Chapter 5 - Review

Chapter 5 - Nonverbal Messages

Chapter 5 Outline

I. Nonverbal communication is commonly used to describe all human communication events that transcend spoken or written words, has many characteristics and functions.

A. There are five characteristics of nonverbal communication.

1. Nonverbal communication may be intentional or unintentional, since often when people communicate nonverbally, they are unaware of it.

2. Nonverbal communication is primary, because it takes precedence over verbal communication.

3. Nonverbal communication is often ambiguous, since a nonverbal behavior may have different meanings depending on the user’s personality, family influences, and culture.

4. Nonverbal communication is continuous, because one is constantly communicating through nonverbal behaviors.

5. Nonverbal communication is multichanneled, since we use a variety of cues to make an interpretation.

B. Nonverbal communication serves five primary functions.

1. Nonverbal communication provides information by repeating, substituting for, emphasizing, or contradicting our verbal messages.

2. Nonverbal communication regulates interaction as conversations are managed through nonverbal cues.

3. Nonverbal communication expresses or hides emotion and affect, since one is able to show nonverbally how one feels about another person, or one may mask true feelings through nonverbal behaviors.

4. Nonverbal communication presents an image, because much of impression management occurs through the nonverbal channel.

5. Nonverbal communication expresses status, power, and control, since many nonverbal behaviors are signs of dominance and one can convey power and status through nonverbal behavior.

II. There are multiple categories of nonverbal communication.

A. Body language is nonverbal communication through body motions, also known as kinesics, the study of body language.

1. Eye contact is how and how much we look at the people with whom we are communicating.

2. Facial expression is the arrangement of facial muscles to communicate emotional states or reactions to messages; emoticons are typed or graphic symbols that convey emotional aspects of online messages.

3. Gesture is a movement of hands, arms, and fingers to describe or to emphasize.

a. Emblems are gestures that can substitute completely for words.

4. Posture is the position and movement of the whole body; body orientation refers to posture in relation to another person.

5. Touch, formally known as haptics, is putting part of the body in contact with something.

a. Spontaneous touch is touch that is automatic and subconscious.

b. Ritualized touch is touch that is scripted and not spontaneous.

c. Task-related touch is touch used to perform an unemotional function.

B. Paralanguage is communication through nonverbal sounds; it is comprised of five vocal characteristics, including pitch, volume, rate, quality, and intonation, which can complement or contradict meaning, while vocal interferences can disrupt messages.

1. Pitch is the highness or lowness of a person’s vocal tone.

2. Volume is the loudness or softness of a person’s vocal tone.

3. Rate is the speed at which a person speaks.

4. Quality is the sound of a person’s voice.

5. Intonation is the variety, melody, or inflection of a person’s voice.

6. Vocal interferences are extraneous words or sounds that interrupt fluent speech.

C. The third category of nonverbal communication is spatial usage, which is nonverbal communication through the use of the space and objects around us.

1. Personal space is the space around the place a person occupies at a given time;

2. Proxemics is the study of personal space.

3. Acoustic space is the area over which one’s voice or music can be heard.

4. Territory is the space over which we claim ownership.

5. Artifacts are the possessions we use to decorate our territory and communicate about our space.

D. Nonverbal communication includes self-presentation cues, which are presented to others and are based on physical appearance, use of time, and use of smells and scents.

1. Physical appearance includes gender, race, body type, and facial features, as well as clothing, grooming, and body decorations.

2. Use of time is how people view and structure their time.

3. Olfactory communication is nonverbal communication through smells and scents.

III. There are cultural and gender variations in nonverbal communication.

A. Use and meanings of body motions, eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, and touch vary depending on the culture and gender of the communicator.

B. Paralanguage varies by culture and gender.

C. Cultural and gender variations occur in spatial usage.

D. Self-presentation in terms of appearance and use of time varies with  culture and gender.

IV. Improving nonverbal communication skills can be achieved by following some suggestions.

A. When sending messages, be aware of the following guidelines.

1.  Be mindful of the nonverbal behavior you are displaying.

2.  Adapt nonverbal behaviors to your purpose.

3.  Adapt nonverbal cues to the situation.

4.  Align nonverbal and verbal cues.

5.  Eliminate nonverbal behaviors that distract from the verbal message.

B. When interpreting others’ nonverbal cues, be mindful of the following 

1.  Be mindful that most nonverbal cues are not emblems.

2.  Consider cultural, gender, and individual influences when interpreting nonverbal cues.

3.  Pay attention to all nonverbal communication cues and their relationship to verbal communication.

4.  Use perception checking.

Nonverbal communication is communication without words. You communicate nonverbally when you gesture, smile or frown, widen your eyes, move your chair closer to someone else's, wear jewelry, touch someone, raise your vocal volume, or even say nothing. The crucial aspect is that the message you send is in some way received by one or more other people. If you gesture while you are alone in your room and no one is there to see you, then, most theorists would argue, communication has not taken place.

The ability to use nonverbal communication effectively can yield two major benefits:

First, the greater your ability to send and receive nonverbal signals, the higher your popularity and psychosocial well-being are likely to be.-

Second, the greater your nonverbal skills, the more successful you're likely to be at influencing others. Skilled nonverbal communicators are highly persuasive.

Perhaps the best way to begin the study of nonverbal communication is to look at your own beliefs. Which of the following statements do you think are true?

1. Nonverbal communication conveys more meaning than verbal communication.

2. Liars avoid eye contact.

3. Studying nonverbal communication will enable you to detect lying.

4. Unlike verbal communication, nonverbal communication is universal throughout the world.

5. When verbal and nonverbal messages contradict each other, it's wise to believe the nonverbal.

Actually, all of these statements are popular myths about nonverbal communication.

(1) In some instances, nonverbal messages may communicate more meaning than verbal messages, but, in most cases, it depends on the situation. You won't get very far discussing science and mathematics nonverbally, for example.

(2) This is an impossible task; you may get ideas about what someone is thinking but you really can't be certain on the basis of nonverbal behaviors alone.

(3) Lie detection is a far more difficult process than any chapter or even series of courses could accomplish.

(4) Although some nonverbal behaviors may be universal in meaning, many signals communicate different meanings in different cultures.

(5) People can be deceptive verbally as well as nonverbally, it's best to look at the entire group of signals before making a judgment.

Principles of Nonverbal Communication

Let's begin our study of nonverbal communication by examining several principles which, as you'll see, also identify the different functions that nonverbal messages serve.

NONVERBAL MESSAGES INTERACT WITH VERBAL MESSAGES

Verbal and nonverbal messages interact with each other in six major ways: to accent, to complement, to contradict, to control, to repeat, and to substitute for each other.

Accent - Nonverbal communication is often used to accent or emphasize some part of the verbal message. You might, for example, raise your voice to underscore a particular word or phrase, bang your fist on the desk to stress your commitment, or look longingly into someone's eyes when saying "I love you:'

Complement- Nonverbal communication may be used to complement, to add nuances of meaning not communicated by your vernal message.

Thus, you might smile when telling a story (to suggest that you find it humorous) or frown and shake your head when recounting someone’s deceit (to suggest your disapproval).

Contradict- You may deliberately contradict your verbal messages with nonverbal movements; for example, by crossing your fingers or winking to indicate that you're lying.

Control - Nonverbal movements may be used to control, or to indicate your desire to control, the flow of verbal messages, as when you purse your lips, lean forward, or make hand movements to indicate that you want to speak. You might also put up your hand or vocalize your pauses (for example, with um) to indicate that you have not finished and aren't ready to relinquish the floor to the next speaker.

Repeat - You can repeat or restate the verbal message nonverbally, you can, for example, follow your verbal "Is that all right?" with raised eyebrows and a ing look, or you can motion with your head or hand to repeat your verbal "Let's go".

Substitute - You may also use nonverbal communication to substitute for verbal messages. You can, for example, signal "OK" with a hand gesture. You can nod your head to indicate yes or shake your head lo indicate no.

When you communicate electronically, of course, your message is transmitted by means of typed letters without facial expressions or gestures that normally accompany face-to-face communication and without the changes in rate and volume that are a part of normal telephone communication. To compensate for this lack of nonverbal behavior, the emoticon was created . Sometimes called a "smiley," the emoticon is a typed symbol that communicates through a keyboard the nuances of the message normally conveyed by nonverbal expression. The absence of the nonverbal channel through which you can clarify your message-for example, smiling or winking to communicate sarcasm or humor make such typed symbols extremely helpful. And of course you can post photos; book and music album covers, for example, to further communicate your emotional meaning.

NONVERBAL MESSAGES HELP MANAGE IMPRESSIONS

It is largely through the nonverbal communications of others that you form impressions of them. Based on a person's body size, skin color, and dress, as wen as on the way the person miles, maintains eye contact, and expresses himself or herself facially, you form impressions­ you judge who the person is and what the person is like. And, at the same time that you form impressions of others, you are also managing the impressions they form of you. As explained in the discussion of impression management in Chapter 2 (pp. 42-47), you use different strategies to achieve different impressions. And of course many of these strategies involve nonverbal messages. Here are some examples:  To be liked, you might smile, pat another on the back, and shake hands warmly. See Table 5.2 for some additional ways in which nonverbal communication may make you seem more attractive and more likeable.

