Articles > Non-verbal Communication
Non-verbal Communication
by Peter Bull
- Does non-verbal behaviour help communication?
- How might they be applied in organizations?
Summary:
Summary: Nonverbal communication includes many features - touch and smell, clothing, masks, vocal features and body movement. The nonverbal and verbal are both parts of communication. Indeed, nonverbal communication may take place in conjunction with our speech or even against our own intentions.
Belief in the importance of nonverbal communication is nothing new. (Don't) watch a person's mouth but his fists was the advice of Martin Luther, the 16th century religious reformer.
The term nonverbal communication was coined in the 20th century and has been taken to include many features - communication through touch and smell, clothing, masks and vocal features such as intonation, stress, speech rate, accent and volume. It also refers to communication through body movement - facial expression, gaze, pupil size, posture and interpersonal distance - and this is what I shall concentrate upon in this article.
The study of non-verbal communication
When we display nonverbal behaviour, we may well not intend to do so. Indeed, nonverbal communication may take place even against our own intentions. As a member of an audience, we may try to look attentive but be unable to suppress a yawn. The speaker may see that we are bored, despite our best intentions not to show it. Sometimes nonverbal communication can take place when no one present can describe the nonverbal cues that transmitted the message. We may believe that another person is angry without being able to say exactly how we got that impression. Nonverbal communications can also be unique to one individual. Hand gestures, for example, may take their meaning from objects or actions they relate to or from the way they are used in conjunction with speech.
The fact that nonverbal communication can be unintentional, unconscious and idiosyncratic makes it very difficult to study. Indeed the scientific study of nonverbal communication became possible only with the development of sophisticated recording - film or videotape - which allows repeated viewing, if necessary in slow motion. Today, sophisticated View more articles on our website: www.nortonmedia.com computer programs such as THEME are also used. This is of particular value for investigating complex sequences of movement that may be inaccessible to the naked eye.
However, the major disadvantage of videotape is that the human observer still has to transcribe the behaviour into appropriate categories. To overcome this, researchers have tried attaching recording apparatus to the body but this can make participants in experiments self-conscious and it also restricts their movements. Developments in computer image analysis hold the promise of fully automated coding which will increase speed and also improve reliability and precision. As such, facial expression measurement may soon become much more widely accessible as research tool in behavioural science, medicine and psychophysiology.
The Functions of Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal behaviour is often seen as distinct from speech, its primary purpose being to communicate emotion and interpersonal relationships. But there is another viewpoint. Nonverbal behaviour and speech are closely connected and separating the two seems artificial. In particular, hand and facial gestures may be seen as visible acts of meaning just as words are audible acts of meaning. Thus some researchers argue they should be seen as an integral part of natural language. In this view, body language is not an alternative to speech. The nonverbal and verbal are both parts of communication. These different approaches are discussed below.
Emotion
The most influential theory on the nonverbal communication of emotion is still the neurocultural model of facial expression. This theory holds that there are at least six fundamental emotions, common to everyone, with innate facial expressions, also common to everyone. These facial expressions can also be modified through learning what are called display rules. These are norms guiding the expression of emotion in different social contexts, which vary both within and between cultures. The idea that there are fundamental emotions is supported by cross-cultural evidence. In experiments in which participants are asked to identify emotions from photographed facial expressions, both literate and pre-literate cultures identify the same six emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise) in the same way.
This model is based on a distinction between two principal types of facial expression: those which are spontaneous, and those which are under voluntary control. This is supported by studies of the effects of brain damage on facial movement. There are cases where a person has suffered facial paralysis which prevents them from putting on a voluntary or deliberate smile (perhaps of welcome), but can still smile spontaneously on the paralysed side if something strikes them as amusing. There are also cases where a person is unable to smile spontaneously, but can still put on a deliberate or voluntary smile.
Critics of the neurocultural model have pointed out that the language used to describe emotion is by no means universal. The words for the so-called basic emotions, such as anger and sadness, are not found in every culture - nor even the word for emotion itself. Furthermore, the whole theoretical basis of the neurocultural model has also been called into question. According to what has been called a behavioural ecology approach, there are neither fundamental emotions nor fundamental expressions of them. There are simply behaviours that manifest social intentions. Facial expressions display what we want to do or intend to do (even if the social context may restrain us.)
For example, what in the neurocultural model is thought of as an expression of anger, is described in the behavioural ecology approach simply as a readiness to attack. In a comparison of these two approaches, an experiment was conducted in which Canadian, Chinese and Japanese observers were shown photographs of the universal emotions. The participants proved equally capable of describing them in terms of emotion categories or social intent, suggesting that the faces conveyed social messages with as much consensus as they conveyed emotional ones. But whichever theory we use, facial expressions are still an extremely important form of nonverbal communication.