COM 3404- Discussion Post #2

In previous generations, tattooing was something done primarily by those, mostly males, in the military and only to a small extent (one or two relatively small tattoos, such as an anchor on a forearm). Also, women rarely were seen with tattoos and those were rarely visible to anyone who passed by. Today, tattooing has become a common occurrence and many people display large, ornate tattoos all over their bodies. The attitude toward these body adornments has changed dramatically. Explain:

1. To what do you attribute this change? How do age, gender, and culture relate to the perceptions and meanings we assign to tattoos?

2. In the video “Darwinian theory of beauty,” Denis Dutton states that “there are many differences among the arts, but there are also universal, cross-cultural aesthetic pleasures and values.” How would you connect Dutton’s statement to the stereotypes related to the use tattoos in your society? How does context affect the use of tattoos? What would be the effects of tattoos on interactions? Provide specific examples.

3. Your assigned textbook chapter explains the different “functions of clothing.” What function would you relate to tattoos ? Why?

Steps required for completing the discussion assignment

Support your points by making specific connections to the readings, videos, and/or recordings for the week. Specifically, include citations or statements from the video(s) and reading(s) covered in the current module.

VIDEO: https://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty

CH. 6 Slides attached

Nonverbal Communication

Chapter 6

The Effects of Physical Characteristics on Human Communication

Our Body: The Physical Attractiveness Stereotype
Physical attractiveness stereotype:
More than just attraction
Plethora of beliefs about associated traits (social/intellectual competence, mental health, virtue, dominance)
Attractive children are seen as: more intelligent, more socially adept, higher educational potential, more positive in their attitudes toward school
Cultural guidelines for attractiveness are internalized by age 6

Implications of High Attractiveness: Positive
Favored treatment, assumptions made
(ex: more lenient sentences in mock jury trials)

‘Benefit of the doubt’

Self-fulfilling prophecy: Own behavior/social skills are influenced by expectations (behavior) of others
Social inclusion
Opportunities for skill development
Nice treatment, respond in kind

Attractiveness Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Snyder et al. (1977)
Men had phone conversations with women
Men given (fake) photo of her: attractive vs. not
Asked to rate what she would be like
Conversation taped and analyzed
Men’s vocal (words and NVC) behavior matched their expectations
Women’s behavior followed in kind

Attractiveness Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (cont’d)
In more detail:
Stereotype (expectation) for ‘attractive’ partner were humorous, socially adept, sociable, poised (21 in all)
Men acted this way themselves
Women acted correspondingly on 17 of the 21 traits (e.g., enjoyment, animation, confidence)
Bottom line: When expecting woman to be attractive, man became more attractive and so did the woman

Implications of High Attractiveness: Positive cont’d
Are more attractive people actually different?
Yes, in some ways
Higher income, more educational attainment, better self-concept, less loneliness, less social anxiety, more popularity (esp. in females), more sexual experience, greater overall psychological well-being

No overall effect for self-esteem but attractiveness more correlated with self-esteem in women than men

Implications of High Attractiveness: Negative
Stereotype: shallow, vain, arrogant, stupid, asking for trouble, manipulative
Social ostracism, jealousy
Harsher punishment for con-artist crimes (simulation study)
More victim-blaming in rape cases

What is ‘Attractiveness’?
No fixed definition
Can refer to physical features only, or features AND expression or behavior (smell, voice)
Can refer to face, body, voice, movement style, cosmetic features (e.g., hairstyle, makeup)
Can refer to physical attraction (i.e., sexual) or non-sexual, generalized attraction (e.g., liking)
Measured by consensus (which is high)
Not just pertaining to women

Universality Question
Mass media produce homogenization of values
Generally, high consensus across perceivers between cultures, though not perfect
Heaviness valued more in developing countries; tiny feet in traditional China
Young infants look preferentially at more attractive faces: inborn preference?

Facial Averageness
The more average the face, the more attractive it is rated (done by morphing many faces together)
But, specific faces may still be especially attractive because they are more extreme on valued features
Very average faces can be nondistinctive (‘typical pretty girl’)

Biracial Features
Rhodes and colleagues found that White and Japanese participants perceived a mixed-race composite face to be more attractive than faces with either exaggerated White or Japanese features.

Facial Symmetry
More symmetrical faces are judged more attractive
However, specific asymmetrical faces might have idiosyncrasy credit (‘interesting’)

Attractiveness: Evolutionary Interpretations
These features signal health
Indeed, serious genetic or developmental defects do produce facial anomalies/asymmetries
People overgeneralize, associating health and therefore desirability to average and symmetrical faces
Spillover from an adaptive tendency to avoid the un-fit

Attractiveness: Evolutionary Interpretations (cont’d)
What features men and women are attracted to, short-term and other things being equal?
Women value more ‘masculinized’ features (thicker brows, thinner lips, squarer jaw) and bigger shoulder-waist ratio
Men value smaller waist-hip ratio, bigger breasts

Evolutionary psychology: these signal health and reproductive fitness

Attractiveness and Dating/Marriage
Matching hypothesis
The tendency to select a person similar to yourself in physical attractiveness—preferably a little above your self-perceived attractiveness

If mismatched, perceivers will judge the less attractive partner to have other attractive features such as making more money, being more successful in their occupations, and being more intelligent

Women often rank characteristics like ambition, social and economic status, dependability, and stability above physical features

Attractiveness and Jobs
Positives
May be an advantage in obtaining a job, obtaining a more prestigious job, and being hired at a higher salary
Negatives
Highly attractive job applicants might be evaluated negatively by same-gender evaluators who feel threatened by them
Attractive workers might worry that positive evaluations of their work are based on how they look rather than how they actually perform

Attractiveness and Persuading Others
Attractiveness of persuader counts
Especially when the persuasion involves a relatively short, one time request; when the first impression is critical; when involvement is low

Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo):
When people feel high involvement, they process the persuasive arguments.
But when involvement is low, they are influenced by superficial cues (such as attractiveness of speaker or model)

Attractiveness: Cautions About Overgeneralizing
In experiments, other factors often “held equal” but real life is not like that (other characteristics could trump attractiveness)

Stereotypes much stronger than actual differences

Moving Beyond Attractiveness – Important Qualifications
Interaction
Talk and nonverbal behavior can significantly affect perceptions
Mimicked verbal and nonverbal behavior during interactions can also lead to higher perceptions of attractiveness
Context
Moderate alcohol consumption leads to increase judgements of physical attractiveness
Time
Overall ratings of attractiveness for both men and women tend to decline in middle and old age; the decline is more severe for women

Johann Kaspar Lavater’s “Physiognomy”
Swiss clergyman, wrote highly influential book in 1772, translated into many languages
Physiognomy (silent ‘g’): “Science” of reading character from physical appearance
Wanted to be scientific; excellent observer

Physiognomy (cont’d)
“Do we not daily judge the sky by its physiognomy?”
“No food, not a glass of wine, or beer, or cup of coffee comes to the table that is not judged by its physiognomy.”
“What knowledge is there that is not founded on the exterior?”

Physiognomy (cont’d)
Recognized difference between form and expression but often mixed them up
Overlooked need for validity data
Said only someone who is “well formed” could be a good physiognomist
Irresponsible, sexist, racist, even nutty….but because of self-fulfilling prophecies there could be some truth that is worth uncovering

Physiognomy (cont’d)
On women: Traits of vanity and pride predominate in face—these traits are rarely in forehead, mostly in sides of nostrils, wrinkles of nose and cheeks particularly
On woman’s hairy warts on chin: These signal industriousness and a good housewife; also amorous to the point of frenzy; talks a lot
On noses: Noses which easily turn up in wrinkles are seldom found in truly good men, while those which will scarcely wrinkle, even with an effort, are in men who are consummately wicked

Physiognomy (cont’d)
On lips: Disproportion between the upper and lower lip is a sign of folly or wickedness; very large lips always denote a gross, sensual, sometimes stupid or wicked man
On chins: Broad, thick chin—only found in rude, harsh, proud, and violent persons
On mouths: Person is stupid if the mouth is very wide
On foreheads: Stupid person has forehead shorter than the nose
(Careful measurements would be made of a person’s face, making the pseudo-science seem like science)

Modern Evidence for Facial Stereotypes
Thick brows – rated as aggressive
Thick lips – rated as warm
Thin face – rated as suspicious
Many ‘snap judgments’ made about people based on facial (or bodily) physiognomy

Babyfaced-ness
Babyfaced features: big eyes, small chin, tall forehead, fat cheeks, small nose
People with these characteristics (of ALL ages) are perceived as ‘babyfaced’—versus ‘maturefaced’
Stereotype: Babyfaced are naïve, warm, honest, weak compared to maturefaced

Implications of Babyfaced-ness
Simulation study: babyfaced person more convicted of crime of negligence, maturefaced person more convicted of crime of intention
Babyfaced children’s misdeeds assumed to be less intentional

Implications of Babyfaced-ness (cont’d)
Babyfaced children assigned fewer chores by parents
Among delinquent boys, babyfaced ones got less maternal supervision

Implications of Babyfaced-ness (cont’d)
Babyfaced children spoken to in babytalk
‘Lost resume’ mailed more by a stranger if belonged to babyfaced (vs. maturefaced) applicant in both U.S. and Kenya

Implications of Babyfaced-ness (cont’d)
Rule and Ambady (2008)
Facial photographs of 50 CEOs of top and bottom Fortune 500 companies
Rated for leadership potential and for power (dominant, competent, facial maturity)
Controlling for age and attractiveness, both these ratings significantly correlated with company’s profits

Implications of Babyfaced-ness (cont’d)
Judgments of competence, dominance, and facial maturity in candidates’ faces predict vote differentials in U.S. elections (The babyface is linked to lower ratings of perceived political competence)

Cultural difference: not true in Japan. Rather, judgments of likeability and trustworthiness in candidates’ faces predict election outcomes

Babyfaced-ness Theory (Zebrowitz)
People overgeneralize the actual traits of babies, perceiving anyone with babyish features to have the traits of babies (weaker, more submissive, more intellectually naïve)
Same brain region activated when viewing babies and babyfaced adults
Evolutionary theory interpretation: Spillover from an adaptive response to babies’ needs

Face Recognition
Face recognition = knowing you’ve seen a face before
Relevant to eye-witness events, everyday life
Studied experimentally, not as an individual skill

Recognizing Faces and Own-Race Advantage
Predominant finding: Own-race advantage
Own-race advantage holds for any groups (White-Black, Black-White, White-Asian, Asian-White)
Several mechanisms proposed
Social: Negative attitudes towards other race proposed but not supported
Experiential: Greater exposure to own race alters perceptual and cognitive factors

Recognizing Faces and Own-Race Advantage (cont’d)
Goldinger et al. (2009) used White-Asian and Asian-White tasks
When viewing other-race faces people used less effective information gathering (eye tracking):
Fewer fixations; longer fixations; less looking at unique features; looking at eyes and hair for own race, looking at nose and mouth for other race; trailing off of effort especially in low-accurate viewers
Supports theory that own-race bias is related to perceptual processing, not a retrieval bias

Recognizing Faces and Own-Race Advantage (cont’d)
More practice with own race  learning to make more fine-grained distinctions
People make more categorical and less individuated analysis of other-race faces
Other-race face processing is therefore shallow and less effortful (paradoxically—product of its being more difficult)
Also could be a retrieval problem

Body Shape
Endomorph – soft, round
Stereotypes: more talkative, warmhearted, good natured, dependent, trusting
Mesomorph – bony, muscular, athletic
Stereotypes: more masculine, adventurous, younger, taller, mature in behavior, self-reliant
Ectomorph – tall, thin, fragile
Stereotypes: younger, ambitious, suspicious, tense, less masculine, more stubborn, more pessimistic, quieter
Some evidence exists for validity of somatic types (likely via self- and other-expectations)

Body Shape: Weight Stigma
Negative reactions to heavy people
A relatively ‘acceptable’ stigma
All ages
Heavier people less likely to marry, more likely to have a lower income
Less likely to go to college in general, and to more prestigious colleges – why?
Parents less likely to support them in college, especially if female (3 studies; Crandall, 1991)

Height
Important to children, certain jobs, in personal ads
Stereotypes different for men and women
Men: Taller is preferred to shorter
Taller presidential candidates have typically won since 1900; candidates hide shortness if they can
Taller men are considered more attractive
High status man perceived as taller (lecturer study)
Taller men chosen as applicants, advance to leadership, make more money
Taller men report having had more intercourse than shorter men

Body Image
Body imagine is one of the first aspects of self-perceptions that individuals form
More extreme in women, who prefer bodies that are smaller than normal, but busts larger than normal
Both men and women often misjudge what body type is the most appealing to others
Women think men prefer a thinner woman than men actually report
Men think women want a heavier man than women actually report

Body Color
Prejudice based on darker skin color, not just between groups but also within
Lighter-skinned Latinos make $5,000 more per year than darker-skinned Latinos
Education test-score gap between darker and lighter toned African Americans
Darker African Americans get more death penalties than lighter, for equivalent crimes
Obama ad created more positive reaction in Whites when African American family in scene had lighter skin

Body Odor
Smells help identify others
Spouses are able to identify the odors of their partners at higher than chance levels, as were mothers in identifying the odors of their infants
Smells play a role in mating and sexual behaviors
Men appear to be sexually responsive to the odors women produce when they are sexually aroused during their luteal phase
Women rate single men’s body odor as stronger than that of partnered men’s, presumably because single men have higher levels of testosterone in them

Hair
Most negative reactions against long hair are directed toward males. People may have negative reactions toward women with short hair.
Other body hair also

Clothes and Artifacts
People believe clothes matter, carry information
Less ambiguity about the intentionality issue
First impressions: Important
Stereotyping (bad if you don’t want it)(Hoodie)
Identity projection (personal and social identity)
Clothing influences receipt of help, obedience (Bickman, Milgrim)
Rules and norms
School uniforms; job uniforms
Conformity to group (avoid rejection, find acceptance)
Conform to situational prescriptions/proscriptions

Functions/Signals of Clothing
Decoration, protection, sexual attraction, self-assertion, group identification, bonding, reveal attitudes and ideology, mood reflection/creation, authority/status display, role display, personality, social integration (shows a person knows/follows the ‘rules’ of dress)

Clothing and Personality
Rosenfeld and Plax’s clothing questionnaire – measured values
Clothing consciousness, Exhibitionism, Practicality, Fashion orientation
Had many correlates in large sample
Other research:
Chic, stylish, colorful: Narcissists and extraverts
Preference for sexy, revealing clothes near time of ovulation: Sexually unrestricted women

Clothing and Personality (cont’d)
Feinberg et al. (1992)
(1) Identified 20 personality traits that might be conveyed by clothing
(2) Female participants brought outfit to lab that they thought reflected their personality
(3) Different women modeled the participants’ outfits for a photograph
(4) Different group guessed the personality of the person who owned the outfit
(5) Original participants self-rated their personality

Clothing and Personality (cont’d)
Feinberg’s results – cont’d
Group that guessed participants’ personality based on clothing were significantly accurate for the traits of:
Informal, lazy, immature, uncultured, conforming, ungracious, closed-minded
There was nearly significant accuracy for:
Unemotional, cold, phony, intuitive, and weak

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NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION IN
HUMAN INTERACTION

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has
deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

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NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION IN
HUMAN INTERACTION

E I G H T H

E D I T I O N

Mark L. Knapp
The University of Texas at Austin

Judith A. Hall
Northeastern University

Terrence G. Horgan
University of Michigan, Flint

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Nonverbal Communication in Human
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Mark L. Knapp, Judith A. Hall and
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Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 16 15 14 13 12

BRIEF CONTENTS

PREFACE xv

PART I
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL

COMMUNICATION 1

C H A P T E R 1 Nonverbal Communication: Basic Perspectives 3

C H A P T E R 2 The Roots of Nonverbal Behavior 29

C H A P T E R 3 The Ability to Receive and Send Nonverbal Signals 59

PART I I THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT 89

C H A P T E R 4 The Effects of the Environment on Human Communication 91

C H A P T E R 5 The Effects of Territory and Personal Space on Human
Communication 123

PART I I I THE COMMUNICATORS 151

C H A P T E R 6 The Effects of Physical Characteristics on Human Communication 153

PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR 197

C H A P T E R 7 The Effects of Gesture and Posture on Human Communication 199

C H A P T E R 8 The Effects of Touch on Human Communication 231

C H A P T E R 9 The Effects of the Face on Human Communication 258

C H A P T E R 1 0 The Effects of Eye Behavior on Human Communication 295

C H A P T E R 1 1 The Effects of Vocal Cues That Accompany Spoken Words 323

PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES 357

C H A P T E R 1 2 Using Nonverbal Behavior in Daily Interaction 359

C H A P T E R 1 3 Nonverbal Messages in Special Contexts 395

REFERENCES 421

NAME INDEX 493

SUBJECT INDEX 508

vi BRIEF CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PREFACE xv

PART I
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL

COMMUNICATION 1

C H A P T E R 1 Nonverbal Communication: Basic Perspectives 3

Perspective 1: Defining Nonverbal Communication 8
Processing Nonverbal Information 9
Awareness and Control 10

Perspective 2: Classifying Nonverbal Behavior 10
The Communication Environment 11
The Communicators’ Physical Characteristics 11
Body Movement and Position 12

Perspective 3: Nonverbal Communication in the Total
Communication Process 14

Repeating 15
Conflicting 15
Complementing 18
Substituting 19
Accenting/Moderating 19
Regulating 19

Perspective 4: Historical Trends in Nonverbal Research 21

Perspective 5: Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Life 25

Summary 27

vii

C H A P T E R 2 The Roots of Nonverbal Behavior 29

The Development of Nonverbal Behavior across Evolutionary Time 31
Evidence from Sensory Deprivation 32
Evidence from Infants 37
Evidence from Twin Studies 40
Evidence from Nonhuman Primates 44
Evidence from Multicultural Studies 52

Summary 57

C H A P T E R 3 The Ability to Receive and Send Nonverbal Signals 59

Development and Improvement of Nonverbal Skills 61

Is It Good to Have More Accurate Knowledge of Nonverbal
Communication? 64

Measuring the Accuracy of Decoding and Encoding Nonverbal Cues 65
Standardized Tests of Decoding Ability 68

Personal Factors Influencing the Accuracy of Decoding Nonverbal Cues 71
Self-Appraisals and Explicit Knowledge of Nonverbal Cues 72
Gender 73
Age 73
General Cognitive Ability 74
Other Personal Correlates 75
Substance Abuse 77
Culture 78

Task Factors Affecting Nonverbal Decoding Accuracy 78

Characteristics of Accurate Nonverbal Senders 79
Putting Decoding and Encoding Together 82

On Being an Observer of Nonverbal Communication 83
The Fallibility of Human Perception 85

Summary 86

PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT 89

C H A P T E R 4 The Effects of the Environment on Human Communication 91

Perceptions of Our Surroundings 94
Perceptions of Formality 94
Perceptions of Warmth 95
Perceptions of Privacy 96
Perceptions of Familiarity 96

viii CONTENTS

Perceptions of Constraint 96
Perceptions of Distance 96

Reacting to Environments 97

Perceptions of Time 98

The Natural Environment 100

Other People in the Environment 104

Architectural Design and Movable Objects 105
Color 108
Sound 111
Lighting 113
Movable Objects 114
Structure and Design 116

Regulating Environments and Communication 121

Summary 122

C H A P T E R 5 The Effects of Territory and Personal Space on Human
Communication 123

The Concept of Territoriality 123

Territoriality: Invasion and Defense 125

Density and Crowding 129
The Effects of High Density on Human Beings 131
Coping with High Density 132

Conversational Distance 133
Sex 137
Age 137
Cultural and Ethnic Background 138
Topic or Subject Matter 139
Setting for the Interaction 140
Physical Characteristics 140
Attitudinal and Emotional Orientation 140
Characteristics of the Interpersonal Relationship 141
Personality Characteristics 141

Seating Behavior and Spatial Arrangements in Small Groups 142
Leadership 143
Dominance 144
Task 144
Sex and Acquaintance 145
Introversion–Extraversion 147
Conclusion 147

Summary 148

CONTENTS ix

PART III THE COMMUNICATORS 151

C H A P T E R 6 The Effects of Physical Characteristics on Human
Communication 153

Our Body: Its General Attractiveness 154
Dating and Marriage 156
On the Job 159
Persuading Others 160
Self-Esteem 161
Antisocial Behavior 161

The Power of Physical Attractiveness: Some Important Qualifications 162
The Effects of Interaction 162
The Effects of Context 163
Stereotypes Are Not Always Valid 164
Attractiveness over Time 164

Our Body: Its Specific Features 165
Attractiveness and the Face 165
Judgments of the Face 167
Body Shape 169
Height 174
Body Image 177
Body Color 178
Body Smell 179
Body Hair 182

Our Body: Clothes and Other Artifacts 186
Functions of Clothing 188
Clothing as Information About the Person 190
Effects of Clothing on the Wearer 190
Clothing and Personality 191
Artifacts and Body Decorations 192

Summary 194

PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR 197

C H A P T E R 7 The Effects of Gesture and Posture on Human Communication 199

Speech-Independent Gestures 201

Speech-Related Gestures 211
Referent-Related Gestures 212
Gestures Indicating a Speaker’s Relationship to the Referent 212

x CONTENTS

Punctuation Gestures 214
Interactive Gestures 214

Gesture Frequency 216

The Coordination of Gesture, Posture, and Speech 219
Self-Synchrony 219
Interaction Synchrony 222

Summary 229

C H A P T E R 8 The Effects of Touch on Human Communication 231

Touching and Human Development 232

Who Touches Whom, Where, When, and How Much? 234

Different Types of Touching Behavior 237

The Meanings and Impact of Interpersonal Touch 241
Touch as Positive Affect 241
Touch as Negative Affect 241
Touch and Discrete Emotions 242
Touch as Play 242
Touch as Influence 243
Touch as Interaction Management 244
Touch as Physiological Stimulus 244
Touch as Interpersonal Responsiveness 244
Touch as Task Related 245
Touch as Healing 245
Touch as Symbolism 247

Contextual Factors in the Meaning of Interpersonal Touch 249

Touch Can Be a Powerful Nonconscious Force in Interaction 250

Self-Touching 253

Summary 256

C H A P T E R 9 The Effects of the Face on Human Communication 258

The Face and Personality Judgments 258

The Face and Interaction Management 259
Channel Control 260
Complementing or Qualifying Other Behavior 260
Replacing Spoken Messages 260

The Face and Expressions of Emotion 261
Display Rules and Facial Emotion Expression 262
The Facial Emotion Controversy 266
Measuring the Face 268

CONTENTS xi

Measuring Emotion Recognition 274
Emotions Inferred from the Face 278

Physiology and the Face 285
Internalizers and Externalizers 285
Facial Expression and Health 285
Facial Feedback 286

The Social Impact of Facial Expressions 289

Summary 293

C H A P T E R 1 0 The Effects of Eye Behavior on Human Communication 295

Gaze and Mutual Gaze 296

Functions of Gazing 297
Regulating the Flow of Communication 298
Monitoring Feedback 300
Reflecting Cognitive Activity 301
Expressing Emotions 301

Communicating the Nature of the Interpersonal Relationship 306

Conditions Influencing Gazing Patterns 309
Distance 309
Physical Characteristics 310
Personal Characteristics and Personality 310
Psychopathology 313
Topics and Tasks 314
Cultural and Racial Background and Racial Attitudes 317

Pupil Dilation and Constriction 318

Summary 321

C H A P T E R 1 1 The Effects of Vocal Cues That Accompany Spoken Words 323

The Relative Importance of Channels 324

The Ingredients and Methods of Studying Paralanguage 326

Vocal Cues and Speaker Recognition 330

Vocal Cues and Personality 333

Vocal Cues and Group Perceptions 336

Vocal Cues and Judgments of Sociodemographic Characteristics 337
Sex 337
Age 339
Social Class or Status 339
Characteristics of Recipients 339

xii CONTENTS

Vocal Cues and Emotion 341

Vocal Cues, Comprehension, and Persuasion 346
Vocal Cues, Comprehension, and Retention 347
Vocal Cues and Persuasion 348

Vocal Cues and Turn Taking in Conversations 349
Turn Yielding 350
Turn Requesting 350
Turn Maintaining 351
Turn Denying 351

Hesitations, Pauses, Silence, and Speech 351
Location or Placement of Pauses 352
Types of Pauses 352
Reasons Why Pauses Occur 353
Influence and Coordination within the Dyad 354
Silence 354

Summary 355

PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES 357

C H A P T E R 1 2 Using Nonverbal Behavior in Daily Interaction 359

Communicating Intimacy 360
Courtship Behavior 360
Quasi-Courtship Behavior 363
Liking Behavior or Immediacy 364
Being Close in Close Relationships 364
Mutual Influence 367

Communicating Dominance and Status 369

Managing the Interaction 373
Greeting Behavior 373
Turn-Taking Behavior 375
Leave-Taking Behavior 378

Communicating Our Identity 379
Personal Identity 380
Social Identity 382

Deceiving Others 387

A Perspective for Communicators 392

Summary 393

CONTENTS xiii

C H A P T E R 1 3 Nonverbal Messages in Special Contexts 395

Advertising Messages 396

Political Messages 401

Teacher–Student Messages 405

Cultural Messages 408
High-Contact versus Low-Contact Cultures 408
Individualism versus Collectivism 409
High-Context versus Low-Context Cultures 410
Similarities across Cultures 410

Therapeutic Settings 411

Technology and Nonverbal Messages 414

Summary 419

REFERENCES 421

NAME INDEX 493

SUBJECT INDEX 508

xiv CONTENTS

PREFACE

Normally, the final thing authors do in a preface is to thank those who have been
instrumental in the development of their book. We’d like to depart from that
tradition by starting with our heartfelt thanks to the thousands of students and
instructors who have used this book and provided feedback to us during the past
40 years. More than anyone else, you are responsible for the longevity of this
book. With this in mind, we undertook this eighth edition by putting what we
believe to be instructor and student needs at the forefront of our writing. As with
previous editions, we encourage you to let us know whether we have succeeded.

The fact that this book is coauthored is worth noting. One of us represents
the field of communication and the other two social psychology. This collabo-
ration, which requires the blending of two distinct perspectives, is symbolic of
the nonverbal literature we report in this volume. The theory and research
addressing nonverbal phenomena comes from scholars with a wide variety of
academic backgrounds and perspectives—communication, counseling, psychology,
psychiatry, linguistics, sociology, management, speech, and others. Understanding
the nature of nonverbal communication is truly an interdisciplinary enterprise.

In revising this book, we retained the features that students and instructors
valued from the previous editions while adding and changing other things that we
believe will improve the book. One change that we hope students like is the inclu-
sion of text boxes in each chapter. These text boxes cover important, interesting,
or current topics relevant to the field of nonverbal communication. We recognize
how important photographs and drawings are in a book like this, so we have con-
tinued to use visual representations to aid comprehension of certain nonverbal
actions. Because an increasing amount of communication is mediated by some
form of technology, we have incorporated new research findings and topics in
that area that are relevant to the lives of students and teachers, such as Facebook,
online dating, and text messaging, to name a few.

In every new edition, we incorporate the most recent theory and research
while retaining definitive studies from the past. Readers will find that some areas

of study have fewer recent references than others. This simply means that there
hasn’t been a lot of recent research in that area or that the recent work, in our
judgment, does not substantially change the conclusions from earlier studies. If
something we know about human behavior today was first revealed in a study
from 1958, we want readers to know that, and we will maintain the 1958 refer-
ence. Research on a particular topic often has an ebb and flow to it. During the
1960s and 1970s, the fear that a worldwide population boom would create terrible
problems spawned a lot of research on space, territory, and crowding. In recent
years, far less research has been done in this area. The study of gestures, on the
other hand, has gone from an area of relatively little research activity during the
1960s and 1970s to an area that is of primary interest to numerous scholars today.

Unlike past editions in which extensive bibliographies followed each chapter,
we have moved all the references to one bibliography in the back of the book.
Similar to previous editions, though, we have tried to retain a writing style that is
scientifically accurate as well as interesting to the reader. We are honored that our
book serves as both a textbook and a reference work. The Instructor’s Manual for
this book provides the information and imagination necessary for effective classroom
learning in nonverbal communication.

The book is divided into five parts. Part I introduces the reader to some funda-
mental ideas and addresses the following questions: What is nonverbal communi-
cation? How do verbal and nonverbal communication interrelate? What difference
does a knowledge of nonverbal communication make to your everyday life? Are
some people more skilled than others at communicating nonverbally? How did
they get that way? With this general perspective in mind, Parts II, III, and IV take
the reader through the nonverbal elements involved in any interaction: the environ-
ment within which the interaction occurs, the physical features of the interactants
themselves, and their behavior—gestures, touching, facial expressions, eye gazing,
and vocal sounds. Part V begins with a chapter focused on how all the separate
parts of an interaction combine as we seek to accomplish very common goals in
daily life—for example, communicating who we are, communicating closeness and
distance, communicating varying degrees of status and power, deceiving others,
and effectively managing the back-and-forth flow of conversation. Chapter 13
examines nonverbal communication in the context of advertising, therapy, the
classroom, politics, culture, and technology. Throughout the book we repeatedly
point out how all interactants involved are likely to play a role in whatever behavior
is displayed by a single individual—even though this perspective is not always
adequately developed in the research we review.

Several helpful online tools are available for use with this text. The online
Instructor’s Resource Manual includes a sample schedule, chapter objectives,
discussion questions, test items, audiovisual resources, exercises, and out-of-class
assignments. The companion Web site features student self-quizzes. In addition,
you can choose to purchase this text with 4 months of free access to InfoTrac®

College Edition, a world-class, online university library that offers the full text of
articles from almost 5,000 scholarly journals and popular publications updated
daily, going back more than 20 years. Students can also gain instant access to
critical-thinking and paper-writing tools through InfoWrite. Your subscription
now includes InfoMarks®—instant access to virtual readers drawing from the vast

xvi PREFACE

InfoTrac College Edition library and hand selected to work with your books. You
can access your online resources at www.cengagebrain.com/. For more information
about these online resources, contact your local Cengage Learning representative.

All of us would like to thank Susanna Tippett for the time, energy, and
accuracy she contributed in preparing the bibliography as well as those (Melissa
Grey and Tom Voss) who reviewed a couple of our text boxes. Mark and Judy are
especially thankful for the high-quality and tireless work that Terry Horgan invested
in this edition. He brought a needed fresh perspective, a dynamic writing style,
and a high level of professionalism to this volume. We are honored that such a
fine scholar agreed to share authorship on this textbook.

Each of us would also like to thank following reviewers for their input
during the development of this edition:

Erika Engstrom, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Peggy Hutcheson, Kennesaw State University
Kevin Hutchinson, St. Norbert College
Rebecca Litke, California State University, Northridge
Christine Moore, Boise State University
Teri Varner, St. Edward’s University
Dennis Wignall, Dixie State College

We would also like to acknowledge the skills exhibited by the publishing staff
who helped us develop this edition including Monica Eckman, publisher, and
Colin Solan, editorial assistant. And a special thanks to Daisuke Yasutake
and Pooja Khurana for great patience and timeliness in all our communications
regarding the revision.

PREFACE xvii

AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE STUDY OF
NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION

[ P A R T I ]

What is nonverbal communication? How does nonverbal behavior function in rela-
tion to verbal behavior? How does nonverbal communication affect our everyday
lives? Do we learn how to perform body language, or is it instinctive? Are some
people more skilled at communicating with these face, voice, and body signals?
The answers to these fundamental questions are the focus of Part I of this book.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION:
BASIC PERSPECTIVES

[ C H A P T E R 1 ]

It may come as no surprise to you that, in everyday life, you are an expert in non-
verbal communication even though you have yet to read a page of this book. Con-
sider the following questions:

• Have you ever looked at another person in such a way as to communicate
your sexual interest in him or her?

• When you enter an elevator full of strangers, do you take a sudden interest in
how those buttons light up as the cage moves from floor to floor?

• Do you know when a baby is hungry as opposed to tired, just from hearing
how it cries?

• If you cut someone off in traffic, would you have a problem understanding the
other driver’s reaction if he or she showed you only an upright middle finger?

• How would you use your right hand when you are introduced to a potential
boss during an interview?

• Can you tell when a loved one might be mad, sad, or happy by looking at his
or her face?

• Imagine entering a dorm room and seeing two men. One is wearing athletic
shorts and a tank top over a heavily muscled body, and he has posters of
football stars on the wall near his bed and his clothes litter his side of the
room. The other man—thin and bespectacled—appears to be neat as a pin,
with stacks of math and engineering books around his desk. Would you
suspect potential conflict between these two?

Those of us who keep our eyes open can read volumes into what we see going on
around us.

—E. T. Hall

Chances are you had no problem answering these questions. That is because
everyone possesses a wealth of knowledge, beliefs, and experience regarding non-
verbal communication. These questions bring to mind three aspects of nonverbal
communication that you make use of during your day-to-day interactions with
others. One concerns the sending of nonverbal messages; the second, receiving
them; and the last, the complex interplay between the first two. First, you send (or
encode) nonverbal messages to others—sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. In
the case of the former, your goal is for the other person to understand a particular
message that you have sent to him or her along one or more nonverbal cue chan-
nels, such as your tone of voice, posture, and facial expression (“She could tell
I was mad at her”). Sometimes you succeed. If you do not, it could be because
your message was unclear, contradictory, or ambiguous or because the other
person missed, ignored, or misread your nonverbal message. You also may send
nonverbal messages to others that are not deliberate or even intended by you. For
example, you naturally communicate your biological sex to others via a series of
static nonverbal cues that include your body shape and facial features, and you
can burst into tears when sad. You have sent a powerful nonverbal message to
others in each case, even though your goal was not necessarily to do so. There are
times in which important information about your emotional state, attitudes, and
intentions leaks out of you nonverbally. Your bitterness toward a rival’s remarks
might be revealed in a flash of anger across your face despite your best efforts to
conceal it. Such facial cues are dynamic in nature because they change during an
interaction.

As you might have guessed already, you live in a sea of static and dynamic
nonverbal messages. These messages come to you when you are interacting with
others and even when you are all alone (“I start to shake when I think about my
date tonight”). They come to you from other people, such as strangers, acquain-
tances, neighbors, coworkers, friends, and loved ones. They even come to you
from animals that are part of your world, such as the neighbor’s dog that wags its
tail every time it sees you. They also come to you from the physical structure of,
and objects contained within, the environments that you move in and out of during
your day. These environments are real in a physical sense because you can make
physical contact with them. However, one such environment is not physical in this
sense: cyberspace. While in cyberspace, you can only hear and see nonverbal mes-
sages, such as those delivered by others’ profile “pics” and emoticons. These
computer-generated nonverbal messages are probably becoming increasingly
important to you in a world where online interactions are taking the place of some
face-to-face interactions. Indeed, some of you might be taking this class—of all
things, a class in nonverbal communication—online.