DO	BUT DON’T
Gesture to show liveliness and animation in ways that are appropriate to the situation and the message.	Gesture for the sake of gesturing or gesture in ways that may prove offensive to members of other cultures.
Nod and lean forward to signal that you're listening and are interested.	Go on automatic pilot, nodding without any coordination with what is being said or lean so forward that you intrude on the other's space.
Smile and otherwise show your interest, attention, and positiveness facially.	Overdo it; inappropriate smiling is likely to be perceived negatively.
Make eye contact in moderation.	Stare, ogle, glare, or otherwise make the person feel that he or she is under scrutiny.
Touch in moderation when appropriate.	Touch excessively or too intimately. When in doubt, avoid touching.
Use vocal variation in rate, rhythm, pitch, and volume to communicate your enthusiasm and involvement in what you're saying.	Fall into the pattern in which, for example, your voice goes up and down, up and down, up and down without any relationship to what you're saying.
Use silence to listen at least the same amount of time as you speak. Show that you're listening with appropriate facial reactions, posture, and back-channeling cues, for example.	Listen motionlessly or in ways that suggest you're only listening half-heartedly.
Stand reasonably close to show connectedness.	Exceed the other person's comfort zone.
Present a pleasant smell and be careful to camouflage the onions, garlic, or smoke that you may be so used to you don't notice.	Overdo the cologne or perfume.
Dress appropriately to the situation.	Wear clothing that is uncomfortable or that calls attention to itself and hence away from your message.

·       To be believed, you might use focused eye contact, a firm stance, and open gestures.

·       To excuse failure, yon might look sad, cover your face with your hands, and shake your head.

·       To secure help by indicating helplessness, you might use open hand gestures, a puzzled look, and inept movements.

·       To hide faults, you might wear flattering clothing or makeup.

·       To be followed, you might dress the part of a leader or display your diploma or awards where others can see them.

·       To confirm self-image and to communicate it to others, you might dress in certain ways or decorate your apartment with things that reflect your personality.

NONVERBAL MESSAGES HELP FORM RELATIONSHIPS

Much of your relationship life is lived nonverbally. You communicate affection, support, and love, in part at least, nonverbally. At the same time, you also communicate displeasure, anger, and animosity through nonverbal signals. You also use nonverbal signals to communicate the nature of your relationship to another person, and you and that person communicate nonverbally with each other. These signals that communicate your relationship status are known as "tie signs": They indicate the ways in which your relationship is tied together. Tie signs are also used to confirm the level of the relationship; for example, you might hold hands to see if this is responded to positively. And of course tie signs are often used to let others know that the two of you are tied together. Tie signs vary in intimacy and may extend from the relatively informal handshake through more intimate forms, such as hand holding and arm linking, to very intimate contact, such as full mouth kissing.

NONVERBAL MESSAGES STRUCTURE CONVERSATION

When you're in conversation, you give and receive cues-signals that you're ready to speak, to listen, to comment on what the speaker just said. These cues regulate and structure the interaction. These turn-taking cues may be verbal (as when you say, "What do you think?" and thereby give the speaking turn over to the listener). Most often, however, they're nonverbal; a nod of the head in the direction of someone else, for example, signals that you're ready to give up your speaking turn and want this other person to say something. You also show that you're listening and that you want the conversation to continue (or that you're not listening and want the conversation to end) largely through nonverbal signals of posture and eye contact (or the lack thereof).

NONVERBAL MESSAGES CAN INFLUENCE AND DECEIVE

You can influence others not only through what you say but also through your nonverbal signals. A focused glance that says you're committed, gestures that further explain what you're saying; appropriate dress that says, "I'll easily fit in with this organization" -these are just a few examples of ways in which you can exert nonverbal influence. And with the ability to influence, of course, comes the ability to deceive-to mislead another person into thinking something is true when it's false or that something is false when it's true. One common example of nonverbal deception is using your eyes and facial expressions to communicate a liking for other people when you're really interested only in gaining their support in some endeavor. Not surprisingly, you also use nonverbal signals to detect deception in others. For example, you may well suspect a person of lying if he or she avoids eye contact, fidgets, and conveys inconsistent verbal and nonverbal messages. But be careful. Research shows that it is much more difficult to tell when someone is lying than you probably think it is. So, use caution in judging deception.

NONVERBAL MESSAGESARE CRUCIAL FOR EXPRESSING EMOTIONS

Although people often explain and reveal emotions verbally, nonverbal signals communicate a great part of their emotional experience. For example, you reveal your level of happiness or sadness or confusion largely through facial expressions. Of course, you also reveal your feelings by posture (for example. whether tense or relaxed), gestures, eye movements, and even the dilation of your pupils. Nonverbal messages often help people communicate unpleasant message that they might feel uncomfortable putting into words. For example, you might avoid eye contact and maintain large distances between yourself and someone with whom you didn't want to interact or with whom you wanted to decrease the intensity of your relationship. At the same time, you also use nonverbal messages to hide your emotions. You might, for example, smile even though you feel sad so as not to dampen the party spirit. Or you might laugh at someone's joke even though you think it silly.

The Channels of Nonverbal Communication

You communicate nonverbally through a wide range of channels: the body, the face, the eyes, space, artifacts, touch, paralanguage, silence, and time.

BODY COMMUNICATION

The body communicates with movements and gestures and just by its general appearance, an area of nonverbal communication referred to as kinesics. Body Gestures Nonverbal researchers identify five major types of kinesics: emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, and adaptors.

Emblems are body gestures that translate directly into words or phrases: for example, the

OK sign, the thumbs-up for "good job," and the V for "victory." You use these consciously and purposely to communicate the same meaning as the words. But emblems are culture specific, so he careful when using your culture's emblems in other cultures.

There is much variation in gestures and their meanings among different cultures. Consider a few common gestures that you might use without thinking hut that could get you into trouble if you were to use them in another culture:

• Folding your arms over your chest would be considered disrespectful in Fiji.

• Waving your hand would be insulting in Nigeria and Greece.

• Gesturing the "thumbs up" would be rude in Australia.

• Tapping your two index fingers together would be considered an invitation to sleep together in Egypt,

• Pointing with your index finger would be impolite in many Middle Eastern countries.

• Bowing to a lesser degree than your host would be considered a statement of your superiority in Japan.

• Inserting your thumb between your index and middle finger in a clenched fist would be viewed in certain African countries as a wish that evil befall someone.

• Resting your feet on a table or chair would be insulting in some Middle Eastern cultures.

Illustrators enhance (literally "illustrate") the verbal messages they accompany. For example, when referring to something to the left, you might gesture toward the left. Most often you illustrate with your hands, but you can also illustrate with head and general body movements. You might, for example, turn your head or your entire body toward the left. You might also use illustrators to communicate the shape or size of objects you're talking about. Recent research points to an interesting advantage of illustrators-namely, that they increase your ability to remember. In this research people who illustrated their verbal messages with gestures remembered 20 percent more than those who didn't gesture.

Affect displays are movements of the face (smiling or frowning, for example) hut also of the hands and general body (body tenseness or relaxed posture, for example) that communicate emotional meaning. You use affect displays to accompany and reinforce your verbal messages and also as substitutes for words. For example, you might smile while saying how happy you are to see your friend, or you might simply smile. (Affect displays, being primarily centered in the facial area, are covered in more detail in the next section.)

Regulators are behaviors that monitor, control, coordinate, or maintain the speech of another individual. When you nod your head, for example, you tell the speaker to keep on speaking; when you lean forward and open your mouth; you tell the speaker that you would like to say something.

Adaptors are gestures that satisfy some personal need, such as scratching to relieve an itch or moving your hair out of your eyes. Self-adaptors are self-touching movements (e.g., rubbing your nose). Alter-adaptors are movements directed at the person with whom you're speaking: for example, removing lint from a person's jacket or straightening his or her tie, or folding your arms in front of you to keep others at a comfortable distance. Object-adaptors are gestures focused on objects (e.g., doodling on or shredding a Styrofoam coffee cup.)

Body Appearance

Your general body appearance also communicates. Height, for example, has been shown to be significant in a wide variety of situations. Tall presidential candidates have a much better record of winning elections than do their shorter opponents. Tall people seem to be paid more and are favored by personnel interviewers over shorter job applicants. Taller people also have higher self-esteem and greater career success than do shorter people. Your body also reveals your race, through skin color and tone, and may even give clues as to your nationality. Your weight in proportion to your height, also will communicate messages to others, as will the length, color, and style of your hair. Your general attractiveness, which includes both visual appeal and pleasantness of personality, is also a part of body communication; Attractive people have the advantage in just about every activity you can name. They get better grades in school, are more valued as friends and lovers, and are preferred as coworkers. Not surprisingly, positive facial expressions contribute to the perception of attractiveness for both men and women.

