4.5 Nonverbal Communication in Context

Nonverbal communication receives less attention than verbal communication as part of our everyday lives. Learning more about nonverbal communication and becoming more aware of our own and others’ use of nonverbal cues can help us be better relational partners and professionals. In addition, learning about cultural differences in nonverbal communication is important for people travelling abroad but also because of our increasingly multinational business world and the expanding diversity and increased frequency of intercultural communication within our own borders.

Nonverbal Communication in Relational Contexts

A central, if not primary, function of nonverbal communication is the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. Further, people who are skilled at encoding nonverbal messages have various interpersonal advantages, including being more popular, having larger social networks consisting of both acquaintances and close friends, and being less likely to be lonely or socially anxious (Riggio, 1992).

Nonverbal communication increases our expressivity, and people generally find attractive and want to pay more attention to things that are expressive. This increases our chances of initiating interpersonal relationships. Relationships then form as a result of some initial exchanges of verbal and nonverbal information through mutual self-disclosure. As the depth of self-disclosure increases, messages become more meaningful if they are accompanied by matching nonverbal cues. Impressions formed at this stage of interaction help determine whether or not a relationship will progress. As relationships progress from basic information exchange and the establishment of early interpersonal bonds to more substantial emotional connections, nonverbal communication plays a more central role. As we’ve learned, nonverbal communication conveys much emotional meaning, so the ability to effectively encode and decode appropriate nonverbal messages sent through facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, and touch leads to high-quality interactions that are rewarding for the communicators involved.

Nonverbal communication helps maintain relationships once they have moved beyond the initial stages by helping us communicate emotions and seek and provide social and emotional support. In terms of communicating emotions, competent communicators know when it is appropriate to express emotions and whether more self-regulation is needed. They also know how to adjust their emotional expressions to fit various contexts and individuals, which is useful in preventing emotional imbalances within a relationship. Emotional imbalances occur when one relational partner expresses too much emotion in a way that becomes a burden for the other person. Ideally, each person in a relationship is able to express their emotions in a way that isn’t too taxing for the other person. Occasionally, one relational partner may be going through an extended period of emotional distress, which can become very difficult for other people in their life. Since people with nonverbal communication competence are already more likely to have larger social support networks, it is likely that they will be able to spread around their emotional communication, specifically related to negative emotions, in ways that do not burden others. Unfortunately, since people with less nonverbal skill are likely to have smaller social networks, they may end up targeting one or two people for their emotional communication, which could lead the other individuals to withdraw from the relationship.

Expressing the need for support is also an important part of relational maintenance. People who lack nonverbal encoding skills may send unclear or subtle cues requesting support that are not picked up on by others, which can lead to increased feelings of loneliness. Skilled encoders of nonverbal messages, on the other hand, are able to appropriately communicate the need for support in recognizable ways. As relationships progress in terms of closeness and intimacy, nonverbal signals become a shorthand form of communicating because information can be conveyed with a particular look, gesture, tone of voice, or posture. Family members, romantic couples, close friends, and close colleagues can bond over their familiarity with each other’s nonverbal behaviours, which creates a shared relational reality that is unique to the relationship.

Nonverbal Communication in Professional Contexts

In surveys of current professionals and managers, most report that nonverbal skills are important to their jobs (DePaulo, 1992). Although important, there is rarely any training or instruction related to nonverbal communication, and a consistent issue that has been reported by employees has been difficulty with mixed messages coming from managers. Interpreting contradictory verbal and nonverbal messages is challenging in any context and can have negative effects on job satisfaction and productivity. A supervisor who gives positive and negative feedback regularly and in periodic performance evaluations, it is important to be able to match nonverbal signals with the content of the message. For example, appropriate nonverbal cues can convey the seriousness of a customer or coworker complaint, help ease the delivery of constructive criticism, or reinforce positive feedback. Professionals also need to be aware of how context, status, and power intersect with specific channels of nonverbal communication. For example, even casual touching of supervisees, mentees, or employees may be considered condescending or inappropriate in certain situations. A well-deserved pat on the back is different from an unnecessary hand on the shoulder to say hello at the start of a business meeting.

In professional contexts, managers and mentors with nonverbal decoding skills can exhibit sensitivity to others’ nonverbal behaviour and better relate to employees and mentees. In general, interpreting emotions from nonverbal cues can have interpersonal and professional benefits. One study found that salespeople who were skilled at recognizing emotions through nonverbal cues sold more products and earned higher salaries (Byron et al., 2007). Aside from bringing financial rewards, nonverbal communication also helps create supportive climates. Bosses, supervisors, and service providers such as therapists can help create rapport and a positive climate by consciously mirroring the nonverbal communication of their employees or clients. In addition, mirroring the nonverbal communication of others during a job interview, sales pitch, or performance evaluation can help put the other person at ease and establish rapport. Much of the mirroring we do is natural, so trying to overcompensate may actually be detrimental, but engaging in self-monitoring and making small adjustments could be beneficial (DePaulo, 1992).