Verbal messages are meaningless unless someone is there to interpret them.
Nonverbal communication is no different. The process of receiving nonverbal mes-
sages, including our own (“Why is my fist clenched when he’s around?”), includes
giving meaning to or interpreting those messages. (This process will be defined later
as decoding a nonverbal message.) As a receiver of nonverbal messages, you may
focus on one particular nonverbal cue or several in an attempt to understand the
message that another person has sent to you. For example, in an effort to under-
stand the emotional state of your friend James, you might focus on his facial

4 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

expression or his posture, facial expression, and tone of voice. Whether you are
successful at interpreting that emotional message is another matter altogether. If
you succeed, what you think he feels and how he actually feels will be the same.
However, as mentioned earlier, you might have missed or ignored that nonverbal
message. Or, depending on your skill level at reading others’ emotion states, you
might have misinterpreted his nonverbal message. Finally, you might have correctly
interpreted his message but still do not understand how he truly feels because he
used nonverbal behavior to feign a feeling or conceal a particular emotion state
from you.

It is obvious that words can be combined in an infinite number of ways, and
that the meaning of a sentence may depend upon contextual information, word
choice, and the arrangement of the selected words. For example, take the following
sentence fragment: “Mia learned about … She drove to … Charity … with a … in
her hand.” It is unclear what is going on in this situation. Let us see what happens
when we add different contextual information and words to these sentences.
(1) Mia learned about the plight of the children. She drove to the Charity with a
checkbook in her hand. (2) Mia learned about her husband’s infidelity. She drove
to the house where Charity lives with a gun in her hand. In a similar fashion, the
meaning of nonverbal communication is not as simple as knowing what specific
nonverbal behavior, say touching, is seen by you. It depends upon contextual infor-
mation, the sender (encoder) of the nonverbal behavior, the receiver (decoder) of
that behavior, the relationship between the sender and receiver, the arrangement
of other nonverbal cues, as well as any words being exchanged by the two.

Let us consider an example to illustrate the complexity of nonverbal communi-
cation. You see two people hug. What does that hug mean? Now what comes to
your mind when additional information is added?

• There are other people around dressed in black standing near an open casket
at a funeral, or the two people are at a high school reunion.

• What if the setting is a nightclub and the two people are a man and woman in
the early stages of a romantic relationship as opposed to two men who are
there to celebrate their baseball team’s victory earlier that evening?

• Would your perception of the hug change if you learned that the setting was a
work party and the person initiating the hugging was known to be very warm
and outgoing versus of high status and a domineering disposition?

• How might the inclusion and placement of other nonverbal cues, such as pos-
ture, affect your perception of the hug? What if the two people are leaning
toward each other from a distance, touching shoulders only briefly as opposed
to pressing their bodies together and resting their heads on each other’s
shoulders? Would it matter to you if the person being hugged stiffened his or her
body before receiving the hug? Historical and cultural factors are likely to play a
role in your perception of that simple hug as well. If you had lived around the
turn of the 20th century, you would have looked askance at the two people if
you knew that they had just ended their first date, whereas nowadays such
behavior would not even raise one of your eyebrows. If the two were Eastern
European men, you might not be surprised if they began cheek kissing as well,
whereas you would be surprised if they were from the United States.

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 5

• Lastly, consideration would be given to any words exchanged between the two
people, as this could significantly alter the meaning of their hug. For instance,
in the funeral setting mentioned earlier, it would matter if, during the hug, one
person said to the other, “Sorry for your loss,” as opposed to “We can now
finally get our hands on our inheritance money!”

Being an expert in using and understanding nonverbal cues, you probably had
no problem understanding how the meaning of that hug changed in these scenar-
ios. On the basis of the hugging scenarios (see Figure 1-1), it might be clear to you
that a particular nonverbal cue has multiple meanings (or maybe even no apparent
meaning at all) and that the particular meaning you settle on depends on a host of
other factors, including the presence and absence of other nonverbal cues. Thus, as
a sender and receiver of nonverbal cues, you have to make some decisions about

CAN PEOPLE READ OTHERS LIKE A BOOK?

It depends on your definition of like a book. There are book
titles that tell us a lot about what is inside (e.g., How to
Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine). Similarly, there are
nonverbal displays that can tell us a lot about what a
person is feeling inside (e.g., red face, eyebrows lowered
and drawn together, shaking fists). Book covers and titles
also allow us to categorize stories (e.g., nonfiction, history,
civil war battles). Likewise, we can categorize people—their
age, gender, and personality traits—by looking at their
head and facial characteristics (see Chapter 6).

However, understanding books and people is generally a far more complicated matter. If you read
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, you had to learn about the characters, the events, the setting, and the
plot to grasp her story. Understanding people is no different. If you were observing another person, you
would want to take into consideration his or her characteristics (physical, social, psychological), his or her
nonverbal and verbal behavior, the setting he or she is in, whom he or she is interacting with and why,
and so on. Importantly, people’s nonverbal cues are only one clue—the meaning of which is dependent
upon a host of other factors—to understanding who they are.

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6 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

the cues you transmit to and pick up from others, which suggests that there must
be some rules that you follow. Some of these rules may be very clear to you, such
as knowing that you should not sniff a member of the other sex when you first
meet him or her. Other rules that you follow are completely unknown to you,
operating outside your conscious awareness. Do you know the array of cues that
you send and receive that allow you and a friend to smoothly and effortlessly take
turns while talking to each other? Finally, other rules occupy the middle ground
between the two; they can be brought to your conscious awareness at times, if
only partially. One such rule concerns not standing too close to others when talk-
ing with them. Although you are aware of this rule, you probably do not think
about it much during your day-to-day interactions. However, although the exact
distance of your personal comfort zone may be unknown to you, you certainly
know when it has been violated by someone standing too close. Because these
rules run the gamut from being explicit to completely outside of your conscious
awareness, the decisions you make regarding your use and interpretation of non-
verbal cues must as well.

Despite being an expert in the everyday use of nonverbal cues, you are new to
the scientific study of nonverbal communication. The need to formally investigate
what people do in everyday life becomes quickly apparent when you think about
the specifics of nonverbal behavior. For example, how do people’s personal com-
fort zones vary from culture to culture, and how do people manage to take turns
smoothly in conversation? The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the
scientific study of nonverbal communication, which includes an examination of
how nonverbal cues are used—whether intentionally or spontaneously, consciously

FIGURE 1-1
What will this hug mean?

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CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 7

or not—in human interaction. Of importance, our understanding of nonverbal
communication comes from many different disciplines, including anthropology,
biology, communication, gender studies, psychology, and sociology, which will
become apparent in the chapters to follow.

However, before we get to that, there is a need to discuss five basic perspec-
tives through which we can view these chapters:

1. As with other scientific disciplines, there is a need for a common language for
discussing the topic at hand. Thus, nonverbal communication will be defined.

2. Nonverbal behavior also will be classified (e.g., territoriality, gestures, touch-
ing, eye behavior). By classifying nonverbal behaviors, we will be able to
review the relevant research in each area in an organized fashion.

3. Nonverbal behavior that has been defined and classified (e.g., touching behav-
ior) should not be thought of as occurring in isolation from nonverbal behav-
ior that is part of another category (e.g., eye behavior) or, for that matter,
from verbal behavior. Indeed, consideration of the interplay between nonver-
bal cues and verbal cues is a vital part of understanding the total communica-
tion process that occurs between people in daily life and even on social
networking sites.

4. The scientific roots and historical trends in nonverbal communication research
will be reviewed, as they provide the foundation and framework, respectively,
for exploring the current research in this domain.

5. The potential relevance of this scientific endeavor to our everyday lives will be
discussed, as many of its findings have implications for our personal lives and
can be applied to the various settings in which we work.

Each of these basic perspectives will be covered in greater detail in the remain-
der of this chapter.

PERSPECTIVE 1: DEFINING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

To most people, the phrase nonverbal communication refers to communication
effected by means other than words, assuming words are the verbal element. Like
most definitions, this one is generally useful, but it does not account for the com-
plexity of this phenomenon adequately. This broad definition should serve us well,
though, as long as we understand and appreciate the following points.

First, we need to understand that separating verbal and nonverbal behavior
into two separate and distinct categories is virtually impossible. Consider, for
example, the hand movements that make up American Sign Language, a language
of the deaf. These gesticulations are mostly linguistic (verbal), yet hand gestures
are often considered behavior that is “other than words.” And for those who can
hear, their own hand gestures may be used to retrieve the words they wish to
speak to others from their mental lexicon (Hadar, Wenkert-Olenik, Krauss, &
Soroker, 1998). McNeill (1992) demonstrated the linguistic qualities of some
gestures by noting that different kinds of gestures disappear with different kinds of
aphasia—the impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words—namely,
those gestures with linguistic functions similar to the specific verbal loss. Conversely,
not all spoken words are clearly or singularly verbal: for example, onomatopoeic

8 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

words, such as buzz or murmur, and nonpropositional speech used by auctioneers
and some people with aphasia.

Second, we need to understand that our definition does not indicate whether
the phrase “by means other than words” refers to the type of signal produced—
that is, its encoding—or to the perceiver’s code for interpreting the symbol—its
decoding. Generally, when people refer to nonverbal behavior, they are talking
about the signals produced, or encoded, to which meaning will be attributed, not
the process of attributing meaning. A first step toward understanding the process
of attributing meaning to nonverbal behavior is to understand how the brain pro-
cesses nonverbal stimuli.

PROCESSING NONVERBAL INFORMATION

Currently, many brain researchers believe that the two hemispheres of the brain
process different types of information, but each hemisphere does not process each
type exclusively. Nonverbal messages may be processed by either hemisphere, even
though the bulk of the work is probably done by the right side. The left hemisphere
processes mainly sequentially ordered, digital, verbal, and linguistic information.
Nonverbal messages processed by the left hemisphere may involve symbolic gestures
and facial expressions that have a closely linked verbal translation: for example,
speech-independent gestures that have a direct verbal translation, such as thumbs-
up (see Chapter 7). The right hemisphere of the brain is normally credited with pro-
cessing visual/spatial relationships and analogic, or Gestalt, information. And it
seems to be the main processing area for some types of gestures as well as spontane-
ous, expressive displays of emotion in the face and voice (Buck & VanLear, 2002;
Kelly & Goldsmith, 2004). It is important to note, however, that few scientists cur-
rently believe that either side of the brain deals exclusively with a particular kind of
information. In fact, the following case illustrates how adaptable the brain can be.

Bruce Lipstadt had the left hemisphere of his brain removed when he was
5 years old (Koutlak, 1976). Few doctors had hope for the development of his
verbal ability, and most thought the operation would paralyze part of his body.
Twenty-six years later, Bruce had an IQ of 126—better than 9 out of 10 people.
He swam, rode his bike, and got an A in a statistics course. Because his speech
was normal, the right hemisphere must have taken over many of the functions
formerly conducted mainly by the left hemisphere. Obviously, this does not always
happen as a result of operations of this type, especially after puberty. But it does sug-
gest that, although the right and left hemispheres seem to specialize in processing
certain types of information, they are by no means limited to processing only one.

Even when information is being processed primarily by one hemisphere, it
is unlikely that the other hemisphere is totally inactive. While someone is reading
a story, the right hemisphere may be playing a specialized role in understanding
a metaphor or appreciating emotional content, whereas the left hemisphere is
simultaneously trying to derive meaning from the complex relations among
word concepts and syntax. Interestingly, the different functions of the two brain
hemispheres do not seem as clearly differentiated in women as in men, and some
left-handed people are known to have hemispheric functions the opposite of those
just described (Andersen, Garrison, & Andersen, 1979; Iaccino, 1993).

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 9

Despite the apparent complexity and adaptability of the brain, much of what is
processed by the right hemisphere seems to be what we call nonverbal phenomena,
whereas much of what is processed by the left hemisphere is what we categorize as
verbal phenomena. However, because some nonverbal behavior is more closely
aligned with verbal behavior than others (e.g., speech-independent gestures), we
might expect to see more left-hemispheric activity in such cases.

AWARENESS AND CONTROL

Thus far, our definition has not addressed the issue of whether the nonverbal beha-
viors we enact are done with a great deal of awareness or not. Nonverbal behavior,
like verbal behavior, is encoded with varying degrees of control and awareness
(Lakin, 2006). Sometimes human beings have time to plan their responses. Some-
times it is extremely important for them to respond rapidly when a great deal of
information is impinging on their senses. When this occurs, people are unaware,
or only dimly aware, of why they responded as they did. These responses are
linked to a cognitive program that takes place immediately and automatically fol-
lowing the perception of a particular stimulus (Choi, Gray, & Ambady, 2005).

When we use speech-independent gestures, pose for photographs, or select our
attire, a high level of awareness and control is usually present. We know what we
are doing, we take time to respond, and we enact our behavior according to a con-
scious plan. Nervous mannerisms, pupil dilation, and mimicking the behavior of an
interaction partner are examples of behavior that are often enacted outside of our
awareness and control (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). We may even have an
entire array of default verbal and nonverbal behaviors that kick in automatically
when, for example, we are introduced to a stranger. We may enact a given behav-
ior without much awareness on some occasions but may do so with a great deal of
awareness at other times. For example, we may not realize our tone of voice is sig-
naling our dislike for a person we are talking to, but we are very much aware of
using our voice to communicate a sarcastic message.

Decoding nonverbal behavior also may be performed with varying degrees
of awareness. Sometimes we perceive a stimulus, such as a man who looks elderly,
and this automatically triggers the perception that the man is also walking slowly—
whether he is or not. When people say they think a person is lying but cannot
explain what behaviors led them to believe that, it may mean there is an out-
of-awareness program in their brain that is associated with the deception and
triggered by the perception of certain behaviors.

But responses that are out of our awareness and control need not always be
that way. Feedback on the accuracy or utility of an automatic process may lead to
changing the program or eliminating it. Reading this book may also make you
more aware of certain behaviors you have been encoding and decoding.

PERSPECTIVE 2: CLASSIFYING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Another way of defining nonverbal communication is to look at the things people
study. The theory and research associated with nonverbal communication focus on
three primary units: the environmental structures and conditions within which

10 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

communication takes place, the physical characteristics of the communicators
themselves, and the various behaviors manifested by the communicators. A detailed
breakdown of these three features follows.

THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT Although most of the emphasis in nonverbal research is on
the appearance and behavior of the people communicating, increasing attention is
being given to the influence of nonhuman factors on human transactions. People
change environments to help them accomplish their communicative goals; con-
versely, environments can affect our moods, choices of words, and actions. Thus,
this category concerns those elements that impinge on the human relationship but
are not directly a part of it. Environmental factors include the furniture, architec-
tural style, interior decorating, lighting conditions, colors, temperature, additional
noises or music, and so on amid which the interaction occurs. Variations in
arrangements, materials, shapes, or surfaces of objects in the interacting environ-
ment can be extremely influential on the outcome of an interpersonal relationship.
This category also includes what might be called traces of action. For instance, as
you observe cigarette butts, orange peels, and wastepaper left by the person you
will soon interact with, you form an impression that will eventually influence
your meeting with him or her. Perceptions of time and timing make up another
important part of the communicative environment. When something occurs, how
frequently it occurs, and the tempos or rhythms of actions are clearly a part of
the communicative world even though they are not a part of the physical environ-
ment per se.

SPATIAL ENVIRONMENT Proxemics is the study of the use and perception of social and
personal space. Under this heading is a body of work called small group ecology,
which concerns itself with how people use and respond to spatial relationships in
formal and informal group settings. Such studies deal with seating and spatial
arrangements as related to leadership, communication flow, and the task at hand.
On an even broader level, some attention has been given to spatial relationships
in crowds and densely populated situations. Personal space orientation is some-
times studied in the context of conversation distance and how it varies according
to sex, status, roles, cultural orientation, and so forth. The term territoriality is
also used frequently in the study of proxemics to denote the human tendency to
stake out personal territory, or “untouchable space,” much as wild animals and
birds do.

THE COMMUNICATORS’ PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

This category covers things that remain relatively unchanged during the period of
interaction. These static nonverbal cues include a person’s physique or body
shape, general attractiveness, height, weight, hair, overall skin color or tone, and
so forth. Body or breath odors associated with the person are normally considered
part of his or her physical appearance. Further, objects associated with interactants
also may affect physical appearance. These are called artifacts and include things

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 11

such as clothes, eyeglasses, hairpieces, false eyelashes, jewelry, and accessories
(e.g., an attaché case). Physical appearance also includes the various ways people
choose to decorate their skin: for example, with tattoos, cosmetics, scars, piercings,
and paint.

BODY MOVEMENT AND POSITION

Dynamic body movement and positioning typically include the following: gestures;
movements of the limbs, hands, head, feet, and legs; facial expressions, such as
smiles; eye behavior, including blinking, direction and length of gaze, and pupil
dilation; and posture. The furrow of the brow, the slump of a shoulder, and the
tilt of a head are all considered body movements and positions. Specifically, the
major areas are gestures, posture, touching behavior, facial expressions, eye behav-
ior, and vocal behavior.

GESTURES There are many different types of gestures, and many variations of these
types, but the most frequently studied are the following:

1. Speech independent. When viewed independently of speech, these gestures
have a well-known verbal translation in their usage community, usually con-
sisting of a word or two or a phrase. The gestures used to represent “okay” or
“peace” (also the “V-for-victory” sign) are examples of speech-independent
gestures for large segments of U.S. culture.

2. Speech related. These gestures are directly tied to, or accompany, speech
and often serve to illustrate what is being said verbally. These movements
may accent or emphasize a word or phrase, sketch a path of thought,
point to present objects, depict a spatial relationship, depict the rhythm or
pacing of an event, draw a picture of a referent, depict a bodily action,
or serve as commentary on the regulation and organization of the
interactive process.

POSTURE Posture is normally studied in conjunction with other nonverbal signals
to determine the degree of attention or involvement, the degree of status relative
to the other interactive partner, or the degree of liking for the other interactant.
A forward-leaning posture, for example, has been associated with higher involve-
ment, more liking, and lower status in studies where interactants did not know
each other very well. Posture is also a key indicator of the intensity of some emo-
tional states: for example, the drooping posture associated with sadness or the
rigid, tense posture associated with anger. The extent to which the communicators
mirror each other’s posture may indicate conversational involvement, which some-
times results in greater rapport between interactants.

TOUCHING BEHAVIOR Touching may be self-focused or other-focused. Self-focused
manipulations, not usually made for purposes of communicating, may reflect a
person’s particular state or habit. Many are commonly called nervous mannerisms.
Some of these actions are relics from an earlier time in our life, when we
first learned how to manage emotions, develop social contacts, or perform some

12 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

instructional task. Sometimes we perform these manipulations as we adapt to such
learning experiences, and they stay with us when we face similar situations later
in life, often as only part of the original movement. Some refer to these types of
self-focused manipulation as adaptors. These adaptors may involve various manip-
ulations of one’s own body, such as licking, picking, holding, pinching, and
scratching. Object adaptors are manipulations practiced in conjunction with an
object, as when a reformed cigarette smoker reaches toward his breast pocket for
the nonexistent package of cigarettes. Of course, not all behaviors that reflect
habitual actions or an anxious disposition can be traced to earlier adaptations,
but they do represent a part of the overall pattern of bodily action.

One of the most potent forms of nonverbal communication occurs when two
people touch. Touch can be virtually electric, but it also can hurt or comfort. As
you will see later, touch is a highly ambiguous form of behavior whose meaning
often depends more on the context, the nature of the relationship, and the manner
of execution than on the configuration of the touch per se. Some researchers are
concerned with touching behavior as an important factor in a child’s early develop-
ment, and others are concerned with adult touching behavior.

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS Most studies of the face are concerned with the configurations
that display various emotional states. The six primary affects that receive the most
study are anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, fear, and disgust. Facial expressions
also can function as regulatory gestures, providing feedback and managing the
flow of interaction. In fact, some researchers believe the primary function of
the face is to communicate, not to express emotions.

EYE BEHAVIOR Where we look, when we look, and how long we look during an
interaction are the primary foci for studies of gazing. Gaze refers to the eye move-
ment we make in the general direction of another’s face. Mutual gaze occurs when
interactants look into each other’s eye area. The dilation and constriction of the
pupils is of particular interest to those who study nonverbal communication because
it is sometimes an indicator of interest, attention/involvement, or deception.

VOCAL BEHAVIOR Vocal behavior deals with how something is said, not what is
said. It deals with the range of nonverbal vocal cues surrounding common speech
behavior. Generally, a distinction is made between two types of sounds:

1. The sound variations made with the vocal cords during speech that are a
function of changes in pitch, duration, and loudness.

2. Sounds that result primarily from physiological mechanisms other than the
vocal cords: for example, the pharyngeal, oral, or nasal cavities.

Most of the research on vocal behavior and its effects on human interaction has
focused on pitch level and variability; the duration of sounds, whether they are clipped
or drawn out; pauses within the speech stream and the latency of response when
switching speaking turns; loudness level and variability; resonance; precise or slurred
articulation; rate; rhythm; and intruding sounds during speech, such as “uh” or
“um.” The study of vocal signals encompasses a broad range of interests, from ques-
tions focusing on stereotypes associated with certain voices to questions about the

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 13

effects of vocal behavior on comprehension and persuasion. Thus, even specialized
sounds such as laughing, belching, yawning, swallowing, and moaning may be of
interest to the extent that they might affect the outcome of an interaction.

PERSPECTIVE 3: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
IN THE TOTAL COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Even though this book emphasizes nonverbal communication, it is important not to
forget the inseparable nature of verbal and nonverbal signals. Ray Birdwhistell, a
pioneer in nonverbal research, reportedly said that studying only nonverbal com-
munication is like studying noncardiac physiology. His point is well taken. It is
not easy to dissect human interaction and make one diagnosis that concerns only
verbal behavior and another that concerns only nonverbal behavior. The verbal
dimension is so intimately woven and subtly represented in so much of what has
been previously labeled nonverbal that the term does not always adequately describe
the behavior under study. Some of the most noteworthy scholars associated with
nonverbal study refuse to segregate words from gestures; these scholars work under
the broader terms of communication or face-to-face interaction (Bavelas & Chovil,
2006). Kendon puts it this way:

It is a common observation that, when a person speaks, muscular systems besides those
of the lips, tongue, and jaws often become active.… Gesticulation is organized as part of
the same overall unit of action by which speech is also organized.… Gesture and speech
are available as two separate modes of representation and are coordinated because both
are being guided by the same overall aim. That aim is to produce a pattern of action that
will accomplish the representation of a meaning. (1983, pp. 17, 20)

Because verbal and nonverbal systems operate together as part of the larger com-
munication process, efforts to distinguish clearly between the two have not been
very successful. One common misconception, for example, assumes that nonverbal
behavior is used solely to communicate emotional messages, whereas verbal behav-
ior is for conveying ideas. Words transmit emotional information—we can talk
explicitly about emotions, and we also communicate emotion between the lines in
verbal nuances. Conversely, nonverbal cues are often used for purposes other than
showing emotion; for example, people in conversation use eye movements to help
tell each other when it is time to switch speaking turns, and people commonly use
hand gestures while talking to help convey their ideas (McNeill, 2000).

We also need to recognize that the ways we attribute meaning to verbal and
nonverbal behavior are not all that different, either. Nonverbal actions, like verbal
ones, may communicate more than one message at a time. For example, the way
you nonverbally make it clear to another person that you want to keep talking
may simultaneously express your need for dominance over that person as well as
your current emotional state. When you grip a child’s shoulder during a repri-
mand, you may increase his or her comprehension and recall, but you may also
elicit such a negative reaction that he or she refuses to obey you. A smile can be
a part of an emotional expression, an attitudinal message, a self-presentation, or a
listener response to manage the interaction. And, like verbal behavior, the mean-
ings attributed to nonverbal behavior may be stereotyped, idiomatic, or ambiguous.

14 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Furthermore, the same nonverbal behavior performed in different contexts may,
like words, receive different attributions of meaning. For example, looking down
at the floor may reflect sadness in one situation and submissiveness or lack of
involvement in another. Finally, in an effort to identify the fundamental categories
of meaning associated with nonverbal behavior, Mehrabian (1970, 1981) identified
a threefold perspective resulting from his extensive testing:

1. Immediacy. Sometimes we react to things by evaluating them as positive or
negative, good or bad, and so on.

2. Status. Sometimes we enact or perceive behaviors that indicate various aspects
of status to us, such as strong or weak, superior or subordinate.

3. Responsiveness. This third category refers to our perceptions of activity as
being slow or fast, active or passive.

In various verbal and nonverbal studies over the past three decades, dimensions
similar to Mehrabian’s have been reported consistently by investigators from
diverse fields studying diverse phenomena. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore,
that these three dimensions are basic responses to our environment and are
reflected in the way we assign meaning to both verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Most of this work, however, depends on people translating their reactions to a
nonverbal act into verbal descriptors. This issue has already been addressed in
our discussion of the way the brain processes different pieces of information.
In general, then, like words, nonverbal signals can and do have multiple uses and
meanings; like words, nonverbal signals have denotative and connotative meanings;
and like words, nonverbal signals play an active role in communicating liking,
power, and responsiveness. With these in mind, we can now examine some of the
important ways verbal and nonverbal behaviors interrelate during human interac-
tion. Ekman (1965) identified the following: repeating, conflicting, complementing,
substituting, accenting/moderating, and regulating.

REPEATING

Nonverbal communication can simply repeat what was said verbally. For instance,
if you told a person he or she had to go north to find a parking place and then
pointed in the proper direction, this would be repetition.

CONFLICTING

Verbal and nonverbal signals can be at variance with one another in a variety of
ways. They may communicate two contradictory messages or two messages that
seem incongruous with each other (see Figure 1-2). In both instances, two messages
that do not appear to be consistent with each other are perceived. It is quite com-
mon, and probably functional, to have mixed feelings about some things. As a
result, incongruous verbal and nonverbal messages may be more common than we
realize. But it is the more dramatic contradictions that we are more likely to notice.
Perhaps it is the parent who yells to his or her child in an angry voice, “Of course
I love you!” Or the public speaker, who, with trembling hands and knees and
beads of perspiration on the brow, claims, “I’m not nervous.”

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 15

Why do these conflicting messages occur? In some cases it is a natural response
to a situation in which communicators perceive themselves to be in a bind. They do
not want to tell the truth, and they do not want to lie. As a result, their ambiva-
lence and frustration produce a discrepant message (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, &
Mullett, 1990). In other situations, conflicting messages occur because people do
an imperfect job of lying. Suppose you have just given a terrible presentation, and
you ask me how you did. I may say you did fine, but my voice, face, and body
may not support my words. On still other occasions, conflicting messages may be
the result of an attempt to communicate sarcasm or irony, saying one thing with
words and the opposite with vocal tone and/or facial expression. The term coy is
used to describe the display of coexisting signals that invite friendly contact with
those that signal rejection and withdrawal. We live in a complex world, which
makes feelings of ambivalence or mixed emotions a much more common experi-
ence than we sometimes acknowledge (Weigert, 1991).

Displays of incongruous or conflicting signals may occur in a variety of ways.
Sometimes two nonverbal signals may manifest the discord (e.g., vocal with visual),
but usually we are more aware of the contrasting verbal and nonverbal signals
(e.g., positive voice/negative words, negative voice/positive words, positive face/
negative words, or negative face/positive words).

How do we react when confronted with conflicting messages that matter to us?
Leathers (1979) has identified a common three-step process:

1. The first reaction is confusion and uncertainty.
2. Next, we search for additional information that will clarify the situation.
3. If clarification is not forthcoming, we will probably react with displeasure,

hostility, or even withdrawal.

It is not unusual for a person perceiving a conflicting message that is ambiguous
to respond with an ambiguous message of his or her own. Some believe that a

FIGURE 1-2
(a) Conflicting verbal/nonverbal signals. (b) Is this an aggressive or playful situation? What observations
influenced your decision?

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16 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

constant barrage of conflicting and ambiguous messages can contribute to a
psychopathology in the receiver. This may be particularly true when the commu-
nicators have a close relationship and the target of the conflicting messages has
no one else he or she can turn to for discussion and possible clarification of
the confusing messages. Some research finds that parents of disturbed children
produce more messages with conflicting cues (Bugental, Love, Kaswan, & April,
1971). Other work suggests that the differences are not in conflicting cues but in
negative messages; that is, parents with disturbed children send more negative
messages (Beakel & Mehrabian, 1969). The combination of negativity, confusion,
and punishment can be very harmful if it is a common style of communication
directed toward children. Date rape is another situation in which testimony often
centers around the extent to which the signals of rejection were unequivocal or
ambiguous.

We do not wish to give the impression that all forms of discrepant messages are
harmful. Our daily conversations are probably peppered with instances in which
gestures and speech do not exactly match one another; for example, a speaker telling
a story about someone climbing up a pipe while simultaneously gesturing as though
he or she were climbing a ladder (McNeill, Cassell, & McCullough, 1994). Some-
times these discrepancies go unnoticed, and many are cognitively “resolved” without
overtly discussing the mismatch. Even contradictions with more important implica-
tions for conversants may not, in some situations, be considered harmful. Moreover,
as stated earlier, discrepancy is required for achieving certain effects. Sarcasm, for
example, occurs when the words are pleasant but the voice quality is unpleasant,
and when the words are unpleasant but the tone of voice is pleasant, we are likely
to communicate the message that we are only joking.

Finally, some discrepancies may be helpful in certain situations. In an experi-
ment, teachers used mixed messages while teaching a lesson to sixth-grade pupils.
When the teachers combined positive words with a negative nonverbal demeanor,
pupils learned more than with any other combination (Woolfolk, 1978). Similarly,
a study of doctors talking with patients found that the combination of positive
words said in a negative tone of voice was associated with the highest levels of
patient satisfaction with the visit (Hall, Roter, & Rand, 1981). Possibly the positive
verbal/negative nonverbal combination is perceived in classrooms and doctors’
offices as “serious and concerned,” and therefore, makes a better impression on
students and patients alike.

Some research has questioned whether we trust and believe nonverbal signals
more than verbal ones when we are confronted with conflicting messages (Bugental,
1974; Burgoon, 1980; Mehrabian, 1972a; Stiff, Hale, Garlick, & Rogan, 1990). It is
often assumed that nonverbal signals are more spontaneous, harder to fake, less
likely to be manipulated, and hence more believable. It is probably more accurate to
say, however, that some nonverbal behaviors are more spontaneous and harder to
fake than others and that some people are more proficient than others at nonverbal
deception. With two conflicting cues, both of which are nonverbal, we predictably
place our reliance on the cues we consider harder to fake. One research team found
that people tended to rely primarily on visual cues in visual/auditory discrepancies,
but when the discrepancy was great, people tended to rely on the audio signals
(DePaulo, Rosenthal, Eisenstat, Rogers, & Finkelstein, 1978).

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 17

The credibility of information in messages made up of conflicting signals is also
an important factor in determining which cues to believe. If the information being
communicated in one channel lacks credibility, we are likely to discount it and look
to other channels for the “real” message (Bugental, 1974). Sometimes we are faced
with the dilemma of perceiving the meaning communicated by hard-to-fake cues
that do not seem credible. If a person says, “This is really great,” with a sad tone of
voice upon receiving a birthday gift you know was long desired, you are likely to
search for other explanations (e.g., he or she is bothered about getting older).

Interestingly, young children seem to give less credence to certain nonverbal
cues than adults do when confronted with conflicting verbal and nonverbal
messages (Bugental, Kaswan, Love, & Fox, 1970; Bugental, Love, & Gianetto,
1971; Volkmar & Siegel, 1982). Conflicting messages in which the speaker smiled
while making a critical statement were interpreted more negatively by children than
adults, particularly when the speaker was a woman.

Other work casts an even deeper shadow on the theory that we always rely on
nonverbal cues in conflicting-message situations. Shapiro (1968) found that student
judges differed as to whether they relied on verbal or facial cues when asked to select
the affect being communicated by sketched faces with expressions that were incon-
gruent with the written messages associated with them. Vande Creek and Watkins
(1972) extended Shapiro’s work by using real voices and moving pictures. The
people in the stimulus examples portrayed inconsistencies in the degree of stress in
verbal and nonverbal channels. Again, they found that some respondents tended to
rely primarily on verbal cues, some tended to rely on nonverbal cues, and some
responded to the degree of stress in general regardless of the channels manifesting it.
The cross-cultural research of Solomon and Ali (1975) suggests that familiarity with
the verbal language may affect our reliance on verbal or nonverbal cues. They found,
for instance, that people who were less familiar with the language used to construct
the contradictory message relied on the content for judgments of affective meaning.
Those who knew the language well were more apt to rely on the vocal intonation
for the affective meaning. So it appears that some people will rely more heavily on
the verbal message when verbal and nonverbal cues offer conflicting information.

We do not know all the conditions that affect which signals people look to for
valid information. As a general rule, people tend to rely on those signals they
perceive harder to fake, but this will most likely vary with the situation; so the ulti-
mate impact of verbal, visual, and vocal signals is best determined by a close exam-
ination of the people involved in a specific communication context.

Finally, whether people rely more on what a person says or does nonverbally
may depend on what they are trying to figure out about that person. Hall and
Schmid Mast (2007) showed that people turn relatively more to nonverbal cues
when they want to know how a person is feeling and more to verbal cues when
they want to know what a person is thinking.

COMPLEMENTING

Nonverbal behavior can modify or elaborate on verbal messages. When the verbal
and nonverbal channels are complementary, rather than conflicting, our messages
are usually decoded more accurately. Some evidence suggests that complementary

18 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

nonverbal signals also may be helpful when attempting to recall the verbal
message. A student who reflects an attitude of embarrassment when talking to a
professor about a poor performance in class assignments is exhibiting nonverbal
behavior that complements the verbal. When clarity is of utmost importance, as in
a job interview or when making up with a loved one after a fight, we should be
especially concerned with making the meanings of verbal and nonverbal behavior
complement each other.

SUBSTITUTING

Nonverbal behavior can also substitute for verbal messages. It may indicate more
permanent characteristics (sex, age), moderately long-lasting features (personality,
attitudes, social group), and relatively short-term states of a person. In the latter
case, we may see a dejected and downtrodden executive walk into his or her
house after work with a facial expression that substitutes for the statement, “I’ve
had a rotten day.” With a little practice, people soon learn to identify a wide
range of these substitute nonverbal displays—all the way from “It’s been a fantastic
day!” to “Oh, God, am I miserable!”