FACIAL COMMUNICATION

Throughout your communication interactions, your face communicates many things, especially your emotions. In fact, facial movements alone seem to communicate the degree of pleasantness, agreement, and sympathy felt; the rest of the body doesn't provide any additional information in those realms. But for other aspects-for example, the intensity with which an emotion is felt-both facial and bodily cues enter in. These cues are so important in communicating your full meaning that graphic representations are now commonly used in electronic communication. On the Internet, emoticon buttons to help you encode your emotions graphically are now common. Some nonverbal research claims that facial movements may communicate at least the following eight emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, contempt, and interest. Try to communicate surprise using only facial movements. Do this in front of a mirror and try to describe in as much detail as possible the specific movements of the face that make up a look of surprise. If you signal surprise like most people, you probably use raised and curved eyebrows, horizontal forehead wrinkles, wide-open eyes, a dropped-open mouth, and lips parted with no tension.

Facial Management

As you grew up, you learned your culture's system of nonverbal communication. You also learned certain facial management techniques that enable you to express feelings while achieving certain desired effects-for example, to hide certain emotions and to emphasize others. Consider your own use of such facial management techniques.

As you do so, think about the types of situations in which you would use facial management techniques for each of the following purposes:

• To intensify-for example, to exaggerate your astonishment at a surprise party to make your friends feel better.

• To Deintensify-for example, to cover up your own joy about good news in the presence of a friend who didn't receive any such news.

• To neutralize-for example, to cover up your sadness so as not to depress others.

• To mask-for example, to express happiness in order to cover up your disappointment at the set of luggage you received, rather than the car you expected.

• To simulate-to express an emotion you don't feel.

Facial management techniques help you display emotions in socially acceptable ways.

For example, if someone gets bad news in which you secretly take pleasure, the social display rule dictates that you frown and otherwise nonverbally signal sorrow. If you place first in a race and your best friend barely finishes, the display rule requires that you minimize your expression of happiness-and certainly avoid any signs of gloating. If you violate these display rules, you'll appear insensitive. So, although facial management techniques may be deceptive, they're expected and even required by the rules for polite interaction.

Facial Feedback

The facial feedback hypothesis claims that your facial expressions influence physiological arousal. In one study, for example, participants held a pen in their teeth to simulate a sad expression and then rated a series of photographs. Results showed that mimicking sad expressions actually increased the degree of sadness the subjects reported feeling when viewing the photographs. Generally, research finds that facial expressions can produce or heighten feelings of sadness, fear, disgust, and anger. But this effect does not occur with all emotions; smiling, for example, doesn't seem to make us feel happier. Further, it has not been demonstrated that facial expressions can eliminate one feeling and replace it with another. So if you're feeling sad, smiling will not eliminate the sadness and replace it with gladness. A reasonable conclusion seems to be that your facial expressions can influence some feelings, but not all.

Culture and Facial Expression

The wide variations in facial communication that we observe in different cultures seem to reflect which reactions are publicly permissible, rather than a difference in the way emotions are facially expressed. For example, when Japanese and American students watched a film of a surgical operation, they were videotaped both while being interviewed about the film and alone while watching the film. When alone, the students showed very similar reactions. To the interview, however, the American students displayed facial expressions indicating displeasure, whereas the Japanese students did not show any great emotion. Similarly, cultural differences exist in decoding the meaning of a facial expression. In one study, for example, American and Japanese students judged the meaning of a smiling and a neutral facial expression. The Americans rated the smiling face as more attractive, more intelligent, and more sociable than the neutral face. The Japanese, however, rated the smiling face as more sociable but not as more attractive, and they rated the neutral face as more intelligent.

EYE COMMUNICATION

Research on communication via the eyes, (a study known technically as oculesics), shows that the duration, direction, and quality of the eye movements communicate different messages. For example, in every culture there are strict, though unstated, rules for the proper duration for eye contact. In our culture, the average length of gaze is 2.95 seconds. The average length of mutual gaze (two persons gazing at each other) is 1.18seconds. When eye contact falls short of this duration, you may think the person is uninterested, shy, or preoccupied. When the appropriate amount of time is exceeded, you may perceive the person as showing unusually high interest.

The direction of the eye glance also communicates. In much of the United States, you're expected to glance alternately at the other person's face, then away, then again at the face, and so on. The rule for the public speaker is to scan the entire audience, not focusing for too long on or ignoring anyone area of the audience. When you break these directional rules, you communicate different meanings-abnormally high or low interest, self-consciousness, nervousness over the interaction, and so on. The quality of eye behavior-how wide or how narrow your eyes get during interaction-also communicates meaning, especially interest level and emotions such as surprise, fear, and disgust.

Eye Avoidance

The eyes are "great intruders," observed-sociologist Erving Goffman. When you avoid eye contact or avert your glance, you help others to maintain their privacy. You may do this when you see a couple arguing in public: You turn your eyes away (though your eyes may be wide open) as if to say, "I don't mean to intrude; I respect your privacy." Goffman refers to this behavior as civil inattention. Eye avoidance can also signal lack of interest-in a person, a conversation, or some visual stimulus. At times you may hide your eyes to block off unpleasant stimuli (a particularly gory or violent scene in a movie, for example) or close your eyes to block out visual stimuli and thus heighten other senses. For example, you may listen to music with your eyes closed. Lovers often close their eyes while kissing, and many prefer to make love in a dark or dimly lit room.

Culture, Gender, and Eye Messages

Not surprisingly, eye messages vary with both culture and gender. Americans, for example, consider direct eye contact an expression of honesty and forthrightness, hut the Japanese often view this as a lack of respect A Japanese person will glance at the other person's face rarely, and then only for very short periods. Interpreting another's eye contact messages with your own cultural rules is a risky undertaking; eye movements that you may interpret as insulting may have been intended to show respect. Women make eye contact more and maintain it longer (both in speaking and in listening) than men. This holds true whether women are interacting with other women or with men. This difference in eye behavior may result from women's greater tendency to display their emotions. When women interact with other women, they display affiliative and supportive eye contact, whereas when men interact with other men, they avert their gaze. In some cases, the visual channel may be damaged and adjustments have to be made. The table below gives you an idea of how such adjustments between people with visual impairments and those without such impairments can make communication more effective.

Communication Tips

Between People with and People without Visual Impairments

People vary greatly in their visual abilities; some are totally blind, some are partially sighted, and some have unimpaired vision. Ninety percent of people who are "legally blind" have some vision. All people, however, have the same need for communication and information. Here are some tips for making communication better between those who have visual those without such difficulties.

If you’re the person without a visual impairment and are talking to someone with a visual impairment:
Generally	Specifically
Identify yourself.	Don't assume the visually impaired person will recognize your voice.
Face your listener; you'll be easier to hear.	Don't shout. Most people who are visually impaired are not hearing impaired. Speak at your normal volume.
Encode into speech all the meanings you wish to communicate.	Remember that your gestures, eye movements, and facial expressions cannot be seen by the visually impaired.
Use audible turn-taking cues.	When you pass the role of speaker to a person who is visually impaired, don't rely on nonverbal cues; instead, say something like, "Do you agree with that, Joe?"
Use normal vocabulary and discuss topics that you would discuss with sighted people.	Don't avoid terms like "see" or "look" or even "blind." Don't avoid discussing a television show or the way your new car looks; these are normal topics for all people.
If you’re the person with a visual impairment and are talking to someone without a visual impairment:
Help the sighted person meet your special communication needs.	If you want your surroundings described, ask. If you want the person to read the road signs, ask.
Be patient with the sighted person.	Many people are nervous talking with people who are visually impaired for fear of offending. Put them at ease in a way that also makes you more comfortable.
Demonstrate your comfort.	When appropriate, let the other person know that you're comfortable with the interaction, verbally or nonverbally.

SPATIALCOMMUNICATION

Space is an especially important factor in nonverbal communication, although we seldom think about it. Edward T. Hall, who pioneered the study of spatial communication, called this study proxemics. We can sample this broad area by looking at proxemic distances and territoriality.

Proxemic Distances

Hall distinguishes four types of proxemic distances that define types of relationships between people: (1) intimate distance, (2) personal distance, (3) social distance, and (4) public distance. Each distance communicates specific kinds of messages.

At an intimate distance, ranging from touching to 18 inches apart, the presence of the other individual is unmistakable. Each person experiences the sound, smell, and feel of the other's breath. You use intimate distance for lovemaking and wrestling, for comforting and protecting. This distance is so short that most people do not consider it proper in public. Personal distance constitutes the protective "bubble" that defines your personal space, which measures from 18 inches to 4 feet. This imaginary bubble keeps you protected and untouched by others. You can still hold or grasp another person at this distance-but only by extending your arms-allowing you to take certain individuals such as loved ones into your protective bubble. At the outer limit of personal distance, you can touch another person only if both of you extend your arms. At a social distance, ranging from 4 to 12 feet, you lose the visual detail you have at personal distance. You conduct impersonal business and interact at a social gathering at this social distance. The more distance you maintain in your interactions, the more formal they appear. Many people in executive and management positions place their desks so that they are assured of at least this distance from employees. Public distance, measuring from 12 to 25 feet or more, protects you. At this distance you could take defensive action if threatened. On a public bus or train, for example, you might keep at least this distance from a menacing or intoxicated fellow passenger. Although you lose fine details of the face and eyes at this distance, you are still close enough to see what is happening.

Territoriality

Another type of communication having to do with space is territoriality, a possessive reaction to an area or to particular objects. You interact basically in three types of territory:

Primary territories: Areas that you might call your own; these areas are your exclusive preserve. Primary territories might include your room, your desk, or your office.

