; personal space; territory; touch; and
appearance.
When interpreting nonverbal communication, meaning can be derived from messages
clustered around three concepts: immediacy, arousal, and dominance. Immediacy messages
communicate a sense of attraction. Arousal messages communicate the level of excitement
being felt. Dominance cues give insight into how powerful a person feels at that time.
Interpreting nonverbal messages is skill-based and this ability can be improved.
Nonverbal interpretations are more likely to be accurate when we consider the cues in context.
Interpreters should attribute meaning to clusters of cues rather than just one isolated cue.
Consider past experiences when interpreting the present. Become adept at checking your
perceptions of nonverbal cues with others. Be aware that the nonverbal expression of emotion
can be contagious: you may "catch" the emotions of others. Be aware of the cues that may
communicate lying.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

CHAPTER OUTLINE
(All key terms appear in bold)

I. Why learn about nonverbal communication?

A. Nonverbal communication is behavior other than written or spoken language that
creates meaning for someone.
B. We rely on nonverbal communication cues to predict how others feel about and react to
us.
C. Nonverbal communication plays a major role in relationship development because it is
the main channel we use to communicate our feelings and attitudes.
D. Most of us have a limited awareness and understanding of nonverbal communication
behavior.
II. Ways we use nonverbal communication.
A. Nonverbal messages communicate our feelings and attitudes.
1. Mehrabian (1972) concluded that as little as 7 percent of the emotional meaning
of our messages is communicated explicitly through verbal channels.
2. When we interact with others, we base our feelings and emotional responses not
upon what our partner says, but rather upon what he or she does.
B. Nonverbal messages are more believable.
1. A contradiction between a person's verbal and nonverbal message makes us
wonder about his or her meaning.
2. Since it is difficult to manipulate an array of nonverbal cues, a skilled observer can
see when a person's true feelings leak out.
C. Nonverbal messages work with verbal messages to create meaning.
1. Nonverbal cues substitute for, repeat, contradict, or regulate verbal messages.
2. Nonverbal cues accent and complement verbal messages.
D. People respond and adapt to others through nonverbal messages.
1. Interaction adaptation theory suggests that a predictor of how you interact with
others is your tendency to adapt to what others are doing.
a. Nonverbal cues play a key role in how we adapt to others (Burgoon).
b. Sometimes we relate by mirroring the posture or behavior of others. This
is explained by interactional synchrony: the mirroring of each other's
nonverbal behavior by communication partners.
2. Nonverbal messages play a major role in interpersonal relationships.
a. Birdwhistle suggests that as much as 65 percent of the social or relational
meaning in messages is based on nonverbal communication.
b. People begin making judgments about strangers just a fraction of a second
after meeting them based on nonverbal information.
1). Within the first four minutes, you draw conclusions about others.
2). You may decide whether a date is going to be pleasant or dull
within the first 30 seconds of meeting your partner.
c. Nonverbal messages of support are important when providing comforting
messages to others during times of stress and anxiety.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

