The Benefits of Studying Nonverbal Communication

 

The Benefits of Studying Nonverbal Communication

 

The ability to use nonverbal communication effectively can yield a variety of both general and specific benefits in your social and your workplace lives. First, let’s identify some general benefits and then some more specific benefits.

 

Some General Benefits

 

The general benefits span the entire range of your communication life whether online or face-to-face, whether personal or workplace.

First, it will improve your accuracy in understanding others, those who are from your own or similar culture as well as those who are from cultures very different from your own. Increased accuracy in understanding others will yield obvious benefits in social and workplace situations—from understanding a coy smile from a date to the meaning of a supervisor’s gestures.

Second, an increased knowledge of nonverbal communication will improve your own ability to communicate information and to persuade others. In many instances, it will help you reinforce your verbal messages. The greater your nonverbal skills, the more successful you’re likely to be at informing as well as influencing others.

Third, it will increase your own perceived attractiveness; the greater your ability to send and receive nonverbal signals, the higher your popularity and psychosocial well-being are likely to be (Burgoon, Guerrero, & Floyd, 2010).  

Fourth, it will enable you to make a more effective self-presentation. Consider, for example, that when you meet someone for the first time—at least in face-to-face meetings—you form impressions of the person largely on the basis of his or her nonverbal messages. Being able to more effectively understand and manage your nonverbal messages will enable you to present yourself in the way you want to be perceived. The “If you want to” feature is largely devoted to the skills of self-presentation. As you can appreciate, these benefits will prove especially valuable in the workplace. In fact, the workplace is emphasized throughout the next chapters with the On the Job feature which presents a workplace issue, revolving around nonverbal communication, and asks you how you’d apply your nonverbal skills in dealing with the issue.

Each of these benefits and skills can be used to help or support another or they can be used for less noble purposes. For example, a person adept at nonverbal communication will be more effective in persuading others to buy cars or sign a mortgage they can’t afford or present themselves as competent when they aren’t or increase their attractiveness before hitting you up for a loan.

 

Some Specific Benefits

 

In addition these general benefits, here are some specific benefits of studying and mastering the art of nonverbal communication. Of course, learning about an important area of human behavior—what it is, how it works, what influences it, and a variety of other dimensions we’ll explore—is a benefit in itself. Increased knowledge is a benefit, pure and simple. But, there are additional, more immediately pragmatic, specific benefits that you can gain as a result for reading the text and completing the exercises. Here are 25:

1. Use nonverbal messages to interact with your verbal messages thus creating meaningful packages of messages.
2. Use nonverbal messages to manage the impressions you give to others.
3. Use nonverbal messages to help form and maintain productive and meaningful interpersonal and work relationships.
4. Use nonverbal messages to help regulate conversations and to make them more effective and satisfying.
5. Use nonverbal messages to persuade—to influence the attitudes or behaviors of others.
6. Use nonverbal messages to help express and communicate your emotions.
7. Use nonverbal messages with sensitivity to cultural and gender differences and expectations.
8. Use hand and body gestures to communicate varied meanings.
9. Use body posture to reinforce your intended messages.
10. Manage your facial expressions to communicate the meanings you want to share.
11. Vary your facial styles to communicate a wide variety of messages.
12. Communicate different meanings with eye movements and with eye avoidance.
13. Use color, clothing, and other artifacts to communicate the meanings you wish.
14. Use spatial messages to reinforce your verbal messages and in ways appropriate to the purpose of the interaction.
15. Use territorial markers and respond to the markers of others appropriately.
16. Use touch appropriate to the relationship stage and avoid touch that may be considered overly intimate or intrusive.
17. Use paralanguage to signal conversational turns, your desire to speak or to continue listening, for example.
18. Use silence to communicate a wide variety of meanings.
19. Respond to the rules of interpersonal time that are maintained in the particular context, for example, the workplace or the classroom.
20. Manage your time effectively and efficiently; avoid wasting time.
21. Increase your own attractiveness in a variety of ways.
22. Increase your ability to detect lying (but with important limitations).
23. Increase your immediacy or closeness to others when you wish.
24. Increase your perceived power with nonverbal cues.
25. Use nonverbal cues in a civil and polite manner to further your purposes.

 

Definitions of Nonverbal Communication

 

Definitions of Nonverbal Communication

Here are some definitions of nonverbal communication by a variety of researchers and theorists. As you see, the definitions boil down to “communication without words”. You'll find more recent definitions saying essentially the same thing.

 

The use of interacting sets of visual, vocal, and invisible communication systems and subsystems by communicators with the systematic encoding and decoding of nonverbal symbols and signs for the purpose(s) of exchanging consensual meanings in specific communication contexts.

Leathers & Eaves (2008), p. 11

 

The process of one person stimulating meaning in the mind of another person (or persons) by means of nonverbal messages.

Richmond, McCroskey, & Hickson (2012), p. 14

 

Messages expressed by nonlinguistic means.

Adler, Rosenfeld, & Proctor (2012), p. 175

 

All aspects of communication other than words themselves.

Wood (2012), p. 132

 

The process of using messages that are not words to generate meaning.

Pearson, Nelson, Titsworth, & Harter (2008), p. 86

 

Communication other than written or spoken language that creates meaning for someone

Ivy & Wahl (2009), p. 3

 

The transfer and exchange of messages in any and all modalities that do not involve words.

Matsumoto, Frank, and Hwang (2013), p. 4

The Myths and Truths of Nonverbal Communication

 

Consider each of the following statements about nonverbal communication. Which do you think are true?

1.      With training, you can tell what a person is thinking from watching their nonverbal behaviors.

2.      Lying is relatively easy to detect, especially with those with whom you have a close relationship.

3.      Unlike verbal communication which is learned, nonverbal communication is innate.

4.      Unlike verbal communication, nonverbal communication is universal—members of all cultures have the same meaning for gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements, for example.

5.      Nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication.

Although we’ll consider each of these assumptions as they become relevant in the course of our coverage of nonverbal communication, we should here examine what nonverbal communication is not. All of the five statements are more myth than fact. Briefly:

1.      You can’t tell what a person is thinking from their nonverbal behaviors, at least not generally. There are situations when you can tell—for example, you can often identify when a person is happy and when a person is sad. But, beyond these rather general meanings, you really can’t read a person like a book.

2.      Lying is actually extremely difficult to detect, especially when the liar is a person with whom you have a close relationship and the reason is that people in a close relationship have learned how to lie effectively to their relationship partner.

3.      Some nonverbal behaviors are certainly innate—fear, for example, may be expressed similarly in different cultures. But, much nonverbal behavior is learned in much the same way as verbal behavior is learned—through imitating those with whom you grow up.

4.      There are some nonverbal behaviors that are universal, the behaviors that are innate such as responses to fear. But, much nonverbal behavior varies widely in meaning from one culture to another. As we’ll see the same hand gesture may mean very different things in different cultures.

5.      This is perhaps the most popular myth about nonverbal communication. Certainly there are situations where nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication—perhaps in first encounters or in expressing support or love—but certainly not in all. You’d be hard pressed to explain nonverbally theoretical concepts, complex directions, or what happened on your way to class today.  So, the importance of one channel over another depends on the message and the unique communication situation you’re talking about. Rather than thinking about verbal and nonverbal communication competing for importance with one another, think about these two signal systems working together—each communicating the information it communicates best.