Secondary territories: Areas that don't belong to you but that you have occupied and with which you're associated. They might include your usual table in the cafeteria, your regular seat in the classroom, or your neighborhood turf.

Public territories: Areas that are open to all people; they may be owned by some person or organization, hut they are used by everyone. They are places such as movie theaters, restaurants, and shopping malls.

When you operate in your own primary territory, you have an advantage, often called the home field advantage. In their own home or office, people take on a kind of leadership role: They initiate conversations, fill in silences, assume relaxed and comfortable postures, and maintain their positions with greater conviction. Because the territorial owner is dominant, you stand a better chance of getting your raise approved, your point accepted, or a contract resolved in your favor if you're in your own territory (e.g., your office or your home) rather than in someone else's (e.g., your supervisor's office). Like many animals, humans mark both their primary and secondary territories to signal ownership. Humans use three types of markers: central, boundary, and earmarkers. Central markers are items you place in a territory to reserve it for you-for example, a drink at the bar, books on your desk, or a sweater over a library chair. Some people, perhaps because they can't own territories, might use markers to indicate a kind of pseudo-ownership or to appropriate someone else's turf or a public territory for their own use. Examples include graffiti and the markings of gang boundaries. Boundary markers serve to divide your territory from that of others. In the supermarket checkout line, the bar placed between your groceries and those of the person behind you is a boundary marker, as are fences, armrests that separate your seat from those on both sides and the contours of the molded plastic seats on a bus. Earmarkers- a term taken from the practice of branding animals on their ears-are identifying marks that indicate your possession of a territory or object. Trademarks, nameplates, and initials on a shirt or attaché case are all examples of earmarkers. Markers are also important in giving you a feeling of belonging. For example, one study found that students who marked their college dorm rooms by displaying personal items stayed in school longer than did those who didn't personalize their spaces.

ARTIFACTUAL COMMUNICATION

Artifactual messages are messages conveyed through objects or arrangements made by human hands. The colors you prefer, the clothing or jewelry you wear, the way you decorate your space, and even bodily scents communicate a wide variety of meanings.

Color Communication

There is some evidence that the colors with which people surround themselves affect them physiologically. For example, respiration rates increase in the presence of red light and decrease in the presence of blue light. Similarly, eye blinks increase in frequency when eyes are exposed to red light and decrease when exposed to blue. These findings seem consistent with our intuitive feelings that blue is more soothing and red more provocative. After the administration at one school changed the classroom walls from orange and white to blue, the students' blood pressure levels decreased and their academic performance improved. Colors influence our perceptions and behaviors. People's acceptance of a product, for example, is strongly influenced by its packaging. In one experiment consumers in the United States described the very same coffee taken from a yellow can as weak, from a dark brown can as too strong, from a red can as rich, and from a blue can as mild. Even our acceptance of a person may depend on the colors that person wears. Consider, for example, the comments of one color expert: "If you have to pick the wardrobe for your defense lawyer heading into court and choose anything but blue, you deserve to lose the case ....”Black is so powerful that it can work against the lawyer with the jury. Brown lacks sufficient authority. Green will probably elicit a negative response; it's likely to be seen as too different from the expected and acceptable norm for lawyers. Colors vary greatly in their meanings from one culture to another. To illustrate this cultural variation, here are some of the many meanings that popular colors communicate in a variety of different cultures. As you read this section, you may want to consider your own meanings for these colors and where your meanings came from.

Red –- In China red signifies prosperity and rebirth and is used for festive and joyous occasions; in France and the United Kingdom it indicates masculinity; in many African countries, blasphemy or death; and in Japan, anger and danger. Red ink, especially among Korean Buddhists, is used only to write a person's name at the time of death or on the anniversary of the person's death; this can create problems when U.S. teachers use red ink to mark homework.

Green – In the United States green signifies capitalism, go ahead, and envy; in Ireland, patriotism; among some Native American cultures, femininity; to the Egyptians, fertility and strength; and to the Japanese, youth and energy.

Black – In Thailand black signifies old age; in parts of .Malaysia, courage; and in much of Europe, death.

White – In Thailand white signifies purity; in many Muslim and Hindu cultures, purity and peace; and in Japan and other Asian countries, death and mourning.

Blue – In Iran blue signifies something negative; in Ghana, joy; among the Cherokee it signifies defeat; for the Egyptian, virtue and truth; and for the Greek, national pride.

Yellow – In China yellow signifies wealth and authority; in the United States, caution and cowardice; in Egypt, happiness and prosperity; and in many countries throughout the world, femininity.

Purple – In Latin America purple signifies death; in Europe, royalty; in Egypt, virtue and faith; in Japan, grace and nobility; in China, barbarism; and in the United States, nobility and bravery.

Clothing and Body Adornment

People make inferences about who you are partly on the basis of how you dress. Whether accurate or not, these inferences will affect what people think of you and how they react to you, Your social class, your seriousness, your attitudes, your concern for convention, your sense of style, and perhaps even your creativity will all be judged-in part at least-by the way you dress.

In the business world, what you wear may communicate your position within the hierarchy and your willingness and desire to conform to the clothing norms of the organization. It also may communicate your level of professionalism, which seems to be the reason some organizations favor dress codes. Your jewelry also communicates messages about you. Wedding and engagement rings are obvious examples. If you wear a Rolex watch or large precious stones, others are likely to infer that you are rich. Men who wear earrings will be judged differently from men who do not. The way you wear your hair says something about who you are-from a concern about being up to date to a desire to shock to, perhaps, a lack of interest in appearances. Men, with long hair, to take only one example, will generally be judged as less conservative than those with shorter hair. And in a study of male baldness, participants rated a man with a full head of hair as younger and more dominant, masculine, and dynamic than the same man without hair. Body piercings and tattoos communicate too. Although people wearing, for example, nose rings or belly button jewelry, may wish to communicate positive meanings, those interpreting the messages of body piercings seem to infer that wearers are communicating an unwillingness to conform to social norms and a willingness to take greater risks than those without such piercings. In a study of employers' perceptions, employers rated and ranked job applicants with eyebrow piercings significantly lower than those without such piercings. Nose-pierced job candidates received lower scores on measures of credibility, such as ratings of character and trustworthiness, as well as on sociability and reliability. Tattoos-whether temporary or permanent-likewise communicate a variety of messages, often the name of a loved one or some symbol of allegiance or affiliation. Tattoos also communicate to the wearers them­selves, for example, tattooed students see themselves (and perhaps others do as well) as more adventurous, creative, individualistic, and risk prone than those without tattoos. Tattoos and piercings on health care professionals have been found to communicate such undesirable traits as impulsiveness, unpredictability, and a tendency toward being reckless or violent.

Space Decoration

The decoration of your workplace tells a lot about you. The office with the mahogany desk and bookcase and oriental rugs communicates importance and status within an organization, just as a metal desk and bare floor indicate an entry-level employee much farther down in the company hierarchy. Similarly, people will make inferences about you based on the way you decorate your home. The expensiveness of the furnishings may communicate your status and wealth; their coordination, your sense of style. The magazines un your coffee table may reflect your interests, and the arrangement of chairs around a television set may reveal how important watching television is to you. The contents of bookcases lining the walls reveal the importance of reading in your life. In fact, there is probably little in your home that does not send messages from which others will make inferences about yon. At the same time, the lack of certain items will communicate something about you. Consider what messages you would gel from a home where no television, phone, or books could be seen. People also will make judgments about your personality on the basis of room decorations, for example, your openness to new experiences (distinctive decorating usually communicates openness, as would travel souvenirs), conscientiousness, emotional stability, degree of extroversion, and agreeableness.

Smell Communication

Smell, or olfactory communication, is extremely important in a wide variety of situations and is now big business, There is some evidence (though it is clearly not very conclusive) that the smell of lemon contributes to a perception of health; the smells of lavender and eucalyptus seem to increase alertness; and the smell of rose oil seems to reduce blood pressure. The smell of chocolate seems to reduce theta brain waves and thus produces a sense of relaxation and a reduced level of attention. Findings such as these have contributed to the growth of aromatherapy and to a new profession of aromatherapists. Because humans possess so many scent glands, it has been argued that it only remains for us to discover how we use scent to communicate a wide variety of messages. Two particularly important messages that scent communicates are those of attraction and identification.

Attraction Messages

People use perfumes, colognes, aftershave lotions, powders, and the like in an effort to enhance attractiveness. You also use scents to make yourself feel better. When you smell pleasant, you feel better about yourself; when you smell unpleasant, you feel less good about yourself-and probably shower and perhaps put on some cologne.

Identification Messages

Smell is often used to create an image or an identity for a product. Advertisers and manufacturers spend millions of dollars each year creating scents for cleaning products and toothpastes, for example, which have nothing to do with products' cleaning power; instead, they function solely to create an image for the products. There is also evidence that we can identify specific significant others by smell. For example, young children were able to identify the T-shirts of their brothers and sisters solely by smell.

