Article summary of Non-verbal behaviour as communication: approaches, issues and research by Gordon et. al. - Chapter

What is this article about?

Researchers in a certain field make use of figurative comparisons and personal perspectives. These perspectives are called paradigms and metaphors. Scientists think that these paradigms are important for creative thoughts. Researchers have reviewed a number of psychology papers and found there to be many distinct mental metaphors. All these metaphors were used to help the reader to understand the topic better. The metaphors were usually based on explicit comparisons, but sometimes also on subtly implied comparisons. Different metaphors place different aspects of psychology on relief. Other researchers have found that we use metaphors in everyday life. The usage of metaphors and irony show that we have a fundamental ability to conceptualize situations figuratively. Research on this topic shows that certain words can have strong meanings. But, the human being doesn’t only express their behavior verbally. Non-verbal behavior seems to be very important for human interaction, maybe even more important compared to verbal behavior.

What is known about non-verbal behavior?

The study of non-verbal behavior is not new. In 1601, Francis Bacon recognized that people do not only talk using mouth, but also using their hands and their eyes. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, gestures and emotional expressions were called the natural languages and people thought that they provided the foundation for symbolic communication. In the nineteenth century, Darwin studied the human face and looked at the neuromuscular expressions of emotions. Scientists back then knew that these expressions took place automatically and rapidly and sometimes involuntarily. In the beginning of this century, researchers placed more emphasis on evolutionary psychology and on how facial expressions adapted for certain reasons. However, some researchers think that this approach is problematic, because it neglects the impact of immediate situational factors. Montepare believes that we need to include proximal/situational influences and distal/historical influences when we study non-verbal communication. In the twentieth century, Freud offered a number of interpretive strategies with his psychodynamic approach for non-verbal communication. Throughout the history, the study of non-verbal communication has emphasized different topics. In Darwin’s time, non-verbal communication was viewed as an affective expression metaphor. In Freud’s time, non-verbal communication was seen as a riddle or obscure text metaphor, which people needed to decode. In the ’70s, researchers viewed non-verbal behavior as a code metaphor and researchers focused more on the structure of the code itself and not on the meaning. Nowadays, non-verbal communication can also be seen as a dramatic presentation, like mime, dance and dramatic stage. These four metaphors all hold to be true.

Non-verbal behavior and style

Usually, we view non-verbal behavior as communication, but some researchers ascribe another style to non-verbal behavior. These two are non-verbal behavior as personal idiom and non-verbal behavior as skill. The personal idiom style sees refers to the distinction between instrumental aspects of action and expressive aspects. The expressive aspects are personalized, like a signature or voice of a person. The skill style refers to that people have acquired certain skills from their environment to perform better. For example, being better in a sport, singing better or performing a surgery better. Skilled performances imply complex, coordinated motor acts that only emerge gradually through development and training. Refined action is another characteristic of skilled performance and not recognizable for the untutored. Skilled performances are dependent on practice over periods of time. Training has to be combined with resting. Some other characteristics of skilled performances are the assumption that individuals vary in the extent to which they display refined performances, their resistance to disuse (if you don’t ride a bicycle for a year, it does not mean that you will forget how to ride a bike) and that performers recognize refinements in their performance. Research has shown there to be a relationship between non-verbal decoding and interpersonal social skills among adults.

How is non-verbal behavior studied?

The study of non-verbal behavior as a form of communication has increased in popularity. There are many book chapters about this topic and even more electronically available articles. Not all articles or books are scientific. The scientific articles and books lay an emphasis on theoretical-research orientation, while articles and books of lay people have an emphasis on application without any theory or without sufficient theory and research to validate the statements or to make them reliable.

There are seven dimensions that describe the categories of non-verbal behavior as communication. These seven dimensions are:

• Kinesics: This is body language, like moving the hands, postural shifts, gestures, facial expressions and eye movement.
• Paralanguage: These are the vocals that are content-free (and discussed in a previous chapter). It relates to voice, volume, pitch, speech rate, pauses and interruptions.
• Physical contact in the form of touching.
• Proxemics: This means interpersonal spacing (do you stand close to your interaction partner?) and norms of territoriality (are you allowed to come near your interaction partner?)
• Physical characteristics of people: These are all the physical characteristics of people. Examples of these are hair color, skin color, body shape and attractiveness.
• Artefacts: These make up the extra things you use to make yourself pretty or presentable. Examples of these are clothes, jewelry, wigs and perfume.
• Environmental factors: Where does the behavior occur? It can be in a classroom, a library, office of other places.

The last three categories convey information about the actor.

Non-verbal communication should not be treated as a separate form of communication. The meaning of non-verbal behavior must be considered in the context in which it occurs. The environmental setting of the behavior is of big importance. The physical and social aspects of this environment can also have a big impact on non-verbal behavior. For example, the arrangements of furniture at a friend’s home can be of big importance for the bodily movements of a person. These bodily movements depend on whether you’re standing upfront in your friend’s house, whether you are sitting on a couch next to him, or whether you are seated on a chair. It is also important to know how far your friend is sitting from you during interaction. It also it seems that non-verbal behavior may have different meanings when exhibited on the street rather than in an office. When you’re talking to somebody on the street near a construction-site, you will probably be more likely to exaggerate your non-verbal communication patterns than when you’re talking/whispering to somebody in the library. The social climate of the environment is also of importance. You will display different behaviors in stressful situations compared to less stressful situations. Also, in a formal setting, you will be producing less non-verbal behavior than in an informal setting.