d. Nonverbal cues are important not only when we initiate relationships, but
also as we maintain and develop mature relationships with others.
e. Long-married couples spend less time verbalizing feelings and emotions:
they learn to interpret each other's subtle nonverbal cues.
II. The challenge of interpreting nonverbal messages.
A. Nonverbal messages are often ambiguous.
1. The meaning of nonverbal messages may be known only to the person displaying
them.
1. That person may not intend the behavior to have any meaning at all.
2. Some people have difficulty expressing their emotions nonverbally.
B. Nonverbal messages are continuous.
1. Words are discrete entities that have a beginning and an end.
1. Nonverbal cues occur in a continuous stream that have no set beginning and end,
so they are difficult to categorize and interpret.
C. Nonverbal cues are multichanneled.
1. Nonverbal messages come from a variety of sources simultaneously.
1. Although you can move among them very rapidly, you can only actually attend to
only one nonverbal cue at a time.
D. Nonverbal interpretation is culture-based.
1. Research suggests that there is some underlying cross-cultural basis for
expressing emotion.
2. Yet each culture may develop unique rules for displaying and interpreting these
nonverbal messages.
III. Nonverbal communication codes.
A. Body movement, posture and gestures.
1. Kinesics is the study of human movement and gesture.
2. One paradigm identifies four stages of "quasi-courtship behavior."
a. In stage one, courtship readiness, we may suck in our stomach, tense our
muscles, and stand up straight.
b. The second stage includes preening behaviors: we manipulate our
appearance by combing our hair, applying makeup, straightening our tie,
pulling up our socks, and double-checking our appearance in the mirror.
c. In stage three, we demonstrate positional cues, using our posture and body
orientation to be seen and noticed by others.
d. In the fourth stage, appeals to invitation, we use close proximity, exposed
skin, open body positions, and eye contact to signal our availability and
interest.
3. Another team of researchers focused on nonverbal behaviors that make us label a
person warm and friendly or cold and distant.
a. "Warm" people face their communication partners directly, smile more,
make more direct eye contact, fidget less, and generally make fewer
unnecessary hand movements.
b. "Cold" people make less eye contact, smile less, fidget more, and turn
away from their partners.
4. Posture and body orientations reveal important information.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

a. Open body posture (uncrossed arms and legs) communicates that we are
receptive and responsive listeners.
b. When we are trying to decrease our contact with someone, we are likely to
turn away from him or her.
5. Mehrabian (1972) found that nonverbal cues of open body and arm position, a
forward lean, and a more relaxed posture communicate liking.
B. The five categories of nonverbal communication.
1. Emblems are nonverbal cues that have a specific, generally understood meaning
in a given culture and may substitute for a word or phrase.
2. Illustrators are nonverbal behaviors that accompany a verbal message and either
contradict, accent, or complement it.
3. Affect displays are nonverbal behaviors that communicate emotion.
4. Regulators are nonverbal messages that help to control the interaction or flow of
communication between people.
5. Adaptors are nonverbal behaviors that satisfy a personal need and help a person
to adapt to the immediate situation.
C. Eye contact serves at least four functions in interpersonal interactions.
1. It serves a cognitive function because it gives you information about another
person's thought processes.
2. People use eye contact to monitor the behavior of others.
3. Eye contact is one of the most powerful regulatory cues used to signal when you
want to talk and when you don't.
4. The area around our eyes serves an expressive function.
5. Research has suggested there are times when you are more and less likely to have
eye contact with someone.
6. Research suggests that we spend the majority of our time looking at other facial
features rather than establishing and holding a direct gaze.
D. Facial expression.
1. To interpret our partner's facial expressions accurately, we need to put our otherorientation skills to work, focusing on what the other person may be thinking or
feeling.
2. According to one research team, your face is capable of producing over 250,000
different expressions.
3 All of our expressions can be grouped under six primary emotional categories:
surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, and sadness.
4. Interpretation is still difficult because, even though our faces provide a great deal
of information about emotions, we have learned how to control our facial
expressions.
5. In addition, our facial expressions seem to be contagious.
E. Vocal cues.
1. Your voice is a primary tool for communicating information about the nature of
relationships between yourself and others.
2. Some vocal expressions of emotion are easier to identify than others.
a. Expressions of joy and anger are obvious ones.
b. Shame and love are the most difficult to identify based on vocal cues
alone.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