TOUCH COMMUNICATION

Touch communication, or tactile communication, is perhaps the most primitive form of nonverbal communication. Touch develops before the other senses; a child is stimulated by touch even in the womb. Soon after birth, the child is fondled, caressed, patted, and stroked. In turn, the child explores its world through touch and quickly learns to communicate a variety of meanings through touch. Touching varies greatly from one culture to another; for example, African Americans touch each other more than European Americans; and touching declines from kindergarten to the sixth grade for European Americans but not for African American children. Japanese people touch each other much less than Anglo-Saxons, who in turn touch much less than southern Europeans. Not surprisingly, touch also varies 'with your relationship stage. In the early stages of acquaintance, you touch little; in intermediate stages of relationship development (i.e., involvement and intimacy), you touch a great deal; and at stable or deteriorating stages of a relationship, you again touch little.

The Meanings of Touch

Researchers in the field of haptics, or the study of touch communication, have identified the major meanings of touch. Here are five of the most important:

·       Touch may communicate positive emotions, such as support, appreciation, inclusion, sexual interest or intent, and affection.

·       Touch often communicates playfulness, either affectionately or aggressively

·       Touch may also control or direct the behaviors, attitudes, or feelings of another person. To get attention, for example, you may touch a person as if to say "Look at me" or "Look over here:'

·       Ritual touching centers on greetings and departures, as in shaking hands to say hello or goodbye, or hugging, kissing, or putting your arm around another's shoulder when greeting or saying farewell.

·       Task-related touching occurs while you are performing some function-for example, removing a speck of dust from another person's face or helping someone out of a car.

As you can imagine, touching may also get you into trouble. For example, touching that is too positive (or too intimate) too early in a relationship may send the wrong signals. Similarly playing that is too rough or holding someone's arm to control their movements may be resented. Using ritualistic touching incorrectly or in ways that may he culturally insensitive may likewise get you into difficulty.

Touch Avoidance

Much as we have a tendency to touch and be touched, we also have a tendency to avoid touch from certain people or in certain circumstances. Researchers in nonverbal communication have found some interesting relationships between touch avoidance and other significant communication variables. Touch avoidance is positively related to communication apprehension: Those who fear oral communication also score high on touch avoidance. Touch avoidance is also high in those who self-disclose little. Both touch and self-disclosure are intimate forms of communication; people who are reluctant to get close to another person by self-disclosing also seem reluctant to get close by touching. Touch avoidance is also affected by age and gender. Older people have higher touch-avoidance scores for opposite-sex persons than do younger people. Males score higher on same-sex touch avoidance than do females, which matches our stereotypes. That is, men avoid touching other men, but women may and do touch other women. On the other hand, women have higher touch-avoidance scores for opposite sex touching than do men.

Touch and Culture

The functions and examples of touching discussed earlier were based on studies in North America; in other cultures these functions are not served in the same way. In some cultures, for example, some task-related touching is viewed negatively and is to be avoided. Among Koreans, it is considered disrespectful for a store owner to touch a customer in, say, handing back change; doing so is considered too intimate a gesture. Members of other cultures who are used to such touching may consider the Koreans' behavior cold and aloof. Muslim children in many countries are socialized to refrain from touching members of the opposite sex. a practice that can easily be interpreted as unfriendly by American children, who are used to touching one another. Students from the United States reported being touched twice as much as did the Japanese students. In Japan there is a strong taboo against strangers' touching, and the Japanese are therefore especially careful to maintain-sufficient distance. Some cultures, such as those of southern Europe and the Middle East, are contact cultures. Others, such as those of northern Europe and Japan, are noncontact cultures. Members of contact cultures maintain close distances, touch each other in conversation, face each other more directly, and maintain longer and more focused eye contact. Members of noncontact cultures maintain greater distance in their interactions, touch each other rarely if at all, avoid facing each other directly, and maintain much less direct eye contact. As a result, northern Europeans and Japanese may be perceived as cold, distant, and uninvolved by southern Europeans-who may in turn be perceived as pushy, aggressive, and inappropriately intimate.

PARALANGUAGE AND SILENCE

Paralanguage is the vocal but nonverbal dimension of speech. It has to do with how you say something rather than what you say. Silence, on the other hand, is the absence of sound but not of communication.

Paralanguage

An old exercise that teachers used to increase students' ability to express different emotions, feelings, and attitudes was to have the students repeat a sentence while accenting or stressing different words each time. Placing the stress on different words easily communicates significant differences in meaning. Consider the following variations of the sentence "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?"

1. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

2. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

3. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

4. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

5. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

Each sentence communicates something different-in fact; each asks a different, even though the words are the same. All that varies among the sentences is which words are stressed, one aspect of paralanguage. In addition to stress, paralanguage includes such vocal characteristics as rate, volume, and rhythm. It also includes the vocalizations you make when crying, whispering, moaning, belching, yawning, and yelling. A variation in any of these vocal features communicates. When you speak quickly, for example, you communicate something different from when you speak slowly. Even though the words are the same, if the speed (or volume, rhythm, or pitch) differs, the meanings people receive also differ.

Judgments about People

Many people make judgments about people's personalities on the basis of their paralinguistic cues. For example, they might conclude that your colleague who speaks softly when presenting ideas at a meeting isn't sure of the ideas' usefulness and believes that no one really wants to listen to them. Or they might assume that people who speak loudly have overinflated egos, or those who speak in a monotone are uninterested in what they are saying and perhaps in life in general. All such judgments are based on little evidence, yet they persist.in much popular talk. Research has found that people can accurately judge the socioeconomic status (whether high, middle, or low) of speakers from 60-second voice sample. Participants also rated people whom they judged to be of high status as more credible than speakers judged to be of middle and low status. Listeners also can accurately judge the-emotional states of speakers from vocal expression alone. In these studies, speakers recite the alphabet or numbers while expressing emotions. Some emotions are easier to identify than others; it is easy to distinguish between hate and sympathy but more difficult to distinguish between fear and anxiety.

Judgments about Communication Effectiveness

Speech rate is an important component of paralanguage. In one-way communication (when one person is doing all or most of the speaking and the other person is doing all or most of the listening), those who talk fast (about 50 percent faster than normal) are more persuasive. That is, people agree more with a fast speaker than with a slow speaker and find the fast speaker more intelligent and objective. Although, generally, research finds that a faster-than-normal speech rate lowers listener comprehension, a rapid rate may still have the advantage in communicating information. For example, when speaking rate increases by 50 percent, comprehension level drops by only 5 percent. When the rate doubles, the comprehension level drops only 10 percent. If, however, the speeds are more than twice that of normal speech, comprehension level falls dramatically. Exercise caution in applying this research to all forms of communication. While the speaker is speaking, the listener is generating, or framing, a reply. If the speaker talks too rapidly, the listener may not have enough time to compose a reply and may become resentful. Furthermore, the increased rate may seem so unnatural that the listener may focus on the speed rather than on the message being communicated.

Paralanguage and Culture

Cultural differences need to be taken into consideration also in evaluating the results of studies on speech rate. In one study, for example, Korean male speakers who spoke rapidly were given unfavorable credibility ratings, in contrast to the positive ratings received by Americans who spoke rapidly. Researchers have suggested that in individualistic societies a rapid-rate speaker is seen as more competent than a slow-rate speaker, but in collectivist cultures a speaker who uses a slower rate is judged more competent.

Silence

Just as words and gestures communicate meaning, so does silence. Here we look at some functions of silence and at a theory of silence that has important implications for society as a whole.

Functions of Silence

Silence allows the speaker and the listener time to think, time to formulate and organize the meaning of the message. 'For example, a lawyer may have many sophisticated points to make during dosing arguments to the jury. A skilled lawyer will use silence, not only to give herself or himself time to present these issues in an organized way, but also to give the jury time to digest the information presented. Silence may also signal the importance or solemnity of the message. Before and after messages of intense conflict or those confessing undying love, there is often silence. Similarly, there would be silence during a prayer or flag-raising service. Similarly, you might use silence to communicate your interest and respect for what someone is saying. Some people use silence as a weapon to hurt others. We often speak of giving someone "the silent treatment. After a conflict, for example, one or both individuals may remain silent as a kind of punishment. Silence used to hurt others may also take the form of refusal to acknowledge the presence of another person, as in disconfirmation (see Chapter 4); in this case, silence is a dramatic demonstration of the total indifference one person feels toward the other. People sometimes use silence because of personal anxiety or shyness, or in response to threats. You may feel anxious or shy among new people and prefer to remain silent. By remaining silent you preclude the chance of rejection. Only when you break your silence and attempt to communicate with another person do you risk rejection. Like the eyes, face, or hands, silence can also communicates emotional responses. Sometimes, silence communicates a determination to be uncooperative or defiant. By refusing to engage in verbal communication, you defy the authority or the legitimacy of the other person's position. Silence often communicates annoyance; in this case, it is usually accompanied by a pouting expression, arms crossed in front of the chest, and flared nostrils. Silence also may express affection or love, especially when coupled with longing gazes into another's eyes. Of course, you also may use silence when you simply have nothing to say, when nothing occurs to you or you do not want to say anything.