Sometimes, when substitute nonverbal behavior does not get the desired
response, the communicator tries to verbally clarify the message. Consider the
woman who wants her date to stop trying to become physically intimate with her.
She may stiffen, stare straight ahead, or act unresponsive. If the suitor still does not
stop, she might say something like “Look, Larry, please don’t ruin a nice
friendship.”

ACCENTING/MODERATING

Nonverbal behavior may accent (amplify) or moderate (tone down) parts of the
verbal message. Accenting is much like underlining or italicizing written words to
emphasize them. Movements of the head and hands are frequently used to accent
the verbal message. When a father scolds his son for staying out too late, he may
accent a particular phrase with a firm grip on the son’s shoulder and an accompa-
nying frown. In some instances, one set of nonverbal cues can accent or moderate
other nonverbal cues. For example, by observing other parts of a person’s body
(e.g., a clenched fist), the full intensity of a facial expression of anger is revealed.

REGULATING

Nonverbal behavior is also used to regulate verbal behavior. We do this in two
ways:

1. By coordinating our own verbal and nonverbal behavior in the production of
our messages

2. By coordinating our verbal and nonverbal message behavior with those of our
interaction partners

We regulate the production of our own messages in a variety of ways. Some-
times we use nonverbal signs to segment units of interaction. Posture changes may

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 19

demarcate a topic change; a gesture may forecast the verbalization of a particular
idea; pauses may help organize spoken information into units. When we speak of
a series of things, we may communicate discreteness by linear, staccato movements
of the arm and hand; for example, “We must consider A, B, and C.” When we
insert a chopping gesture after each letter, it may suggest a separate consideration
of each letter; a single chop after C might indicate either a consideration of all
three as a group or C in particular.

We also regulate the flow of verbal and nonverbal behavior between ourselves
and an interactant. This may manifest itself in the dramatic (e.g., every time one
person gets mad and yells, the other behaves in a solicitous manner) or less obvious
(e.g., the signals of initiation, continuation, and termination of interaction) types of
behavior that two interactants elicit from each other. The way one person stops
talking and another starts in a smooth, synchronized manner may be as important
to a satisfactory interaction as the content. After all, we do make judgments about
people based on their regulatory skills; for example, we are familiar with the
descriptions “Talking to him is like talking to a wall” or “You can’t get a word in
edgewise with her.” When another person frequently interrupts or is inattentive, we
may feel this person is making a statement about the relationship, perhaps one of
disrespect. There are rules for regulating conversations, but they are generally
implicit. It is not written down, but we seem to know that two people should not
talk at the same time, that each person should get an equal number of turns at
talking if he or she desires, that a question should be answered, and so forth.
Wiemann’s (1977) research found that relatively minute changes in these regulatory
behaviors—interruptions, pauses longer than 3 seconds, unilateral topic changes,
and so on—resulted in sizable variations in how competent a communicator was
perceived to be. As listeners, we are apparently attending to and evaluating a
host of fleeting, subtle, and habitual features of the speaker’s conversational
behavior. When children first learn these rules, they use less subtle cues; for
example, they tug on clothing or raise a hand. Children are also less skilled in
accomplishing smooth turn-taking, as you will have noticed if you have conversed
with a young child on the telephone. Conversational regulators involve several
kinds of nonverbal cues. When we want to indicate that we are finished speaking
and the other person can start, we may increase our eye contact with the other
person. This is often accompanied by the vocal cues associated with ending
declarative or interrogative statements. If the other person still does not figura-
tively pick up the conversational ball, we might extend silence or interject a
“trailer” such as “you know” or “so, ah.” To keep another person from speaking
in a conversation, we have to keep long pauses from occurring, decrease eye con-
tact, and perhaps raise the volume of our voice. When we do not want to take a
speaking turn, we might give the other some reinforcing head nods, maintain
attentive eye contact, and, of course, refrain from speaking when the other begins
to yield. When we do want the floor, we might raise our index finger or enact an
audible inspiration of breath with a straightening of the posture as if ready to
take over. Rapid nodding may signal the other to hurry up and finish, but if we
have trouble getting in, we may have to talk simultaneously for a few words or
engage in stutter starts that we hope will be more easily observed cues to signal
our desire to speak.

20 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Conversational beginnings and endings also act as regulatory points. When we
are greeting others, eye contact indicates that the channels are open. A slight head
movement and an “eyebrow flash” of recognition—a barely detectable but distinct
up-and-down movement of the eyebrows—may be present. The hands are also
used in greetings for salutes, waves, handshakes, handslaps, or emblematic signals
such as the peace or victory sign, a raised fist, or a thumbs-up. Hands may also
perform grooming activities, such as running fingers through the hair, or they may
be involved in various touching activities such as kissing, embracing, or hitting
another on the arm. The mouth may form a smile or an oval shape, as if ready to
start talking (Krivonos & Knapp, 1975).

Saying good-bye in semiformal interviews was shown to elicit many nonverbal
behaviors in one study. The most common included the breaking of eye contact
more often and for longer periods of time, positioning one’s body toward an exit,
and leaning forward and nodding. Less frequent, but very noticeable, were accent-
ing behaviors that signaled, “This is the termination of our conversation, and I
don’t want you to miss it!” These accenters included explosive hand and foot
movements, such as raising the hands and/or feet and bringing them down with
enough force to make an audible slap while simultaneously using the hands and
feet as leverage to catapult the interactant out of his or her seat. A less direct mani-
festation was placing the hands on the thighs or knees in a leveraging position, as if
preparing to catapult, hoping that the other person picked up the good-bye cue
(Knapp, Hart, Friedrich, & Shulman, 1973).

PERSPECTIVE 4: HISTORICAL TRENDS IN NONVERBAL RESEARCH

The scientific study of nonverbal communication is primarily a post–World War II
activity. This does not mean we cannot find important early tributaries of knowl-
edge; even ancient Chinese, Greek, and Roman scholars commented on what we
today would consider nonverbal behavior. Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, for
example, is an important source of information on gestures written in the first cen-
tury. If we were to trace the history of fields of study—such as animal behavior,
anthropology, dance, linguistics, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, sociology,
and speech—we would no doubt find important antecedents of today’s work
(Asendorpf & Wallbott, 1982; Davis, 1979; DePaulo & Friedman, 1998; Hecht &
Ambady, 1999). Nonverbal studies never have been the province of any one partic-
ular discipline. In the last half of the 19th century, Delsarte, among others,
attempted to codify and set forth rules for managing both “voice culture” and
body movements or gestures (Shawn, 1954). Although Delsarte’s “science of
applied esthetics” and the elocutionary movement gave way to a less formal, less
stylized manner in the 20th century, it represents one of several early attempts
to identify various forms of bodily expression. One of the most influential
pre–20th-century works was Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals in 1872. This work sparked the modern study of facial expressions,
and many of Darwin’s observations and ideas have been validated by other
researchers (Ekman, 1973).

During the first half of the 20th century, there were isolated studies of
the voice, physical appearance and dress, and the face. An unsystematic look at

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 21

the publications during this period suggests that studies of proxemics, the environ-
ment, and body movement received even less attention, and the least attention was
given to the investigation of eye behavior and touching. Two distinct but note-
worthy events occurred during this period: The first involved some controversial
scholarship and a scandal; the second concerned a work of extraordinary influence
in the study of nonverbal behavior.

In 1925, Kretschmer authored a book, Physique and Character. This was
followed in 1940 by Sheldon’s The Varieties of Human Physique. These works
were based on the idea that if we precisely measure and analyze a person’s body,
we can learn much about his or her intelligence, temperament, moral worth, and
future achievement. Sheldon’s belief that certain characteristics are associated with
certain body types—the thin ectomorph, the muscular mesomorph, and the fatty
endomorph—is still debated (see Chapter 6). His work was featured on the cover
of the popular magazine Life in 1951. To develop a catalogue of body types,
Sheldon was permitted to photograph freshman students in the nude at Yale,
Wellesley, Vassar, Princeton, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and other colleges (Rosenbaum,
1995). The students were told it was a project involving posture, and thousands
complied—including future president George H. W. Bush and future Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The photos have reportedly been destroyed, and
Sheldon’s personal notes indicate that he drew racial conclusions from his work.
People continue to associate certain characteristics with different body types, but the
validity of these perceptions was not proven by Sheldon or any researchers since.

In contrast, Efron’s Gesture and Environment (1941) has become a classic
because it made three important contributions. Efron’s innovative and detailed
methods of studying gesture and body language, along with his framework for clas-
sifying nonverbal behavior, influenced future generations of scholars. In addition,
Efron’s work documented the important role of culture in shaping our gestures and
body movement, which at the time was contrary to the belief of many—including
Adolf Hitler—who thought that people’s behavior was not subject to much modifi-
cation by changing contexts and environments.

The 1950s showed a significant increase in the number of research efforts that
delved into nonverbal communication. Some of the milestones included the
following:

1. Birdwhistell’s Introduction to Kinesics appeared in 1952, and Hall’s The Silent
Language in 1959. These anthropologists were responsible for taking some
of the principles of linguistics and applying them to nonverbal phenomena,
providing new labels for the study of body movement (kinesics) and space
(proxemics), and launching a program of research in each area.

2. Trager’s 1958 delineation of the components of “paralanguage” (see Chapter 11)
greatly enhanced the precision with which we classify and study vocal cues.

3. Psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch and photographer Weldon Kees combined their
efforts to produce a popular book titled Nonverbal Communication: Notes
on the Visual Perception of Human Relations in 1956. This was probably the
first book to use the term nonverbal communication in its title. Therapists,
including Freud, had been interested in nonverbal cues prior to the 1950s, but
this work provided additional theoretical insights into the origins, usage, and

22 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

coding of nonverbal behavior; it also provided extensive visual documentation
for the communicative role of environments.

4. Also in 1956, Maslow and Mintz’s study of the environmental effects of a
“beautiful” room and an “ugly” room was published. This oft-cited study is a
highlight in the history of environmental forces impinging on human
communication.

5. Frank’s comprehensive article “Tactile Communication” appeared in 1957 and
suggested a number of testable hypotheses about touching in human interaction.

If the 1950s produced an increase in the number of nonverbal studies, the 1960s
must be classified as a nuclear explosion of the topic. Specific areas of the body
were the subject of extensive programs of research: Exline’s work on eye behav-
ior; Davitz’s work on vocal expressions of emotion, which culminated in The
Communication of Emotional Meaning in 1964; Hess’s work on pupil dilation;
Sommer’s continued exploration of personal space and design; Goldman-Eisler’s
study of pauses and hesitations in spontaneous speech; and the study of a wide
range of body activity by Dittmann, Argyle, Kendon, Scheflen, and Mehrabian.
During this time, psychologist Robert Rosenthal and his colleagues brought
vividly to our attention the potential impact of nonverbal subtleties when they
showed how experimenters can affect the outcome of experiments—and teachers
can affect the intellectual growth of their students—through their nonverbal
behavior (Rosenthal, 1966; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Perhaps the classic
theoretical piece of the 1960s is Ekman and Friesen’s article on the origins,
usage, and coding of nonverbal behavior (Ekman & Friesen, 1969b). This article
distinguished five areas of nonverbal study that served as a guide for their own
research and ultimately that of many other researchers. These areas were
emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, and adaptors.

The 1970s began with a journalist’s account of the study of nonverbal commu-
nication from the perspective of a handful of researchers. Fast’s Body Language
(1970), a best seller, was followed by a steady stream of books that attempted to
make nonverbal findings understandable and usable to the American public. These
books, in the interest of simplification and readability, often misrepresented
findings when recounting how to make a sale, detect deception, assert one’s domi-
nance, obtain a sexual partner, and so on.

Although such books aroused the public’s interest in nonverbal communication,
they incurred some anticipated fallout (Koivumaki, 1975). Readers were too often
left with the idea that reading nonverbal cues was the key to success in any human
encounter. Some of these books implied that single cues (legs apart) had single mean-
ings (sexual invitation). Not only is it important to look at nonverbal clusters of
behavior but also to recognize that nonverbal cues, like verbal ones, rarely have a
single denotative meaning. Some of these popularized accounts did not sufficiently
remind readers that the meaning of a particular behavior is often understood by
looking at the context in which the behavior occurs; for example, looking into some-
one’s eyes may reflect affection in one situation and aggression in another.

Another common reaction to such books was the concern that once the non-
verbal code was broken we would be totally transparent; people would know
everything about us because we could not control these nonverbal signals. As

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 23

noted earlier, we have varying degrees of conscious control over our nonverbal
behavior. Some behavior is very much under our control; other behavior is not,
but it may be once awareness is increased. Further, it may be that as soon as some-
one exhibits an understanding of your body language, you will modify it and make
adaptations. The 1970s were also a time of summarizing and synthesizing. Ekman’s
research on the human face (Emotion in the Human Face, 1972, with Friesen and
Ellsworth); Mehrabian’s research on the meaning of nonverbal cues of immediacy,
status, and responsiveness (Nonverbal Communication, 1972b); Scheflen’s kinesic
research in the framework of general systems theory (Body Language and the Social
Order, 1972); Hess’s study of pupil size (The Tell-Tale Eye, 1975b); Argyle’s study
of body movement and eye behavior (Bodily Communication, 1975; and Gaze and
Mutual Gaze, with Cook, 1976); Montagu’s Touching (1971); and Birdwhistell’s
Kinesics and Context (1970) were all attempts to bring together the growing litera-
ture, or a particular research program, in a single volume.

During the 1980s, some scholars continued to specialize, but others focused on
identifying the ways in which a variety of nonverbal signals work together to
accomplish common communicative goals: for example, getting someone to do
something for you, showing affection, and lying to someone (Patterson, 1983). It
became clear that we could not fully understand the role of nonverbal behavior in
accomplishing these goals unless we also looked at the role of co-occurring verbal
behavior and tried to develop theories about how various verbal and nonverbal
cues interact in the process (Bavelas & Chovil, 2006; Kendon, 1983; Streeck &
Knapp, 1992). Thus, we are gradually beginning to learn how to put the pieces
back together after several decades of separating them to examine them micro-
scopically. This trend is a manifestation of a larger movement to bring our research
efforts more in line with the way we know human communication occurs in life’s
laboratory (Archer, Akert, & Costanzo, 1993; Knapp, 1992; Patterson, 1984).
Therefore, nonverbal research continues to change in the following ways:

• From studying noninteractive situations to studying interactive ones
• From studying one person to studying both interactants
• From studying a single point in time to studying changes over time
• From studying single behaviors to studying multiple behaviors
• From the view that we perceive everything that occurs to acknowledging that

we need to know more about how people perceive signals during interaction
• From single-meaning and single-intent perspectives to acknowledging that

often multiple meanings occur and multiple goals exist
• From a measurement perspective focused almost exclusively on frequency and

duration to one that also includes issues related to when and how a behavior
occurs

• From attempting to control context by eliminating important and influential
elements to attempting to account for such effects

• From studying only face-to-face interaction to examining the role of nonverbal
messages in mediated communication settings (e.g., Facebook, instant messages,
texting, email).

• From an overemphasis on studying how strangers interact to one equally con-
cerned about how intimates interact

24 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

• From studying only culture or only biology as possible explanations of behav-
ior to examining the roles both play

Such a brief historical view inevitably leaves out many important contributions
(see Knapp, 2006). The preceding discussion is simply an attempt to highlight
some important developments and depict a general background for our current
perspectives.

PERSPECTIVE 5: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Clearly, nonverbal signals are a critical part of all our communicative endea-
vors. Sometimes nonverbal signals are the most important part of our message.
Understanding and effectively using nonverbal behavior is crucial to our success
in virtually every social encounter we experience.

First impressions often have a strong impact on any given social interaction
and can affect subsequent interactions (Ambady & Skowronski, 2008). We also
know that people can make some valid inferences about others based on their
initial reading of the other’s nonverbal cues (Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick,
2009). Thus, each interaction begins with both interactants trying to draw accurate
inferences about the other and simultaneously trying to manifest the verbal and
nonverbal behavior that will give them the best shot at accomplishing their com-
municative goals. This process continues as the interaction unfolds.

Nonverbal cues such as attire, eye gaze, smiling, posture, distance, and listener
responses are just as important as choosing the right words—sometimes more so,
as Lieutenant General David McKiernan found out. In June 2003, the Boston
Globe reported that he was taken off the list of possible candidates for the top
leadership position of Army Chief of Staff because Pentagon officials observed
“bad body language.” Apparently, McKiernan was standing with his arms crossed
and did not respond in positive ways during “applause lines” while listening to a
speech given by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq (Austin American
Statesman, 2003). Nonverbal messages are no less important in formal job inter-
views or in ongoing performance on the job, whether it involves public relations,
customer service, marketing, advertising, supervision, or leadership (DePaulo,
1992; Hecker & Stewart, 1988; Riggio, 2005). In one study, female job intervie-
wees were subjected to a sexually provocative comment. When they responded
with a fake smile (see Chapter 9) in an effort to get through this difficult situation,
males who were likely to engage in sexual harassment perceived these smiles as
flirtatious and the women as desirable. In addition to their inability to accurately
decode these fake smiles, these same men rated nonsmiling women as vulnerable
and confused (Woodzicka & LaFrance, 2005).

Some occupations and leadership positions require establishing or implement-
ing policies involving nonverbal messages. Some schools and businesses have rules
about hair length, facial hair, or appropriate clothing and artifacts; sexual harass-
ment cases may hinge on determining the type of touching that occurred; and
some airlines, broadcasters, and others have been involved in lawsuits charging dis-
crimination on the basis of physical appearance. The San Francisco City Council
was reportedly discussing a ban on certain nonverbal expressions—smirks, raised

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 25

eyebrows, or loud guffaws—in an effort to restore civility to council debates
(Reuters, 2003).

In a remarkable study, the faces of chief executive officers of the 25 highest
and 25 lowest performing U.S. companies were rated on their leadership ability
and their power-related traits of dominance, maturity, and competence. When any
effects due to age, affect, or attractiveness were removed, the highest ratings on
leadership and power-related traits were significantly related to their company’s
profits (Rule & Ambady, 2008b).

While the consequences of the preceding studies are unquestionably important,
they are not life-threatening. But in nurse–physician interactions during a surgical
procedure, effective nonverbal communication can literally make the difference
between life and death. One teenager’s tragic death was the result of misreading
nonverbal signals: The teen was practicing sign language with his cousin, and
some of his gestures were believed by one gang to be signs of a rival gang, so they
shot the boy (Austin American Statesman, 2000). Other potentially harmful situa-
tions involving assault and abuse have been the subject of nonverbal studies.

One study analyzed the appearance and movements of people who walked
through one of the highest assault areas in New York City (Grayson & Stein,
1981). Then, prisoners who had knowledge of such matters were asked to view
the films of the potential victims and indicate the likelihood of assault. In addition
to finding that older people are a prime target, the researchers also found that
potential victims tended to move differently. Specifically, they took long or short
strides, not strides of medium length, and their body parts did not seem to move
in synchrony; that is, they seemed less graceful and fluid in their movement.
A related study, using different methods, found similar results and concluded that
a reduced vulnerability to attack is associated with any cluster of nonverbal signals
suggesting that a person has the energy to defend himself or herself and/or the
ability to escape with ease (Gunns, Johnston, & Hudson, 2002). Other studies
have tried to identify nonverbal characteristics that rapists use to select their
victims. Some rapists look for women who exhibit passivity, a lack of confidence,
and vulnerability; others prefer the exact opposite, wishing to “put an uppity
woman in her place.” The conclusion seems to recommend a nonverbal demeanor
that is confident yet not aggressive (Myers, Templer, & Brown, 1984).

Another study that assessed potentially aggressive acts focused on mothers who
abused their children (Givens, 1978a). It was noted that even while playing with
their children, these mothers communicated their dislike with nonverbal behavior
such as turning away or not smiling. Just as abusive and nonabusive mothers differ
in their nonverbal behavior, the children of abusive parents and nonabusive parents
differ in theirs (Hecht et al., 1986). Facial expressions of children in response to
violence on television may also have some predictive value for identifying aggres-
sive behavior (Ekman et al., 1972). In short, scientists are examining nonverbal
signals of both potential perpetrators of violence and potential victims of that
violence (Givens, 2007).

Once a person has been charged with a crime and the trial process begins, we
can see several important and influential sources of nonverbal cues (Peskin, 1980;
Pryor & Buchanan, 1984). One of this text’s authors received a letter from an
attorney in Florida seeking information about nonverbal behavior in order to

26 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

identify the possible effects of an appellate judge making a decision based on the
written record of the trial without the benefit of seeing or hearing any nonverbal
signals. Because of the important implications of decisions made in courtrooms
and the desire to maintain impartial communication, almost every facet of the
courtroom process is being analyzed (Searcy, Duck, & Blanck, 2005). Judges are
cautioned to minimize possible signs of partiality in their voice and positioning. In
one study, mock jurors were very much aware of judges whose nonverbal behavior
suggested a lack of involvement in the proceedings and perceived this behavior
negatively (Burnett & Badzinski, 2005). Other studies confirm the belief that the
attitudes and nonverbal cues enacted by judges do in fact influence the outcome of
a trial (Blanck & Rosenthal, 1992). In Chapter 6, several studies are reported
concerning the effects of physically attractive witnesses and defendants. In some
cases, attorneys and witnesses have been videotaped in pretrial practice sessions to
determine whether they are conveying nonverbally any messages they want to
avoid. The study of nonverbal behavior is also important to the process of jury
selection. Although this attention to nonverbal signals emanating from prospective
jurors may indicate a degree of sensitivity that did not previously exist, we need not
worry that attorneys or social scientists will become so skilled that they can rig
juries (Saks, 1976).

A list of all the situations in which nonverbal communication plays a signifi-
cant role would be almost endless and would include areas such as dance, theater,
music, film, and photography. The nonverbal symbolism of various ceremonies and
rituals—the trappings of the marriage ceremony, Christmas decorations, religious
rituals, funerals, and so on—provide stimuli that guide the responses of those
involved.

From this broad array of situations in which nonverbal communication plays a
central role, we have selected some areas that we feel are particularly meaningful
and discuss them further. In Chapter 12, we examine nonverbal behavior used in
communicating intimacy, dominance or status, identity, deception, and interaction
management. Chapter 13 is devoted to an analysis of nonverbal signals in advertis-
ing, politics, education, culture, health care, and technology.

SUMMARY

The term nonverbal is commonly used to
describe all human communication events that
transcend spoken or written words. At the same
time, we should realize that these nonverbal
events and behaviors can be interpreted through
verbal symbols. We also found that any classi-
fication scheme that separates things into two
discrete categories—verbal/nonverbal, left/right
brain, vocal/nonvocal, and so on—will not be
able to account for factors that do not seem to
fit either category. We might more appropriately
think of behaviors as existing on a continuum,
with some behaviors overlapping two continua.

We encode and decode nonverbal behaviors
with varying degrees of awareness and control.
There are times when our responses are carefully
planned, and we are very much aware of what we
are doing; there are other times when our responses
occur more automatically, and little conscious
planning and awareness is associated with them.

The decoding of nonverbal signals is often
done with the right hemisphere of the brain, but
a considerable overlapping of functions between
right and left hemispheres occurs—especially if
one side has to compensate due to surgery or
injury on the other hemisphere.

CHAPTER 1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: BASIC PERSPECTIVES 27

The theoretical writings and research on non-
verbal communication can be broken down into
the following three areas:

1. The communication environment (physical
and spatial)

2. The communicator’s physical characteristics
3. Body movement and position (gestures,

posture, touching, facial expressions, eye
behavior, and vocal behavior)

Nonverbal communication should not be
studied as an isolated phenomenon but as an
inseparable part of the total communication
process. The relationship between verbal and
nonverbal behavior was illustrated in our dis-
cussion of how nonverbal behavior functions
in repeating, conflicting with, substituting for,

complementing, accenting/moderating, and regu-
lating verbal communication. Nonverbal com-
munication is important because of its role in
the total communication system, the tremendous
quantity of informational cues it gives in any
particular situation, and its use in fundamental
areas of our daily life.

This chapter also reviewed some of the his-
torical highlights, noting the current influence
of the works of Darwin, Efron, Birdwhistell,
Hall, Ruesch and Kees, Mehrabian, Rosenthal,
Ekman and Friesen, and others. We reviewed
the important roles and shortcomings of the
popular literature. The chapter concluded with
an account of the prevalence and importance
of nonverbal signals in selected areas of our
daily life.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Identify a situation in which you believe
verbal behavior was clearly more important
to the outcome of an interaction than non-
verbal behavior. Explain why.

2. Identify a situation in which you would give
more credibility to a person’s verbal behavior
when verbal and nonverbal behavior convey
different messages.

3. Discuss the most unusual or subtle nonverbal
signal or signals you have observed in an
interaction partner. What helped you assess
their meaning?

4. If you could get an instant and true answer to
any question about nonverbal communica-
tion, what would your question be?

READING RESOURCES

Because our concern is the scientific study of nonverbal
communication, we include many scholarly citations
in this book’s chapters. In addition to these specific
research works, the following are good general resources
for the student of nonverbal communication:

Hall, J. A., & Bernieri, F. J. (Eds.). (2001). Interper-
sonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hall, J. A., & Knapp, M. L. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook
of nonverbal communication. Berlin: de Gruyter
Mouton.

Harrigan, J. A., Rosenthal, R., & Scherer, K. R. (Eds.).
(2005). The new handbook of methods in
nonverbal behavior research. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Manusov, V. (Ed.). (2004). The sourcebook of non-
verbal measures: Going beyond words. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Manusov, V. L., & Patterson, M. L. (Eds.). (2006).
The Sage handbook of nonverbal communication.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

28 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

[ C H A P T E R 2 ]

In 1967, when David Reimer was 8 months old, his genitals were accidentally
mutilated when he was being circumcised. Subsequently, on the advice of physi-
cians, David’s parents agreed to a surgical sex change and set about raising David
as a girl. Nurture, it was believed, would triumph over nature, and David would
become “Brenda.” Despite 12 years of social, mental, and hormonal conditioning,
David never felt he was a girl. His parents gave him dolls, dressed him as a girl,
and tried in every way to reinforce his identity as Brenda. But his twin brother
expressed what others observed as well: “I recognized Brenda as my sister, but
she never, ever acted the part … when I say there was nothing feminine about
Brenda … I mean there was nothing feminine. She walked like a guy. Sat with her
legs apart. She talked about guy things … she played with my toys” (Colapinto,
2000, p. 57). It was not that Brenda did not learn what others were teaching
her about how to behave like a girl. Nurture played its part. But what surprised
everyone involved in this real-life nature/nurture experiment was the powerful
influence of genetic, or hardwired, aspects of sexual identity.

During the 20th century, the question of whether human behavior is influenced
more by nature or nurture was hotly debated. For many years the prevailing view
was that all human behavior was the result of learning. The behaviorists believed
that any differences between individuals could be erased if they experienced the
same environmental stimuli. In short, genetic heritage was presumed to be malleable.
Today, scientists tend to reject the either/or approach to the debate. Instead of trying
to argue that all of our behavior is primarily guided by nature or nurture, most

As we look back on a long phylogenetic history, which has determined our present
day anatomical, physiological, and biochemical status, it would be simply
astounding if it were found not to affect our behavior also.

—T. K. Pitcairn and I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt

believe it is wise to assume that there may be both a nature and a nurture component
associated with any given behavior that we exhibit. No doubt much of our non-
verbal behavior has both innate and learned, including imitative, aspects.

Ekman and Friesen (1969), whose work in this area is detailed later, outline
three primary sources of our nonverbal behavior:

1. Inherited neurological programs
2. Experience common to all members of the species (e.g., regardless of culture,

the hands are used to place food in the mouth)
3. Experience that varies with culture, class, family, or the individual

Biological and cultural forces overlap in many important ways. Some common
biological processes can be used to communicate—for example, breathing becomes
a sigh of relief, grief, or boredom; a hiccup becomes an imitation of a drunk’s
behavior; audible blowing through one’s nose may be interpreted as a snort of
scorn; and coughing becomes “ahem.” Later in this chapter, we discuss studies
that suggest that some aspects of facial expressions of emotion are inherited and
common to members of the human species. These studies, however, do not negate
the importance of our cultural learning in manifesting these expressions. The
neurological program for any given facial expression can be altered or modified by
learned “display rules” specific to our culture, such as men should not cry in
public. Different stimuli may trigger a given facial expression, again depending on
one’s cultural training. A snake may evoke an expression of fear in one culture
and bring out an expression of joy in another (e.g., because it is an important
food source). The society we grow up in is also largely responsible for the way we
blend two or more emotional expressions, such as showing features of surprise and
anger at the same time.

Studies of birds show clearly the joint impact of biology and environment on
behavior. The European male robin attacks strange robins that enter his territory
during the breeding season. Research using stuffed models has shown that the red
breast alone triggers this attack mechanism. The female robin who shares the nest,
however, also has a red breast and is not attacked. Thus, this aggressive behavior,
which is believed to be innate, is modified by certain conditions in the environment
or by the situation that calls forth the response. As another example, some birds
instinctively sing a song common to their own species without ever having heard
another bird sing the song. These birds may, on hearing the songs of their particu-
lar group, develop a variation on the melody that reflects a local dialect. It has also
been noted that without exposure to mature songs, the young bird’s song remains
rudimentary and imperfect. And even when a bird is born with its basic song, it
may have to learn to whom the call should be addressed, and under what circum-
stances, and how to recognize signals from other birds. Many of the inherited
components of human behavior can be modified similarly. It is like our human
predisposition for, or capacity to learn, verbal language (Lenneberg, 1969; Pinker,
1994). Although we are born with the capacity to learn language, it is not learned
without cultural training. Children isolated from human contact do not develop
linguistic competence. Some nonverbal signals probably depend primarily on inher-
ited neurological programs; others probably depend primarily on environmental
learning; and, of course, many behaviors are influenced by both.

30 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Finally, the answer to the nature/nurture issue concerning nonverbal behavior
varies with the behavior under consideration. As we see in Chapter 9, there may be
multiple origins of facial expressions of emotion. Certain nervous mannerisms or self-
touching gestures may be learned primarily as we learn to perform certain tasks and
cope with various interpersonal experiences. Some behaviors may be primarily the
product of imitating others. Some hand gestures, such as the thumbs-up gesture, are
primarily culture specific, but certain patterns of eye gaze seem to have a strong
genetic component. The stronger the learned component of nonverbal behavior, the
more we would expect to find variations across cultural, class, and ethnic lines. Note,
however, that a behavior that varies from group to group may still have a common
biological base, after cultural teachings are stripped away. How can we ever know
that a single behavior or pattern of behavior has a common biological base?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
ACROSS EVOLUTIONARY TIME

Human beings, like other species, have evolved through a process of adaptation to
changing conditions (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992). Which nonverbal behaviors
have ancient roots in human history? On what basis do social scientists conclude that a
behavior or behavioral pattern includes an inherited component? It is not an easy task.
Some of our current behavioral displays are only fragments of larger patterns no
longer enacted in their entirety; some behaviors now embedded in rituals have little to
do with their original function; and some behavior that seems to serve one function
may be associated with something completely different; for example, self-grooming
may be the result of confusion or frustration in achieving a goal rather than a behavior
enacted for self-preservation, courtship, or cleanliness goals. And studying the fossil
record is not much help in understanding the biological roots of behavior. Despite the
difficulties inherent in any questions of phylogeny—in this case, the roots of behavior
in human evolutionary history—researchers continue to make important discoveries.
Real connections to human reproductive success and cross-cultural similarities have
been shown for various aspects of facial attractiveness, such as symmetry, as well as the
waist–hip ratio (see Chapter 6), which indicates they may have played a role in the evo-
lution of our species (Floyd, 2006; Rhodes & Zebrowitz, 2002).

But the best evidence for inferences about whether a behavior has been in-
herited and is genetically transmitted to every member of the human species is
derived from as many of the following five research perspectives as possible. If we
can compile strong evidence in all five of these perspectives, our confidence in a
phylogenetic dimension reaches the highest level.

1. Evidence from sensory deprivation—noting the manifestation of a behavior in
blind and/or deaf people who could not have learned it through visual or
auditory channels

2. Evidence from neonates—observing behaviors displayed within minutes or
hours after birth

3. Evidence from identical twins reared in different environments—identifying the
behavioral similarities of people whose gene structure is known to be virtually
identical and whose learning environment is known to be very different

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 31

4. Evidence from other animals—showing an evolutionary continuity of a
behavior up to and including our closest relatives, nonhuman primates

5. Evidence from multicultural studies—observing the manifestation of similar
behaviors used for similar purposes in other cultures around the world, both
literate and preliterate

Research from each of these perspectives makes up the remainder of this chapter.
The nonverbal behavior that has received the most scrutiny in each perspective is the
facial expression of emotion. But as Buck and Powers (2006) remind us, the origin of
any behavioral display by an individual communicator is only part of the story. Evolu-
tion may also be responsible for “preattunements” that structure a person’s percep-
tions of these behavioral displays. For example, physical attractiveness is perceived
with a high degree of consistency, and certain facial expressions of emotion have been
decoded accurately in a variety of cultures around the world. According to Buck and
Powers, this interplay between biologically structured displays and preattunements
“creates the basis for the social organization of the species” (p. 120).

EVIDENCE FROM SENSORY DEPRIVATION

Many have observed the early appearance of nonverbal behavior in children.
Perhaps the behaviors are learned quickly. To verify such a hypothesis, we need to
examine children who, because of being blind and deaf at birth, could not learn
such behaviors from visual or auditory cues. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1973, 1975; Pitcairn &
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1976) filmed several blind/deaf children between the ages of 2 and
10 and reached conclusions similar to those of others who have systematically
compared the behavior of blind/deaf children with sighted/hearing children. His
conclusion was that the spontaneous expressions of sadness, crying, laughing,
smiling, pouting, anger, surprise, and fear are not significantly different in blind/
deaf children. Smiling, crying, and laughing sequences filmed by Eibl-Eibesfeldt are
shown in Figure 2-1, Figure 2-2, and Figure 2-3.

Some might argue that such expressions could be learned by blind/deaf
children by touching or through a slow reinforcement program. Eibl-Eibesfeldt
points out, however, that even babies born with no arms or other severe birth
defects because their mothers took the drug thalidomide while they were pregnant,
as well as children who could hardly be taught to raise a spoon to their mouths,
showed similar expressions.

