We interact with other people using three information channels: verbal, non-verbal and paraverbal. Every channel has it’s own weight in our interaction with other people and provides different information. Each channel is interesting to discuss but for the purpose of this article I would like to talk about the non-verbal communication.
The non-verbal communication is a topic which intrigues vast range of audience including psychologists, politicians, leaders and others. Today there is so much literature and books on this topic which claim that “after reading them, you will be a complete expert”.
Most of these books are made for the broad audience - readers, who don’t have any background knowledge and are just curious about the nonverbal communication.
Being curious is not a bad thing. Quite on the contrary – be as more curious as you can ! But always approach information with critical thinking and try to do some analysis.
Most of the books about nonverbal communication promise you unrealistic things like becoming an expert in reading someone’s hidden intentions; reading someone’s mind; telling if someone is truthful to you or not. Some of the books strongly suggest that there are specific gestures and “body language” for specific situations and regard them as “an alphabet” which you have to learn and start applying your skills right away.
In some manner I could say that I understand why they (some authors) are doing it – the audience demands it. Today people want the ready ‘here and now’ solutions without the actual knowledge behind their mechanism. So the authors provide them.
Emotions and non-verbal communication
According to Darwin’s Theory of evolution, all our ancestors had to deal with the same conditions in their struggle to survive in the open world. That includes self-defense, competition, reproduction. This way they’ve developed different set of autonomic defense reactions, which include physiological conditions, expressed by certain muscular responses. In other words – that’s how our emotions were formed.
When we talk about emotions, we recognize six emotions, which are universal for all humans:
Fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust and surprise.
Unlike emotions when it comes to non-verbal communication we cannot talk about universal gestures, signs and body language. There are no universal gestures for all mankind.
This is a fact due to several logical reasons.
Gestures are influenced by the cultural heritage
Unlike the common natural factors which influenced the forming of our emotions, the social ones are not linked to our sensory perceptions. But that doesn’t mean that the social factors do not influence the individual’s behavior, his relationship with others and his views about the outside world and social norms.
Gestures, and the non-verbal behavior as a whole, are influenced by the society’s established rituals, cultural heritage and social norms.
For example for one nation it’s a common thing to greet strangers with a hug, while for others it’s absolutely unacceptable and if you are not familiar with their norms, you might even get into serious trouble. So does it mean that these people hate you, if don’t hug you back? Of course not.
Gestures are influenced by the social norms of the society.
How relationships are formed in a given society is crucial for the individual to learn how to behave and how to understand the outside world: learning what’s appropriate and what’s not.
Gestures could be learned and imitated.
We humans often refer to ourselves as “social animals”. We are always interacting with the outside world, asking questions, giving answers, explaining different phenomena.
By interacting with other humans we are constantly looking for our place to belong. All the activities that we engage in are related at some point to our desire to matter and to find people with our interests and views of the world. Often in order to fit in a certain society you have to learn what’s appropriate to them and how you should (and should not) behave. That includes both verbal and non-verbal communication.
Sometimes this need to “fit” and to belong would require from us to suppress already learned gestures, mimics and non-verbal communication because they might not be accepted in this social group. And of course that means we have to learn new ones in order to make sure we are adequate in the situation and accepted by the others.
Gestures could be automated
After long practice and experience, gestures and non-verbal communication in general could be automated and “switched on and off “ depending on the situation. That’s why you might’ve seen the same person dramatically changing and “becoming someone else”. This is a perfect example for a person who learned how and where to apply his knowledge about non-verbal communication. Neuro-linguistic programming, anyone? ;)
Conclusion
So following the already said in this article it becomes clear that the non-verbal communication is not something universal. Reading a book or two about this topic will not make you and expert of any sort.
The experts in the field of non-verbal communication are aware that in order to make conclusions about one’s non-verbal behavior you need to take in consideration factors like his cultural heritage, his social environment and finally but not on the last place his baseline.
Every person has their own unique base line of behavior, influenced by the already mentioned factors. The goal of the expert is to provoke and analyze the baseline. After that it’s easy to observe the deviating gestures and behavior and make an analysis. But we will discuss that in another, detailed article.
Literature:
Navarro, J,(2011) „ What every body is saying“
Seeman, J., Kenrik, J.,(2009) „Psychology“
Velichkov, A. „Environment and behaviour“, (unpublished monography)
Pictures:
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