Not all cultures view silence in the same way. In the United States, for example, silence is often interpreted negatively. At a business meeting or even in informal social groups, the silent member may be seen as not listening or as having nothing interesting to add, not understanding the issues, being insensitive, or being too self-absorbed to focus on the messages of others. Other cultures, however, view silence more positively. In many situations in Japan, for example, silence is a response that is considered more appropriate than speech. The traditional Apache, to take another example, regard silence very differently than do European Americans. Among the Apache, mutual friends do not feel the need to introduce strangers who may be working in the same area or on the same project. The strangers may remain silent for several days. This period enables them to observe and evaluate each other. Once this assessment is made, the individuals talk. When courting, especially during the initial stages, the Apache remain silent for hours; if they do talk, they generally talk very little. Only after a couple has been dating for several months will they have lengthy conversations. These periods of silence are often erroneously attributed to shyness or self-consciousness. But the use of silence is explicitly taught to Apache women, who are especially discouraged from engaging in long discussions with their dates. Silence during courtship is a sign of modesty to many Apache.

The Spiral of Silence

The "spiral of silence" theory offers a somewhat different perspective on silence. This theory, originally developed to explain the media's influ­ence on opinion, argues that you're more likely to voice agreement than disagreement. The theory claims that when a controversial issue arises, you estimate the opinions of others and figure out which views arc popular and which are not. You also estimate the rewards and the punishments you'd probably get from expressing popular or unpopular positions. You then use these estimates to determine which opinions you'll express and which you won't. Generally, you're more likely to voice your opinions when you agree with the majority than when you disagree. You may do this to avoid being isolated from the majority or for fear of being proved wrong or being disliked. Or you may simply assume that the majority, because they're a majority, must be right. As people with minority views remain silent, the majority position gets stronger (because those who agree with it are the only ones speaking); so, as the majority position becomes stronger and the minority position becomes weaker, the silence becomes an ever-widening spiral. The Internet (blogs and social network sites. especially) may in some ways add as a counteragent to the spiral of silence, because it provides so many opportunities to express minority viewpoints (anonymously if you wish) and to quickly find like-minded others.

TIME COMMUNICATION

The study of temporal communication, known technically as chronemics, concerns the use of time-how you organize it, react to it, and communicate messages through it. Time is important in both face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. The time you take to poke someone back on Facebook, or the time you take to respond to an email request for a favor, or the delay in returning a phone call will all communicate varied messages. Often, as you have probably already discovered the meanings that the sender intends to communicate are not the same as the meanings the receiver constructs.

Time Orientation

An especially important aspect of temporal communication is psychological time: the relative importance people place on the past, present, or future. With a past orientation, you have a particular reverence for the past. You relive old times and regard the old methods as the best. You see events as circular and recurring and find that the wisdom of yesterday is applicable also to today and tomorrow. With a present orientation, you live in the present-for now-without planning for tomorrow. With a future orientation, you look toward to and live for the future; we save today, work hard in college, and deny yourself luxuries because-you are preparing for the future. Consider some of the findings on these time orientations. Future income is positively related to future orientation; the more future oriented you are, the greater your income is likely to be. Present orientation is strongest among lowest-income males and also among those with high emotional distress and hopelessness. The time orientation you develop depends largely on your socioeconomic class and your personal experiences. For example, parents in unskilled and semiskilled occupations are likely to teach their children a present-oriented fatalism and a belief that enjoying yourself is more important than planning for the future. Parents who are teachers or managers, for example, teach their children the importance of planning and preparing for the future along with strategies for success. Different time perspectives also account for much intercultural misunderstanding, because different cultures often teach their members drastically different time orientations. For example, members of some Latin cultures would rather be late for an appointment than end a conversation abruptly. The Latin person sees the lateness as politeness toward the person with whom he or she is conversing, but people of another culture may see it as impolite to the person with whom he or she had the appointment.

Time and Culture

Culture influences time communication in a variety of ways. Here we look at three of them: (1) time orientation, (2) monochronism and polychronism, and (3) social clocks.

Time Orientation

Not surprisingly, time orientation is heavily influenced by culture. Some cultures-individualistic cultures in particular-seem to emphasize a future orientation; members work hard today for a better future and without much regard for the past, for example. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, have greater respect for the past; the past is often looked to for guidance for the present. According to some intercultural researchers, many Asian cultures (e.g., Japanese and Chinese) place great value on the past; Latinos and Native Americans place more emphasis on the present; and European Americans emphasize the future. Attitudes toward the importance of time vary from one culture to another, for example, one study measured the accuracy of clocks in six cultures- Japan, Indonesia, Italy, England, Taiwan, and the United States. Japan had the most accurate and Indonesia the least accurate clocks. The researchers also measured the speed at which people in these six cultures walked; results showed that the Japanese walked the fastest, the Indonesians the slowest.

Monochronism and Polychronism

Another important cultural distinction exists between monochromic time orientation and polychrome time orientation. Monochronic peoples or cultures, such as those of the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland, schedule one thing at a time. These cultures compartmentalize time and set sequential times for different activities, Polychrome peoples or cultures, such as those of Latin America, the Mediterranean, and the Arab world, on the other hand, schedule multiple things at the same time. Eating, conducting business with several different people, and taking care of family matters may all go on at once. No culture is entirely monochrome or polychrome; rather, these are general or preponderant tendencies. Some cultures combine both time orientations; in Japan and in parts of American culture, for example, both orientations can be found.

Social Clocks

Your culture maintains a social dock-a lime schedule for the right time to do various important things, such as starting to date, finishing college, buying your own home, or having a child. The social clock tells you whether you're keeping pace with your peers, are ahead of them, or are falling behind. On the basis of this social clock, which you learned as you grew up; you evaluate your own social and professional development. If you're keeping pace with the rest of your peers (e.g., you started dating at the "appropriate" age or you're finishing college at the "appropriate" age), you'll feel well adjusted, competent, and a part of the group. If you're late, you'll probably experience feelings of dissatisfaction. Although today the social clock is becoming more flexible and more tolerant of deviations from the acceptable time table, it still exerts pressure on each of us to keep pace with our peers.

Some Nonverbal Communication Skills

Throughout the discussion of nonverbal communication, you've probably deduced a number of suggestions for improving your own nonverbal communication. Here, we bring together some suggestions for both receiving and sending nonverbal messages. Perhaps the most general skill that applies to both receiving and sending is to become mindful of nonverbal messages-those of others as well as your own. Observe those whose nonverbal behavior yon find particularly effective and those you find ineffective and try to identify exactly what makes one effective and one ineffective. Consider this chapter a brief introduction to a lifelong study. In addition to mindfulness, general suggestions can be offered under two headings: decoding (or interpreting) nonverbal messages and encoding (or sending) nonverbal messages.

DECODING SKILLS

·       When you make judgments or draw conclusions about another person on the basis of her or his nonverbal messages, consider these suggestions:

·       Be tentative. Resist the temptation to draw conclusions from nonverbal behaviors. Instead, develop hypotheses (educated guesses) about what is going on, and test the validity of your hypotheses on the basis of other evidence.

·       When making judgments, mindfully seek alternative judgments. Your first judgment may be in error, and one good way to test it is to consider alternative judgments. When your romantic partner creates a greater than normal distance in relation to you, it may signal an annoyance with you; but it can also signal that your partner needs some space to think something out.

·       Notice that messages come from many different channels and that reasonably accurate judgments can only be made when multiple channels are taken into consideration. Although textbooks (like this one) must present the areas of nonverbal communication separately, the various elements all work together in actual communication situations.

·       Consider the possibility that you are incorrect, even after you've explored the different channels. This is especially true when you make a judgment that another person is lying, based on, say, eye avoidance or long pauses. These nonverbal signals may mean many things (as well as the possibility of lying).

·       Interpret your judgments and conclusions against a cultural context. For example, think about whether you are interpreting the nonverbal behavior of someone through its meaning only in your own culture. So, if you interpret someone's "overly close" talking distance as intrusive or pushy because that's your culture's interpretation, you may miss the possibility that this distance is simply standard in the other person's culture: or it's a way of signaling closeness and friendliness.

·       Consider the multitude of factors that can influence the way a person behaves nonverbally; for example, a person's physical condition, personality, or particular situation may all influence a person's nonverbal communication. An upset stomach may be more influential in unpleasant expressions than any communication factor. A low grade in an exam may make your normally pleasant roommate scowl and grumble. Without knowing these factors, it's difficult to make an accurate judgment.

ENCODING SKILLS

When using nonverbal messages to express your meanings, consider these suggestions:

·       Think about your choices for your nonverbal communication just as you do for your verbal messages. Identify and think mindfully about the choices you have available for communicating what you want to communicate.

·       Keep your nonverbal messages consistent with your verbal messages: avoid sending verbal messages that say one thing and nonverbal messages that say something else-at least not when you want to be believed.

·       Monitor your own nonverbal messages with the same care that you monitor your verbal messages. If it's not appropriate to say "this meal is terrible” then it's not appropriate to have a negative expression when you're asked if you want seconds.

·       Avoid extremes and monotony. Too little nonverbal communication or too much are likely to be responded to negatively, Similarly, always giving the same nonverbal message-say, continually smiling and nodding your head when listening to a friend's long story-is likely to be seen as insincere.

·       Take the situation into consideration. Effective nonverbal communication is situational; to be effective adapt your nonverbal messages to the specific situation. Nonverbal behavior appropriate to one situation may be totally inappropriate in another.

·       Maintain eye contact with the speaker-whether at a meeting, in the hallway, or on an elevator; it communicates politeness and says that you are giving the person the consideration of your full attention. Eye contact that is too focused and too prolonged is likely to be seen as invasive and impolite.