Galati, Scherer, and Ricci-Bitti (1997), Galati, Miceli, and Sini (2001), and Galati,
Sini, Schmidt, and Tinti (2003) found similar results with sighted and congenitally
blind children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. Spontaneous expressions of
sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust, surprise, and interest were filmed and coded with
Ekman and Friesen’s Facial Action Coding System (see Chapter 9). There were few
differences between the expressions of the sighted and blind children, and judges who
looked at the faces were able to accurately identify the situations that triggered the
expressions for both. Thus, being able to see the facial expressions of others does not
seem to provide a significant advantage in being able to make basic facial displays.

In addition to facial expressions, the deaf/blind children studied by Eibl-Eibesfeldt
also showed other patterns of movement exhibited by sighted children. They sought

32 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

contact with others by stretching out one or both hands, wanted to be embraced and
caressed when distressed, and, as the pictures in Figure 2-4 reveal, showed a remark-
ably familiar sequence of refusal gestures.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt also reports some interesting eye patterns of blind children.
When he complimented a 10-year-old girl on her piano playing, she looked at
him, coyly looked down and away, and then looked at him again. A similar
sequence was recorded for an 11-year-old boy when asked about his girlfriend.
This sequence of turning toward and away is also seen in sighted children under
similar circumstances. Magnusson (2006) observed some similarities in the way
sighted and blind communicators managed conversational turn-taking and dis-
played turn exchange and regulation, like nodding and smiling, but fewer similari-
ties were observed with the congenitally blind than with those whose blindness was
the result of an accident. Lastly, hearing individuals can decode the dynamic facial
displays used in American Sign Language by the deaf to communicate emotion
states (e.g., anger, surprise) and “language-specific grammatical constructs,” such
as questions about who, what, or why, presumably because of similarities in the
facial expressions used by both groups of people (Grossman & Kegl, 2007).

a b

c d

FIGURE 2-1
Blind/deaf smiling response filmed by Eibl-Eibesfeldt. The head is lifted and tilted back as the intensity increases.
Source: From I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, “The Expressive Behavior of the Deaf-and Blind Born,” in M. von Cranach and I. Vine, Social Communication
and Movement. New York: Academic Press, 1973 and with permission from Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 33

However, the facial expressions of blind/deaf children and blind children may
be different in some ways when compared with those of sighted and hearing
children. These differences are particularly evident as the children grow older and
learn certain display rules by looking at the way others perform expressions. For
example, subtle gradations in the onset and passing of expressions were not
observed as often in the blind/deaf children; their expressions seemed to quickly

a b

c d

e f

FIGURE 2-2
Blind/deaf crying response filmed by Eibl-Eibesfeldt.
Source: Filmed by I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt in T. K. Pitcairn and I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, “Concerning the Evolution of Nonverbal Communication in Man,”
in M. E. Hahn and E. C. Simmel, Communicative Behavior and Evolution. New York: Academic Press, 1976.

34 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

appear and suddenly disappear, leaving the face blank. Display rules about the
suitable intensity of expressions is another lesson blind/deaf children appear to be
less familiar with; for example, how intense crying and laughing should be in various
situations. Sighted children also seemed more likely than blind children to learn a dis-
play rule for masking negative emotions (Galati, Miceli, & Sini, 2001; Galati, Sini,
Schmidt, & Tinti, 2003). The general absence of facial blends among the blind/deaf
suggests that this may also depend on learning. Making voluntary expressions—that
is, mimicking facial expressions—is also a learned behavior, and young deaf children
do not perform this skill very well. But at least one study suggests that congenital
blindness does not prevent adults from producing expressions that are as accurately
decoded as those of sighted adults (Galati, Scherer, & Ricci-Bitti, 1997). All of these
findings point to a joint role for innate predispositions and social learning.

FIGURE 2-3
Blind/deaf laughing response filmed by Eibl-Eibesfeldt.
Source: From I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, “The Expressive Behavior of the Deaf-and Blind Born,” in M. von Cranach and I. Vine, Social Communication
and Movement. New York: Academic Press, 1973 and with permission from Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 35

Thus far, the focus has been on the encoding (i.e., production) of nonverbal
information among the blind/deaf. Regarding decoding nonverbal cues, children
who have been blind/deaf since birth obviously have not had the opportunity to
see other people’s facial expressions/to hear people speak. However, recent tech-
nological advances—with more surely to come—may afford these children the
opportunity to decode such nonverbal information for the first time. Cochlear
implants (CI), for example, permit deaf children to perceive sound. Research with
children who had been deaf since infancy and later equipped with a CI in their
right ear found that, although these children could identify the emotional meaning
of facial expressions, they had difficulty recognizing emotion in voices (Hopyan-
Misakyan, Gordon, Dennis, & Papsin, 2009). This difficulty might stem from
shortcomings in the CI design or suggest that there is a critical period for learning
how to decode emotion cues from voices.

a b

c d

e f

FIGURE 2-4
A blind/deaf child refusing an offer of a tortoise. The child sniffs at the object and pushes it back
while simultaneously lifting her head in a movement of withdrawal. Finally, she puts out her
hand in a gesture of warding off.
Source: From I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, “The Expressive Behavior of the Deaf-and Blind Born,” in M. von Cranach and
I. Vine, Social Communication and Movement. New York: Academic Press, 1973 and with permission from Irenäus
Eibl-Eibesfeldt.

36 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

EVIDENCE FROM INFANTS

There is evidence that newborns come into this world prepared to receive certain
nonverbal cues from their mothers. At the neurological level, for example, new-
borns appear to respond differently to their mother’s breast milk than they do to
formula, showing greater oxygenated blood flow to the orbitofrontal region of
their brain to the former than to the latter (Aoyama et al., 2010). At the behavioral
level, newborns show less distress in response to heel sticks when they are exposed
to the odor of their own mother’s breast milk as opposed to that of another
woman or formula (Nishitani et al., 2009). These results do not imply that new-
borns do not learn maternal odors outside the womb. Indeed, there is evidence
that newborns have a sensitive period for learning new odors (minutes after birth)
(Romantshik, Porter, Tillmann, & Varendi, 2007). However, particularly impor-
tant maternal nonverbal cues, such as those linked to sustenance, may be learned
in utero, due to their importance in ensuring the survival of the newborn.

Newborn babies are born ready to process certain nonverbal cues that they
could not have learned in utero, such as the human face (Pascalis & Kelly, 2009),
as well as the jointly occurring gaze and voice of an adult (Guellai & Streri,
2011), as they presumably begin the task of identifying others. In addition, within
days of birth, newborns spend more time looking at happy faces than fearful ones,
suggesting that experiences outside the womb have shaped their preference for
happy expressions (Farroni, Menon, Rigato, & Johnson, 2007).

DID YOU MAKE SCENTS TO YOUR MOTHER EVEN AT BIRTH?

Yes!
Our signature communicates our uniqueness as an

individual to others. As adults, others recognize who we
are by how we write our name. At birth, our mothers can
recognize who we are by how we smell. It appears we
have an “olfactory signature” (see Chapter 6). As evi-
dence of this, postpartum women are able to quickly tell
by scent alone which clothes were worn by their baby as
opposed to another woman’s baby.

A human mother’s ability to recognize her offspring by
scent would be an example of evolutionary conservation.
That ability is there because, presumably, it has been an

effective means of offspring recognition among animals over a great span of time. Offspring recognition is
important because it is needed for the establishment and maintenance of the parent–child bond. Without that
bond, an offspring—and thus the parents’ genes—might not survive. Therefore, being able to recognize an
offspring’s olfactory signature must have worked (in an evolutionary sense) for mothers, whether she is a
ewe or human.

Human mothers can identify their offspring using other nonverbal cues as well, including the cry of their
baby, the tactile characteristics of their baby’s hand, and the visual features of their baby’s face. Thus, infant rec-
ognition among human mothers likely involves the integration of multiple nonverbal cues, which they quickly
associate with their baby. This ability distinguishes humans from ungulates in which infant recognition
depends more heavily on offspring odor, and is likely due to the greatly expanded neocortex in humans.

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CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 37

Newborn babies also seem to have the facial muscle actions necessary to
express virtually all the basic affect displays of adults (Oster & Ekman, 1978).
The questions of interest in the remainder of this section are whether newborns
show affect displays resembling those of adults, and if so, do those displays convey
the same emotions as they do in adults? Here the evidence is mixed, partly because
of intrinsic difficulties in determining what emotion a baby is experiencing.

Researchers disagree on this important question: Does an infant’s facial reper-
toire consist of undifferentiated expressions of arousal and distress, which are then
shaped by experience, or is a baby born with a biologically based predisposition
to display the full repertoire of emotional expressions identified in adults? Much
research has been inspired by the latter view, which is embodied in what has become
known as differential emotions theory (Izard, 1977; Izard & Malatesta, 1987). This
proposes a strong genetic basis for facial expressions, and thus, emotions would
produce the same distinctive facial patterns in both infants and adults.

Infants only a few months old do display some expressions consistent with
prototypical emotional displays in adults—specifically expressions for joy, surprise,
and interest (Oster, Hegley, & Nagel, 1992). These expressions are also easily rec-
ognizable by untrained observers as representing those emotions. This does not
mean, of course, that the infants were actually experiencing those emotions, only
that the facial configurations match the adult prototypes (Camras, 1994). For the
negative emotions, however, evidence indicates that discrete expressions correspond-
ing to adults’ expressions of emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, and sadness do
not exist in young infants (Camras, Sullivan, & Michel, 1993; Oster, Hegley, &
Nagel, 1992). Stenberg, Campos, and Emde (1983), though, found the capacity
to express anger to be well developed in infants by 7 months of age, and that the
attending facial expression was reliably detected in the absence of contextual
information.

To date, the data from infant studies do not provide complete support for
a biological root to discrete facial expressions of emotion. Moreover, it has been
pointed out that too much emphasis on finding adults’ expressions in infants
might lead researchers to make several errors, including the following:

1. They may reach erroneous conclusions about what emotions are actually being
felt; just because an infant and an adult show the same expression, we do not
know they are feeling the same emotion.

2. They may fail to observe distinctive infant emotional expressions that do not
happen to match up with adult expressions (Barrett, 1993; Oster, Hegley, &
Nagel, 1992).

All researchers seem to agree, however, that infants’ faces convey information
about their states; that more research is needed to uncover exactly what is being
conveyed and what regularities exist in the developmental unfolding of emotional
expression; and that socialization still plays a crucial role.

The study of pain expression in infants and adults also yields information on the
biological basis of expression and seems a less debatable topic than the expression
of basic emotions. It is easy to argue that the adaptive advantage of being able to
engage adult care from the earliest moments of life would lead to the evolution of
an innate program for displaying pain (Prkachin & Craig, 1995). Expressions of

38 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

pain in infants, even in newborns, are highly similar to those observed in adults.
These are the five most consistently seen facial movements:

1. A lowered brow
2. Eyes squeezed tightly shut
3. Vertical wrinkles at the side of the nose (the nasolabial furrow)
4. Open lips and mouth
5. A taut, cupped tongue (Grunau & Craig, 1990)

Computer-based technology has been used to measure how a neonate’s face
changes in expression after he or she has been exposed to a painful stimulus, such
as a heel stick. These changes include mouth opening, drawing in of the eyebrows,
and closing of the eyes (Schiavenato et al., 2008). Moreover, when a male neonate
is experiencing more pain (e.g., from a circumcision without analgesia), he opens his
mouth vertically wider than does a male neonate feeling less pain (e.g., from a heel
stick) (Schiavenato, Butler-O’Hara, & Scovanner, 2011). A wider mouth may be an
important cue to felt pain to know, especially given that, although adults routinely rec-
ognize facial signs of pain, there is evidence that observers also tend to underestimate
the extent of pain in infants (and adults for that matter) (Prkachin & Craig, 1995).

Research on imitation highlights the complex intertwining of biology and
socialization in the development of expression. The early ability to imitate others’
expressions may be inherited and may ultimately play a role in the development of
various facial displays. Meltzoff and Moore (1977, 1983a, 1983b) demonstrated
that 12- to 21-day-old infants imitated adults who performed four actions: tongue
protrusion, mouth opening, lip protrusion, and sequential finger movement (see
Figure 2-5). Subsequent research replicated the findings for tongue protrusion and
mouth opening for neonates 0.7 to 71 hours old. Their experiments seem to negate
explanations for such behavior based on innate releasing mechanisms similar to
those found in many animals as well as on learning processes linked to caregiver
behavior. Instead, they argue that infants are born with the ability to use what they
call intermodal equivalencies, which means the infant is able to use the “equivalence
between the act seen and the act done as the fundamental basis for generating the
behavioral match.” Perception and production, then, are closely linked and mediated
by a common representational system from birth (cf., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).

The Meltzoff and Moore research is complemented by other studies (Field,
Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982) that examined the imitation of specific
facial displays of emotion by 2-day-old infants (see Figure 2-6). These findings sup-
port those of Meltzoff and Moore and indicate that the ability to discriminate and
imitate happy, sad, and surprised facial expressions is one with which children
enter their social environment.

Perhaps even more significant for understanding the early processes of learning
and socialization is the finding that 9-month-old infants can imitate behavior from
memory after a 24-hour delay (Meltzoff, 1985, 1988a; Meltzoff & Gopnik, 1989),
and 14-month-olds can accurately imitate a sequence of acts after a week’s delay
(Meltzoff, 1988b). The early integration of cognitive, linguistic, and communicative
development is also demonstrated by the infant’s ability to process visually the connec-
tion between mouth shape and sound; for example, that the “ah” sound comes from a
mouth with the lips wide open and the “ee” sound comes from a mouth with corners
pulled back (Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982). In one study, 4- and 6-month-old infants were

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 39

able to discriminate languages, French and English, from the facial movement they
saw on silent videotapes (Weikum et al., 2007).

EVIDENCE FROM TWIN STUDIES

Monozygotic (i.e., identical) twins are sometimes separated at birth and reared in
very different environments. Because their genetic similarity is known, it is possible
to compare and contrast their abilities and behavior to determine how much nature
and nurture contribute to each.

Plomin (1989) provided an extensive review of the research using identical and
fraternal twins as well as adopted children. This research shows a substantial hered-
itary influence—usually about 50 percent for identical twins—on the following
items: job satisfaction; religious interests, attitudes, and values; IQ; vocational inter-
ests; reading disability; mental retardation; extraversion; emotionality; sociability;
alcoholism; and delinquency and criminal behavior. Extensive studies at the University
of Minnesota of identical twins reared apart indicate the amount of genetic
influence on a behavior can be high, but it varies with the behavior in question.

a b c

FIGURE 2-5
Sample photographs from videotape recordings of 2- to 3-week-old infants imitating (a) tongue
protusion, (b) mouth opening, and (c) lip protrusion demonstrated by an adult experimenter.
Source: Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates.
Science, 198, 75–78. Reprinted with permission from AAAS.

40 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

FIGURE 2-6
Sample photographs of model’s happy, sad, and surprised expressions and infant’s corresponding
expressions.
Source: Field, T., Woodson, R., Greenberg, R. & Cohen, D. (1982) Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions
by neonates. Science, 218(8), 179–181. Tiffany.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 41

General intelligence, for example, has a fairly strong genetic influence—50 to 70
percent—whereas personality traits are about 50 percent genetic, occupational
interests 40 percent, and social attitudes about 34 percent (Segal, 1999). The
genetic influence on behaviors can be substantial, but nongenetic factors such
as family and nonfamily environment are responsible for at least half of the
variance in most complex behaviors. Even though genes may account for half of
the variance associated with a particular behavior, note that this is almost never a
highly deterministic, single-gene influence. And just because we have a genetically
based predisposition to behave in a particular way does not mean that these beha-
viors are unalterable or that they will even be displayed.

Despite the intriguing results from a variety of behavioral areas, there is very
little systematic research that bears specifically on nonverbal behavior. Pairs of
monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins from the Minnesota Study of Twins
Reared Apart project had their facial expressions coded as they watched emotion-
inducing films (Kendler et al., 2008). MZ twins showed greater similarity in their
facial expressions than did DZ twins, suggesting the heritability of facial displays
of emotion. In another analysis of identical twins reared apart, some statistical evi-
dence showed striking similarities between twins in vocal pitch, tone, and talkative-
ness (Farber, 1981). Other mannerisms such as posture, laughter, style of walking,
head turning, and wrist flicking were also observed as “more alike than any quanti-
fiable trait the observers were able to measure.” Farber goes on to say, “Possibly the
most interesting observation over the years was that many sets had identical ‘body
languages’—that is, they unconsciously moved and gestured in the same way, even
when they had not had an opportunity for mutual identification” (p. 90).

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption
Research echo these observations (Bouchard, 1984, 1987; Segal, 1999). For example,
Segal says,

One of my favorite tasks was faithfully capturing hand gestures, head positions, foot
tapping and energy level in one-hour videotaped sessions of each twin alone, followed
by half-hour videotaped sessions of the twins together. Distinctive physical expressions
co-occurring in identical twins reared apart suggest that genetic factors are involved.
Jerry Levey and Mark Newman, identical [twin] volunteer firemen, held pinky fingers
under cans of Budweiser beer long before they met. [See Figure 2-7] Other pairs were
notorious for swaying side-to-side while walking, accenting long slender fingers with
abundant jewelry, and belting out warm, rich laughter. (pp. 143–144)

When asked to stand against a wall for a series of photographs, identical twins in
the University of Minnesota studies frequently assumed the same posture and
hand positions; this happened only occasionally with fraternal twins reared apart.
One pair of identical male twins reared apart had grown similar beards, had their
hair cut similarly, and wore similar shirts and wire-rimmed glasses. Their photo
shows them both with thumbs hooked into their pants tops. Another pair of female
twins both started crying at the slightest provocation, and it was later learned that
each had behaved in this manner since childhood. These unsystematic observations
do not prove anything about heredity and nonverbal behavior; they only suggest
intriguing avenues for research.

Most of the studies comparing twins reared apart have emphasized responses to
paper-and-pencil tests. But it seems reasonable to assume that detailed observational

42 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

studies will indicate a hereditary influence associated with behavior as well. For
example, studies of twins show an inherited component to the trait of extraversion
(Pedersen, Plomin, McClearn, & Friberg, 1988; Viken, Rose, Kaprio, & Koskenvuo,
1994), and we know that certain nonverbal behaviors, such as faster speech, are
associated with the trait of extraversion. Therefore, it is possible that these and
other nonverbal cues related to extraversion are common between identical
twins. Twin studies have also shown a strong hereditary basis for social anxiety
(Beatty, Heisel, Hall, Levine, & LaFrance, 2002; Beatty, Marshall, & Rudd, 2001).
Nonverbal behaviors associated with nervousness and tension are logically linked to
social anxiety, but we also know learning can play an important role in controlling
such behavior. Other relationship styles such as aggressiveness, in which heredity also
seems to play an important part, may eventually reveal more about the extent to which
nonverbal behavior has an innate foundation. But until more twin studies are done in
which nonverbal behavior is the specific focus, we have to rely too much on tantaliz-
ing, but incomplete, anecdotal observations and reasoned inferences.

Brain imaging studies should offer one intriguing avenue of insight into the
possible role of genes in individual differences in the processing of nonverbal
behavior. Anokhin, Golosheykin, and Heath (2010), for example, recorded the
brain activity (specifically, event-related brain potentials [ERPs]) of MZ and DZ
twins who watched a face change in expression from neutral, happy, and fearful.
The authors noted that 36 to 64 percent of the individual variation in the ERPs
to these changes in facial expression can be attributed to genetic factors.

FIGURE 2-7
Identical twins Jerry Levey and Mark Newman were reared apart yet both became volunteer firefighters. For a
photograph of how they both hold a beer can with a pinky finger underneath, see Segal (1999, p. 144).

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CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 43

EVIDENCE FROM NONHUMAN PRIMATES

Human beings are primates, as are apes and monkeys. If we observe our nonhu-
man primate relatives manifesting behaviors similar to ours in similar situations,
we are more confident that such behavior has phylogenetic origins.

For Charles Darwin, evidence of similarities in expressive behavior across differ-
ent species constituted important support for his theory of evolution. For Darwin,
the increasing use of the face, voice, and body for emotional and communica-
tive purposes demonstrated the process of evolutionary advancement. Darwin
wrote:

With mankind some expressions, such as the bristling of the hair under the influence
of extreme terror, or the uncovering of the teeth under that of furious rage, can hardly
be understood, except on the belief that man once existed in a much lower and animal-
like condition. The community of certain expressions in distinct, though allied species,
as in the movements of the same facial muscles during laughter by man and by various
monkeys, is rendered somewhat more intelligible if we believe in their descent from a
common progenitor. (1872/1998, p. 19)

Among vertebrates, the functionality of a rich repertoire of expressive and signaling
behaviors is clearly related to the complexity of a species’ social organization. We
need only compare the differing number of facial muscles possessed by a lizard to
those of a monkey to understand why Darwin considered expression a critical link
in the argument for evolution.

Before we begin emphasizing similarities, we should acknowledge some impor-
tant differences in human and nonhuman primates. Human beings make little use
of changes in body color, but we do have an extensive repertoire of gestures that
attend our verbal language. Apes, monkeys, and chimpanzees use almost no refer-
ential gestures with each other (Pika, Liebal, Call, & Tomasello, 2005; Pika &
Mitani, 2006). We also seem to have a greater variety of facial blends, and our
response repertoire is not nearly as limited to immediate and direct stimuli. And
although other animals are capable of complex acts, the level of complexity, con-
trol, and modification shown by the human animal may be hard to match.

Behavioral similarities are often linked to common biological and social pro-
blems that confront human and nonhuman primates: for example, mating, groom-
ing, avoiding pain, expressing emotional states, rearing children, cooperating in
groups, developing leadership hierarchies, defending, establishing contact, and main-
taining relationships. Chimpanzees, like humans, form political alliances to gain
power, show empathy for those in distress, do favors for others, and reconcile after
a fight with a touch or embrace (de Waal, 2002). Figure 2-8 shows some of these sim-
ilarities in grooming and bodily contact. Of the many behaviors that might be
explored for evolutionary roots (Altmann, 1968; Thorpe, 1972; van Hooff, 1973),
we focus on three: facial expressions, perception of the color red on conspecifics,
and eye behavior during greetings.

Studies comparing the facial displays of nonhuman primates and human beings
find that the “tense-mouth display” of nonhuman primates (see Figure 2-9) shows
social and morphological kinship to anger on human faces. When circumstances trig-
ger a combination of anger and fear, nonhuman primates manifest a threat display
(see Figure 2-10 and Figure 2-11). In human beings, this most closely resembles a

44 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

FIGURE 2-8
Upper left: Signaling connection in human couple. Upper right: Two chimpanzees signaling
connection. Middle left: Rhesus monkey mother with child. Middle right: Sonjo children
clasping each other in fright. Lower left: Social grooming of vervet monkeys. Lower right: Social
grooming among Balinese women.
Source: Upper left, Middle left, Middle right, Lower right: Courtesy of I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt from I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, 2nd ed., New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975. Upper right: Minden
Pictures/Masterfile. Lower left: Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 45

FIGURE 2-9
A tense-mouth display by an adult female rhesus monkey. Ears are flattened, brows are raised,
the gaze is fixed and staring, jaws are close together, and lips are compressed. Teeth are not
prominently exposed, although this animal is highly disposed toward attack. Angry humans
display a similar configuration.

FIGURE 2-10
An adult female rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) displaying a facial threat. Notice that the
teeth are not prominently exposed. Ears are flattened against the head, the brow is raised, the
gaze is fixed and staring, nostrils are flared, and the upper lip is rounded over the teeth.

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46 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

blend of anger in the mouth—an open-mouthed anger expression—and fear in the
eye area (Redican, 1982).

Figure 2-12 provides both written and visual descriptions of probable evolution-
ary paths for facial displays of anger in three living primates. It shows evolutionary
dead ends for some expressions and continuity for others. Chevalier-Skolnikoff has

FIGURE 2-11
Facial expressions of Macaca arctoides according to intensity and emotion. Note that on the
anger axis (top row, left to right) as the monkey becomes increasingly angry, the stare intensifies,
the ears are brought forward, the hair is raised over the head and neck, the lips are tightened
and contracted, and the mouth is opened. On the fear axis (left column, top to bottom) as the
animal’s fear increases, the gaze is averted; the ears are drawn back against the head, where they
do not show; and the lips are retracted horizontally and vertically, baring the teeth.

Reading left to right, and from top to bottom, these are the expressions: (a) Neutral face.
(b) “Stare”: mild, confident threat. (c) “Round-mouthed stare”: intense, confident threat.
(d) Slight “grimace”: slight fear. (e) A mild fear–anger blend. (f) “Open-mouthed stare”:
moderately confident, intense threat. (g) Extreme “grimace”: extreme fear. (h) Mild “bared-teeth
stare”: extreme fear blended with anger. (i) “Bared-teeth stare”: intense fear–anger blend.
Source: From Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973, p. 27. Drawn by Eric Stoelting.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 47

proposed similar phylogenetic chains for expressions of happiness, such as smiling
and laughter, and sadness with and without crying (Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973;
van Hooff, 1972). Like human beings, nonhuman primates may accompany their
emotional facial displays with complementary cues in other body regions: for
example, they may display raised hair or muscle tenseness. Varying degrees of

FIGURE 2-12
A between-species analysis and probable evolutionary paths for facial expressions of anger.
(a) The closed mouth, Type I Angry Face in humans has an equivalent in both macaques and
chimpanzees. In all species, the mouth is closed, the eye gaze is direct, and brows are either
pulled down and together or raised and lowered. (b) This anger display has no equivalent in
human beings. In macaques and chimpanzees, the mouth is partly opened with lips covering
teeth. The macaques’ mouth is rounded. The gaze is direct and accompanied by a roar or bark.
(c) This anger display is found only in macaques. The common elements are direct gaze, jaws
slightly to moderately open, accompanied by a roar or bark. Macaques will raise and lower their
brows, and sometimes the lips will not cover the lower teeth. (d) An equivalent of this open
mouth, Type II Angry Face in humans is found in all the nonhuman primates identified here.
Direct gaze; lower eyelids tensed, often producing a squint; brows lowered and pulled together;
jaws moderately open in a rectangular form with teeth showing are all part of the human display.
Words often accompany this display, as do screams and shrieks in other species.
Source: From Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973, p. 27. Drawn by Eric Stoelting.

48 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

intensity, as well as blending, can also be produced by nonhuman primates (see
Figure 2-11).

Extensive studies of different species of macaques also demonstrate a wide
variety in the social functions served by particular facial expressions. Thus, even
within these closely related monkey species, the same facial expression can be
used with different overall frequencies and can have different meanings. For
example, there are “remarkable species differences with respect to the exact
social meaning of the silent bared-teeth display” or fear grimace (Preuschoft,
1995, p. 201) shown in Figure 2-13. This grimace usually signifies submissive-
ness and appeasement in species marked by rigid status hierarchies. However,
in species in which status differences are weakly expressed, the expression
has converged with other expressions—for example, the “play face” shown in
Figure 2-14 and the “open-mouthed bared-teeth display,” a more extreme
version of the grimace—to signify genuinely affiliative and reciprocal social inter-
action, such as during greeting, grooming, embracing, or huddling, and also to
reassure a lower-ranking partner. The likely relation to human smiling has long
been noted by primate researchers (van Hooff, 1972). Thus, in species marked
by a reduction of power asymmetry and an increased overlap of interests among
interactants, there has occurred an “evolutionary emancipation of silent bared-
teeth display from its originally fearful motivation” (Preuschoft, 1995, p. 209).
Such evidence that the same expression can have a diversity of meanings and
functions among macaques should caution researchers of human expressions not
to leap to simplistic conclusions about what human expressions mean based on
the primate evidence.

FIGURE 2-13
A grimace by an adult female rhesus macaque. Teeth receive a prominent frontal exposure in this
and related compound displays.

U
se

d
w
ith

p
er
m
is
si
o
n
o
f
S
R
I
In
te
rn
at
io
n
al

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 49

Many of our facial expressions have evolved from noncommunicative beha-
viors such as attacking, moving toward or away from things, self-protective
movements, and movements associated with respiration and vision. Chevalier-
Skolnikoff argues, for instance, that

threat postures of most primates contain elements derived from attack (mouth open and
ready for biting) and locomotion toward (body musculature tense and ready to advance),
while the submissive postures contain elements derived from protective responses
(retraction of lips and ears) and locomotion away from the sender. (1973, p. 30)

Thus, a behavior such as flight from an enemy, which was originally critical
to survival, may eventually become associated with feelings of fear and/or anger. It
is possible, then, that an expression of fear and/or anger may appear even if the
original behavior (fleeing) is unnecessary; for example, a monkey that feels fearful
when approaching a female to copulate. The facial display has, over time, become
associated with a particular feeling state and appears when that feeling state is
aroused. It is likely that those animals that substituted facial expressions of threat
for actual attack and fighting probably had a higher survival rate and, in turn, passed
on this tendency to succeeding generations. Similarly, our greater dependence on
signals received visually—rather than through smell, for instance—may have
been especially adaptive as our ancestors moved into open areas and increased
in physical size.

FIGURE 2-14
A playful chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) displaying the primate equivalent to the human laugh
and pleasurable smile.

M
ic
h
ae

l
Ly

st
er
,
Lo

n
d
o
n
,
19

50 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

To this point, our focus has been on our closest living relatives: nonhuman pri-
mates. Although these studies may seem most relevant to us, it is worth noting that
nonprimates also show discriminable facial displays. The open-mouth display is
seen in reptiles, and the flattening of the ears in situations evoking threat or star-
tle is seen in most mammals. Some discriminable facial displays in greeting,
grooming, submission, and threat have been identified in fur seals and walruses
(Miller, 1975).

Humans and nonhuman primates need to be able to not only encode emotional
information on the face but also interpret facial cues and expressions, as they both
live in group settings in which others communicate emotional information to them.
Lemurs follow the gaze of other lemurs as they move about in naturalistic settings
(Shepherd & Platt, 2008).

Rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees can discriminate between the facial expres-
sions of conspecifics (Parr & Heintz, 2009; Parr, Waller, & Heintz, 2008). And
great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans) might be able to use facial expres-
sions to infer behavior. Buttelmann, Call, and Tomasello (2009) had great apes
observe a male human reacting happily to what was inside one container and in a
disgusted fashion to what was inside another container. Afterward, the apes saw
the human eating food. When given the opportunity, the apes were more likely
to choose the container that the human had shown disgust toward, presumably
inferring that there was still food in there (i.e., the human had eaten the food in
the other container). This finding suggests that great apes can infer how a human
had behaved toward two containers of hidden food based on the human’s prior
emotion reactions to each.

We also can look at psychological reactions to color as well as entire sequences
of behavior that may have some genetic components and evolutionary origins. For
example, there appear to be parallels in how humans and nonhuman primates
react to seeing the color red on a conspecific in particular settings. Human males
and male rhesus macaques seem to perceive dominance in opponents wearing red
in competitive situations (Hill & Barton, 2005; Khan, Levine, Dobson, & Kralik,
2011), and human males and male chacma baboons appear to perceive greater
“sexiness” in their respective female counterparts when those females are display-
ing red on their body or, in the case of humans, appearing in a red background or
wearing red clothing (Bielert, Girolami, & Jowell, 1989; Elliot & Niesta, 2008;
Roberts, Owen, & Havlicek, 2010). Similarly, human females and female rhesus
macaques appear to more sexually attracted to males wearing red clothes or dis-
playing reddened faces, respectively (Roberts, Owen, & Havlicek, 2010; Waitt,
Lane, & Head, 2003). The color red on the body may signal sexual maturation
or receptiveness in male and female humans and nonhuman primates alike, result-
ing in similarities in how each responds to conspecifics displaying that color in
specific settings (e.g., mating).

Many factors affect the way greetings are handled: place, time, relationship
between the greeters, and so forth. With so many sources of potential variation,
it is noteworthy when we find seemingly invariant patterns. Pitcairn and
Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1976) observed the eye behavior of adult human beings, human
infants and children, blind persons, and nonhuman primates in greeting rituals
and found some remarkable similarities. In each case there was a pattern of looking

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 51

at the anticipated interaction partner from a distance and looking at them during
the greeting at a closer range and as interaction began; then there was a period of
looking away prior to reestablishing gaze for interaction. They believe this behavior
is a “stream of activity which, once started, must continue to the end” and that
there is a strong possibility of a genetic or inherited program behind it.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s studies of what he calls basic interaction strategies in several
different cultures led him to conclude that rules related to dominance, bonding
affiliation, and the fear of these are at the root of both verbal and nonverbal
human behavioral displays, whether in greeting, trying to block aggression, getting
the focus of attention, or persuading a partner to give you something. But he
acknowledges that cultural teachings and environmental factors may play an enor-
mous role in making these strategies seem very different from one culture to another.
Still, his observations of children in various cultures led him to state,

We can assume there exists a system of universal rules that structure social interac-
tions, verbal and nonverbal alike. These rules could be rooted in certain panhuman
dispositions that channel the acquisition of norms, and some norms may even be
encoded in reference patterns given to us as phylogenetic adaptations. (1988, p. 114)

Although Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s view may be perceived as overstated or radically
deterministic, given the evidence he provides for behavioral universality, his obser-
vations do open the door for consideration of entire chains or sequences of behavior
involved in relating to our fellow human beings that may be rooted in our biological
makeup. Cappella (1991), Buck and Powers (2006), and others argue convincingly
that a biological foundation for certain patterns of interaction—responses of both
interactants—in humans also exists.

EVIDENCE FROM MULTICULTURAL STUDIES

Human beings the world over have two basic adaptive problems to solve: how to
stay alive and how to raise their offspring to a reproductive age. Solutions to these
problems might have evolved because they were successful in dealing with these
two problems, and thus are part of our human heritage. Such solutions would be
biological (e.g., the configuration of facial muscles; the ability to run), psychologi-
cal (e.g., the ability to experience emotion states), and social (e.g., the ability to
communicate with others verbally and nonverbally) in nature. To use an overly
simplified example, when confronted by a predator, those humans who could expe-
rience fear, could display that emotion on their face, or could understand the emo-
tional meaning of that expression in others might have been more likely to survive,
assuming those abilities were also associated with the motivational behavior of flee-
ing the situation. To the extent that nonverbal communication aided our survival
and ability to reproduce, it would not be surprising to find cross-cultural similarities
in how humans communicate emotional and social information to one another.

