Nonverbal communication body language

As anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a fellow driver’s display of the middle finger knows, nonverbal communication is sometimes quite obvious and conscious. But then there are those times when a significant other says “Don’t look at me like that, ” and you respond, “Don’t look at you like what?” knowing full well the nature of the feelings you were so confident of having hidden. Or you might smack your lips and proclaim that your spouse’s scallop and cheddar casserole is yummy, but somehow still elicit the response, “What, you don’t like it?”

Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them. Since much if not most of the nonverbal signaling and reading of signals is automatic and performed outside our conscious awareness and control, through our nonverbal cues we unwittingly communicate a great deal of information about ourselves and our state of mind. The gestures we make, the position in which we hold our bodies, the expressions we wear on our faces and the nonverbal qualities of our speech – all contribute to how others view us.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words. Our nonverbal sensors are so powerful that just the movements associated with body language – that is, minus the actual bodies – are enough to engender within us the ability to accurately perceive emotion. For example, researchers made video clips of participants who had about a dozen small lights or illuminated patches attached at certain key positions on their bodies. The videos were made in light so dim that only the patches were visible. In these studies, when the participants stood still, the patches gave the impression of a meaningless collection of points. But when the participants stirred, observers were able to decode a surprising amount of information from the moving lights. They were able to judge the participants’ sex, and even the identity of people with whom they were familiar, from their gait alone. And when the participants were actors, mimes or dancers asked to move in a way that expressed the basic emotions, the observers had no trouble detecting the emotion portrayed.

We routinely participate in elaborate nonverbal exchanges even when we are not consciously aware of doing so. For example, in the case of casual contact with the opposite sex, I’d have been willing to bet a year’s pass to a Manhattan cinema that if a male pollster type approached a guy’s date while they were standing in line to buy a ticket at said theater, few of the fellows approached would be so insecure that they’d consciously feel threatened by the pollster. And yet, consider this experiment, conducted over two mild autumn weekend evenings in an “upper middle class” neighborhood in Manhattan. The subjects approached were all couples, yes, waiting in line to buy tickets to a movie.

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Q&A

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What should everyone know about nonverbal communication and body language?

That the meaning of gestures is not universal. A gesture might mean something good in one culture but not in the next.
Take for example the thumbs up gesture, which in the Western world means 'ok' and in the international sign language of divers 'Let's go up again'. Yet it is the Greek equivalent of 'Up your's!'. It can be found in the book The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara and Allen Pease. [1]
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