·       Avoid using certain adaptors in public-for example, combing your hair, picking your teeth, or putting your pinky in your ear; these will be seen as impolite. And, not surprisingly, the greater the formality of the situation, the greater the perception of impoliteness is likely to be. So, for example, combing your hair while sitting with two or three friends would probably not be considered impolite (or perhaps only mildly so); but in a classroom or at a company meeting, it would be considered inappropriate.

·       Avoid strong cologne or perfume. While-you may enjoy the scent, those around you may find it unpleasant and intrusive. Much like others do not want to hear your cell messages, they probably don't want to have their sense of smell invaded either.

·       Be careful with touching; it may or may not be considered appropriate or polite depending on the relationship you have with the other person and on the context in which you find yourselves. The best advice to give here is to avoid touching unless it's part of the culture of the group or organization.

Practice Test

1. When Rhonda texts her friends, they cannot see her facial expressions or gestures. So to compensate for this lack of nonverbal behavior, Rhonda adds a smiley face when she says something humorous. Rhonda is using __________ in her texting.

A) acronyms

B) emoticons

C) abbreviations

D) syntax

2. Danny really wants his mother to give him a piece of candy. He says, “I want it NOW!” and stamps his feet as he says the word now. In this case, Danny’s nonverbal communication is used to __________ his verbal message.

A) complement

B) contradict

C) substitute

D) accent

3. Which of the following nonverbal messages will probably make you LESS attractive or likeable to another person?

A) standing reasonably close to the person

B) staring at the person

C) nodding and leaning forward while the person is talking

D) dressing appropriately for the situation

4. Which of the following is an example of a “tie sign”?

A) Kai pounds his fist on his desk during a company meeting to emphasize his point.

B) Annie and Ron hold hands as they walk through the park.

C) When Marion lets another driver pull in front of her, the other driver nods and waves at Marion.

D) Roger wants to make a good impression on his job interview, so he buys a brand new tie to wear.

5. The body communicates with movements and gestures and just by its general appearance, an area of nonverbal communication referred to as __________.

A) kinesics

B) metacommunication

C) lateral communication

D) kinesthetics

6. Which of the following is an example of a regulator?

A) giving the “thumbs down” sign to show that something is wrong

B) moving your hair out of your eyes

C) smiling when you see your friend is at the front door

D) nodding your head to show that you want the speaker to continue

7. Research indicates that __________ alone seem to communicate the degree of pleasantness, agreement, and sympathy you feel.

A) hand gestures

B) facial movements

C) adaptors

D) general body appearance

8. Your mom tells you that if you would only smile more, you would feel happier. She appears to subscribe to the __________.

A) cognitive dissonance theory

B) facial feedback hypothesis

C) social exchange hypothesis

D) face negotiation theory

9. What advice would you give Frieda, who is about to deliver a speech to an audience of about 500 people?

A) Scan the entire audience as you speak, and do not focus on any one person for too long.

B) Look over the heads of your audience and do not make eye contact with anyone.

C) Focus your eye contact on just one or two people in the crowd and talk to them in a “conversational” way.

D) Look down at your notes as you speak, glancing up only to make sure the audience is still paying attention.

10. Veronica’s friend, Ahmet, is blind. When Veronica approaches Ahmet, which of the following would be appropriate?

A) She says, “Hey, it’s me!”

B) She avoids terms like see or look.

C) She says, “Hi Ahmet, it’s Veronica” in her regular speaking voice.

D) She shouts, “Ahmet!” as loudly as she can.

11. When you are kissing your partner, you are at __________ distance with each other.

A) personal

B) intimate

C) social

D) public

12. Which of the following would Dallas consider his primary territory?

A) his corner of the dorm room

B) his usual table in the cafeteria

C) the movie theater down the street

D) the park where he jogs each morning

13. Messages that are conveyed through objects or arrangements made by human hands are __________ messages.

A) lateral

B) artifactual

C) artificial

D) downward

14. Chun Hei was raised in Korea but attends a college in the United States. Why might she be a bit upset if her professor returns an essay to her with comments written in red ink?

A) The color red signifies anger and danger in Korea.

B) In Korea, red signifies failure or deceit.

C) Only lower-class Koreans wear the color red.

D) Among Korean Buddhists, red is associated with death.

15. At the office, Thea has an expensive, solid-wood desk sitting on a luxurious rug. The office walls are lined with bookshelves containing many thick volumes. Based on this information alone, you can probably determine that Thea __________.

A) is nearing retirement age

B) is an important person at her company

C) is an entry-level employee

D) has just received a promotion

16. This is perhaps the most primitive form of nonverbal communication.

A) touch communication

B) facial communication

C) kinesics

D) proxemics

17. You are more likely to see friends standing more closely together and touching each other as they talk if you visit __________.

A) Sweden

B) Japan

C) Italy

D) Denmark

18. How does the Internet help counteract the “spiral of silence” phenomenon?

A) by isolating individuals who express disagreement with the majority view

B) by providing opportunities for minority viewpoints to be heard and expressed

C) by making it easier for people to arrive at consensus on difficult issues

D) by providing listeners an easy opportunity to investigate truth-claims on their own

19. Which of the following is a good tactic to use to draw conclusions about another person on the basis of his or her nonverbal messages?

A) be tentative

B) avoid monotony

C) maintain eye contact with the speaker

D) avoid extremes

20. When using nonverbal messages to express your meaning, you would be wise to __________.

A) consider the possibility that you are incorrect

B) interpret your judgments against a cultural context

C) mindfully seek alternative judgments

D) avoid strong cologne or perfume

21. Nonverbal messages can be used both to influence and to mislead.

A) True

B) False

22. The wide variations in facial communication that are observed in different cultures seem to reflect a difference in the way emotions are facially expressed.

A) True

B) False

23. There is some evidence that the colors with which people surround themselves affect them physiologically.

A) True

B) False

24. Not all cultures view silence in the same way.

A) True

B) False

25. Perhaps the most general skill that applies to both receiving and sending nonverbal messages is to become mindful of them.

A) True

B) False

26. Just as Nikolai takes a big bite of his sandwich, the server comes by to ask if everything is okay. Nikolai’s mouth is full, so he gives the “thumbs up” sign to the server instead. Which of the following types of nonverbal message occurred here?

A) accent

B) substitute

C) contradiction

D) control

27. What is the MOST likely reason Dr. Howard displays her diplomas on her office wall?

A) to be followed

B) to excuse failure

C) to hide faults

D) to be liked

28. When you are playing Monopoly and you hand the dice to your sister for her to take her roll, you are giving her a(n) __________.

A) tie sign

B) emotional message

C) turn-taking cue

D) tactile cue

29. The waiter guides the guest to her table by saying, “Right this way, Madame” and gesturing with his hand toward the table. What type of gesture is this?

A) illustrator

B) affect display

C) regulator

D) adaptor

30. Which of the following statements about tall people is correct?

A) Tall people are considered more aggressive and hostile than short people.

B) Tall people have lower self-esteem than short people.

C) Tall people have greater career success than short people.

D) Tall people appear to be less likely to win elections than short people.

31. In which of these situations are you MOST likely to be considered insensitive?

A) You suspected your friends were throwing you a surprise party, but you exaggerate your facial expression to make it look as if you really are surprised.

B) When your neighbor, whom you dislike immensely, tells you that he is being audited by the IRS, you cannot suppress a smile.

C) You finish first in the 5K race, but your pal does not even make it across the finish line. As you accept your trophy, you smile slightly.

D) You are very sad when your grandmother dies, but you try hard not to cry because you know you would upset your father if you did.

32. You are walking through the park when you notice a man talking on his cell phone. It appears that he has just received some bad news, because he begins to weep openly. Rather than stare at him, you avert your gaze. In this case, your behavior is an example of __________.

A) civil inattention

B) top-down communication

C) facial feedback

D) proxemics

33. You probably maintain this level of distance with the salesperson who helps you purchase a new smartphone.

A) public distance

B) intimate distance

C) personal distance

D) social distance

34. Ramon intends to ask his boss, Matilda, for a raise. If he understands the concept of territoriality, where will he conduct the negotiation with Matilda?

A) over dinner at his favorite restaurant

B) in his office

C) in the company cafeteria

D) in Matilda’s office

35. In which of the following situations is Lupe using a central marker?

A) Lupe leaves her coat on the back of a chair in the library.

B) Lupe decides to build a fence around her property.

C) Lupe places a plastic bar between her groceries and those of the customer behind her in the supermarket checkout line.

D) Lupe pulls down the armrest that separates her seat from the person sitting next to her on her flight.

36. Quincy Edward Davis has his initials—QED—embroidered on the cuffs of his shirts. This is an example of a(n) __________.

A) boundary marker

B) home-field advantage

C) earmarker

D) index

37. In Latin America, the color purple signifies __________.

A) joy

B) fertility

C) death

D) purity

38. Which of the following would be an example of task-related touching?

A) Cinny gives Kate a high-five after Kate hits the winning home run in the playoff game.

B) Alessandro gives his friend Mason a big hug as Mason arrives at the party.

C) Meadow reaches up and removes a piece of lint from the lapel of Oskar’s suit.

D) Donna shakes hands with her rabbi as she leaves the weekly services.