c. We are also likely to confuse fear with nervousness, love with sadness, and
pride with satisfaction.
3. Our voices also provide information about our self-confidence and our knowledge
of the subject matter in our messages.
4. Vocal cues serve a regulatory function, signaling when we want to talk and when
we don't.
a. Backchannel cues are the nonverbal cues, typically vocal cues, that signal
your wish to begin or end a conversation.
b. These are particularly useful in telephone conversations when we have no
other nonverbal cues to signal when we want to get off the phone.
5. Sometimes it is not what we say, or even how we say it, that communicates our
feelings.
a. Silence may communicate volumes and serves many functions.
b. Baker's theory of silence suggests that the more at ease we are when we
share a silence with a close friend, the more comfortable we are with just
being together and enjoying each other's companionship.
F. Personal space.
1. Proxemics is the study of how close or far away from people and objects people
position themselves.
2. Hall (1966) identified four zones that people in Western cultures unconsciously
define for themselves.
a. Intimate space is the zone of personal space most often used for very
personal or intimate interactions, ranging from zero to one and one-half
feet from the individual.
b. Personal space is the zone of personal space most often used for
conversation, ranging from one and one-half to four feet from the
individual.
1). Most of our conversations with family and friends occur in this
zone. 2). If someone we don't know well invades this space on
purpose, we
may feel uncomfortable.
c. Social space is the zone of personal space most often used for group
interactions, ranging from four feet to twelve feet.
d. Public space is the zone of interaction most often used by public speakers
or anyone speaking to many people, ranging beyond twelve feet from the
individual.
3. The specific space that you and others choose depends upon several variables.
a. The more you like someone, the closer you will stand.
b. We allow high-status individuals to surround themselves with more space
than we do lower-status people.
c. Large people also usually have more space around them than smaller ones.
d. All of us tend to stand closer to others in a large room than we do in a
small room.
e. In groups, more dominant group members tend to select seats at the head
of a table, while more shy individuals often select a corner seat at a
rectangular table.

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G. Territory.
1. Territoriality is the study of how animals and humans use space and objects to
communicate occupancy or ownership of space.
2. We announce our ownership of space with territorial markers: things that signify
that the area has been claimed.
3. We also use markers to indicate where our space stops and someone else's starts.
H. Touch is another category of nonverbal codes.
1. Normally, we touch to express intimacy.
2. Countless studies have shown that intimate touching is vital to our personal
development and well-being.
3. The amount of touch we need, tolerate, receive, and initiate depends upon many
factors.
a. The amount and kind of touching you receive in your family is one big
influence.
b. Studies show that most of us are more likely to touch people when we are
feeling friendly, happy, or under other specific circumstances:
1). When we ask someone to do something for us.
2). When we share, rather than ask for, information.
3). When we try to persuade someone to do something.
4). When we are talking about intimate topics.
5). When we are in social settings that we choose rather than in
professional settings that are part of our job. 6). When we are thrilled and
excited to share good news. 7). When we listen to a troubled or worried friend. I.
Appearance.
1. American culture places a high value upon how much we weigh, the style of our
hair, and the clothes we wear.
2. These things are especially important in the early stages of relationship
development.
3. Attractive females have an easier time persuading others than do those who are
perceived as less attractive.
4. In general, Americans think attractive people are more credible, happier, more
popular, more sociable, and even more prosperous than less attractive people.
5. If you believe others think a person is attractive, you'll be more likely to evaluate
that person as attractive, too.
6. The shape and size of your body also affect how others perceive you.
a. Heavier and rounder individuals are often perceived to be older, more oldfashioned, less good-looking, more talkative, and more good-natured than
thin people are.
b. Thin people are perceived to be more ambitious, more suspicious of
others, more uptight and tense, more negative, and less talkative.
c. Muscular and athletically fit folks are seen as better looking, taller, and
more adventurous.
7. Our clothes also affect how others perceive us.
a. The clothes you wear are a way of communicating to others how you want
to be treated.

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IV. Interpreting nonverbal communication.