If we observe human beings in different environments with different cultural guide-
lines similarly encoding and/or decoding particular nonverbal behaviors, we will develop
increasing confidence that inherited components of the species may be responsible.
Nonetheless, even though multicultural similarities may be attributable to a common
human inheritance, such observations are not absolute proof of innateness. It only

52 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

means that the cause of similarities across cultures is due to something people have in
common, and thus makes a genetic explanation a possible one to explore.

Some of these cross-cultural similarities concern the perception of discrete emo-
tions (a topic we will deal with more extensively shortly) or socially relevant state
information in people, whereas others concern the enactment of specific behaviors.
In terms of emotion states, Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, and Scott (2010) demonstrated
that negative emotion states, such as fear and anger, have specific vocal qualities
that are decoded similarly by people from different cultures.

Regarding socially relevant information, it appears that both people from indus-
trialized Western cultures and those from a preliterate African tribe recognize the
nonverbal expression of pride (Tracy & Robins, 2008). The combination of nonver-
bal cues that signal pride includes a head tilted backward slightly, postural expansion,
a low-intensity smile with the mouth, and arms akimbo with hands on the hips.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1988) suggests we might find entire sequences of behavior
manifesting cross-cultural similarities: for example, coyness, flirting, embarrass-
ment, open-handed greetings, and a lowered posture for communicating submission.
In fact, Schiefenhövel (1997) believes his own work and that of Eibl-Eibesfeldt have
“clearly proven the existence of universal facial, proxemic, and to a lesser extent,
gestural behaviors” (p. 65). Although others may not share the unequivocality of
Schiefenhövel’s claim, he reminds us of the extensive body of research ethologists
have accumulated around the globe that speaks to our common behavioral heritage.
At the same time, though, it is important to recognize that much research remains
to be done. For example, there have been claims that, in the area of seeking a mate,
a common “courtship dance” among humans and nonhumans exists, and that
cross-cultural similarities can be observed in the nonverbal behaviors used by
humans when flirting with members of the other sex (Birdwhistell, 1970;
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1971). Although it seems that females use specific nonverbal beha-
viors to start the courtship process with males (looking at a male or standing close
to him), there is a limited cross-cultural understanding of the specific courtship cues
that are used successfully by females to attract males or of the nonverbal behaviors
that males use to court females who have flirted with them (Moore, 2010).

Importantly, even if cross-cultural similarities are found, we should not over-
look how cultural factors might lead to differences in the expression of that non-
verbal behavior. Two examples concern the circumstances that elicit the nonverbal
behavior, and the cultural norms and rules that govern how that nonverbal behav-
ior is managed around others. Next, we detail two behaviors with widespread doc-
umentation in a variety of cultures—findings that urge us to look for the possibility
of phylogenetic origins: (1) the eyebrow flash and (2) facial expressions of emotion.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1972) has identified what he calls the eyebrow flash. He has
observed this rapid raising of the eyebrows—maintained for about one-sixth of a
second before lowering—among Europeans, Balinese, Papuans, Samoans, South
American Indians, Bushmen, and others (see Figure 2-15). Although the eyebrow
flash often can be seen in friendly greeting behavior, it has also been seen when
people are giving approval or agreeing, seeking confirmation, flirting, thanking,
and when beginning and/or emphasizing a statement. The common denominator
seems to be a “yes” to social contact, requesting or approving such contact. Smiles
and nods sometimes accompany this gesture. The Japanese, however, are reported

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 53

to suppress it as an indecent behavior. However, other instances of reported eye-
brow raising seem to indicate disapproval, indignation, or admonishment. These
“no” eyebrow signals are often accompanied by a stare and/or head lift with lower-
ing of the eyelids signaling a cutting off of contact. Because Eibl-Eibesfeldt observed
eyebrow lifting in some Old World monkeys, he began speculating on the possible
evolutionary development. He reasoned that in both the “yes” and “no” displays, a
similar purpose was being served: calling attention to someone or letting someone
know for sure that he or she was being looked at. When we display the expression
of surprise, for instance, we raise our eyebrows and call attention to the object of
our surprise. It may be a friendly surprise or an annoyed surprise. The evolutionary
chain hypothesized by Eibl-Eibesfeldt is presented in Figure 2-16.

FIGURE 2-15
Eyebrow flash during friendly greetings filmed by Eibl-Eibesfeldt.
Source: Filmed by I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt from I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, 2nd ed., New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1975.

54 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Perhaps the most conclusive evidence supporting the universality of facial
expressions is found in the work of Ekman and his colleagues (Fridlund, Ekman,
& Oster, 1987). Photos of 30 faces expressing happiness, fear, surprise, sadness,
anger, and disgust/contempt were presented to people in five diverse, literate
cultures. Faces were selected on the basis of meeting specific criteria for facial
musculature associated with such expressions. There was generally high agree-
ment among the respondents regarding which faces fit which emotions. Other
studies have found results supporting the accuracy of decoding posed facial
expressions of emotion. These studies tested people from 21 different countries
ranging from Kirghizistan to Malaysia and from Ethiopia to Estonia (Boucher &
Carlson, 1980; Ekman, 1972, 1998; Izard, 1971; Niit & Valsiner, 1977; Shimoda,
Argyle, & Ricci-Bitti, 1978).

Because these people were exposed to the mass media and travelers, we
might argue that they learned to recognize aspects of faces in other cultures from
these sources. However, Ekman and Friesen’s (1971) research with the South Fore
in Papua New Guinea and Heider’s (1974) work with the Dani in western New
Guinea show that these isolated, preliterate peoples—who were not exposed to the
mass media and travelers—decoded the posed expressions comparably to the peo-
ple from literate Eastern and Western cultures. In Ekman’s work with the South
Fore, stories were told to the subjects who were then asked to select one of three
facial photos that reflected the emotion of the story. Distinguishing fear from sur-
prise was the most difficult discrimination to make. Perhaps, as Ekman says, fearful
events in this culture are often surprising, too. Interestingly, when Ekman obtained

FIGURE 2-16
Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s hypothesized evolution of eyebrow movements.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 55

photos of expressions made by these New Guineans and asked Americans to judge
them, the Americans accurately decoded all the expressions with high levels
of accuracy, with the exception of fear, which was often judged as surprise and
vice versa.

Physiological reactions associated with facial expressions have also been estab-
lished. Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1983) found that greater heart rate accelera-
tion and increased skin conductance occurred when people in the United States
made negative facial expressions displaying fear, disgust, and anger. Levenson,
Ekman, Heider, and Friesen (1992) found the same physiological reactions in the
Minangkabau of Sumatra.

Although Ekman’s program of research is perhaps the most complete, other
studies of other cultures support his findings. There does seem to be a universal
association between particular facial muscular patterns and discrete emotions. Note
that this is only a specific element of universality and does not suggest all aspects of
facial affect displays are universal, as Ekman and Friesen (1969) testify,

[W]e believe that, while the facial muscles which move when a particular affect is
aroused are the same across cultures, the evoking stimuli, the linked effects, the
display rules and the behavioral consequences all can vary enormously from one
culture to another.

Do these cultural display rules follow a pattern too? Matsumoto (1991) believes
two important dimensions of culture will help us predict the display rules for facial
expressions in any given culture:

1. Power distance, or the extent to which a culture maintains hierarchical, status,
and/or power differences among its members

2. Individualism–collectivism, or the degree to which a culture encourages indi-
vidual needs, wishes, desires, and values versus group and collective ones

Matsumoto hypothesizes that members of power-distance cultures will display
more emotions in public that preserve status differences. Cultures that stress
individualism, according to this theory, will manifest greater differences in public
emotional displays between ingroups and outgroups than in collective cultures.

Although the evidence seems to point toward universal recognition of certain
emotions from facial expressions, it is important to note that the only facial expres-
sion that received close to or above 90 percent accuracy by those tested in Japan,
Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the United States was happiness (Ekman, 1973,
1994). The smile, surely the most salient feature of the happy expressions, may
indeed have nearly universal meaning. But even here, we should exercise caution
because studies like those conducted by Ekman ask people to judge “pure” expres-
sions and they are often out of context. The social and emotional context of a
smile, and the exact combination of facial muscles used, can add many new and
even contradictory meanings, as we will discuss in Chapter 9. The claim of univer-
sality is not, therefore, that all smiles will always be interpreted as happy but that
the prototypical happy expression, involving movements of certain facial muscles,
will have a common meaning across most cultures.

The possibility of great variation in the meanings attributed to facial expres-
sions is made even clearer when we examine the judgments made of other facial

56 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

expressions of emotion (fear, surprise, anger, disgust/contempt, and sadness). For
these expressions, even the prototypical ones, the accuracy rate across the cultures
Ekman studied is noticeably less than it was for happiness. Perhaps, for these emo-
tional expressions, the biological determinants are weaker or have been overridden
more by cultural norms. Furthermore, Russell (1994) demonstrated that recogni-
tion scores for people from non-Western cultures are significantly lower than
Western respondents for expressions of fear, disgust, and anger. He also notes
the many problems associated with assessing universality in emotion recognition and
cautions that we should not overlook the degree to which cultures do not agree.

As we see in later chapters, there is also evidence that cultures can differ widely
in the overall frequency with which specific gestures or expressions are used, as
well as in the meanings attributed to those cues. So even though some facial dis-
plays of emotion may have a neurologically hardwired component to them, they
are also modified by local norms, values, and customs. As a result, these emotional
displays can be accurately recognized around the world; although some cultures
show more accuracy than others, all cultures are most accurate when judging
expressions made by people from their own culture (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002).

Thus, again, the debate over universality versus cultural specificity cannot
be viewed as either/or any more than the nature-versus-nurture debate can be. To
illustrate, two cultures might engage in different amounts of interpersonal touch,
but the meanings attributed to various kinds of touches—sexual, friendly, domi-
nant, aggressive, and so forth—may be the same in both. Thus, we would see cul-
tural specificity in terms of usage but universality in terms of meaning. Or different
cultures might use the very same hand gesture with the same frequency but may
use it to convey very different messages. In this case there would be universality of
usage but cultural specificity on meaning.

We have ended this chapter by introducing the idea of differences among cul-
tures in emotional displays and recognition. In Chapter 3, we will expand on the
“difference” concept to examine differences among individuals in the ability to
send and understand nonverbal cues.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, we examined five different ways
researchers accumulate data relevant to questions
of genetic and learned behavior. If we had data
from each area for a particular behavior, the
evidence would be strong. Instead, we have frag-
ments and tantalizing possibilities. The evidence
that facial expressions of emotion have an inher-
ited component is, to date, the strongest data we
have on any nonverbal behavior. Facial expres-
sions of emotion seem to manifest themselves in
children deprived of sight and hearing, in infants,
in nonhuman primates, and in literate and pre-
literate cultures around the world. A genetic
component passed on to members of the human

species seems probable for this behavior. The
innate capacity to perceive various kinds of beha-
viors and imitate them also has important impli-
cations for nonverbal study. And even though
little detailed and systematic evidence is available,
the possibility that entire sequences of behavior
may have a link to inheritance is most intriguing.

We take the point of view that neither nature
nor nurture is sufficient to explain the origin of
many nonverbal behaviors. In many instances,
we inherit a neurological program that gives
us the capacity to perform a particular act or
sequence of acts; the fact that a particular behav-
ior occurs at all may be genetically based. Our

CHAPTER 2 THE ROOTS OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 57

environment and cultural training, however, may
be responsible for when the behavior appears, the

frequency of its appearance, and the display rules
accompanying it.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you think it means to say that non-
verbal behavior is universal? State evidence
supporting and not supporting such a claim.
What exceptions can you think of?

2. Darwin thought there were many similarities
between the nonverbal expressions of humans
and those of lower animals. Discuss commu-
nication in the animal world. Do you think
animals send the same messages via nonverbal
behavior that we do?

3. Why, in your opinion, do infants imitate
adults’ facial movements? Do you think
they know what different expressions mean?
Why do babies have such expressive faces
and voices?

4. The eyebrow flash is seen in cultures around
the world. Reflect on your own use of this
gesture. Do you use it? If so, when do you
use it and with what meanings?

58 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND

SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS

[ C H A P T E R 3 ]

As you look around, you will readily note that some people seem more socially
wise than others. Some people can “get along with anybody”; some we call savvy,
tactful, shrewd, or poised. In contrast, some people seem insensitive, awkward,
obtuse, or just tuned out. All of these qualities fit into the concept of social compe-
tence. Social competence is not easy to define, but it has long interested researchers,
and social intelligence is considered a basic intellectual capacity distinct from other
cognitive abilities (Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979; Sternberg,
1984). Emotional intelligence is a related concept involving the ability to judge
emotional messages, to regulate our own emotions, and to use emotions wisely
to guide thought and action (Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2002; Salovey &
Mayer, 1989). Even though it may seem that social and emotional intelligence are
distinct—one cognitive, the other emotional—our success in daily living may
depend on our ability to tie our emotions to our thinking (Damasio, 1994).

We definitely know that skill in nonverbal communication is part of social com-
petence. Some people are comparatively more alert to nonverbal cues and better able
to identify what these cues mean; some people are also more proficient at expressing
their feelings and attitudes nonverbally. Some people try, using nonverbal as well as
verbal cues, to project an image of themselves—for example, they want to be seen as
cool, reckless, intellectual, sincere, or competent—but they just cannot pull it off
convincingly; their performances seem fake or flawed. Others do an excellent job of
projecting exactly the image they desire. The social competence that comprises such
skill is essential in our daily life, both personal and professional. If we accept the

premise that skill in nonverbal communication is important, and that some people are
more effective at such communication than others, we may legitimately ask how they
became effective, and whether these abilities can be developed in other people.

In this chapter, we focus on the receiving and sending of nonverbal messages,
using the terms skill, ability, and accuracy more or less interchangeably. Although
nonverbal communication skills are often talked about with reference to judging
and expressing emotions, people actually judge and express many other kinds of
nonverbal messages, states, and traits as well. We make such inferences and expres-
sions so often in daily life that we are barely aware of doing it.

A person needs to notice characteristics of others in order to interpret them
correctly. These can include aspects of physical appearance, such as clothing and
hairstyle, as well as nonverbal behaviors. Sometimes the noticing by itself is the
important thing, independent of whatever interpretations might be made (Hall,
Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2006; Horgan, Schmid Mast, Hall, & Carter, 2004).
For example, we might notice and remember that our friend likes dangly earrings,
that she often wears blue, or that she might be a bit too plump for the sweater you
are thinking of buying her. Sometimes we notice something and make an interpre-
tation right away (“She is jumping up and down at the news—she must be really
excited” or “Whoops, that ring tells me he’s married”). Other times, we may notice
something but not grasp its meaning until later, as in “Oh, you didn’t get your
promotion. No wonder you were so quiet at dinner.”

Social communication skill does not rest only on nonverbal cues, however.
People also need to grasp verbal meanings—literal, metaphoric, and shades of
innuendo—and to integrate verbal and nonverbal cues; sarcasm and joking, for
example, are expressed through combinations of verbal and nonverbal cues. The
ability to connect a name with a face is yet another skill required in daily life, as
is the ability to know whether you have heard a certain voice (see Chapter 11) or
seen a certain face before (Leeland, 2008).

People also need to understand social contexts and roles: what is and is not
expected in a given social situation; how people in particular roles—for example,
professors and students—are expected to behave; and what consequences might
ensue from violating others’ expectations (Bernieri, 2001). Kurt Danziger (1976)
has argued that social interaction is impossible without a subtle and unspoken—in
other words, nonverbal—negotiation of the respective roles to be played by the
two parties in an interaction. Usually one person lays claim to a particular role or
definition of the relationship, and the other has to go along or else counter with a dif-
ferent role definition. Until the two people tacitly agree on a common understanding,
they cannot successfully interact, because they cannot effectively enact the roles of
friend–friend, teacher–student, salesperson–customer, doctor–patient, interrogator–
suspect, or mother–child. People generally know how to play these roles very well,
and they do so without having to think about it consciously; furthermore, people
are sensitive to whether roles are being enacted appropriately by others. This subtle
negotiation over roles usually goes unnoticed until one person acts “out of role” or
inappropriately to the other’s unspoken expectations. Then people are likely to become
aware that the interaction has become problematic, although they still may not know
why. Clearly, the ability to read and send the subtle cues required for role negotiation,
and to know when roles are being fulfilled appropriately, is an important social skill.

60 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Although much research has been done on nonverbal abilities, many questions
remain unanswered. These include the origins of nonverbal abilities; the role that
motivation, and trying hard, plays in accurate judgment and expression; whether
skill in receiving and sending are part of one larger skill or are separate skills; and,
within the receiving and sending modalities, whether there are many distinct sub-
skills—such as skill in judging emotion, skill in judging personality, and skill in judg-
ing deception—or whether all these can be subsumed under the general concept of
accuracy. There are also many unresolved methodological issues in this domain
(Hall, Bernieri, & Carney, 2005), some of which we will touch upon in this chapter.

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF NONVERBAL SKILLS

Most of our ability to send and receive nonverbal signals is derived from
“on-the-job training,” the job being the process of daily living. In short, we learn
our nonverbal skills, not always consciously, by imitating and modeling others
and by adapting our responses to the coaching, feedback, and advice of others.
This process starts in infancy with babies’ mimicry of adult facial expressions.
Even within the first few days of life, infants can imitate mouth opening and
tongue protrusion; within the first few months, imitation extends to lip protrusion,
finger movements, brow movements, and even different emotional expressions on
the face (see Chapter 2). By 9 months, a mother’s facial expressions are not only
reciprocated by her baby but also have a clear influence on the baby’s affect and play
behavior (Field, 1982; Field, Woodson, Greenberg, & Cohen, 1982; Meltzoff &
Moore, 1983a, 1983b; Termine & Izard, 1988). Experts believe that an innate
repertoire of facial expressions, innate imitative ability, and selective reinforce-
ment by caretakers combine to produce in a child an understanding of the
socially agreed-on meanings of different nonverbal cues, and that these processes
enable people to label emotions in themselves and others (Lewis & Rosenblum,
1978). In Chapters 7 and 9, we discuss nonverbal mimicry further.

That nonverbal and other social skills are strongly rooted in learning seems
apparent enough and provides insight into why individuals differ so much in these
skills. Among many animals, social interaction is also essential to developing appro-
priate social behavior later in life. Harlow’s famous studies of rhesus macaque mon-
keys showed that monkeys raised in complete isolation for 6 months and then tested
at 2 to 3.5 years of age “displayed aggression even to 1-year-old infants, as no self-
respecting socially raised rhesus would” (Harlow & Mears, 1978, p. 272). Even
specific communication skills in monkeys have been linked to social experience
early in life. Miller, Caul, and Mirsky (1967) found that rhesus monkeys reared in
isolation were deficient in facial expression and judgment ability. In an experiment,
two monkeys could each avoid an electric shock if one could communicate to the
other through facial cues that the shock was imminent (indicated to the expressor
monkey by a colored light) so that the other monkey could press a bar in time to
cancel the shock for both of them. Monkeys reared in isolation were incapable of
producing the necessary expressions and, when put in the role of receiver monkey,
proved deficient at reading the fearful facial expressions of the other monkey.

Feedback from others as we grow up does not have to mention our behavior
explicitly; it can be a response to our behavior. Feedback, then, may be another

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 61

person saying, “Well, you don’t look happy,” or even without making such a state-
ment, treating you like you are an unhappy person. Through feedback we increase
our awareness of ourselves and others. We not only learn what behaviors to enact
but also how they are performed, with whom, when, where, and with what conse-
quences. You can practice nonverbal sending and receiving frequently, but without
regular, accurate feedback, you may not improve your ability. Feedback in the
form of telling participants when their nonverbal judgments are right or wrong is
one of the more successful methods of improving nonverbal abilities (Ambady,
Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000).

Overall, there do appear to be positive effects of training. Studies have incorpo-
rated a variety of approaches, including teaching the meanings of cues and provid-
ing discussion, practice, and feedback as mentioned earlier. Though the evidence is
positive, not much is known about how long such improvements last or about how
they impact social functioning (Beck & Feldman, 1989; Costanzo, 1992; Davitz,
1964; Ekman & Friesen, 1975; Elfenbein, 2006; Grinspan, Hemphill, & Nowicki,
2003). Nevertheless, the potential impact of training should not be overlooked.
For example, men at high risk for physically abusing their children could benefit
from training in emotion recognition, as they appear to have deficits in this area
(Asla, dePaúl, & Pérez-Albéniz, 2011), and physicians could benefit from training

THE TRUTH ABOUT DECEPTION

“Hey, I just lied to you!” How many times have you heard that right after someone has just lied to your
face? If we ever learn about another’s deceit, it is likely well after the fact. Not knowing that we are being
lied to when we are being lied to, we have little opportunity to detect associations between the nonverbal
cues of the liar and the lie itself.

Moreover, even when we suspect deception, the liar is not likely to admit that we have caught him or
her in a lie, depriving us of the feedback that we need to hone our deception-detecting skills. How often
have you heard the following? “You’re right, I am lying to you. What gave me away?” For these reasons,
the learning environment for decoders is rather impoverished when deception is involved. Skill at decoding
deception is consequently not all that good.

We might not be aware that our skill at detecting deception is not all that good for the same reasons we
are not good at distinguishing between a lie and the truth. In general, we learn that another person has lied
to us after the fact. We are thus required to search our memory banks for clues about what the liar did or
did not do when he or she was deceiving us. Such recollections could be misleading because what sticks out
in our minds will likely be salient nonverbal cues that do not signal deception per se (e.g., “I remember she
got angry when I accused her of pilfering money from the company’s petty cash fund”). We might also
remember seeing cues that were not actually present during the lie because these cues fit with the faulty ste-
reotypic information we have about the nonverbal behavior of liars (e.g., “I recall his eyes became shifty
when I confronted him about flirting with our neighbor”). Lastly, when we suspect deception, we might
ignore the feedback from the other person—“I’m not lying about this!”—that would lead us to understand
that the person is actually telling the truth to us. Ironically, we cannot be good lie detectors if we do not
understand the nonverbal behaviors associated with telling the truth.

The truth about deception is that, in general, we do not fully appreciate the fact that we are not all that
good at detecting it.

62 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

in effective nonverbal communication strategies for dealing with their patients
(Crane & Crane, 2010).

Individuals from one culture have also been successfully trained to understand
and enact characteristic nonverbal behaviors of people from a different culture
or subculture (Collett, 1971). In Elfenbein’s (2006) training study, participants
profited the most when learning to judge emotional expressions from a culture
dissimilar to their own, perhaps due to the relative novelty of the expressions.

Some kinds of everyday experience may also serve as a form of training:

1. Parents, especially mothers, of toddler-age children were shown to be more
accurate in judging nonverbal cues on a standard test than were similar
married people without children (Rosenthal et al., 1979). Though this study
does not prove cause and effect, it fits with other studies that show positive
correlations between experiences requiring communication in the nonverbal
medium and performance on tests of decoding nonverbal cues.

2. One study showed an intriguing connection with training in a different
modality: Training in keyboard music produced improvements in the
ability to decode the meanings of vocal expressions of emotion (Thompson,
Schellenberg, & Husain, 2004).

3. Furthermore, travel outside one’s own country (Swenson & Casmir, 1998) and
dance or athletic experience (Pitterman & Nowicki, 2004) are associated with
greater ability to decode nonverbal cues.

These studies suggest that a person’s nonverbal skills benefit from more varied
experience in decoding the feelings and reactions of people through nonverbal
cues, as would happen when communicating with people who do not speak
your language, and from reading the cues of teammates and competitors on the
playing field or from spending many hours in the expressive medium of music or
dance.

There have also been efforts to train people’s abilities in sending—not just
decoding—nonverbal cues, especially using the social-skills model developed by
Argyle (1988). According to this model, socially skilled behavior is analogous to
skilled motor behavior, such as driving a car. In both kinds of skills, a person
makes moves, observes their effect including others’ reactions to them (i.e., gets
feedback from others about the effect of his or her moves), and takes corrective
action, all with the purpose of obtaining a goal. The different elements of social
behavior are seen as hierarchical. The finer, lower-level elements are automatic
and habitual; the higher levels are more strategic in nature, and therefore, are
under more direct cognitive control. This kind of training involves more active
role-playing and practice than the research described previously. Social-skills train-
ing based on this model has been used to train people of low social competence
in the effective use of nonverbal cues to make friends; it is also aimed at helping
distressed married couples, psychiatric patients, children with learning disabilities,
and professionals who need social skills for their occupations (Argyle, Trower, &
Bryant, 1974; Hargie, 2006).

A major category of behavior emphasized in social-skills training is reinforce-
ment, which involves the provision of encouragement and reward to others in
the course of an interaction. Reinforcers can be verbal and nonverbal. Verbal

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 63

reinforcers include acknowledgment, agreement, and praise. Nonverbal reinforcers
include the positive use of smiles, head nods, looking at the other, touching, body
proximity, certain gestures (e.g., thumbs-up), and an encouraging voice quality.

IS IT GOOD TO HAVE MORE ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE
OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION?

Students frequently ask whether attempts to learn about and develop skills in non-
verbal communication might have negative consequences. They wonder whether
we will know too much about others for our own good, and whether those who
have this information might use it to manipulate others for self-serving ends. Or
they worry that being expert in reading nonverbal cues will make a person
unhappy or unpopular, because that person is able to see through others’ lies and
insincerity. Though all of these could happen in specific circumstances, there is,
thus far, little overall evidence of these negative consequences. In general, we
believe that increasing people’s knowledge of nonverbal cues is a good thing,
and that both individuals and society benefit when everyone’s communication
skills are better.

Greater knowledge of cues and more developed skills may also make people
less vulnerable to manipulation. But even tactics that work do not work all the
time. A good analogy can be drawn from the study of verbal persuasion. People
have been studying the art of persuasion for over 2,000 years, yet it does not
appear that anyone has become so sophisticated that he or she invariably succeeds
in persuading anyone in any situation. Furthermore, it is the nature of human
adaptation to change behavior when it becomes unproductive. Whenever people
who know more about nonverbal behavior are suspected of using it against others,
we soon see attempts to expose or counteract the attempted influence. It also goes
without saying that each person has the ethical responsibility not to use knowledge
to harm others.

Interestingly, people seem to be less comfortable with the idea of skilled, con-
scious use of nonverbal cues than with the idea of skilled verbal persuasion. People
seem to want to believe that nonverbal communication is always a spontaneous,
and therefore sincere, reflection of feelings or intentions. As long as people believe
all nonverbal cues are spontaneous expressions of feeling, they will be less on
guard against nonverbal manipulation and, therefore, more vulnerable to it. But
nonverbal communication is much more than a spontaneous readout of feelings
(see Chapter 9). People use nonverbal cues for self-presentation and for a variety
of strategic and deliberate, sometimes even dishonest, purposes. A trial lawyer
must act convinced of her client’s dubious innocence. A psychotherapist needs to
appear sincerely interested and accepting of a client’s plight, whatever it might be.
A manager has to, at times, be able to produce a smile and a cheerful greeting for
his subordinates even when his own mood is less than sunny. And a parent may
use nonverbal communication constantly and deliberately to reinforce and direct a
child’s behavior in socially acceptable ways. Each of us has a multitude of roles to
play in life, and a skilled understanding of the nonverbal cues relevant to each role
is important for the smooth functioning of society and can serve to keep us in good
standing with others.

64 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

MEASURING THE ACCURACY OF DECODING
AND ENCODING NONVERBAL CUES

Interest in measuring sending (encoding) and receiving (decoding) accuracy goes
back to the early decades of the 20th century. Over the years, many researchers
have measured accuracy in order to answer a variety of scientific questions. Some-
times the purpose has been to study the encoding and decoding process itself: Can
emotions be recognized from nonverbal cues? What cues do people rely on most
when making their judgments? Sometimes the goal is to compare accuracy in dif-
ferent communication channels or among different emotions: Is it easier to decode
the face than the voice? Which are the hardest messages to send via nonverbal
cues? And sometimes the purpose is to compare the accuracy of individuals and
groups. It is this last line of research that we emphasize in this chapter. Other
chapters in this book take up some of the other questions listed earlier.

Most research on nonverbal communication skill has focused on the sending
and receiving of nonverbal cues reflective of emotions. However, there is much
latitude, both theoretically and in practice, in how nonverbal skill is defined and
measured (Hall & Bernieri, 2001). The following list shows some of the variety
and richness of the information that is sent and received in daily life.

• Interpersonal orientation: “That person was trying to dominate me,” or
“He didn’t seem very threatening.”

• Attitudes: “I really like you,” or “I could tell that you didn’t like that movie.”
• Intentions or needs: “She wants to leave,” or “She wants attention.”
• Physical states: “I’m in pain,” or “You look really tired.”
• Personality: “She was the most extraverted person I’ve ever met,” or “He is

so neurotic.”
• Personal characteristics: “You don’t look a day over 30,” or “I bet he’s gay.”
• Intelligence: “I have to seem really smart to get this job,” or “He’s not as

dumb as he looks.”
• Deception and insincerity: “I like this present, I really do,” or “I thought she

was a big phony.”
• Appearance and behavior: “Remember Jenny? She’s the one who smiles a lot,”

or “She’s worn the same thing three days in a row!”

The following examples will give you a taste of actual research. Bernieri, Gillis,
Davis, and Grahe (1996) have studied rapport, which is defined as how much pos-
itivity, attentiveness, and coordination are experienced by people toward each
other when they interact (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1990). Bernieri measured
observers’ accuracy in rating the degree of rapport felt by opposite-sex dyads inter-
acting on a videotape by comparing these ratings to the degree of rapport reported
by the people on the tape. Observers’ accuracy was better than the guessing level
but was impeded by their reliance on some cues that were not, in fact, indicators
of actual rapport. For example, they thought more smiling was a sign of rapport,
when in fact it was not.

On the opposite side of rapport, adults and children may pick up on nonverbal
cues linked to interracial disharmony. Using 20-second clips of white undergradu-
ates speaking with black or white experimenters, Richeson and Shelton (2005)

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 65

found that the speaker’s prejudice against blacks was detectable by other under-
graduates who rated how positively toned the speaker’s behavior was. Accuracy in
predicting prejudice was especially high when the rater was black and the video
clip showed a white speaking with a black experimenter. In other words, the black
student raters seemed to be especially able to discern how the more prejudiced
whites spoke to blacks. More disturbingly, children’s racial attitudes might be
informed by observing adults’ nonverbal cues of uneasiness in mixed-racial interac-
tions (Castelli, De Dea, & Nesdale, 2008).

A novel kind of accuracy was studied by Carter and Hall (2008), who mea-
sured how well people could notice covariations between characteristics of people
and how they behaved in a group discussion. For example, when observing a
group of people talking about living on campus versus living off campus, did the
observer notice that those who lived on campus talked more than those who did
not? Women’s accuracy on this test was higher than men’s, and accuracy was
higher for observers who had more extraverted and less neurotic personalities.

Other kinds of interpersonal accuracy include the ability to recognize what
social groups people belong to as well as their sexual orientation. Kraus and
Keltner (2009) noted that observers could distinguish between individuals of upper
and lower socioeconomic status (SES), and that a person’s SES might be signaled
by his or her nonverbal cues of disengagement (e.g., doodling, shown more by
upper SES individuals) and engagement (e.g., head nodding, shown more by lower
SES individuals) during interactions. Ambady, Hallahan, and Conner (1999) measured
the accuracy with which people could identify the sexual orientation (gay/lesbian vs.
heterosexual) of people shown speaking for only a few seconds. Accuracy was higher
than would be expected by chance, and the less information provided on which to
base a judgment, the more accurate gay and lesbian observers were relative to hetero-
sexual observers. Rule and Ambady (2008b) further demonstrated that college
students had an accuracy rate higher than guessing when shown gay and straight
men’s faces for only a 20th of a second.

As one final example, accuracy in judging personality traits can be measured
not only from how people behave but also from their social footprint. This foot-
print can include their tastes in music and recreation, their self-representation on
personal Web sites, their clothing choices, and the manner in which they decorate
and maintain their living or working spaces. Accuracy in judging personality from
such footprint cues has been shown to be surprisingly good, as documented in stud-
ies of music tastes, dress, and living/working spaces, among others (Borkenau, P., &
Liebler, A. (1993a), 1995; Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002; Zweigenhaft,
2008). Social footprint information also seems to help us detect a disorder of person-
ality, narcissism. Observers appear to be aware of the flashy dress and neat appear-
ance of narcissists (Vazire, Naumann, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2008).

In typical studies of accuracy in judging nonverbal cues, stimuli include video-
tapes, photographs, or audio recordings of people. The stimuli might show all of
the information, as in a regular videotape, or the researcher might carve the non-
verbal cues up into channels, such as silent video, face only, and voice only.

For facial encoding, the people who serve as the stimuli are often asked to
express a series of emotions or attitudes with their faces, or to tell about an emo-
tional experience, while being videotaped. In the slide-viewing paradigm (Buck,

66 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Miller, & Caul, 1974), the researcher shows expressors (i.e., encoders) a series of
emotionally arousing slides categorized as scenic, sexual, unpleasant, or unusual.
Facial reactions to the slides can then be assessed. Such facial expressions are
much more spontaneous than in the previously described methods, because expres-
sors do not know they are being videotaped while watching the slides (or films, in
some studies; the issue of posed versus spontaneous behavior is discussed later in
this chapter and in Chapter 9).

For vocal encoding, senders may be asked to recite a standard sentence with
emotionally neutral content or to recite the alphabet while expressing different
emotional/attitudinal states. Or they might be asked to describe a past emotional
experience, and thereby reexperience the emotion they had felt at the time. If, for
example, the request is to “talk about a sad experience you have had,” the tone of
voice used by a sender would reflect how successfully he or she had conveyed his
or her sadness. If the researcher wants to be sure that verbal cues do not provide
the listener with clues as to what message is being conveyed, electronic filtering
methods can be applied to make the words unintelligible so that only nonverbal
qualities, such as loudness and pitch, remain (see Chapter 11).

The accuracy with which the expressors have nonverbally conveyed various
emotions or messages is often defined in terms of whether people who do not
know what the original emotions or messages were can accurately identify them.
Thus, Koerner and Fitzpatrick (2003) had spouses deliberately send emotional mes-
sages to each other and then scored encoding accuracy by showing the videotapes
to a group of naive judges who guessed what emotion was being conveyed. The
proportion of judges whose guesses matched the original affective intention of the
spouses was used as the operational definition of encoding accuracy.

The methods described so far involve presenting a set of nonverbal stimuli to
perceivers. Such stimuli are often called thin slices because they are short excerpts
from the ongoing stream of behavior (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000;
Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992; Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007; Lippa & Dietz,
2000). The thin slices used in research can range in length from a video of people
interacting for several minutes down to still facial expressions shown for less than
1 second (Matsumoto et al., 2000).