39. People with especially effective nonverbal skills __________.

A) are highly persuasive

B) tend to be rather unpopular

C) do not need to develop their verbal skills

D) are influential only in individualist cultures

40. __________ is the vocal but nonverbal dimension of speech.

A) Metalanguage

B) Syntax

C) Paralanguage

D) Grammar

41. In the United States, someone who speaks softly at a company meeting will likely be perceived to be __________.

A) uncertain

B) uninterested

C) credible

D) persuasive

42. When her parents scold 15-year-old Bethany for violating her curfew, Bethany remains completely silent with her arms crossed in front of her chest. What is the MOST likely reason for her silence?

A) She is giving her parents “the silent treatment” to “punish” them for scolding her.

B) Like many adolescents, Bethany has simply become shy around everyone, even her parents.

C) It is an emotional response to being scolded; possibly defiance or anger.

D) She recognizes the solemnity of what her parents are telling her.

43. The study of __________ communication concerns the use of time.

A) temporal

B) lateral

C) opportune

D) social

44. Natalie’s mother has been hinting that it is about time for Natalie to start a family. Natalie’s mother evidently is very concerned about __________.

A) monochromic time

B) the social clock

C) the social calendar

D) polychromic time

45. Always nodding your head as you listen to your friend’s story is likely to be interpreted as __________.

A) interest

B) insincerity

C) aggression

D) understanding

46. You reveal your level of happiness or sadness or confusion largely through your posture.

A) True

B) False

47. There is some evidence that colors influence our perceptions and behaviors.

A) True

B) False

48. People who are considering medicine as a profession would be well advised to avoid getting tattoos or piercings.

A) True

B) False

49. Younger people have higher touch-avoidance scores for opposite-sex persons than do older people.

A) True

B) False

50. Monitor your own nonverbal messages with the same care that you monitor your verbal messages.

A) True

B) False

Chapter Test

1. When we are listening to someone speak, we are not passive; rather, we nod our heads, purse our lips, lean forward, and so on. All of the above nonverbal behaviors function to

A) repeat verbal messages.

B) accent verbal messages.

C) control the flow of verbal messages.

D) help the speaker adapt to the interaction.

2. Gila holds up two fingers while telling Henry she’ll be back in two minutes. Gila has used nonverbal communication to __________ verbal communication.

A) regulate

B) repeat

C) complement

D) contradict

3. Which of the following is true concerning the research on nonverbal communication functions?

A) Researchers have found that it is more difficult to detect lying by interpreting nonverbal cues than most people think.

B) Nonverbal communication has little to do with persuasion.

C) People use verbal communication more than nonverbal communication to manage how others see them.

D) Emotional expression is more clearly evident in verbal communication than in nonverbal communication.

4. During stressful situations, Andre tends to play with his glasses to calm his nerves and focus his attention. Andre’s nonverbal action is an example of an

A) emblem.

B) adaptor.

C) affect display.

D) illustrator.

5. Generally, people use facial management techniques to

A) enable them to express feelings while achieving desired effects.

B) show how they really feel about others.

C) establish territorial boundaries.

D) distance themselves from others.

6. The facial feedback hypothesis poses that

A) if you give positive facial cues to others, they will reciprocate.

B) negative facial cues have little effect on the feedback people receive.

C) facial expressions influence levels of physiological arousal.

D) All of the above.

7. Artifactual communication would include

A) jewelry and clothing.

B) winking and nodding.

C) nearness and contact.

D) pupil dilation and eye contact.

8. Paralanguage may be defined as the

A) nonverbal dimension of gesture.

B) vocal, verbal dimension of speech.

C) vocal, nonverbal dimension of speech.

D) movements of the small muscles of the face.

9. People in monochronistic cultures

A) don’t pay much attention to color.

B) compartmentalize time.

C) value silence.

D) value traditions.

10. Which of the following are benefits of effective nonverbal communication use?

A) greater ability to send and receive nonverbal signals

B) higher popularity and psychological well-being

C) Both A and B.

D) Neither A nor B.

11. Proficiency in sending and receiving nonverbal messages can directly affect a person’s popularity.

A) True

B) False

12. Your facial expressions influence your own level of emotional arousal.

A) True

B) False

13. Emblems are generally paralinguistic cues.

A) True

B) False

14. The personal distance is the closest of all of Hall’s four distances and ranges from the close phase of actual touching to the far phase of 6 to 18 inches.

A) True

B) False

15. Your regular seat in a classroom is an example of a secondary territory.

A) True

B) False

16. The two important messages that smell communicates are attraction and identification.

A) True

B) False

17. Silence tends to serve the same functions in most cultures.

A) True

B) False

18. Another term for time communication is haptics.

A) True

B) False

19. Monochronemic societies tend to schedule many different tasks at one time.

A) True

B) False

20. Eye messages vary with both culture and gender.

A) True

B) False

21. What is one difference in the way men and women make eye contact?

A)   Men maintain eye contact longer than women.

B)    Unlike men, when women interact with other women, they avert their gaze.

C)    Men make eye contact with other men much longer than they make eye contact with women.

D)   Women make eye contact more than men.

22. Why is it unsurprising that touch avoidance is negatively related to self-disclosure?

A)   Both are intimate forms of communication.

B)    Both are forms of tactile communication.

C)    Self-disclosure cannot occur at the same time touch communication is occurring.

D)   Touch violates deep social conventions, while self-disclosure does not.

23. People who speak faster than normal __________.

A)   are understood more easily than people who speak slowly

B)    are generally more persuasive in one-way communication

C)    are usually considered less intelligent than slow speakers

D)   are thought of as less honest by most listeners

24. According to the “spiral of silence” theory, __________.

A)   the minority opinion will eventually become the majority opinion

B)    you are more likely to voice your opinions when you agree with the minority

C)    you disregard rewards and punishments you are likely to receive for expressing an opinion

D)   you are more likely to voice agreement than disagreement

25. Which of the following is an example of an object-adaptor?

A)   Layla tugs her ear when she is nervous.

B)    Declan cracks his knuckles frequently throughout the day.

C)    doodles in the margins of her notebook as she takes notes during English class.

D)   Ann straightens Matt’s tie for him as he leaves for the office in the morning.

26. In a study of male baldness, participants rated a man with a full head of hair as __________ than the same man without hair.

A)   less aggressive

B)    younger

C)    more conservative

D)   lazier

27. Studies show that personal attractiveness does not have much influence on the way others treat you.

A)   True

B)    False

28. Sadie likes to think about her childhood. She believes the way things were done in the “good old days” were the best. Sadie appears to have a __________ orientation about time.

A)   unyielding

B)    past

C)    temporal

D)   present

29. Proxemics is the study of __________ communication.

A)   spatial

B)    touch

C)    facial

D)   body

30. The street where you live would be considered part of your __________ territory.

A)   public

B)    primary

C)    secondary

D)   private

31. When using nonverbal messages to express your meanings, you should __________.

A)   avoid sending verbal messages that say one thing and nonverbal messages that say something else

B)    not vary your nonverbal messages much at all

C)    use touch communication as much as possible

D)   remember that effective nonverbal communication is never situational

32. Smell is also referred to as __________ communication.

A)   haptic

B)    kinesic

C)    vocalic

D)   olfactory

33. Samuel tells his 4-year-old son that Santa Claus is real, then winks to his two older children who are sitting nearby. In this case, Samuel __________ his verbal message with the wink.

A)   contradicts

B)    controls

C)    repeats

D)   substitutes

34. Which of the following behaviors should Professor Gleason use if he wants his students to like him?

A)   cover his face with his hands when he makes a mistake

B)    wear lots of expensive cologne to class

C)    smile at the students as he enters the classroom

D)   display his diploma on the wall of the classroom

35. Monochronic cultures tend to __________.

A)   thoroughly embrace the concept of multitasking

B)    conduct business with many people at once, often over a meal

C)    schedule multiple things at the same time

D)   set sequential times for different activities

36. When making judgments about a nonverbal message, mindfully seek alternatives.

A)   True

B)    False

37.  __________ serve to divide your territory from that of others.

A)   Boundary markers

B)    Central markers

C)    Personal markers

D)   Earmarkers

38. Communication without words is called __________ communication.

A)   proximate

B)    nonverbal

C)    incomplete

D)   silent

39. Tie signs vary in intimacy from the informal to the very warm.

A)   True

B)    False

40. Facial management techniques allow you to express feelings while achieving certain desired effects.

A)   True

B)    False

41. When Harrison is chatting with his girlfriend as they stroll through the park, they are MOST likely keeping __________ distance between each other.

A)   public

B)    social

C)    personal

D)   intimate

42. Silence can best be defined as the absence of communication.

A)   True

B)    False

43. In most countries, pointing your thumb straight down means something is wrong or bad. This kind of gesture is a(n) __________.

A)   affect display

B)    emblem

C)    illustrator

D)   regulator

44. When Raoul splashes on some Polo cologne before going out dancing for the evening, he is MOST likely trying to __________.

A)   mark his primary territory

B)    enhance his attractiveness

C)    attain a “home field advantage”

D)   create an identity

45. The relative importance people place on the past, present, or future is called __________.

A)   physiological time

B)    time orientation

C)    psychological time

D)   the social clock