NVC Flashcards
What are the functions of NVC?
Patterson 1988
To provide information to others
To regulate interaction (e.g. turn-taking)
To express intimacy (e.g. liking)
To attempt to exert social control e.g., making certain hand gestures to communicate power
Presentation - using body language e.g., a strong handshake can be used to create a positive impression
Affect management - how we regulate emotion
Facilitating service or task goals e.g., a professional smile that a flight attendant might give to reassure passengers
What are the evolutionary bases of the work on nvc?
Children born blind will smile and laugh - this means that it isn’t learned and has to be biologically encoded.
breathe in
breathe out
How do people respond to NVC?
Many of our responses to nvc are automatic and happen outside conscious awareness.
A lot of the time people don’t have to put a lot of cognitive effort into some responses because they’re biologically based e.g., reactions to nvc of babies - an innate response to babies smiling/laughing
What are the different channels of nvc?
Facial expression Gaze and pupil dilation Gestures, body movements and posture Touch/bodily contact Spatial behaviour (‘proxemics’) Clothing Non-linguistic aspects of speech e.g., tone Smell (e.g. use of perfumes) - seeking to send a message and control the impression made of us through smell
How might clinical disturbances impact the sensitivity to nvc?
Some clinical disturbances affect non-verbal encoding and decoding (e.g. Schizophrenia, ASD) If someone is on the autistic spectrum, they might have difficulty accurately decoding the body language of others, they might also use inappropriate body language cues themselves.
What gender differences are there in the sensitivity to nvc?
Overall, women are more sensitive to non- verbal cues and decode them more accurately than men.
There are evolutionary reasons for this - for many thousands of years, women were the primary caregivers of infants, so it makes sense for them to be particularly tuned into decoding non-verbal cues.
There is strong cross-cultural evidence for this (e.g. Hall, 1979; Rosenthal & DePaulo, 1979; Rosip & Hall, 2004)
What age differences are there in the sensitivity to nvc?
The older we get the worse we get at decoding non-verbal cues
- older individuals (e.g. aged 70+) are worse at lying and at detecting deception
It seems to correlate with a general decline in cognitive function, which occurs during the human ageing process.
But training can improve sensitivity
How can sensitivity to nvc be improved
It can be improved through training. Sometimes, its incorporated into teacher training programmes and sometimes it’s used by clinical psychologists to help people with mental health challenges.
How can space convey power and control?
E.g. Kane (1971) - violent prisoners and personal space. The researchers found that the most violent prisoners often had a zone of personal space around them that other prisoners would avoid (e.g., empty chairs around them in the canteen because they fear them).
Also in the business world, the higher up the chain you go, the bigger the office you get, even though this is unnecessary in a world where everything is done electronically.
Why is the spatial channel (proxemics) important in nvc?
Spatial metaphors are common e.g., in relationships you might say “we are growing apart”
Space can convey liking/disliking e.g., sitting close to those you like or far apart when they annoy you
Space can convey power and control. E.g. in prison and business settings
Hall (1966) - in different settings we are comfortable with different distances e.g., while people may stay in close proximity to someone because they like them, there are other occasions such as in a lecture hall where they have no romantic or other interest
Culture and proxemics (Hall, 1966) – in europe during business meetings you c an stand a few metres apart, but in arab countries, you should stand so close that you can feel and smell the breath of the person you are speaking to
What is some evidence of the importance of touch as a nvc?
Extremely powerful – linked with emotion and relationships
Even fleeting, incidental touches can have marked effects:-
Crusco & Wetzel (1984) – larger tips if touched on hand by waitress
(Fisher et al., 1976) Greater liking for librarian and library if touched on hand by librarian when returning a book– but only female Ps affected
How are facial expressions used as a channel of communication?
Important for conveying emotion
Ekman et al (1972) - happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust - expressed the same throughout the world
Gender differences - women attend to faces more than men do
‘Micro-expressions’ occur for 2/5ths of a second which people have no control over (Haggard & Issacs, 1966)
Recognising emotion is apparently part of emotional intelligence
What did Ekman et al., (1972) find about facial expressions?
They took images of westerners expressing emotions into non-industrialised societies e.g., tribal cultures in Africa.
They found that happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust - expressed the same throughout the world
This makes evolutionary sense as for a few thousand years humans did not have a sophisticated verbal language and so they needed to have a basic way of understanding each others feelings.
How is gaze used as a channel of communication?
Very powerful and often automatic e.g. pupil dilation and blink rate – many people get a pupil dilation response which happens outside conscious awareness when responding to the image of a baby
In eye-gaze studies, it has been shown that observers pay much attention to eyes
Sometimes a ‘leaky’ channel – when trying to control how others think about is, this is a difficult channel to control e.g., looking at someone that is attractive
Gaze can be used to exert dominance
Gaze as a threat signal e.g., when you stare at certain animals like gorillas or chimpanzees they might interpret it as a threat signal and try to attack you (Exline & Yellin, 1969; Marsh et al., 1978)