There are many advantages to having the stimuli standardized in a set that can
be reused with many different perceivers. This is the usual definition of a test.
However, sometimes a researcher wants to investigate nonverbal communication
between individuals who are communicating with each other; for example, they
want to measure the accuracy of communication between spouses (Noller, 1980)
or between subordinates and their bosses (Snodgrass, 1992). Live-interaction
studies like these are not standardized in the way that a test would be. Snodgrass
studied communication accuracy in dyads in the following manner: After a period
of interaction in assigned boss-employee roles, the dyad members made ratings of
their own feelings and feelings about the other person, and then both guessed
what the other person’s feelings were using the same rating scales. Communication
accuracy was defined as the correlation between these two sets of ratings, with
accurate communication occurring when one person’s pattern of guesses matched
the pattern of the other person’s self-ratings. Using this method, it is a challenge to
separate the skills of encoder (expressor) and decoder (receiver) because high

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 67

accuracy can result if an encoder sends very clear messages about what he or she
thinks and feels, or if the decoder is highly sensitive to the cues conveyed by the
encoder, or both. However, by showing videotapes of the interactions to a new
group of naive judges, it is possible to disentangle these different sources of accu-
racy (Hall, Rosip, Smith LeBeau, Horgan, & Carter, 2006; Snodgrass, Hecht, &
Ploutz-Snyder, 1998).

A constant problem in this area of research centers on the question of criteria.
It is easy to ask decoders to judge what the sender is feeling or communicating, but
how do you know whether the decoders are right? If the communication is posed,
the criterion can be simply whatever encoders were asked to pose. If the sender
was asked to look happy, a decoder would get a correct answer for saying the per-
son looked happy. Using this system, a decoder could make an error through no
fault of his or her own if the encoder did a poor job of showing the intended emo-
tion. Other criteria have been used, but none is perfect. With the slide-viewing
technique, a decoder’s answer is scored as correct if he or she correctly identifies
which slide the encoder was viewing when the encoder’s face was recorded. This
method assumes that encoders’ faces show an appropriate response, but
sometimes they do not. Sometimes experts decide on what emotion is being
expressed in a stimulus. Sometimes consensus is used, so a correct answer is
based on what the majority of decoders say. (See Chapter 9 for further discussion
of judgment methods.)

STANDARDIZED TESTS OF DECODING ABILITY

Robert Rosenthal and his associates developed a multichannel test of nonverbal
decoding ability known as the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity or PONS test. The
PONS test is a 45-minute video that contains 220 auditory and visual segments to
which viewers are asked to respond. Each segment is a 2-second excerpt from a scene
portrayed by a white American woman. Five scenes portray a positive-dominant
affect or attitude (e.g., “admiring a baby”); five scenes portray positive-submissive
behavior (e.g., “expressing gratitude”); five scenes portray negative-dominant
behavior (e.g., “criticizing someone for being late”); and five scenes portray
negative-submissive behavior (e.g., “asking forgiveness”). Each scene is presented to
viewers in 11 different cue channels, representing the single or combined channels of
face, body, and two different kinds of content-masked speech (see Chapter 11 for
the description of the methods used to accomplish this). A decoder obtains a score
for particular channels and combinations of channels in addition to a total score.
The test has been administered widely to people of different ages, occupations,
and nationalities.

Figure 3-1 shows three still photos taken from the PONS test. Each item has
two choices: for example, (a) returning faulty item to a store versus (b) ordering
food in a restaurant or (a) talking about one’s divorce versus (b) expressing motherly
love. Thus, the PONS test measures the ability to recognize affective or attitudinal
states in a situational context.

In contrast, the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA;
Nowicki & Duke, 1994) is based on recognition of pure emotions—happiness,
sadness, fear, and anger—shown out of context; thus, it taps into a more unitary

68 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

kind of knowledge. The DANVA has several versions, including tests of facial,
vocal, and postural expressions of adult and child expressors. The facial and
postural expressions were generated by asking encoders to pose the different emo-
tions while a photograph was taken, and the vocal cues were generated by asking
encoders to say an ambiguous sentence while conveying the four different emotions.
The DANVA has been used extensively with children and adults.

A recent addition to these standardized tests is the Japanese and Caucasian
Brief Affect Recognition Test (JACBART; Matsumoto et al., 2000). This test
shows still photos of facial expressions of white American and Japanese adults
at extremely short exposures—mere fractions of a second. These photos are sand-
wiched between two neutral expressions of each expressor so that the viewer sees
the sequence of neutral-emotion-neutral in rapid succession. The JACBART inves-
tigates sensitivity to micromomentary expressions, which we discuss further in
Chapter 9.

In contrast to these tests, in which encoders act out different scenes or emo-
tions, the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT) emphasizes more spontaneous behav-
ior. Its developers reasoned that in real life, the things we judge about others are
often actual events or relationships (Archer & Akert, 1977; Costanzo & Archer,
1989). For example, a man and woman are interacting with two children: Which
is their own child? Two women discuss a tennis game they have just played: Who
was the winner? A man tells his life story, then he tells it again quite differently:
Which story is true? Figure 3-2 shows some still frames from a preliminary version
of the test. In the final audiovisual version of the test, verbal as well as nonverbal
information is conveyed by the expressors, but the verbal information is ambiguous
enough so that the words alone do not give away the correct answers.

Each item in the IPT has an objectively correct answer; because the scenes
are more ecologically valid than items on most such tests, it is believed the IPT

FIGURE 3-1
Still photos from the PONS test.

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CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 69

measures the subtle and complex skills that people use in everyday life. One final
method based on naturalistic stimuli is called the empathic accuracy paradigm.
Here, a person’s ability to “mind read” what another person is thinking and feeling
at particular moments in a conversation is measured by making use of a later
review of the videotape by both parties, during which each party explains their

FIGURE 3-2
How’s your interpersonal perception? In (a), are the two people a couple married 2 years or
strangers posing together? In (b), which woman is the mother of the children? In (c), is the
woman waking her husband from a nap, watching an arm wrestling match, or playing with
her baby daughter? Answers are given at the end of the chapter.

D
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19
80

70 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

thoughts/feelings as they occurred. Accuracy is then calculated as how well one
person’s guesses about the other’s thoughts/feelings correspond to what the other
person said (Ickes, 2001, 2003; Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, & Garcia, 1990).

PERSONAL FACTORS INFLUENCING THE ACCURACY
OF DECODING NONVERBAL CUES

People can be extremely sensitive to nonverbal cues. In Chapter 1, we showed that
students react to very subtle positive and negative expectancy cues from their tea-
chers. Research shows that first impressions of personality, based on superficial
observation and no actual interaction, agree impressively among observers and
with the targets’ own self-descriptions. Thus, people agree on others’ sociability or
extraversion after the barest exposure to each other, and those ratings are more
accurate than would be expected by chance (Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988;
Levesque & Kenny, 1993; Marcus & Lehman, 2002).

Similarly, observers’ ratings of only a few seconds, or thin slices, of behavior
can be surprisingly accurate and predictive of other important variables (Ambady,
Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000). The predictive power of thin slices has been demon-
strated in a variety of domains, including judgments of teacher effectiveness, the
affective style of children and their families, personality traits and psychopathol-
ogy, rapport during medical examinations, and intelligence (Ambady & Rosenthal,
1993; Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007; Fowler, Lilienfeld, & Patrick, 2009; Murphy,
Hall, & Colvin, 2003; Oveis, Gruber, Keltner, Stamper, & Boyce, 2009;
Roter, Hall, Blanch-Hartigan, Larson, & Frankel, 2011). Interestingly, accurate
predictions can be made of consumers’ personalities based on thin slices of their

FIGURE 3-2 (continued)

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A
rc
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er
,
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.,
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CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 71

avatars (Bélisle & Bodur, 2010). Regarding teacher effectiveness, people who
watch brief clips of silent video of teachers’ classroom behavior agree remarkably
on the teachers’ qualities, and their ratings predict performance evaluations by the
teachers’ own students and principal (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). Clips a minute
long or shorter produce accuracy above chance levels for a variety of personality
traits and intelligence (Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007; Murphy, Hall, & Colvin,
2003). In the Carney et al. study, clips of 5 seconds were as good as much longer
clips for judging some characteristics (e.g., intelligence).

However, the accuracy with which thin slices are judged varies greatly from
study to study and depends both on the method used and the construct being
judged. Accuracy may be best when people do not think too much about the judg-
ment process (Ambady, 2011). Accuracy in distinguishing truth from lies is typi-
cally not much above the guessing level (Bond & DePaulo, 2006), whereas
accuracy in judging basic emotions, and also the status difference between two
people, is often very high (Biehl et al., 1997; Schmid Mast & Hall, 2004). Compar-
isons like this must be made with caution, however, because in developing their
tests, investigators have great latitude in determining how easy or difficult the
items are (by, for example, varying how much information is made available
to perceivers). In order to detect differences in test-takers’ accuracy levels, test
developers often strive to make their tests neither too easy nor too difficult.

SELF-APPRAISALS AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE OF NONVERBAL CUES

Considering the time required to develop, validate, administer, and score nonverbal
tests, you might think it would be cheaper and easier just to ask people to appraise
their own skills. Unfortunately, this does not work. People high in sensitivity
to nonverbal cues are not necessarily those who appraise their own skills highly
(Riggio & Riggio, 2001). Though their accuracy in self-evaluation is above
the guessing level (Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, 2009), it is not nearly high
enough for self-evaluations to be substituted for tested nonverbal decoding skill.
This fairly low self-awareness of skill is entirely consistent with the view of most
experts that people’s knowledge of nonverbal cues is tacit; that is, people process
nonverbal cues largely unconsciously, without much awareness of which cues they
rely on. Indeed, the cues that people think they use when making nonverbal judg-
ments are often not the ones actually relevant to the judgments they are making
(Zuckerman, Koestner, & Driver, 1981).

However, it has been shown that people do have some explicit knowledge of
nonverbal communication—that is, knowledge they can articulate on a paper-and-
pencil test (Rosip & Hall, 2004), and that deficits in such knowledge may have
important implications for understanding people with subclinical autistic character-
istics (Ingersoll, 2011). The Test of Nonverbal Cue Knowledge (TONCK) (Rosip &
Hall, 2004) measures knowledge with 81 items marked true or false, and the results
are scored based on findings established through published research. These scores
significantly predict accuracy on the PONS and DANVA nonverbal decoding tests
(described earlier), but the correlations are not large enough to permit the TONCK
to be used as a substitute for measuring the actual decoding of cues. However, the
TONCK is a good addition to the instruments available for researchers.

72 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

GENDER

One of the best documented correlates of nonverbal sensitivity is gender. More often
than not, girls and women score higher than boys and men on tests of judging the
meanings of nonverbal cues (Hall, 1984; McClure, 2000). Women also score higher
than men on the TONCK, and they remember people’s appearance and nonverbal
cues better than men do (Hall, Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2006; Horgan, Schmid
Mast, Hall, & Carter, 2004). The female advantage in decoding the meanings of
nonverbal cues is present from grade school on up. Although the difference is not
great—about 2 percentage points between average male and female PONS scores,
for example—it is extremely consistent. Females scored higher than males in 80 per-
cent of 133 different groups given the PONS test, including a variety of non-U.S.
samples (Hall, 1984; Rosenthal et al., 1979). Reviews of research using many other
decoding tests have confirmed that this gender difference exists across ages of parti-
cipants and regardless of whether the encoders are male or female and regardless of
which particular test is used (Hall, 1978). It also holds up, with rare exceptions,
from culture to culture (Dickey & Knower, 1941; Izard, 1971; Merten, 2005;
Rosenthal et al., 1979).

Although these and other studies indicate a superior ability among females to
judge nonverbal cues, there are limits and exceptions to a general female advantage.
Females are especially good at judging facial cues relative to other channels and
when emotion of some sort is being judged (Hall, 1978; Rosenthal & DePaulo,
1979). For the decoding of anger cues, there is some evidence that males may actu-
ally have an advantage when the person being judged is male (Rotter & Rotter,
1988; Wagner, MacDonald, & Manstead, 1986). Researchers have shown that
women do not have an advantage at judging whether another person is lying
(Aamodt & Custer, 2006), or when judging status and dominance (Schmid Mast &
Hall, 2004). And, women’s advantage is less consistent when the task is Ickes’
empathic accuracy paradigm described earlier, involving the ability to guess another
person’s thoughts and feelings at particular moments in a conversation (Ickes, Gesn,
& Graham, 2000). Tasks that possibly show a weaker female advantage are those in
which facial expression plays a less significant role. Indeed, in the empathic accuracy
paradigm, the most important cues appear to be verbal rather than facial (Gesn &
Ickes, 1999; Hall & Schmid Mast, 2007).

Given how widespread the evidence for females’ superiority on nonverbal judg-
ment tasks is, it is no surprise that interpersonal sensitivity is part of the common
stereotype about women (Briton & Hall, 1995). We think it is likely that females’
greater skill as interpersonal decoders has been recognized throughout history and
contributes to the layperson’s notion of “female intuition.” Gender differences in
nonverbal communication skill are discussed further in Chapter 12.

AGE

Age also has been studied in relation to decoding skill. Provocative research indi-
cates that infants only a few months old have some ability to discriminate among
facial and vocal expressions of emotion (Haviland & Lelwica, 1987; Walker-
Andrews, 1997; Walker-Andrews & Lennon, 1991). Of course, it is difficult to

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 73

assess how much infants understand the cues’ meanings; discrimination per se does
not demonstrate this kind of understanding. But research did find that 7-month-
olds showed increased attention to faces that matched auditory tones on emotional
quality; for example, they looked more at a joyful face than a sad face when the
associated vocal tones were ascending, fast oscillating, high, and pulsing (Phillips,
Wagner, Fells, & Lynch, 1990). Thus by this age, infants at least know what facial
cues go with what vocal cues.

People generally show a gradually increasing decoding skill from kindergarten
until ages 20 to 30 (Dimitrovsky, 1964; Harrigan, 1984; Markham & Adams,
1992; Nowicki & Duke, 1994; Rosenthal et al., 1979). More focused investiga-
tions have been able to identify the ages when specific skills are gained; for exam-
ple, children 6 and 7 years old could not tell smiles of enjoyment from those
of nonenjoyment, which differ in muscle movements around the eyes, but children
9 and 10 years old could (Gosselin, Perron, Legault, & Campanella, 2002). The
great majority of research into developmental trends has been concerned with judg-
ing emotions from nonverbal cues. Recently, McLarney-Vesotski, Bernieri, and
Rempala (2006) also found improvements across ages 8, 13, and adult for a test
of judging personality traits from short video excerpts.

The trend reverses, however, as a person ages. Numerous studies comparing
young adults to older adults show a decline in accuracy in judging nonverbal cues
with age. For example, women averaging 62 years of age scored significantly lower
on the multichannel PONS test than women averaging 22 years of age (Lieberman,
Rigo, & Campain, 1988), and other researchers have found deficits in adults over
age 65 compared to younger adults (college aged and in their 20s) for face, body,
and voice cues examined separately (Isaacowitz et al., 2007; Ruffman, Henry,
Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008). Finally, Phillips, Scott, Henry, Mowat, and Bell
(2010) found that older individuals with Alzheimer’s disease had difficulties decod-
ing subtle facial expressions of emotion. Given that people are living longer and are
thus more likely to suffer from particular cognition-related syndromes, such as
Alzheimer’s, it will be increasingly important for researchers to assess deficits
in nonverbal decoding skill among the elderly and understand the quality-of-life
implications associated with those deficits.

GENERAL COGNITIVE ABILITY

An important question is whether scores on tests of nonverbal sensitivity reflect a
unique ability or a general cognitive skill. If the latter is the case, researchers do
not need to develop sensitivity tests but could administer standard cognitive tests,
such as IQ tests. A recent meta-analysis revealed a small-to-medium positive cor-
relation between general cognitive ability and nonverbal sensitivity (Murphy &
Hall, 2011). However, the relation was small enough to suggest that the two
abilities are far from synonymous. Instead, a person’s skill at judging nonverbal
behavior likely depends to some extent upon, but is not defined completely by,
his or her general level of intelligence. In addition, as seen later in this chapter,
a relation does seem to exist between decoding skill and academic performance
in children, though again, not one that is large enough to suggest that the skills
are interchangeable.

74 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

OTHER PERSONAL CORRELATES

Adults who do well on tests of decoding nonverbal cues have been found to exhibit
certain personal and interpersonal characteristics, based on much research and
many published summaries (e.g., Carney & Harrigan, 2003; Funder & Harris,
1986; Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, 2009; Marsh, Kozak, & Ambady, 2007;
Pickett, Gardner, & Knowles, 2004; Rosenthal et al., 1979). High-scoring adults
are better adjusted, less hostile and manipulating, more interpersonally democratic
and encouraging, more tolerant, more helpful to others, more open to experience,
more conscientious, more extraverted, more in need of social inclusion, less shy,
less anxious, more likely to believe they control what happens to them, more
warm, more empathic, more popular, more reported by others to be interpersonally
sensitive, and better able to judge others’ interpersonal sensitivity. In many ways,
high-scoring adults appear to have a positive interpersonal orientation to other
people. This is interesting because those who are open, positive, agreeable, and
invested in interpersonal relationships are also better at judging people’s personal-
ity traits (Fast, Reimer, & Funder, 2008; Letzring, 2008; Vogt & Colvin, 2003).
The relevance of a positive interpersonal orientation to enhanced interpersonal
sensitivity should not apply to personal encounters only, but rather extend to
professional ones as well, such as between a clinician and his or her patients
(Hall, 2011a).

Superior skill in decoding nonverbal cues also has occupational benefits. High-
scoring adults perform better in the workplace, as rated by their supervisors, and
have more satisfying personal relationships. Moreover, nonverbal decoding accu-
racy has recently been found to predict objective outcomes relevant to workplace
success, such as attaining more favorable negotiation outcomes (Elfenbein, Foo,
White, Tan, & Aik, 2007) and performing objectively better as a salesperson
(Byron, Terranova, & Nowicki, 2007).

Children in preschool and/or elementary school who score higher at decoding
face, posture, gesture, or tone of voice have been found to be more popular and
more socially competent, less anxious, less emotionally disturbed, less aggressive,
and less depressed, and they are higher in internal locus of control (e.g., Baum &
Nowicki, 1998; Izard, Fine, Schultz, Mostow, Ackerman, & Youngstrom, 2001;
Lancelot & Nowicki, 1997; McClure & Nowicki, 2001; Nowicki & Carton,
1997; Nowicki & Duke, 1994; Nowicki & Mitchell, 1998). Conversely, difficul-
ties in judging facial expressions may be associated with peer problems among
boys and learning difficulties among girls in elementary school (Goodfellow &
Nowicki, 2009).

A test that consists of black Americans’ facial expressions shows an array of
correlates among black test-takers (Nowicki, Glanville, & Demertzis, 1998); for
example, better decoding scores were associated with higher self-esteem and more
internal locus of control in both children and college students. When this test was
given along with a corresponding test showing white adult facial expressions to
samples of black and white college students, the white participants were less accu-
rate than blacks when judging blacks’ expressions, but the two groups did not dif-
fer in their accuracy of judging whites’ expressions. Subsequent research on white
and black schoolchildren showed that popularity with peers was related to success

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 75

in decoding facial expressions of the students’ own ethnic group, but not those of
the other group (Glanville & Nowicki, 2002).

Children who score higher on nonverbal decoding tests also score higher on
academic achievement (Halberstadt & Hall, 1980; Izard, Fine, Schultz, Mostow,
Ackerman, & Youngstrom, 2001; Nowicki & Duke, 1994). Several studies suggest
that although general cognitive ability may contribute to the ability to understand
nonverbal communication, nonverbal skills may in turn influence academic
achievement, possibly through their impact on teacher-student relationships.
Halberstadt and Hall found that children who scored higher on the PONS test
were perceived by their teachers as smarter, even when the pupils’ actual academic
and IQ scores were controlled statistically. Izard and colleagues found that the
ability to understand facial expressions at age 5 predicted teachers’ ratings of
academic competence at age 9, controlling for objectively tested cognitive ability.
It is possible that nonverbally sensitive youngsters create such a good impression
that adults either want to spend more time with them or attribute greater cognitive
ability to them, which may create a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy in which these
children are taught more and encouraged more, leading to actual gains in their
academic achievement. One study has found that decoding skill also seems to have
a direct role in the learning process. Bernieri (1991) found that high school
students who scored higher on the PONS test learned more from a peer in a brief
teaching session than did students who scored lower.

Although it is generally difficult to think of any benefits of a large amount of
television viewing, Feldman, Coats, and Spielman (1996) hypothesized that chil-
dren might actually learn to decode emotional expressions from television, where
such expressions tend to be plentiful as well as exaggerated. And they were right:
Elementary schoolchildren who watched over 14 hours of television weekly were
more accurate in decoding facial expressions of emotion than children who watched
7 or fewer hours.

Certain groups tend to have greater nonverbal decoding ability. The top three
groups on the PONS test were actors, students studying nonverbal behavior, and
students studying visual arts. Buck’s (1976) research on the interpretation of facial
expressions found that students who were fine arts majors were better decoders
than math and science majors.

Psychologically damaging experiences early in life may also affect accuracy at
decoding nonverbal cues. Hodgins and Belch (2000) found that college students
who had been exposed to parental violence growing up were worse at judging
happy cues than students who had not been, but they did not differ when judging
other emotional expressions. And Pollak and Sinha (2002) found that abused and
maltreated children had a lower threshold for identifying anger in facial expressions.

People suffering from mental illness score considerably lower than norm
groups on the PONS test (Rosenthal et al., 1979). Other studies concur that patients
with schizophrenia, with both chronic and acute forms of the illness, judge facial and
vocal expressions less accurately than unimpaired groups, regardless of whether they
are medicated (Edwards, Jackson, & Pattison, 2002; Mandal, Pandey, & Prasad,
1998; Mueser, Penn, Blanchard, & Bellack, 1997). Though groups with various
kinds of psychological disturbance often have a generalized decoding deficit,
sometimes the deficit is specific; for example, groups with psychopathic personality

76 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

disorders and other documented antisocial behaviors were selectively worse than
control groups when judging fearful facial expressions (Marsh & Blair, 2008), and
depressed patients were selectively worse than a control group when decoding
sad facial expressions (Surguladze et al., 2004).

Examination of error patterns can also be instructive for psychologically
impaired groups. On the PONS test, decrements in decoding ability were found in
boys referred to clinics for various kinds of childhood psychopathology (Russell,
Stokes, Jones, Czogalik, & Rohleder, 1993). Interestingly, boys with problems of
self-control and social incompetence made the majority of their decoding errors
on PONS items requiring a judgment about the dominant-submissive dimension of
behavior, consistent with previous findings that aggressive boys tend to see aggres-
siveness in neutral stimuli (Dodge & Newman, 1981). Similarly, preschool children
who were rated by their teachers as hostile and dependent were biased in their
judgments of their classmates’ facial expressions; they were more likely to say the
expressions were sad or angry and less likely to say they were happy, compared to
children who were not hostile and dependent (Barth & Bastiani, 1997).

A group known for having interpersonal communication difficulties is people
with autism (Philippot, Feldman, & McGee, 1992). Autism is a disorder largely
defined in terms of deficient verbal, and especially nonverbal, communication and
an extreme inability to relate to other human beings. The neurologist Oliver Sacks
has written about Temple Grandin, an autistic academician whose insights greatly
illuminate our understanding of the psychological experience of autism. Grandin’s
understanding of others’ feelings and intentions comes from “immense intellectual
effort” as opposed to the unconscious, intuitive process used by nonautistic people.
Commenting on Grandin’s childhood experiences, Sacks writes:

Something was going on between the other kids, something swift, subtle, constantly
changing—an exchange of meanings, a negotiation, a swiftness of understanding so
remarkable that sometimes she wondered if they were all telepathic. She is now aware
of the existence of these social signals. She can infer them, she says, but she herself cannot
perceive them, cannot participate in this magical communication directly.… This is why
she often feels excluded, an alien. (1993, p. 116)

Not surprisingly, individuals with autism—and a milder, related condition,
Asperger’s syndrome—consistently perform worse than normal-functioning people
on tests of decoding facial and vocal expressions (Rutherford, Baron-Cohen, &
Wheelwright, 2002). Deficits in decoding are not restricted to facial and vocal
cues, though; adolescents with Asperger’s syndrome, for example, appear to
be slower at recognizing postural cues of boredom, interest, and disagreement
(Doody & Bull, 2011).

SUBSTANCE ABUSE

Substance abuse can damage the brain, resulting in specific cognitive impairments,
including nonverbal decoding skill. For example, alcohol and opiate dependence
have been linked to a reduced ability to decode facial expressions of emotion
(Kornreich et al., 2003). The ability to recognize a change in facial expression
from neutral to affective in nature (e.g., sad, angry) is slower among heavy

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 77

cannabis users (Platt, Kamboj, Morgan, & Curran, 2010). Finally, alcoholic
patients score lower than norm groups on the PONS test (Rosenthal et al., 1979).
An intriguing experiment using photographs of six emotions found that when non-
alcoholic participants were given alcohol, their decoding accuracy was impaired,
especially men’s ability to identify anger, disgust, and contempt (Borrill, Rosen, &
Summerfield, 1987). Perhaps some of the antisocial behavior of drinkers is linked
to an impairment in their sensitivity to these cues.

CULTURE

The PONS test has been administered to people from over 20 nations (Rosenthal
et al., 1979). People from countries most similar to the United States in language
and culture—relative to modernization, widespread use of communications media,
and so on—scored highest. The PONS research, therefore, offers a synthesis of
two opposed positions on the universality of emotional expressions: One states
that these are universally used and recognized, and the other states that nonverbal
communication is as culture specific as verbal language itself. The universalist posi-
tion is supported by the fact that all cultures were able to perform at levels higher
than chance on the PONS test. However, the specificity argument is also supported
by the fact that groups more culturally similar to that of the person shown in the
PONS video were able to extract more accurate meaning from the cues. Elfenbein
and Ambady (2002), in a review of many studies, confirmed that people have a
slight advantage in accuracy when judging encoders who come from their same
culture. (Chapters 2, 9, and 12 offer further discussion of cultural universality
and relativity.)

TASK FACTORS AFFECTING NONVERBAL DECODING ACCURACY

You may think the particular channels tested—face, voice, and so on—make a dif-
ference in a person’s nonverbal receiving accuracy. Generally, judgments of visual
channels, especially the face, are more accurate than judgments of the voice,
though generalizations like this must be made with caution, because tests of differ-
ent channels may vary in other methodological ways. Several studies show that
emotions and attitudes of liking and disliking are more accurately perceived in the
face than in the voice. Although you may be better able to recognize many emo-
tions and attitudes if you get both audio and visual cues, some messages may be
more effectively communicated in one mode than in another; for example, vocal
cues may be more effective for communicating anxiety and dominance than other
communication channels. And studies show that if you are accurate in recognizing
facial signals, you will also be accurate in perceiving vocal ones (Zuckerman,
Lipets, Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1975). Also, accuracy is usually higher if the
expressions are posed rather than spontaneous, but if you do well in decoding one
of these modalities, you will probably do well in the other (Zuckerman, Hall,
DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976). It is clear that some emotional and attitudinal states
are more difficult to judge than others. At one extreme, it is very difficult to tell
if someone is lying, and at the other, it is very easy to identify posed facial expres-
sions showing basic emotions such as disgust or joy.

78 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

We might also speculate, as did the PONS researchers, that the amount of time
a receiver was exposed to a nonverbal signal would affect his or her accuracy
in identification. The PONS scenes were presented to people with the exposure
time varied: for example, 1/24 of a second, 3/24 of a second, and so on up to
2 seconds (Rosenthal et al., 1979). Accuracy did increase as exposure time
increased. Yet research on judgments made of exposures varying between
2 seconds and 5 minutes has shown that more information often does not yield
higher accuracy, and when it does, the differences are often not dramatic (Ambady,
Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007).

People’s moods can influence how they perceive others’ nonverbal behavior.
Positive and negative moods produce a bias to see corresponding emotions in
others’ faces (Niedenthal, Halberstadt, Margolin, & Innes-Ker, 2000; Schiffen-
bauer, 1974). A sad mood has been shown to reduce the accuracy of judging
others (Ambady & Gray, 2002), which lends support to the argument that sad
moods promote a deliberative information-processing style that can detract from
accuracy of nonverbal judgments that would otherwise be made in a more auto-
matic, nonanalytic manner. Paradoxically though, a history of major depression is
associated with an enhanced ability to judge others’ mental states based on only
their eye expressions (Harkness, Jacobson, Duong, & Sabbagh, 2010). It could
be that the assessment of mental states (e.g., Is the person reflective? Ashamed?
Confident?) benefits from a more deliberative information-processing style when
only one cue (the eyes) is available to decoders compared to judgments of felt
emotion that require decoders to integrate multiple cues, as is the case when inter-
preting facial expressions of emotion.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ACCURATE NONVERBAL SENDERS

When broadly conceived, a definition of nonverbal sending is even more complex
than a definition of nonverbal decoding. In a sense, nonverbal sending is everything
of an interpersonal nature that we do without words. Indeed, it is inevitable that
nonverbal cues will be perceived and interpreted by others—even if a person’s inten-
tion is to appear neutral or unexpressive. Attempts to control nonverbal cues by try-
ing not to express them at all are likely to be interpreted as dullness, withdrawal,
uneasiness, aloofness, or even deceptiveness (DePaulo, 1992). As it is sometimes
said, you cannot not communicate nonverbally.

A person’s nonverbal sending is a mixture of spontaneous cues and more
deliberate or intentional ones. When both spontaneous and posed expressions are
obtained from the same people, these two abilities are positively related; that is, if
a person’s spontaneous facial expression to pleasant stimuli, such as a television
comedy scene, and unpleasant stimuli, such as a gory accident scene, were easy to
“read,” that person would also show skill in performing posed expressions.

In daily life, we deliberately convey a host of impressions of ourselves as nice,
smart, youthful, honest, dominant, brave, and so forth through nonverbal chan-
nels. We also use nonverbal communication intentionally as part of our effort to
act socially appropriate: for example, to be respectful to authorities, dignified in a
fancy restaurant, or polite in the face of disappointment. Children attain these
more deliberate self-presentation skills through a long process that combines social

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 79

experience with their own development of identity; numerous studies testify to
developmental trends in these skills (DePaulo, 1992; Harrigan, 1984; Nowicki &
Duke, 1994).

According to DePaulo, success at regulating nonverbal behaviors to promote
our public presentation depends on knowledge, skill, practice, experience, confi-
dence, and motivation. The success of nonverbal self-presentation is also limited by
the inherent controllability of different nonverbal channels—the face, for example, is
believed to be more controllable than voice or body—as well as individual differ-
ences among people and the intensity of the reality we might wish to mask. For
example, the angrier you are, the harder it will be to act as if everything is fine.

One individual difference that definitely affects self-presentation is spontaneous
expressiveness of the sort discussed in relation to the slide-viewing paradigm; for
example, a person may not realize how much his or her face reflects the content of
a gruesome or romantic scene viewed on television. These differences are observ-
able in infancy and remain stable over the course of development. The spontane-
ously expressive person has many social advantages, as we outline shortly, but
may be handicapped whenever self-presentation calls for application of display
rules or deception. It is suggested, for example, that a highly expressive person
may not make a good poker player (DePaulo, 1992).

Another factor influencing nonverbal self-presentation involves lasting physical
and expressive qualities that bestow a particular demeanor on a person. The man
with thick, bushy eyebrows may look threatening no matter how gentle he actually
is. Research finds that some people’s demeanors tend to make them look honest
or dishonest or pleasant or unpleasant, no matter what they actually feel or do
(Wallbott & Scherer, 1986; Zuckerman, DeFrank, Hall, Larrance, & Rosenthal,
1979). Demeanor can work for or against you, depending on your goals; the socially
skilled person may learn to complement demeanor with other expressive cues to
enhance self-presentation. For example, a person with a babyish face, which others
are likely to perceive as honest-looking (Zebrowitz, 1997), may develop a repertoire
of “innocent” nonverbal cues to enhance the impression of sincerity.

Most research on nonverbal sending accuracy involves emotions. The person
who is spontaneously emotionally expressive tends to be female and reports less
ability to control his or her emotions (Tucker & Riggio, 1988). It has been suggested
that not allowing free expression can take a toll on health and cognitive functioning
(Berry & Pennebaker, 1993). People who are less expressive experience a higher
level of internal physiological arousal (Buck, 1977; Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974),
and experiments show short-term effects of emotional suppression with negative
effects on cardiovascular activity, blood pressure, and memory for stimuli presented
during the suppression of emotion (Butler et al., 2003; Richards & Gross, 1999).

Accuracy in expressing emotions deliberately increases through childhood, but
then it levels off. Borod et al. (2004) compared young, middle-aged, and older
adults in their ability to pose several emotions using the face. Clear age effects
were observed, with the greatest deficit occurring between the older adult group
compared to the other two groups.

The seemingly elusive concept of charisma has been operationally defined as
expressiveness, including both spontaneous and more intentional sending. Research
with the Affective Communication Test (ACT)—which measures expressiveness

80 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

through self-reported statements such as “I show that I like someone by hugging or
touching that person,” “I like being watched by a large group of people,” “I don’t
usually have a neutral facial expression,” and “I can easily express emotion
over the telephone”—documents that the expressive person is socially influential
(Friedman, Prince, Riggio, & DiMatteo, 1980; Friedman & Riggio, 1981; Fried-
man, Riggio, & Casella, 1988). People who scored as more expressive on the ACT
were more likely to have given a lecture, to have been elected to office in a political
organization, to influence others’ moods, and to be perceived as more likable when
meeting new people; in a sample of physicians, they were likely to have more
patients than their counterparts who scored as less expressive. High scorers were
also more likely to have had acting experience, to have had a job in sales, to desire
an occupation that uses social skills—such as counselor, minister, or diplomat—
and to be extraverted, affiliative, and dominant. Comparable findings have
emerged for a longer self-report instrument designed to measure seven dimensions
of social skills (Riggio, 1986).