You can also use nonverbal communication to bring positive attention to yourself. Being able to nonverbally encode turn-taking cues can allow people to contribute to conversations at relevant times, and getting an idea or a piece of information or feedback in at the right time can help bring attention to your professional competence. Being able to encode an appropriate amount of professionalism and enthusiasm during a job interview can also aid in desired impression formation because people make judgements about others’ personalities based on their nonverbal cues. A person who comes across as too enthusiastic may be seen as pushy or fake, and a person who comes across as too relaxed may be seen as unprofessional and unmotivated.

Nonverbal Communication and Culture

As with other aspects of communication, norms for nonverbal communication vary from country to country and also among cultures within a particular country. We have already learned that some nonverbal communication behaviours appear to be somewhat innate because they are universally recognized. Two such universal signals are the “eyebrow flash” of recognition when we see someone we know and the open hand and the palm up gesture that signals a person would like something or needs help (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). Smiling is also a universal nonverbal behaviour, but the triggers that lead a person to smile vary from culture to culture. The expansion of media, particularly from Canada, the United States, and other Western countries around the world, is leading to more nonverbal similarities among cultures, but the biggest cultural differences in nonverbal communication occur within the categories of eye contact, touch, and personal space (Pease & Pease, 2004). Take the time to watch the video below as it reviews some of the nonverbal communication concepts we covered in this chapter and relates them to differences within cultures.

(Study Hall, 2022)

Kinesics

Cultural variations in the way we gesture, use head movements, and use eye contact fall under the nonverbal category of kinesics.

Gestures

Remember that emblems are gestures that correspond to a word and an agreed-on meaning. When we use our fingers to count, we are using emblematic gestures, but even our way of counting varies among cultures (Pease & Pease, 2004). You could fairly accurately separate British people and North Americans from French, Greek, and German people based on a simple and common gesture. Try this exercise—first, display with your hand the number five. Second, keeping the five displayed, change it to a two. If you are from North America or Britain, you are probably holding up your index finder and your middle finger. If you are from a continental European country, you are probably holding up your thumb and index finger. While North Americans and Brits start counting on their index finger and end with five on their thumb, Europeans start counting on their thumb and end with five on their pinky finger.

How you use your hands can also get you into trouble if you’re unaware of cultural differences (Pease & Pease, 2004). For example, the “thumbs up” gesture, as we just learned, can mean “one” in mainland Europe, but it is also a signal for hitchhiking or means “good,” “good job,” “way to go,” or “OK” in many other cultures. Two hands up with the palms facing outward can signal “ten” in many Western countries and is recognized as a signal for “I’m telling the truth” or “I surrender” in many cultures.

Head Movements

Bowing is a nonverbal greeting ritual that is more common in Asian cultures than Western cultures, but the head nod, which is a common form of acknowledgement in many cultures, is actually an abbreviated bow. Japan is considered a noncontact culture, which refers to cultural groups in which people stand farther apart while talking, make less eye contact, and touch less during regular interactions. Because of this, bowing is the preferred nonverbal greeting over handshaking. Bows vary based on status, with higher status people bowing the least. For example, in order to indicate the status of another person, a Japanese businessperson may bow deeply. An interesting ritual associated with the bow is the exchange of business cards when greeting someone in Japan. This exchange allows each person to view the other’s occupation and title, which provides useful information about the other person’s status and determines who should bow more. Since bowing gives each person a good view of the other person’s shoes, it is very important to have clean shoes that are in good condition since they play an important part of initial impression formation.

Eye Contact

In some cultures, avoiding eye contact is considered a sign of respect. However, such eye contact aversion could also be seen as a sign that the other person is being deceptive, is bored, or is being rude. Some Indigenous groups teach that people should avoid eye contact with elders, teachers, and other people with status. This can create issues in classrooms when teachers are unaware of this norm and may consider a student’s lack of eye contact as a sign of insubordination or lack of engagement, which could lead to false impressions that the student is a troublemaker or less intelligent.

