Lecture 19:Everyday life Flashcards
Define non-verbal communication
What is wrong with this definition?
Communication by means other than words.
It’s very broad and doesn’t reflect the complexity of it. For example, american sign language have behaviours other than words but there are also linguistic properties. It also doesn’t specify whether ‘means other than words’ involves how the communication is produced or how it’s received.
What are the three types of encoding in terms of non-verbal communication?
Arbitrary coding; for example, sign language, many other species can learn it. Cats can learn it.
Iconic coding; gestures that symbolise hunger, anger or mating
Intrinsic coding; Hard wired gestures that can be used as protection, to show hunger, to mate etc.
How does decoding occur?
Your brain decodes the gestures, your left hemisphere involves verbal phenomena and your right hemisphere involves non-verbal phenomena. The left hemisphere; verbal information, symbolic gestures, facial expression. Right hemisphere; visual and spatial, spontaneous expression of emotion like voice pitch.
Describe the human communication environment
The physical environment: Furniture, architecture, style, colours, noises, traces of actions like cigarette buts, or the seating area in a lecture hall (where you sit correlates to attention). Changes in wall colours can reduce habituation and induce positive moods in prisons. San Jose painted the prison pink which caused hostility after 3 hours.
Spatial environment: distance between interacting individuals and seating arrangements, the closer the proximity, the stronger the relationship. The cocktail party effect; focusing on one person when there is a lot of surrounding sound. As interference level increases, the optimal group size decreases. A circle arrangement is best for communication compared to a bar arrangement.
Discuss a communicator’s physical characteristics
Their characteristics can cause influential non-verbal cues. The characteristics don’t change throughout the interaction. Facial hair, body attractiveness and skin colour can influence how old your’e considered, how aggressive you are, your social status etc. It also involves clothing, make-up and accessories.
Discuss the effects of posture, gestures, facial expressions, eye behaviour and touch on talk
(These are all body movements)
4 basic types of non verbal communication
Speech independent gestures; they have a direct verbal translation but aren’t accompanied with speech.
Speech related gestures; they accompany speech and emphasise the sentence. For example, pointing at an object.
Posture also has an effect, it helps determine the degree of involvement and the status with the other participant. It indicates the intensity of emotional states.
Touching; self directing behaviours like scratching are signs that you are shy
Facial expressions; they express emotions and can inform receivers about what will happen next, like pouncing.
Eye behaviour: they’re social cues, for example gaze. People have reputational concerns when they are being watched. Bateson found this as people paid more ffor a coffee, via an honesty box, when being watched. The amygdala can detect pupil dilation unconsciously and large pupils increased the activity of it, showing arousal.
Discuss vocal behaviour in terms of non-verbal communication
How you say things can act as a non-verbal cue. For example, sound variations during speech and sounds resulting from physiological functions like yawning or laughing.
Discuss the integration of verbal and non-verbal behaviour
This is multimodal communication. Non-verbal behaviour is there to express emotions, convey attitudes, present your personality and accompany speech. For example, the McGurk effect. The term repetition and redundancy is often used, it means when verbal communication conveys the same information as non-verbal communication. It strengthens the meaning. Conflict and antagonism is when the two convey different information. If it’s ambivalent, frustrating or deceiving then it can lead to an incongruent message. For example, looking disgusted when you are scared. When the body posture aka context was incongruent, people made more mistakes at identifying the emotion. When the two are complementary, the message is decoded more accurately and it facilitates the recall. Substitution can occur when only non-verbal signals are used. It indicates permanent characteristics like gender and short term states, like attitude. This is shown by your common gestures and expressions. Modulation is when you amplify part of a message through gaze or facial expression. Regulation is when you coordinate your behaviour with the receiver’s via verbal or non-verbal cues.