People can have insight into their spontaneous expressiveness, but research
often finds a weak relationship between participants’ self-reports of posed encoding
skill and their ability to act out emotions on purpose (Riggio, Widaman, & Fried-
man, 1985; Zuckerman & Larrance, 1979). Studies that actually measure people’s
nonverbal sending abilities, rather than asking for self-reports, have also produced
a variety of findings. Females manifest greater encoding skill than males in both
posed and spontaneous facial accuracy (Buck, Miller, & Caul, 1974; Friedman,
Riggio, & Segall, 1980; Wagner, Buck, & Winterbotham, 1993; Zaidel & Mehra-
bian, 1969). Possibly contributing to these effects is that females are more success-
ful than males at mimicking facial expressions shown in photographs and on
videotape (Berenbaum & Rotter, 1992). However, evidence is mixed on whether a
gender difference applies for vocal encoding of emotions. Also, the gender-related
difference in sending ability has not been found with children between 4 and 6
years old for spontaneous facial expressions (Buck, 1975). Buck (1977) actually
found preschool boys to be more accurate senders of spontaneous facial cues than
preschool girls, but boys’ accuracy declined at ages 4 through 6, perhaps due to
socialization pressure related to the male gender role.

Just as boys appear to be learning the expression norms for their gender, girls
are learning theirs as well. Aside from becoming more facially expressive, girls
learn earlier to use nonverbal cues according to “display rules” (see Chapter 9)
that dictate what behaviors are socially appropriate. At preschool and elementary
school ages, girls showed less negativity than boys after receiving a disappointing
gift when in the presence of an adult, although control conditions showed they
were no less disappointed than the boys (Cole, 1986; Davis, 1995).

Some personality characteristics also have been associated with accurate sen-
ders of nonverbal information. High “self-monitors”—people who are very aware
of how they should be acting in various situations and are willing to do so to
advance their self-interest—are better able to send emotional information through
facial and vocal channels (Snyder, 1974). People who are more extraverted are
higher on behavioral measures of expressiveness, whereas those who are more neu-
rotic are lower on such measures (Riggio & Riggio, 2002). Buck’s (1975) personal-
ity profile for young children shows many of the same characteristics reviewed

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 81

earlier for decoders. Children who are effective senders are extraverted, outgoing,
active, popular, and somewhat bossy and impulsive. Ineffective senders tend to
play alone and are introverted, passive, shy, controlled, and rated as cooperative.
Among adults, highly accurate senders are more dominant and exhibitionistic
(Friedman, Riggio, & Segall, 1980). Better adult senders also make an impression
of greater expressiveness, confidence, and likability; and among males, they use
more fluent speech, more fluent body movements, and more smiles (Riggio &
Friedman, 1986).

For many years, clinicians and researchers have noticed expression deficits in
individuals with schizophrenia. Compared to individuals without the disorder,
these people tend to show reduced facial expressivity, are more likely to show neg-
ative than positive expressions, show less congruence between verbal and facial
messages, and are less accurate in facial and vocal expressions of affect (Mandal,
Pandey, & Prasad, 1998). Individuals with alexithymia, or difficulty in identifying
one’s own emotions, also have reduced facial expressiveness when describing posi-
tive or negative events from their past (Wagner & Lee, 2008). Finally, socially anx-
ious children may have more problems expressing their anger on their face than do
inattentive–hyperactive children (Walker, Nowicki, Jones, & Heimann, 2011).

Noller (1980; Noller & Gallois, 1986) studied the accuracy of husbands’ and
wives’ nonverbal communication to each other. Women were better encoders than
men, both in terms of perceivers’ ability to judge the women accurately and in
terms of the women’s correct use of the particular cues associated with a given
message (e.g., smiling for a positive message, frowning for a negative message).
Marital adjustment was related to encoding skill among men. Men in happier mar-
riages sent clearer messages through the face. These husbands were also more likely
to offer a correct cue, such as a smile during positive messages, than less happy
husbands, whereas less happy husbands used more eyebrow flashes, a cue not asso-
ciated with a positive message. This research suggests that marital unhappiness
might be partly due to the husband’s inadequacy in nonverbal communication.
Unhappy husbands were, in fact, more accurate in decoding the nonverbal behav-
ior of an unknown married woman than that of their own spouse.

PUTTING DECODING AND ENCODING TOGETHER

There are two ways in which decoding and encoding can be considered together. The
first way is to ask whether skilled encoders are also skilled decoders. Interestingly,
this question has not been definitively answered despite considerable research. Some
researchers have found no relationship, or even a negative relationship, between
sending and receiving ability; for example, Lanzetta and Kleck (1970) found that
people who were accurate facial senders were poor receivers and vice versa. Others
find that the two kinds of skill are positively related, leading to the hypothesis of a
“general communication ability” (Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976).
A recent meta-analysis revealed a positive association between encoding and decod-
ing accuracy for intentional displays of emotion (Elfenbein & Eisenkraft, 2010).

Nonetheless, there is quite a bit of unexplained variation in the results of
studies examining the relation between encoding and decoding skill. A negative
relation between encoding and decoding skill has been theorized to stem from the

82 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

childhood socialization experience, in particular, the communication environment
within the family (Izard, 1971; Zuckerman, Lipets, Koivumaki, & Rosenthal,
1975). The reasoning goes like this: In a highly expressive family, expression skills
will be well developed, but because emotional cues are so clearly sent by other fam-
ily members, there is no need to fine-tune one’s decoding skill, and, therefore,
decoding ability remains relatively undeveloped. However, in unexpressive homes,
a child’s expression skills will be poorly developed, but his or her decoding skill is
sharpened, because the child is forced to read minimal or ambiguous cues coming
from other family members. The skill developed from reading family members
who are just barely showing their feelings is hypothesized to generalize, so that a
person from an unexpressive family is predicted to score relatively high on a stan-
dard test of decoding nonverbal cues. Using the Family Expressiveness Question-
naire to measure the communication environment in the family, Halberstadt
(1983, 1986) found support for the predictions stemming from this theory; namely,
that encoding skill would be positively related to greater freedom of emotional
expression in the family, and that decoding skill would be negatively related to
freedom of emotional expression. Consistent with this, a recent study showed that
family expressiveness was negatively related to decoding facial expressions of emo-
tion (Halberstadt, Dennis, & Hess, 2011).

The second way we can consider decoding and encoding together is to
acknowledge that they occur together in the communication process. Although we
have discussed them as separate skills that can be compared, in real interpersonal
interaction, these skills are used together. A person is required to encode and
decode simultaneously—to act out or display feelings, reactions, intentions, and
attitudes while at the same time noticing the other’s cues, forming impressions,
interpreting the meanings of expressions, and evaluating feedback from his or her
own behavior. This “parallel processing” aspect of interpersonal communication
puts many demands on the cognitive system, insofar as it is difficult to allocate
attention or effort to all of these tasks at the same time. The process is made some-
what easier by the fact that a certain amount of nonverbal processing is so well
learned that it is rather automatic, requiring few cognitive resources (i.e., mental
attention). The complex sending and receiving of turn-taking cues in conversation
is a good example: We know how to do this without much conscious thought.
However, when individuals engage in strategic behavior—as in deliberately trying
to persuade someone—or when they suffer from social anxiety, considerable expen-
diture of cognitive resources is required that can selectively affect either the encoding
or the decoding process. For instance, socially anxious people tend to be more self-
focused, which can detract them from processing another person’s cues (Patterson,
1995). Indeed, more socially anxious people do score lower on nonverbal decoding
tests than less socially anxious people.

ON BEING AN OBSERVER OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
The observation of Expression is by no means easy.

—Charles Darwin

As you set out to read the remaining chapters of this book, now seems a good time
to reflect on how you can best use the knowledge contained there. You will learn

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 83

quite a lot about the meanings and functions of nonverbal behaviors conveyed in
all cue channels. You will learn that nonverbal cues are major indicators of emo-
tion and play a crucial role in making social impressions and influencing others.
You have just learned that people differ markedly in their skills in judging and
using nonverbal cues. Although certain groups, such as actors and mental patients,
fall at the extremes of skill, a great deal of variation from person to person exists
even in the middle, so-called normal range.

The research indicates that there may not be strong general skills; instead, there
appear to be distinctive skills in different domains. A person may be skilled at
judging emotions in the face but not in the voice; another may have the opposite
pattern. Sarah may be good at identifying nonverbal deceptions, whereas Jim spe-
cializes in recognizing faces, and Martha can tell who stands where in the pecking
order simply from hearing their tone of voice. In short, there are many ways to be
accurate in nonverbal communication. Because so much of a person’s time is spent
observing other people, either passively as when observing strangers on a train or
bus, or actively as when in direct interaction with others, one is wise to try to
develop good observational habits. The following list can be useful to observers of
any human transaction. At times some of the following information will contribute
to observer bias, but the information may be necessary at some point to interpret
the observations fully:

1. Find out about the participants—age, sex, position or status, relationship to
each other, previous history, and the like.

2. Find out about the setting of the interaction—kind of environment, relation-
ship of the participants to the environment, and expected behavior in that
environment.

3. Find out about the purposes of the interaction—what are people’s stated as
well as hidden goals, compatibility of goals, and so on.

4. Find out about the social behavior—who does what to or with whom, form of
the behavior, its intensity, who initiates it, apparent objective of the behavior,
effect on the other interactants, and so on.

5. Find out about the frequency and duration of such behavior—when it occurs,
how long it lasts, whether it recurs, frequency of recurrence, and how typical
such behavior is in the situation.

You will also have to decide whether the cues you see are intentional or
unintentional. The term unintentional may itself have a range of meaning; a
behavior may be truly accidental, or it may have significance not recognized by
its enactor. Attributions of intention also may vary depending on the nature of
the behavior in question. Some people believe that spoken words are generally
designed with some goal in mind, but sometimes people say things unintention-
ally or without much advance planning. Certain environments cause us to focus
or attend to the issue of intention more than others. Take the act of being
bumped into by another person: At a crowded football stadium, the question of
the person’s intent may not even be considered, but being bumped into while
walking down an uncrowded hallway may be another matter entirely. A full
understanding of the nuances of intentionality poses many difficult barriers
(Stamp & Knapp, 1990).

84 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

THE FALLIBILITY OF HUMAN PERCEPTION

Despite our suggestions concerning how to improve your observational skills, it
is important to stress that human behavior and perception are extraordinarily com-
plex. And even though humans are extraordinarily gifted, relative to other life
forms, in judging the meaning of behavior, we are not infallible creatures. Even
with the best of intentions, it is not unusual for several observers of the same
event to “see” several different things, nor is it unusual for one observer to “see”
different things in the same event at different times. Consequently, it would be
wise of us to take the following into account when considering factors that may
contribute to differences in perception.

First, we must recognize that our perceptions are structured by our own
cultural conditioning, education, and personal experiences. Adults teach children
what they think are critical dimensions of others by what they choose to talk
about and make note of. Thus, we form associations that inevitably enter into our
observations. For instance, we may be unable to see what we consider to be contra-
dictory traits or behaviors in others; that is, can you conceive of a person who is
both quiet and active? Wealthy and accessible? Short and romantic? Another
aspect of this internally consistent worldview that may affect our observations con-
cerns preconceptions about what we will see. For example, “My observations will
take place in a nursing home. Therefore, the people I will observe will be noncom-
municative, sick, and inactive.” Social psychological experimentation has produced
many demonstrations showing that people see what they expect or wish to see,
often without any awareness that they are biasing their observations in this way.

Sometimes we project our own qualities onto the object of our attention; after
all, we think, if these qualities are a part of us, they must be true of others. Some-
times such projection stems less from the desire to flatter ourselves than from a dis-
torted worldview, as in bullies who see others as hostile and threatening. We
sometimes reverse the process when we want to see ourselves as unique: for exam-
ple, “I am a rational person, but most people aren’t.” This interaction between our
own needs and desires, or even our temporary emotional states and what we see in
others, sometimes causes us to see only what we want to see or causes us to miss
what may be obvious to others. This process is known as selective perception.
Because of these perceptual biases, observers must check their observations against
the independent reports of others, or they must check the consistency of their own
observations at several different points over an extended period of time.

We must also recognize that our perceptions are influenced by which people
we choose to observe. We probably do not use the same criteria for observing our
friends and parents as we do when observing strangers. We may attribute more
positively perceived behaviors to our friend’s personality but attribute negatively
perceived behaviors to situational constraints. Familiarity can either assist observa-
tion or create observational “noise,” but it does affect our perceptions. Further-
more, some phenomena will cause us to zero in on one particular kind of
behavior, observing it very closely but missing simultaneous behaviors occurring
elsewhere. It might be that the behavior receiving the scrutiny is bigger, more
active, or just more interesting. Or it might be that we monitor deviant behavior
more closely than normative or expected behavior. When observing a conversation,

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 85

we cannot possibly attend to everything as it happens. Sometimes we will look for,
see, respond to, and interpret a particular set of cues; at other times, the same cues
will go unnoticed or be disregarded. Sometimes observers fall prey to the natural
tendency to follow conversational speaking turns, viewing only the speaker and
missing the behavior of the nonspeakers. And of course, some phenomena are so
complex, so minute, or so frequent that observer fatigue becomes a major concern.

Even if two people observe the same event and attach similar meanings to it,
they may express their observations differently. Others may suspect, then, that the
two observers saw two different things, such as the difference in describing a facial
expression as happiness, joy, delight, pleasure, or amusement. Or it might be the
difference between saying “She struck him” versus “She pushed him,” or between
describing a girl as “aggressive” and a boy as “exhibitionistic” when they engage
in the same behavior. Hence the language we use to express our perceptions can
be an important variable in judging the accuracy of those perceptions.

Finally, we must be aware of the difference between factual, nonevaluative
descriptions of behavior and the interpretations we give to these descriptions. At
the most basic level, we can say that a successful observer is careful not to confuse
pure description with inferences or interpretations about the behavior. Failure at
the inference stage is aptly illustrated by the familiar story of the scientist who told
his frog to jump, and after a few minutes, the frog jumped. The scientist then
amputated one of the frog’s hind legs, and again he told the frog to jump. He told
the frog to jump several more times, and eventually the frog made a feeble attempt
to jump with one hind leg. Then the scientist cut off the other hind leg and repeat-
edly ordered the frog to jump. When no jumping occurred, the scientist recorded
in his log, “Upon amputation of one of the frog’s hind legs, it begins to lose its
hearing; upon severing both hind legs, the frog becomes totally deaf.” This story
illustrates clearly the huge gap that can exist between the factual evidence and the
interpretations that are made.

When we are judging the meanings of the highly complex behaviors that make
up nonverbal communication, it is quite possible to perceive the behaviors accu-
rately but not know, or be wrong about, what they mean. No dictionary of non-
verbal cue meanings exists in which we can simply look up a cue to find its
meaning. Thus, we must constantly be on guard against facile interpretations
about meaning. We must also be cautious about assuming cause-and-effect expla-
nations when, in fact, there could be several different paths of causation between
one variable and another.

SUMMARY

This chapter dealt with nonverbal skills, how to
develop them, and the characteristics of people
who have such skills. In the first half of the
chapter, we reviewed different definitions of
communication skill as well as the major method-
ologies for measuring sending and receiving skills.
We also presented findings on the training of
nonverbal skills, using methods such as feedback,

observation, and role-playing. The second half
of the chapter examined traits and conditions
associated with effectiveness in nonverbal send-
ing (encoding) and receiving (decoding). Most
research in this area has focused on questions
of decoding ability. We reviewed a large number
of different correlates of accuracy in encoding
and decoding nonverbal cues, among which

86 PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

one of the most consistent is the tendency for
females to be more accurate communicators as
both encoders and decoders.

We also discussed how accuracy in decoding
may vary with the channel in which the infor-
mation is presented, what characteristics the
encoders have, and how long we heard or saw
the behavior. In spite of these possible varia-
tions, some evidence suggests that if you are
proficient in decoding one channel, you will
be proficient in decoding others, and if you are
proficient in decoding posed expressions, you
will be proficient in decoding spontaneous
ones too. We also presented problems associated

with simultaneously encoding and decoding
nonverbal cues, as we routinely do in conversa-
tion. Evidence is mixed on whether being a good
decoder implies being a good encoder. It does
not necessarily follow that proficiency in one
skill, encoding or decoding, makes a person pro-
ficient in the other, although sometimes this is
the case.

Finally, we talked about what being a good
observer of nonverbal behavior entails. Knowing
the most likely meanings of particular cues and
cue combinations is important, but so are other
factors relating to our attitudes and the context
in which observation is taking place.

Answers to Figure 3-2: (a) strangers posing together, (b) woman on the left, and (c) playing with her
baby daughter.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. How much insight do you think people have
into the cues they use to make judgments
about others’ states and traits?

2. It has been suggested that abilities to send and
receive nonverbal expressions may be
inversely related, in part due to the expression
norms within families. Is your own family
high or low on expressiveness? How might
your family’s expression norms have influ-
enced your encoding and decoding skills?

3. The ability to decode other people’s nonver-
bal emotional expressions is only one defini-
tion of nonverbal sensitivity. Think of some
other definitions of nonverbal sensitivity, and
analyze why and when they are useful.

4. Are there any moral or ethical issues related
to the decoding and encoding of nonverbal
cues?

5. Do you think that too much knowledge or
skill in nonverbal communication could be
a bad thing? Argue both for and against this
hypothesis.

6. Sometimes it is said that people enact and
interpret nonverbal cues automatically, that
is, without analytic thought or intention. For
different behaviors and/or skills that you can
point to, what do you think are the relative
contributions of deliberate intention versus
automatic processing?

CHAPTER 3 THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE AND SEND NONVERBAL SIGNALS 87

THE COMMUNICATION
ENVIRONMENT

[ P A R T II ]

The features of the environment within which our interactions take place can exert
a powerful influence on that interaction. Lighting, color schemes, furniture, and
architecture, among other features, affect what we say and even how often we
say it; sometimes we deliberately structure these features in order to obtain certain
responses from others. Part II explores the way we affect and are affected by the
space we have within communication environments, as a preface to discussing, in
Parts III and IV, the behavior of the people who do the communicating.

THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT

ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 4 ]

When people communicate with one another, features of the surrounding environ-
ment always exert an influence on their interaction. What are these environmental
features, and how do they affect us?

First, let us look at a familiar communication environment: the classroom.
Modern architects experiment with different designs, but many classes still take
place in a rectangular room with straight rows of chairs for student seating. A row
of windows along one side of the room may determine the direction students
face, and consequently determine the front of the room. It is not uncommon for
classroom seats to be permanently attached to the floor for ease of maintenance
and tidiness. Classrooms typically have some type of partition, often a desk or
lectern, that serves as a boundary between the teacher and students. It is not hard
for students and teachers to identify problems encountered in environments
designed for learning: poor lighting and acoustics; inadequate climate control;
external construction noises; inoperative or nonexistent electrical outlets; immov-
able seats; gloomy, dull, or distracting color schemes; unpleasant odors; and so
on. Both students and teachers recognize that such problems impede the purpose
for gathering in these rectangular rooms: to increase knowledge through effective
student/teacher communication. The influence of the classroom environment on
student and teacher behavior remained relatively unexplored until Sommer (1967,
1969, 1974) took a closer look. He focused his attention on the influence of
classroom design on student participation.

Every interior betrays the nonverbal skills of its inhabitants. The choice of
materials, the distribution of space, the kind of objects that command attention or
demand to be touched—as compared to those that intimidate or repel—have much
to say about the preferred sensory modalities of their owners.

—J. Ruesch and W. Kees

Sommer selected several different types of classrooms for his study. He wanted
to compare the amount of student participation in these classrooms and to analyze
aspects of participatory behavior in each type. He selected seminar rooms with
movable chairs, usually arranged in a horseshoe shape; laboratories—complete
with Bunsen burners, bottles, and gas valves—that represented an extreme in
straight-row seating; a windowless room; and a room with an entire wall of
windows. Among other things, Sommer concluded the following from his studies:

1. Students and teachers who dislike their learning environment will try to avoid
it or change it.

2. In general, the amount of student participation decreases as the number of
students in the class increases. The length of a student’s participation is also
longer in smaller classes.

3. The content of student participation in large classes is more likely to be
devoted to questions of clarification or requests to repeat an idea rather than
participation focused on the ideas themselves.

4. Participation was most frequent among those students within range of the
instructor’s eye gaze. In a seminar room, the students sitting directly across
from the instructor participated more. A follow-up study by Adams and Biddle
(1970) found a zone of participation in the center of the room (see Figure 4-1).
This center zone is most likely to occur when the instructor stands in the
middle of the room because it is highly dependent on the instructor’s visual
contact with the students. If the instructor moved to the side and maintained
visual contact with the students in front of him or her, the zone of participa-
tion would no longer be in the center. But there is more to this story: Koneya
(1973) found that when high-, moderate-, and low-participating students were

FIGURE 4-1
The zone of class participation.

92 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

given a chance to select any seat they desired, high participators were most
likely to select seats in the central zone of participation. We can conclude from
this that student participation can be facilitated by visual contact with the
instructor, but that students who are likely to participate tend to position
themselves in seats that are close to the instructor or within the instructor’s
likely field of gaze. Also note that an instructor’s gaze can be used to inhibit
communication as well as facilitate it. When students feel they will be
punished—or at least not rewarded—for participating, the zone of participation
is inoperative.

5. What happens when you take moderate- and low-participating students and
deliberately seat them in the zone of participation? Koneya (1973) found that
moderate participators increased their participation, but low participators
remained low. This suggests that where students sit can alter their classroom
participation, but this effect is less likely with low participators. Haber (1982)
found that ethnic, racial, and religious minorities at five colleges tended to
select seating peripheral to the zone of participation—even when they were
a majority at a particular college.

From these studies, we can conclude that classroom seating is not random. Certain
types of people gravitate toward seats that are close to the instructor and/or within
his or her expected pattern of gaze. The instructor’s gazing patterns create a zone
where students are more likely to verbally participate, unless they are students
who initially sought seating outside of this zone and were moved within it. Even
then, we might find increased participation at some point if a teacher rewards and
supports student participation.

The world of education has changed dramatically since the time of Sommer’s
research. Students take notes (and, of course, check their Facebook pages) on
laptops, enroll in online classes, participate with other students in “discussion
boards,” meet with the instructor during his or her virtual office hours, and so on.
For some who are shy in face-to-face settings, an online setting might afford them
more opportunities to participate in a class. For those who need to see the instruc-
tor in person, an online format might be detrimental to the quality of their
education.

Even though many classrooms have changed in form (to more technologically
rich) or location (cyberspace), educators must still be aware of the setting in which
students learn. For example, online classes should be designed to be user-friendly.
A virtual classroom should be designed so as not to make one group, such as
females, feel less welcome because it is more stereotypically masculine in appear-
ance (Cheryan, Meltzoff, & Kim, 2011). Brooks (2011) examined the relationship
between classroom design and student learning in a face-to-face setting. Most of
the participants in the study were first-year, first-semester students taking Principles
of Biological Science with the same instructor. Some of these students were enrolled
in a traditional classroom where they sat at tables facing the front of the classroom,
which had a whiteboard, projection screen, and teacher’s desk. The other students
were enrolled in an active learning classroom that had round tables (which have
been shown to promote greater collaborative and student-centered learning), laptop
technology, an instructor station, and marker boards along the perimeter of the

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 93

room. With respect to learning outcomes, the difference between actual grades and
predicted grades based on college entrance exam scores was greater for those in the
active learning classroom than it was for those in the traditional classroom. This
meant that the active learning environment benefited students’ performance to a
greater extent than did the traditional classroom.

The preceding discussion of the classroom is an example of a specific context
in which spatial relationships, architecture, and objects surrounding the partici-
pants influence the amount of interaction and learning that occur. We will examine
other environmental factors that impinge on human communication behavior
shortly. As a cautionary note, though, you should remember that the environment
is only one element in structuring such behavior. If students, administrators,
teachers, secretaries, and custodians want to run a school or university like a
prison or a dehumanized bureaucracy, changes in the classroom structure will
likely have little impact.

Throughout this chapter, we discuss a number of characteristics of environ-
ments. Let us initiate our exploration by examining the way we perceive our
surroundings, because this can significantly influence the way we feel and the way
we choose to communicate.

PERCEPTIONS OF OUR SURROUNDINGS

The number of places in which we communicate with others is limitless: buses,
homes, apartments, restaurants, offices, parks, hotels, sports arenas, factories,
libraries, movie theaters, museums, and so on. Despite their diversity, we probably
evaluate these environments along similar dimensions. Once we perceive our
environment in a certain way, we may incorporate such perceptions in the develop-
ment of the messages we send. And once these messages have been sent, the
environmental perceptions of the other person have been altered. Thus, we influ-
ence and are influenced by our environments.

How do we see our environments? We believe the following six dimensions are
central to our perceptions and consequently to how we send and receive messages.

PERCEPTIONS OF FORMALITY

One familiar dimension along which we can classify environments is a formal–
informal continuum. Reactions may be based on the objects present, the people
present, the functions performed, or any number of other variables. Individual
offices may be more formal than a lounge in the same building; a year-end banquet
takes on more formality than a “come as you are” party; an evening at home with
one other couple may be more informal than an evening with 10 other couples.
The greater the formality, the greater the chances that the communication behavior
will be less relaxed and more superficial, hesitant, and stylized.

Of importance, what we expect to see along the formal–informal continuum in
a particular setting matters. We expect to see less formal behavior and dress in
informal settings and more formal behavior and dress in formal settings. Trouble
can arise when these expectations go unmet. Consider the likely reactions of sun-
bathers at a beach to a group of men and women sitting on leather chairs and

94 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

discussing corporate strategy in their business suits. In Figure 4-2—dubbed the
“flip-flop flap”—expectations were violated, leading to negative reactions on the
part of some viewers. The problem was that several members of Northwestern
University’s championship lacrosse team wore flip-flops when they had their
photo taken with President Bush at the White House (“NU’s Lacrosse Team Sparks
Flip-Flop-Flap at White House,” 2005). To some people, flip-flops were disrespectful
footwear in such a lofty setting.

PERCEPTIONS OF WARMTH

Environments that make us feel psychologically warm encourage us to linger, relax,
and feel comfortable. It may be some combination of the color of the drapes or walls,
paneling, carpeting, texture of the furniture, softness of the chairs, soundproofing, and
so on. Even the exterior of an environment can affect our anticipated feelings of com-
fort. Students viewed slides of 34 different medical facilities, and the expected quality
of care and degree of comfort varied with different types of buildings (Devlin, 2008).

Fast-food chains try to exhibit enough warmth in their decor to seem inviting
but enough coldness to encourage rapid turnover. Interestingly, environments that
make us feel psychologically warm may also make us feel physically warmer.
Students were asked to spend 2 hours studying or reading in a room with a neutral
decor, similar to that of a classroom. Then they were asked to read or study in a
room that resembled a walk-in meat cooler. Nearly all the students felt the second
room was cooler, even though the temperature was actually the same in both

FIGURE 4-2
Northwestern Women’s Lacrosse Team at White House.

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r

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 95

rooms. Then the meat cooler room was paneled, carpeted, and equipped with sub-
dued lighting and other appointments. Another group of students was asked to
read or study in each room. This time, the redesigned meat-cooler room was
judged to have a higher temperature than the classroom. Again, actual tempera-
tures were the same (Rohles, 1980).

PERCEPTIONS OF PRIVACY

Enclosed environments usually suggest greater privacy, particularly if they accom-
modate only a few people. If the possibility of other people’s entering and/or
overhearing our conversation is slight, even if we are outdoors, there is a greater
feeling of privacy. Personal items such as toilet articles, low or focused lighting,
high-density situations, partitions, noise, and other environmental factors can affect
perceptions of privacy (Buslig, 1999). With greater privacy, we will probably find
close speaking distances and more personal messages designed and adapted for the
specific other person rather than people in general.

PERCEPTIONS OF FAMILIARITY

When we meet a new person or encounter an unfamiliar environment, our responses
typically are cautious, deliberate, and conventional. Unfamiliar environments are
laden with rituals and norms we do not yet know, so we are hesitant to move too
quickly. We will probably go slowly until we can associate this unfamiliar environment
with one we know. One interpretation for the stereotyped structure of fast-food restau-
rants is that they allow us, in our mobile society, to readily find a familiar and predict-
able place that will guarantee minimal demands for active contact with strangers. In
unfamiliar environments, the most likely initial topic of conversation will be the envi-
ronment itself: Have you ever been here before? What is it like? Who comes here?

PERCEPTIONS OF CONSTRAINT

Part of our total reaction to our environment is based on our perception of
whether, and how easily, we can leave it. Some students feel confined in their own
homes during the school Christmas break. But consider the differences between this
2-week constraint and a permanent live-at-home arrangement. The intensity of
these perceptions of constraint is closely related to the space available to us as well
as the privacy of this space during the time we are in the environment. Some envir-
onments seem to be only temporarily confining, such as an automobile during a
long trip. Perceptions of confinement in other environments, such as prisons, space-
craft, or nursing homes, will likely seem more enduring.

PERCEPTIONS OF DISTANCE

Sometimes our responses within a given environment are influenced by how close
or far away we must conduct our communication with another. This may reflect
actual physical distance—an office on a different floor, a house in another part of
the city—or it may reflect psychological distance, with barriers clearly separating
people who are fairly close physically. You may be seated close to someone and

96 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

still not perceive it as a close environment: for example, interlocking chairs facing
the same direction in an airport. When the setting forces us into close quarters
with other people not well known to us, such as elevators or crowded buses, we
try to increase distance psychologically to reduce threatening feelings of intimacy.
We can do this through less eye contact, body tenseness and immobility, cold
silence, nervous laughter, jokes about the intimacy, and public conversation
directed at all present.

The perceptions just described represent only some of the dimensions along
which we can view communication settings. Generally, more intimate communi-
cation is associated with informal, unconstrained, private, familiar, close, and
warm environments. In everyday situations, however, these dimensions combine in
complex ways. The mixture of intimate and nonintimate factors can be seen in an
elevator if it is perceived as close, familiar, and temporarily confining but also pub-
lic, formal, and cold.

REACTING TO ENVIRONMENTS

Once these perceptions are made, how do they affect our reactions? Sometimes the
impact of the environment will be slight, but it has the potential to play a signifi-
cant role in affecting our behavior. In a study of 98 child-care classes for 3- and
4-year-olds, Maxwell (2007) concluded that perceptions of the physical environ-
ment were related to measures of the children’s cognitive and social competency,
especially for the 3-year-olds.

Mehrabian (1976) argued that we react emotionally to our surroundings.
These emotional reactions can be accounted for in terms of (1) how aroused the
environment makes us feel, (2) how pleasurable we feel, and (3) how dominant we
feel. Arousal refers to how active, stimulated, frenzied, or alert we are. Pleasure
refers to feelings of joy, satisfaction, and happiness. Dominance refers to feelings
of being in control, important, and free to act in a variety of ways.

Novel, surprising, and complex environments probably produce higher
arousal. Those people less able to screen out unwanted information from the envi-
ronment inevitably have to respond to more stimuli and, in turn, become more
aroused. Although we all probably respond as screeners and nonscreeners on occa-
sion, some people tend to respond habitually as one or the other. Nonscreeners are
less selective in what they respond to in any environment. They see, hear, smell,
and otherwise sense more stimuli. Screeners, in contrast, are selective in what they
respond to. They impose a hierarchy of importance on various components in a
complex situation. Nonscreeners not only become more aroused than screeners in
novel, changing, and sudden situations, they also remain aroused longer—even
after leaving the arousing environment. That is why nonscreeners are most
attracted to environments that are both arousing and pleasurable.

Introversion–extraversion is another personality variable that influences how
people respond to arousing environments. Research by Geen (1984) has shown
that introverts require less stimulation to reach their optimal level of physiological
arousal than do extraverts. This means that introverts could become overly aroused
in an environment that is comfortable for extraverts. Knowing this, introverts and
extraverts may choose some environments over others, avoiding those that will

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 97

not be arousing enough or too arousing for them. In line with this, Campbell and
Hawley (1982) found that introverted students preferred quiet, socially isolated
settings when studying, whereas extraverts sought noisier settings where they
could socialize with others.

Ambient aroma is an environmental factor that influences how people behave
in an environment. Research by Baron (1997) has shown that pleasant odors
increase our willingness to help members of the same sex. The increased helpful-
ness seems to be due to the pleasant odors making people feel better. It also
appears that clean scents increase people’s willingness to be charitable (Liljenquist,
Zhong, & Galinsky, 2010). Importantly, these environmental effects are likely to
be nonconscious in nature, suggesting that our behavior could, at times, be under
the influence of the odors wafting through or lingering in the spaces we pass
through.

PERCEPTIONS OF TIME

Time is also a part of the communicative environment. At first, it may seem strange
to include something as seemingly intangible as time in the same environmental
package as chairs, walls, noise, or even weather conditions. However, the human
brain may be wired to encode time and place information after an event that is
tragic or of momentous importance. Do you have a vivid memory of the events
directly surrounding 9/11? What were you doing before, during, and after that
news broke? Chances are that that information is burned into your memory, some-
thing psychologists refer to as a flashbulb memory. In the United States, people
treat time as something tangible, a commodity that can be divided up, saved,
spent, and made. Furthermore, we often project temporal qualities onto objects
within our environment: for example, a chair that looks like it has been there for-
ever or an elevator that “never seems to be on time.”

Time is important to us. It governs when we eat and sleep, it often determines
how much we get paid at work, and it sets limits on how much material students
can learn in a given class period. Time plays a key role in social interaction as
well. It influences our perceptions of people: for example, responsible people are
on time, boring people talk too long, or a good romantic partner gives us some
time to ourselves (Leonard, 1978; Werner & Baxter, 1994). A course in time man-
agement is a staple for anyone expecting to climb the corporate ladder in U.S.
organizations. Time plays such an important role in our lives that we often carry
the date and time around with us on our wrist or on our cell phones. Most cars
have clocks, and some of them even have devices for computing the time it will take
to drive from one location to another. We are very much aware of the stress time can
create in our lives. We think of a vacation as a retreat to a place where time matters
less. Ironically, vacations are usually thought of as a set period of time.

Time is perceived very differently in other cultures (Hall, 1959). These varying
orientations to time are often a central factor in misunderstandings among mem-
bers of different cultures. Psychology professor Robert Levine gives this account of
his teaching experience in Brazil:

As I left home for my first day of class, I asked someone the time. It was 9:05 a.m.,
which allowed me time to relax and look around the campus before my 10 o’clock

98 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

lecture. After what I judged to be half an hour, I glanced at the clock I was passing.
It said 10:20! In a panic, I broke for the classroom, followed by gentle calls of
“Hola, professor” and “Tudo bem, professor?” from unhurried students, many of
whom, I later realized, were my own. I arrived breathless to find an empty room.
Frantically, I asked a passerby the time. “Nine forty-five” was the answer. No,
that couldn’t be. I asked someone else. “Nine fifty-five.” Another said: “Exactly
9:43.” The clock in a nearby office read 3:15. I had learned my first lesson about
Brazilians: Their timepieces are consistently inaccurate. And nobody minds. My class
was scheduled from 10 until noon. Many students came late, some very late …

none seemed terribly concerned about lateness…. The real surprise came at noon …

only a few students left immediately. Others drifted out during the next fifteen
minutes, and some continued asking me questions long after that. (Levine & Wolff,
1985, p. 30)

Biologically, our bodies seem to be programmed so that “internal clocks” regulate
our physical, emotional, and intellectual functioning as well as our sense of time
(Luce, 1971; Meissner & Wittmann, 2011). However, we can experience distor-
tions in the perception of time; some of which are influenced by events, whereas
others by personality variables.