Haptics

As we’ve learned, touch behaviours are important during initial interactions, and cultural differences in these nonverbal practices can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding. For example, shaking hands as a typical touch greeting but varies among cultures (Pease & Pease, 2004). It is customary for British, Australian, German, Canadian, and American colleagues to shake hands when meeting each other for the first time and then to shake again when departing company. In Canada or the United States, colleagues do not normally shake hands again if they see each other once more later in the day, but European colleagues may shake hands with each other several times a day. Once a certain level of familiarity and closeness is reached, North American colleagues will likely not even shake hands daily unless engaging in some more formal interaction, but many European colleagues will continue to shake each time they see one another. Some French businesspeople have been known to spend up to 30 minutes a day shaking hands. The squeezes and up-and-down shakes used during handshakes are often called “pumps,” and the number of pumps used in a handshake also varies among cultures. Although the Germans and French shake hands more often throughout the day, they typically only give one or two pumps and then hold the shake for a couple seconds before letting go. The British tend to give three to five pumps, and Canadians tend to give five to seven pumps. This can be humorous to watch at a multinational business event, but it also affects the initial impressions people make of each other. A Canadian may think that a German is being unfriendly or distant because of their single hand pump, whereas a German may think that a Canadian is overdoing it with seven.

Contact cultures are cultural groups in which people stand closer together, engage in more eye contact, touch more frequently, and speak more loudly. Italians are especially known for their vibrant nonverbal communication in terms of gestures, volume, eye contact, and touching, which not surprisingly places them in the contact culture category. Italians use hand motions and touching to regulate the flow of conversations, and when non-Italians don’t know how to mirror an Italian’s nonverbal communication, they may not get to contribute much to the conversation, which likely feeds into the stereotype of Italians as domineering in conversations or overly expressive. For example, Italians speak with their hands raised as a way to signal that they are holding the floor for their conversational turn. If their conversational partner starts to raise their hands, the Italian might gently touch the other person and keep on talking. Conversational partners often interpret this as a sign of affection or of the Italian’s passion for what they are saying. In fact, it is a touch intended to keep the partner from raising their hands, which would signal that the Italian’s conversational turn is over and the other person now has the floor. It has been suggested that in order to get a conversational turn, you must physically grab the other person’s hands in midair and pull them down. While this would seem very invasive and rude to northern Europeans and North Americans, it is a nonverbal norm in Italian culture and may be the only way to get to contribute to a conversation (Pease & Pease, 2004).

Vocalics

The volume at which we speak is influenced by specific contexts and is more generally influenced by our culture. In European countries like France, England, Sweden, and Germany, it is not uncommon to find restaurants that have small tables very close together. In many cases, two people dining together may be sitting at a table that is actually touching the table of another pair of diners. Most North Americans would consider this a violation of personal space, and Europeans often perceive North Americans to be rude in such contexts because they do not control the volume of their conversations more. Since personal space is usually more plentiful in places such as Canada and the United States, people are used to speaking at a level that is considered loud to many cultures where less personal space is the norm .

Proxemics

Cultural norms for personal space vary much more than some other nonverbal communication channels such as facial expressions, which have more universal similarity and recognizability. We have already learned that contact and noncontact cultures differ in their preferences for touch and interpersonal distance. Countries in South America and southern Europe exhibit characteristics of contact cultures, whereas countries in northern Europe and Southeast Asia exhibit noncontact cultural characteristics. Because of the different comfort levels with personal space, a Guatemalan and a Canadian might come away with differing impressions of each other because of proxemic differences. The Guatemalan may feel that the Canadian is standoffish, and the Canadian may feel that the Guatemalan is pushy or aggressive.

Chronemics

The United States, Canada and many European countries have a monochronic orientation to time, meaning that time is seen as a commodity that can be budgeted, saved, spent, and wasted. Events are to be scheduled in advance and have set beginning and ending times. Countries such as Spain and Mexico have a polychronic orientation to time. Appointments may be scheduled at overlapping times, making an “orderly” schedule impossible. People may also miss appointments or deadlines without offering an apology, which would be considered very rude by a person with a monochronic orientation to time. People from cultures with a monochronic orientation to time are frustrated when people from polychromic cultures cancel appointments or close businesses for family obligations. Conversely, people from polychromic cultures feel that Canadians, for example, follow their schedules at the expense of personal relationships (Martin & Nakayama, 2010).

References

Byron, K., Terranova, S., & Nowicki Jr., S. (2007). Nonverbal emotion recognition and salespersons: Linking ability to perceived and actual success. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37(11), 2600–2619.

DePaulo, P. J. (1992). Applications of nonverbal behavior research in marketing and management. In R. S. Feldman (Ed.), Applications of nonverbal behavioral theories and research (pp. 63–87). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Intercultural communication in contexts (5th ed). McGraw-Hill.

Pease, A., & Pease, B. (2004). The definitive book of body language. Bantam.

Study Hall. (2022, November 9). Nonverbal cues and the use of space, touch, and Time | Intro to Human Communication | Study Hall [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGcnqqrj3Os

Image Credits (images are listed in order of appearance)

Two people paired up on a speed date, each earing a name tag by al fernandez, CC BY 2.0

Employee Training – Communication Skills Illustration by Digits.co.uk Images, CC BY 2.0

Man in white suit, thumbs up, looking at viewer by Katusali, CC BY-SA 4.0