A. Mehrabian (1972) has found that we synthesize and interpret nonverbal cues along
three primary dimensions: immediacy, arousal, and dominance.
1. Immediacy cues are behaviors that communicate liking and engender feelings of
pleasure.
a. The principle of immediacy is simple: We move toward persons and
things we like and avoid or move away from those we dislike.
b. When someone expresses pleasant nonverbal messages, we reciprocate.
c. Immediacy is contagious.
2. To communicate that we like someone, we use these cues:
a. Close proximity and forward lean.
b. Direct and possibly side-by-side body orientation.
c. Eye contact and mutual eye contact.
d. Smiling.
e. Head nods and movement.
f. Open posture with arms oriented toward others.
g. Cultural- and context-appropriate touch,
h. Higher and upward pitch in our voice.
B. Arousal cues indicate responsiveness and interest.
1. Arousal is defined as feelings of interest and excitement communicated by such
nonverbal cues as vocal expressions, facial expressions, and gestures. The face,
voice, and movement are primary indicators of arousal.
2. Forward lean, a flash of the eyebrows, and a nod of the head are other cues that
implicitly communicate arousal.
C. Dominance cues communicate status, position, and importance.
1. Dominance is defined as power, status, and control communicated by such
nonverbal cues as relaxed posture, greater personal space, and protected personal
space.
a. A person of high status tends to have a relaxed body posture when
interacting with a person of lower status.
b. High-status individuals usually have more space around them, have bigger
offices, and have more "barriers" protecting them.
c. Other power cues that communicate feelings of dominance include our use
of furniture, clothing, and locations.
2. Argyle (1988) summarizes the nonverbal cues that communicate dominance
according to:
a. Use of space (height, facing a group, more space).
b. Eye contact (less with lower status, more when talking, more when
initially establishing dominance, more when starting to establish power).
c. Face (no smile, frown, mature adult features).
d. Touch (initiating touch).
e. Voice (loud, low pitch, greater pitch range, slow, more interruptions, more
talk, slight hesitation before speaking).
f. Gesture (pointing at the other or at his or her property).
g. Posture (standing, hands on hips, expanded chest, more relaxed).
V. Improving your ability to interpret nonverbal messages.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

A. Expectancy violation theory explains that we interpret the messages of others based on
how we expect others to behave (Burgoon).
1. Each of us enters into a relationship with certain preconceived expectations for
others' behavior.
2. We tend to adapt to the behavior of others, even when the behavior is not what we
expected.
B. Some people are better at interpreting nonverbal cues than others.
1. Consider nonverbal cues in context: context can change the meaning of nonverbal
cues.
2. Look for clusters of nonverbal cues.
a. Trying to draw conclusions from an isolated behavior or a single cue can
lead to misinterpretations.
b. Always consider nonverbal behaviors in conjunction with other nonverbal
cues, the environment, and the person's verbal message.
3. Consider past experiences when interpreting nonverbal cues.
a. Familiarity with another person increases our ability to interpret his or her
nonverbal behavior.
b. After knowing someone over a period of time, you begin to increase your
sensitivity to certain glances, silences, and vocal cues that might be
overlooked or misunderstood by others.
C. Check your perceptions with others.
1. You judge others by their behavior, not by their intent.
2. The only way to know what people intend is to ask them whether you have
interpreted their behavior correctly.
3. The key skill in doing this is called perception checking: asking someone
whether your interpretation of his or her nonverbal behavior is accurate.
a. First, observe the person's nonverbal cues, making a point to note such
variables as amount of eye contact, posture, use of gestures, facial
expression, and tone of voice.
b. Second, try to interpret what the individual is expressing through his or
her nonverbal behavior.
c. Finally, check your perception by asking him or her if it is accurate.
4. Overusing this skill would be irritating to most people, but it may be called for
when you are uncertain of how someone feels and it is important for you to know.
5. Addressing your question to a specific nonverbal cue will help you interpret your
partner's behavior in future interactions as well.
D. Be aware that nonverbal expression of emotion is contagious.
1. Emotional contagion theory suggests that emotional expression is contagious;
people can "catch" emotions just by observing each other's emotional
expressions.
2. Interpersonal interactions with others can affect your nonverbal expression of
emotions.
E. Look for cues that may communicate lying.
1. Look for nonverbal clues.
2. Listen to the content of what the person says.
3. Measure such physiological responses as heart rate, breathing, etc.

Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others (4e)

4. Ask other people for collaborating information, or do your own detective work.