Non-verbal behavior of communication can be differently interpreted by the encoder and the decoder. The encoder is the person who displays the non-verbal behavior, while the decoder is the receiver who interprets this behavior. There are two classifications for behavioral messages. One of them is the informative act. This is the information that is tried to be sent to the receiver, and the receiver might interpret this correctly or incorrectly. The receiver can form impressions without the sender intending this. The second classification is the communicative act. This is the opposite of the informative act. The encoder is intentionally trying to send a specific message to the receiver. People can stop sending intentional messages, but they can’t stop conveying information. Sometimes, the decoder might think that the encoder is sending a wrong message on purpose, while in fact he isn’t. This may result in feelings of anger in the decoder, while this was not intended. The encoder can send two types of signals to the decoder: goal-directed or non-goal-directed signals. The decoder may interpret these as goal-directed or as non-goal-directed. Goal-directed signals of the encoder are intended. Hopefully, the decoder will also perceive this as intended. Otherwise, conflicts can arise.

What is a model of non-verbal communication?

Ekman and Friesen developed a model of non-verbal communication and this model distinguishes between three characteristics of non-verbal behavior: usage, origin and coding. Usage refers to all circumstances that exist at the time of the non-verbal act. This means the setting, the emotional tone and the relationship between the people who are interacting. Usage refers to the intentionality of the encoder and the external feedback the decoder sends when he or she has interpreted the message. The origin refers to the location of the non-verbal behavior, of which some are rooted in the nervous-system (like reflexes), while others are learned through culture or family members. Coding refers to the meaning that is attached to a non-verbal act. Coding can be extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsically coded acts represent something, in a symbolic way. Examples of these are a thumbs-up sign and flipping the middle-finger. Intrinsic codes represent the same feelings. If you are mad at your friend, you may playfully hit him on his arm. This is a mild form of aggression and it also represents aggression.

There are five other categories of behavioral acts. The first one is emblems. These are non-verbal acts that have direct verbal translation and can even substitute words. An example of this is frowning to indicate disapproval. Emblems can be learned. The second category is illustration. This refers to a movement that illustrates what is verbalized. If you say that something is a couple centimeters long, you may also show this by holding your thumb and index-finger a couple centimeters apart. These behavioral acts are socially learned. The third category is regulation. This serves to regulate the conversation flow between people. You can nod your head to show that you understand what the other person is talking about. Regulators are culture-specific and may thus be misinterpreted by people from another culture. The fourth category is the category of adapters. These are objects of self-manipulation which are learned in early childhood. Adapters are behavioral habits and sometimes do not really have a function, like scratching your head when you do not know something. There are also alter-adaptors and these include hand movements to protect oneself from attack. Another category of adaptors is the object adaptor. These are learned instrumental tasks, like playing with a pen or smoking. The fifth category of behavioral acts are the affect displays. This refers to facial expressions of emotions. People from different cultures do agree on which facial expression represents which emotion, but they do not always agree on the intensity of expressions. Also, cultures have different display rules. For example, Japanese people are usually not allowed to show negative emotions in a formal context.

How is non-verbal communication organized?

Researchers have found other ways to organize non-verbal acts of communication. According to Dittmann, there are four major channels of communication: language, facial expressions, vocalizations and bodily movements. All of these are defined in the degree of information they convey at any moment. Some channels provide much information, while others do not. For example, you may tell someone that you are happy for him or her, but your facial expressions and bodily movements do not match your statement. Then, your expressions and movements convey more information than your language.

Mehrabian used another approach to categorize non-verbal behaviors. Mehrabian has organized the non-verbal categories in three dimensions: positiveness, potency and responsiveness. Positiveness relates to the evaluation of a person or object and persons uses this to decide to either approach or avoid the object or person. Potency represents status or social control and relates to cues of posture. Responsiveness is related to activity cues.

What is the relationship between non-verbal communication and the context?

One of the limitations of many studies on non-verbal behavior is that it happens in the laboratory and thus misses out on the relevant environmental and social features that real-life interactions have. It is thus difficult to generalize laboratory findings to real-life settings, especially in different role-defined settings. Research has found that decoders overemphasize dispositional qualities in inferring the causes of the actor’s behavior. This means that they don’t really pay attention to the situational factors on the impact of behavior, but think that the behavior is mostly caused by the characteristics of the actor. Actors do the opposite: they overemphasize situational factors in explaining their own behavior. This can lead to an observer bias and have serious consequences. If you think that a classmate from a different country didn’t pass the exam because he or she is not smart enough instead of assigning this to some personal issues your classmate had, you might come to stereotype all people of that country as stupid. As discussed above, culture may also have a big impact in display rules. Some cultures have certain display rules and are not allowed to show certain types of emotions in certain settings (Japanese). This can be perceived negatively by other cultures and people from the West might think that Japanese people are cold and heartless.