We all know that “a watched pot doesn’t boil” and that the waiting room at a
physician’s office is a fitting description. Examples of events that seem to slow time
down—that is, the perceived duration is longer than the actual duration—include
scary ones (e.g., skydiving for novices) and seeing angry or fearful faces compared
to neutral faces (Campbell & Bryant, 2007; Effron, Niedenthal, Gil, & Droit-Volet,
2006; Gil & Droit-Volet, 2011). On the other hand, highly exciting events can
make time fly (Campbell & Bryant, 2007).

Individual differences in the perception of time have been linked to neurolog-
ical and psychological differences (Westfall, Jasper, & Zelmanova, 2010;
Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Regarding the latter, Zimbardo and Boyd (1999)
believe in individual differences in people’s attitudes toward time, something
which can influence their decisions and judgments. These include the past-
negative type (you view your past negatively, and your past still upsets you), the
past-positive type (you have a nostalgic view of your past), the present-hedonistic
type (you think more about partaking in pleasures of the present than conse-
quences in the future), the present-fatalistic type (you feel stuck in the present
and unable to change your future), and the future-focused type (you are focused
on accomplishing goals important to your future). These orientations may repre-
sent a long-term style or may be subject to change; for example, a present-
hedonistic type, who “lives for the moment” at one point in his or her life,
might later adapt to a future-focused style that involves evaluating today’s
“moments” in terms of the long-range picture (Gonzalez & Zimbardo, 1985).

We devote the remainder of this chapter to the characteristics of environ-
ments that form the bases of the perceptions just outlined: perceptions of our
surroundings and perceptions of time. Each environment has three major
components:

1. The natural environment—geography, location, atmospheric conditions
2. The presence or absence of other people
3. The architectural design and movable objects

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 99

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Some of us live in densely populated urban areas, some in smaller towns, some in
suburban areas on the outskirts of these cities and towns, and others in rural
areas. Within these broad areas, we find other environmental features that affect
the nature of human interaction and health: for example, apartment complexes,
neighborhoods, high-rise buildings, and urban settings with forested areas. The
places we live, play, and work are bound to have an impact on our behavior.
The number of people we communicate with can influence our interaction style,
but perhaps more important is the number of different people for whom we have
to adapt our messages. Some environments are very homogeneous and provide
inhabitants with fewer experiences and fewer examples of diverse styles, behavior,
and values. The pace of life and the time devoted to developing social and personal
relationships may also vary as a function of where we live. In slums or ghettos in
urban areas, we often find a social climate that encourages or fosters unconven-
tional and deviant behavior or at least tolerates it. Thus, slum areas show a high
incidence of juvenile delinquency, prostitution, alcohol and drug addiction, physical
and mental disability, and crimes of violence (Krupat, 1985).

The natural environment that surrounds us on a day-to-day basis also comes
with a host of weather-related phenomena. For instance, behavioral scientists have
been interested in the effects of barometric pressure: High or rising barometric
pressure has been associated with feelings of good health; low or falling barometric
pressure is more likely to be linked to feelings of pain or depression. Optimum stu-
dent behavior and performance have been observed when the barometer was high
or rising and on cool days with little wind and precipitation. Increase in positive
air ions also seems to increase people’s irritability and tension.

The changing seasons seem to have an impact on our behavior and mental
health, too. Even in areas of the United States with minimal seasonal variations
in temperature, national routines associated with changing seasons are still
followed: for example, taking summer vacations and starting school in the fall.
Some of the ways in which our behavior varies with the seasons include the
following:

1. Suicide rates and admissions to public mental hospitals rise dramatically in the
spring and peak in the summer.

2. College students tend to break up with their dating partners at the beginnings
and endings of semesters (May/June, August/September, or December/
January).

3. During the summer, people tend to see their friends more often.
4. During the summer, crimes of assault and rape increase.
5. From July to November, people tend to report less happiness but more activity

and less boredom.
6. U.S. females born during the fall are more likely to have symptoms related to

eating disorders than females born during the other seasons (Javaras, Austin, &
Field, 2011).

7. Although seasonal affective disorder (we describe this later in the chapter) can
be triggered in spring, the onset is more likely to be during late fall and early
winter.

100 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

BROKEN WINDOWS. BROKEN RULES?

Imagine entering an urban neighborhood with
few people around. You pass by numerous build-
ings that have been vandalized (e.g., broken
windows, graffiti on the outside walls, and litter
all around). Do these represent clues to the ex-
isting norms of conduct operating in that envi-
ronment? Do you think that the buildings are not
monitored and that getting caught for littering or
damaging property further is very unlikely?

Wilson and Kelling (1982) and others
(Kelling & Coles, 1996) proposed the so-called
broken windows theory to account for how the
appearance and upkeep of an environment is
one signal of the social norms there, the extent
to which the setting is monitored, and whether
criminal behavior occurs in that area. These,
in turn, are relevant to the occurrence and
prevention of some criminal activity.

In principle, one way to prevent petty
criminal activity is to repair damaged property
and not let trash accumulate because this
lets would-be vandals know that the area is
monitored and that vandalism will be detected
and dealt with. On the other hand, the presence
of litter, broken windows, and other signs of

vandalism might not deter some individuals from engaging in similar petty or even serious criminal activity in
the neighborhood. Furthermore, additional criminal activity can lead to a further deterioration of the appear-
ance of the area, only making matters worse. For example, law-abiding citizens may decide to flee the area.

The broken windows theory has received some empirical support, but it has also been criticized. Survey
research has shown that aspects of the theory have utility in explaining residents’ concern about neighbor-
hood safety as well as students’ perceptions of social disorder in their school (Pitner, Yu, & Brown, 2012;
Plank, Bradshaw, & Young, 2009). Experimental work has revealed that littering, trespassing, and stealing
are greater when there are signs that people are violating other rules; littering was greater, for example, when
participants saw graffiti on a wall marked with a “no graffiti sign” than when that same wall had no graffiti
on it (Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008). However, the research of Cialdini, Kallgren, and Reno (1991)
suggests that it might be important for us to see another person behave in a way that is consistent with the
existing norms in the environment. They found that participants were more likely to litter in a messy garage
than a clean garage when they had first seen another person litter in that garage. Stated differently, the litterer
brought the norm (“It’s okay to litter”) to participants’ awareness when they were in the messy garage.

As a theory, broken windows has been criticized on a number of fronts. First and foremost, it cannot
explain the causes of serious criminal activity. Of course, most of the people who live in blighted urban
areas do not turn to a life of violent crime. Moreover, a criminal may be little concerned with the upkeep
of a street; a burglar, for instance, may case a luxury home in an exclusive neighborhood and ignore a
modest home in a run-down neighborhood because the potential payoffs are greater with the former.

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CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 101

We recognize that seasons come and go gradually along with the weather that
typically accompanies them—falling leaves eventually give way to falling snow.
However, within seasons, the weather can change suddenly and drastically: for
example, a sunny spring day can be followed by violent storm activity that night,
with tornadoes touching down and ripping apart neighborhoods. Natural disasters
can inflict great psychological damage on those who have experienced them, some-
times leading to post-traumatic stress disorder (Simpson, Weissbecker, & Sephton,
2011).

Temperature and the way it affects human responses is the climatic factor that
has received the most scientific attention—specifically, the extent to which hot tem-
peratures increase aggressive motivation and aggressive behavior.

Lengthy periods of extreme heat are often associated with discomfort,
irritability, reduced work output, and unfavorable evaluations of strangers. In
one study, hot temperatures increased aggressive horn-honking for drivers
without air-conditioning (Kenrick & MacFarlane, 1986). Vrij, van der Steen,
and Koppelaar (1994) studied the reactions of police officers to a simulated
burglary in which the temperature varied from comfortably cool to hot. When
the temperature was hot, officers reported more aggressive and threatening
impressions of the suspect and were more likely to draw their weapon. As
Anderson (2001) noted, uncomfortably warm temperatures seem to increase the
likelihood that ambiguous social interactions will be viewed as aggressive.
A simple question such as “Is it really necessary that I do that?” may be taken
as an aggressive challenge to personal authority that demands some form of
retaliation.

An analysis of riots in India over a 22-year period found that most took place
during the months when the temperature was between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit
(Berke & Wilson, 1951). Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (1968) on riots in the United States said that hot summer nights added to
an already explosive situation that eventually resulted in widespread rioting in
ghetto areas: “In most instances, the temperature during the day on which the vio-
lence erupted was quite high” (p. 71; also see Goranson & King, 1970). An analysis
of 102 riots in the United States between 1967 and 1971 concluded that the most
likely temperature-riot sequence was one in which the temperature rose to between
81 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit and remained within that range for about 7 days
preceding the riot. Rotton and Cohn (2003) conducted two studies, each covering
38 years or more, and found annual temperatures associated with various forms of
criminal behavior such as assaults, rapes, robberies, burglaries, and larceny—but not
murder.

Without any way to relieve the effects of high temperatures, criminal behavior
is likely to decrease when extremely high temperatures persist. Very high tempera-
tures lead people to seek ways to relieve their discomfort rather than engage in
criminal activity. Riots were less likely to occur as temperatures climbed above
90 degrees Fahrenheit (Baron & Ransberger, 1978; Carlsmith & Anderson, 1979).
As Figure 4-3 indicates, assaults in climate-controlled settings tend to increase
when temperatures are extremely high but decrease in outdoor situations without
climate controls (Rotton & Cohn, 2004).

102 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

You might be wondering why heat would lead to more aggression. According
to Leonard Berkowitz (1989), the likely culprit is negative feelings. In short, high
temperatures can produce negative feelings, and it is these feelings that can trigger
anger and hostile thoughts and behaviors in people. This occurs because such
thoughts and behaviors are linked to it in an associated network in memory. This
model implies that other environmental stressors that arouse negative feelings in
people—excessive noise, traffic jams, pollution, and so on—might also lead to
more aggression under the right circumstance.

Obviously, the relationship between temperature, negative affect, and aggres-
sion is not simple. Probably a number of factors interact with the temperature to
increase the chance of aggression: prior provocation; the presence of aggressive
models; and negative affect experienced from sources other than temperature, such
as poverty and unemployment, perceived ability to leave the environment, and the
availability of sources to relieve any adverse effects of temperature. A thorough
review of the literature, however, concludes the following:

Clearly, hot temperatures produce increases in aggressive motives and tendencies.
Hotter regions of the world yield more aggression; this is especially apparent when
analyses are done within countries. Hotter years, quarters of years, seasons,
months, and days all yield relatively more aggressive behaviors such as murders,
rapes, assaults, riots, and wife beatings, among others. Finally, those concomitant
temperature-aggression studies done in the field also yielded clear evidence that
uncomfortably hot temperatures produce increases in aggressive motives and beha-
viors. (Anderson, 1989, p. 93)

Note, however, that sometimes unpleasant environmental factors, such as heat
or noise, can increase attraction for others. In such cases, the aversive stimulus may

Temperature
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FIGURE 4-3
Aggravated assault as a function of temperature and climate control.

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 103

function as something both people have in common (Kenrick & Johnson, 1979;
Schneider, Lesko, & Garrett, 1980). The extent to which heat and other environ-
mental variables increase or decrease attraction to others depends on how these
interact with many other factors, such as interactants’ personalities and the pres-
ence or absence of simultaneously occurring rewarding stimuli.

The effects of the moon and sunspots on human behavior have also been stud-
ied scientifically. Psychiatrist Arnold Lieber (1978) reasoned that human beings,
like the earth, are subject to gravitational forces created by different positions of
the moon. (Human beings, like the planet itself, are about 80 percent water and
20 percent solids.) He plotted the number of murders in relation to the position of
the moon and concluded a strong relationship between the two. But considerable
skepticism exists regarding Lieber’s theory and similar work because research of
this type shows how two things vary together, not that a particular moon position
actually causes certain behaviors. Several other factors likely are interacting and
affecting the two. Two separate analyses of over 37 studies that purportedly linked
moon positions and the frequency of psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides,
homicides, traffic accidents, and changes in the stock market concluded that a spu-
rious relationship exists between moon phases and these behaviors (Campbell &
Beets, 1978; Rotton & Kelly, 1985). Furthermore, Schafer, Varano, Jarvis, and
Cancino (2010) did not find a relationship between lunar cycles and reported
criminal conduct in a more recent study on this topic.

Aside from the influence of high temperatures on aggressive tendencies, we do
not have a lot of reliable and valid information on how the natural environment
affects our communication behavior. It seems reasonable to believe that various
aspects of the natural environment will have an influence, but the exact nature
and degree of this influence is still unknown. Most people seem to believe the
weather has less impact on their own behavior than it does on others’ behavior,
that it has less impact on behavior than it does on emotional states, and that it
does not have more impact on negative states than on positive ones (Jorgenson,
1981). Kraut and Johnston (1979) found that people walking on the sidewalk
smiled more when the weather was sunny and pleasant than when it was rainy
and overcast. This difference was much less significant than the effect of being
with others; people smiled much more when in an interaction than when alone.
Thus, compared to more social factors, climate and other environmental variables
may have weak influences on our behavior.

OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ENVIRONMENT

Chapter 5 examines the reactions of people to overpopulated environments. For
now, we point out that people can be perceived as part of the environment and do
have an effect on the behavior of others. These people may be perceived as active
or passive participants, depending on the degree to which they are perceived as
involved in conversations, either speaking or listening. In many situations, these
people are seen as active, especially if they are able to overhear what is being said.
In some situations, we grant another person or persons the dubious status of
nonperson and behave accordingly. This may occur in high-density situations, but

104 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

it is also common with just one other person. Cab drivers, janitors, and children
achieve nonperson status with regularity. The presence of nonpersons, of course,
allows the uninhibited flow of interaction because as far as the active participants
are concerned, they themselves are the only human interactants present. Parents
sometimes talk to others about personal aspects of their child while the child is
playing nearby. For interactants, the child is perceived as “not there.” Any relevant
verbal or nonverbal responses on the part of the nonperson that are picked up by
interactants immediately strip the person of the nonperson role.

Research shows that the home team was usually the winner in sporting events
(Jamieson, 2010). One study found this to be true 53 percent of the time in profes-
sional baseball, 58 percent in professional football, 60 percent in college football,
67 percent in professional basketball, and 64 percent in professional hockey. Possi-
ble reasons are the home team’s familiarity with the home field or the visiting
team’s travel fatigue. However, an important factor contributing to the home
team’s victories seems to be the spectators, who provide psychological support
that improves performance. In contrast, unfriendly home crowds may increase
performance errors (Schwartz & Barsky, 1977; Thirer & Rampey, 1979). Some
analyses of home team performances before supportive fans have suggested a
tendency for the home team to choke in championship games, but some studies
have not shown this to be true for baseball or basketball (Schlenker, Phillips,
Boniecki, & Schlenker, 1995).

The ways in which groups influence individual performance are too numerous
and too large a topic to discuss here. Two examples illustrate the subtlety of some
of these effects:

1. In one of social psychology’s first experiments, boys wound line on fishing
reels faster when others were present performing the same activity, even
though there was no competition and no emphasis on speed. Many studies
have since found this social facilitation effect whereby performance—on simple
and well-learned tasks, at least—is enhanced by the mere presence of others.

2. If people feel others are working with them on a joint task, they often slack off
without realizing it. This social loafing is strongest when people feel their own
contributions cannot be tallied or evaluated (Harkins & Szymanski, 1987).

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND MOVABLE OBJECTS

Hall (1966) labeled the architecture and objects in our environment as either fixed
feature space or semifixed feature space. Fixed feature space refers to space orga-
nized by unmoving boundaries, such as in rooms of houses; semifixed feature
space refers to the arrangement of movable objects, such as tables or chairs. Both
can have a strong impact on our communication behavior.

At one time in U.S. history, banks were deliberately designed to project an
image of strength and security. The design frequently featured large marble pillars,
an abundance of metal bars and doors, uncovered floors, and bare walls. This style
generally projected a cold, impersonal image to visitors, yet oddly enough, it also
gave customers some measure of comfort because in such a place their money

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 105

would likely be safe. Later, bankers perceived the need to change their environ-
ment, to create a friendly, warm, homey place where people would enjoy sitting
down and discussing their financial needs and problems. Bank interiors began to
change. Carpeting was added, wood replaced metal, cushioned chairs were added,
and potted plants and art were brought in for additional warmth. This is only one
example of the recognition that many times, the interior in which interaction
occurs can significantly influence the nature of the interaction. Some churches
have tried to make their environments more inviting by having greeters, Power-
Point presentations, musicians who sing and play guitars, and the like. Nightclub
owners and restaurateurs have long been aware that dim lighting and sound-
absorbing surfaces—such as carpets, drapes, and padded ceilings—provide greater
intimacy and cause patrons to linger longer than they would in an interior with
high illumination and no soundproofing. And lastly, attention has been paid to
how gamblers are influenced by the design and decor features of casinos (Finlay,
Marmurek, Kanetkar, & Londerville, 2010).

The earliest studies to focus on the influence of interior decoration on human
responses were conducted by Maslow and Mintz (1956) and Mintz (1956). They
selected three rooms for study: One was an “ugly” room, designed to give the
impression of a janitor’s storeroom in disheveled condition; one was a “beautiful”
room, complete with attractive appointments that included carpeting and drapes;
and one was an “average” room—a professor’s office. People sitting in these
rooms were asked to rate a series of negative print photographs (to control for
color, shading, etc.) of faces. The experimenters tried to keep all factors—time of
day, odor, noise, type of seating, and experimenter—constant from room to room,
so results could be attributed to the type of room.

Results showed that people in the beautiful room gave significantly higher rat-
ings on “energy” and “well-being” to the faces than did participants in the ugly
room. Experimenters and subjects alike engaged in various escape behaviors to
avoid the ugly room, which was variously described as producing monotony,
fatigue, headache, discontent, sleep, irritability, and hostility. The beautiful
room, however, produced feelings of pleasure, comfort, enjoyment, importance,
energy, and a desire to continue the activity. In this instance, we have a well-controlled
study that offers some evidence of the impact of visual-aesthetic surroundings on the
nature of human interaction. Similar studies found that students do better on tests,
rate teachers higher, and solve problems more effectively in beautiful rooms than in
ugly ones (Campbell, 1979; Wollin & Montagre, 1981).

Because at least one study did not find mood or evaluations of others to
change with drastic changes in appointments and decor (Kasmar, Griffin, &
Mauritzen, 1968), we are reminded that the impact of the environment is only
one source of influence on our perceptions. Sometimes it is a powerful force, but
sometimes the close relationship between the two parties, an understanding of or
tolerance for clutter, positive behavior on the part of the other person, and other
factors offset any negative effects emanating from an ugly environment.

Sometimes we get very definite person- or couple-related messages from home
environments (see Figure 4-4). The designation of places in the home for certain
activities and not for others, the symbolism attached to various objects in the
home, and ways of decorating the home may tell us a lot about the nature of a

106 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

couple’s relationship (Altman, Brown, Staples, & Werner, 1992). Sometimes the
way a home is decorated reveals whether the inhabitants decorated their home for
themselves, for others, for conformity, for comfort, and so on (Sandalla, 1987). It
is easier to judge aspects of other people’s personalities when they feel that their
home decor expresses their personality (Hâta, 2004).

Lohmann, Arriaga, and Goodfriend (2003) were able to use decorative objects
in a home to determine the closeness of the inhabitants’ relationship. They asked
couples who were either married or living together in a romantic relationship to
identify objects in their homes they most wanted visitors to notice and to specify
their favorite objects. Each object was also identified as either individually acquired
or jointly acquired. Couples completed questionnaires that measured their relation-
ship commitment and closeness. The couples who had greater commitment and
closer relationships were also couples who had a higher proportion of jointly
acquired objects that they wanted visitors to notice and more jointly acquired
favorite objects.

Researchers have explored individual differences in how people decorate their
actual (e.g., bedrooms, offices) or virtual worlds (Graham, Sandy, & Gosling,
2011). For example, Gosling (2008), Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, and Morris (2002),
and Gosling, Gaddis, and Vazire (2008) were interested in whether personality
characteristics could accurately be predicted from a person’s office or bedroom.

FIGURE 4-4
Environmental Perception Test: (a) Describe the people who live here. (b) Tell why you would or
would not like to meet the people who live here. (c) How much communication takes place here?
(d) What topics are most likely discussed? (e) Which dimensions listed on pp. 94–97 influenced
your perceptions the most? (f) Compare your answers with others.

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CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 107

Observers who experienced various offices and bedrooms firsthand indicated the
extent to which the environment they saw reflected the person’s extraversion,
agreeableness, emotional stability, openness to experience, and conscientiousness.
The personality profile of the people who worked in the offices and slept in the
bedrooms was obtained from their own responses to personality measures. These
types of environments seem to have enough signals associated with conscientious-
ness and openness to experience to enable observers to effectively judge inhabitants
with those characteristics (e.g., a variety of reading material was linked to openness
to experiences; being neat was linked to conscientiousness), but observers were not
as successful in judging other personality characteristics. We may not always be
accurate in judging another person’s personality characteristics from the way they
construct their environment, but that does not stop us from making such judg-
ments. People who judged the personality of characters in a story when the quality
of their housekeeping was varied judged the housekeepers with a dirty environment
as less agreeable, less conscientious, less intelligent, and less feminine but more
open and more neurotic than the clean housekeepers. Whether the housekeeper
was male or female did not affect the judgments (Harris & Sachau, 2005).

The way people decorate their rooms may also forecast future behavior. In one
study, researchers took photographs of 83 first-year students’ rooms. When the
photographs of the rooms of students who had dropped out of school a year and
a half later were analyzed, it was noted that the dropouts had more decorations
reflecting high school and home and fewer related to the university community.
Dropouts also seemed to have fewer ways to protect their privacy; their favorite
way to combat unwanted noise was to override it with more noise of their own
(Vinsel, Brown, Altman, & Foss, 1980).

COLOR

Researchers have been investigating how color affects our behavior, from how food
tastes to us to how attractive we find others (Elliot & Niesta, 2008; Harrar,
Piqueras-Fiszman, & Spence, 2011). First off, people believe that colors can affect
behavior. In fact, some believe “prisoner mischief” will vary as a function of the
colors surrounding prisoners. For example, the walls of the San Diego city jail
were at one time reportedly painted pink, baby blue, and peach on the assumption
that pastel colors would have a calming effect on the inmates. In Salem, Oregon, the
cell bars of Oregon’s correctional institution were painted soft greens, blues, and
buffs; some cell doors were painted bright yellow, orange, green, and blue. In addi-
tion, the superintendent of the institution said the color schemes would be continu-
ally changed to keep it “an exciting place to work and live in.” Initial studies of
people exposed to environments painted Baker-Miller pink found decreasing heart
rates, pulse, and respiration. Subsequent studies in adult and juvenile correctional
facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and controlled laboratory studies with undergraduate
students supported the belief that this pink color aided in suppressing violent
and aggressive behaviors (Pelligrini & Schauss, 1980; Schauss, 1985). In 2005, the
sheriff of Mason County, Texas, painted the bars and walls of his five-inmate jail
pink and issued pink sheets, pink slippers, and pink jumpsuits to his prisoners. He
claims it has led to a 70 percent decrease in repeated offenses (Phinney, 2006).

108 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

But not all experiences with pink have been so positive. The county jail in San
Jose, California, reportedly painted two holding cells shocking pink in the belief
that prisoner hostility would be reduced. Prisoners seemed less hostile for about
15 minutes, but soon the hostility reached a peak; after 3 hours, some prisoners
were tearing the paint off the wall. This result is consistent with the research of
Smith, Bell, and Fusco (1986) who found pink to be arousing rather than weaken-
ing. In fact, any color that is highly saturated and bright is likely to be more arousing
and will garner more attention than paler colors (Camgoz, Yener, & Guvenc, 2004;
Garber & Hyatt, 2003). When prisoners are allowed to paint their cells with colors
they choose, it may have an aggression-reducing effect, but the effect may have
more to do with the prisoner’s control over the choice of colors than the colors
themselves. Nevertheless, the preceding reports show how various institutions have
tried, with mixed results, to apply the findings from color research to affect the
nature of human interaction in certain environments.

Colors are also believed to influence student learning. Colors that will facili-
tate, or at least not impede, learning are always a concern during classroom
construction. In Munich, Germany, a group of researchers studied the impact of
colors on mental growth and social relations (“Blue Is Beautiful,” 1973). Children
tested in rooms they thought were beautiful scored about 12 points higher on an
IQ test than those tested in rooms they thought were ugly. Blue, yellow, yellow-
green, and orange were considered beautiful; white, black, and brown were consid-
ered ugly. The beautifully colored rooms also seemed to stimulate alertness and
creativity. In the orange room, psychologists found that positive social reactions,
such as friendly words and smiles, increased 53 percent, whereas negative reac-
tions, such as irritability and hostility, decreased 12 percent.

Ball’s (1965) summary of the color research prior to 1965 found what others
have found since then: that people associate serenity and calm with the colors blue
and green, and that red and orange are perceived to be arousing and stimulating.
The research of Wexner (1954) and Murray and Deabler (1957) are representative
of this tradition. Wexner (see Table 4-1) presented 8 colors and 11 mood-tones to
94 research participants. The results show that a single color is significantly related
to some mood-tones; for others, two or more colors may be associated.

It is difficult to interpret this research. First, research participants were asked to
judge colors outside of any context, even though the colors we respond to in daily
life are perceived within a particular context. Separating color from the objects and
forms that give it shape, the surrounding colors, and other contextual features may
elicit some learned stereotypes about the relationship of mood and color, but each
stereotype may or may not be relevant when given a context. Pink may be your
favorite color, but you may still dislike pink hair.

Hines (1996) found that residents of four American cities believed red meant
danger, warmth, love, strength, and safety, but when these same people were
asked to think about red in terms of products, they said red meant Coca-Cola.
Because the color red is associated with male dominance and testosterone levels in
some nonhuman animals, Hill and Barton (2005) wondered whether the wearing
of red would play a role in winning sporting contests. In the 2004 Olympic
games, contestants in four combat sports—tae kwon do, boxing, Greco-Roman
wrestling, and freestyle wrestling—were randomly assigned red or blue outfits. In

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 109

all four competitions, the contestants wearing red won significantly more fights.
The researchers later compared the performances of five soccer teams that varied
the color of their uniforms and found that they won significantly more games
when wearing red. The researchers caution, however, that wearing red may only
be a favorable factor in winning when the combatants are reasonably matched in
skill: Wearing red will not overcome a lack of talent.

Studies suggest that the color red enhances the attractiveness of members of the
other sex. In one experiment, young men saw the same black-and-white photo of a
woman in one of two conditions: in either a red background or a white back-
ground. Men’s ratings of the woman’s attractiveness were higher when she was
featured in the red as opposed to the white background (Elliot & Niesta, 2008).
Similarly, Elliot et al. (2010) found that young women thought a man was more
attractive when he was shown on a red background compared to a white one.

A series of studies on the color of uniforms worn by football and hockey
players pinpointed the complex ways in which colors may affect behavior. Frank
and Gilovich (1988) began by demonstrating that students rated black uniforms as
connoting meanness and aggression more than other colors. Then they examined
statistics from actual professional games and found that football and hockey
teams wearing black uniforms were penalized more than teams wearing other col-
ors. And when a team changed its color to black from some other color, it began

TABLE 4-1 COLORS ASSOCIATED WITH MOODS

Mood-Tone Color Number of Times Chosen

Exciting/stimulating Red 61

Secure/comfortable Blue 41

Distressed/disturbed/upset Orange 34

Tender/soothing Blue 41

Protective/defending Red 21

Brown 17

Blue 15

Black 15

Purple 14

Despondent/dejected/unhappy/melancholy Black 25

Brown 25

Calm/peaceful/serene Blue 38

Green 31

Dignified/stately Purple 45

Cheerful/jovial/joyful Yellow 40

Defiant/contrary/hostile Red 23

Orange 21

Black 18

Powerful/strong/masterful Black 48

110 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

getting more penalties! The researchers then asked whether the effect was caused
by the players themselves—maybe they acted meaner and rougher wearing black—
or by the stereotyped perceptions of referees. The researchers made experimental
films in which they varied the uniforms of players engaging in identical moves and
then showed these to subjects acting as referees. These referees did find more
instances of penalizable behavior among those suited in black, even though there
actually were no differences. However, when the researchers put black uniforms
on students, they found evidence that wearing a black uniform produced more
aggressive behavior in the wearer. More recent evidence, however, has called this
effect into question. Caldwell and Burger (2011) did not find that hockey teams
showed more aggression when the players wore a black or red jersey as opposed
to their normal jersey color.

We cannot make any conclusive judgments about the impact of color on
human interaction from the research to date, but common sense tells us that colors
in our environment will affect the way we respond: We simply do not know how
or how much. What we do know is that research in this area needs to continue,
and that its scope must be broadened to new interaction environments. For
instance, because many people visit Web sites on a daily basis, researchers should
examine how color in those Web sites impacts visitors both within and across vari-
ous cultures (e.g., Cyr, Head, & Larios, 2010).

SOUND

Types of sounds and their intensity also seem to affect our interpersonal behavior,
task performance, and health. We may have very different reactions to the drone of
several people’s voices, the overpowering sound of a nearby jackhammer, or the
soothing or stimulating sounds of music.

Most of us are aware of how music can affect our moods, and our selection
of music may be designed to match or even change our moods. Depressing music
can add to the intensity of an already gloomy mood; uplifting music can enhance
a joyful feeling. Beginning with ideas like this, Honeycutt and Eidenmuller (2001)
conducted an exploratory study in which they asked couples to work at resolving
a source of conflict in their relationship while background music was playing.
Some couples experienced music rated as more positive and uplifting, and others
experienced negative or dreary music. The results of this study suggest not only
that the type of music can affect the verbal and nonverbal behavior of interactants
(e.g., agitating music was more likely to be linked to arguments), but the intensity
of the music can affect the intensity of the interaction. In a related study, uplifting
or annoying music was played for users of a university gym. Following their work-
out, they were asked to sign up for a helping task that did not involve much effort
or commitment or one that did. People exposed to both types of music signed up
for the easy task, but significantly more people who heard the uplifting music signed
up to help with the more difficult task (North, Tarrant, & Hargreaves, 2004).

Music can also affect consumer behavior. At one British restaurant, diners were
exposed to classical, pop, or no music for 18 evenings. When dining to the sound
of classical music, people spent significantly more money (North, Shilcock, &
Hargreaves, 2003). Obviously, different types of music are suitable for different

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 111

environments, and the music that is most effective for an environment is music that
is compatible with perceptions of other environmental features. Scientists at the
University of Leicester in England displayed four French and four German wines in
a local supermarket. The wines from the two countries were similar in price, sweet-
ness, and dryness. For 2 weeks, a tape deck on a nearby shelf alternated each day
with either French accordion music or German beer-hall music. Placement of the
wine on the shelves was alternated midway through the experiment. Researchers
found that sales were clearly linked to the type of music being played: When French
music was played, French wines outsold German wines, but when German music
was played, German wines outsold French wines. Only about 7 percent of those
purchasing wines were willing to acknowledge that the music may have influenced
their decision (North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1997).

Concern has grown in the general public about the effects of music on young
people’s behavior. It is important to remember that the music most young adults
listen to (pop, rap, rock and roll, soul, country, etc.) contains lyrics. Teasing apart
the impact of the music versus the lyrics is thus important. For example, it appears
that violent lyrics contribute to aggressive thoughts and behaviors, prosocial lyrics
contribute to helping behavior, and romantic lyrics contribute to romance-related
behavior (namely, women’s initial openness to having phone contact with a male)
(Anderson, Carnagey, & Eubanks, 2003; Greitemeyer, 2009; Guéguen, Jacob, &
Lamy, 2010; Mast & McAndrew, 2011). More important, it seems that it is the
lyrics and not the music per se that is responsible for the increase in aggressive
thoughts and behavior. Here again, we see that co-occurring verbal cues must be
taken into consideration when we evaluate the impact of a nonverbal cue, such as
music. We also should not ignore individual differences. Huang and Shih (2011),
for instance, found that music negatively affected workers’ concentration when the
music was either strongly liked or disliked by the worker.

Szalma and Hancock’s (2011) review revealed that noise negatively impacts
performance, including communication that is both oral and written. However,
they noted that the extent to which noise hurts performance depends on a variety
of factors, including noise intensity, whether the noise is intermittent or continuous,
the type of noise, noise duration, and the type of task being done under noisy
conditions. As an illustration of some of these factors, Glass and Singer (1973) con-
ducted a series of studies on the impact of noise on performance. People were
asked to perform a variety of tasks varying in complexity while noises were manip-
ulated by the experimenters. Noise levels were varied: Some noise followed a
predictable pattern, and some did not. Various noise sources were tested, including
typewriters, machinery, and people speaking a foreign language. Although noise
alone did not seem to have a substantial effect on performance, deterioration was
observed when noise interacted with other factors; for instance, performance
decreased when the workload was high and the noise was uncontrollable and
unpredictable. Other factors that determine whether noise is a problem or a
pleasure include the type of noise—for example, music versus people talking—the
volume, the length of time it lasts, and whether the listener is accustomed to it or
not. Obviously, some individuals are more influenced by noise than others. Noise-
sensitive incoming college students perceived more noise than other students, and
these perceptions increased after 7 months into the school year. The noise-sensitive

112 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

students also received lower grades, felt less secure in their social interactions, and
had a greater desire for privacy than did their peers who were less sensitive to noise
(Weinstein, 1978).

Noise can also have short- and long-term effects on learning, motivation,
behavior, and health. Ryan and Mendel (2010) reported that the noise levels sur-
rounding physical education settings (e.g., gymnasium) are too high for Florida
school-aged children (elementary, middle, and high school), which could be detri-
mental to their learning. Jahncke, Hygge, Halin, Green, and Dimberg (2011)
noted that participants were less motivated and felt more tired when working in an
open-plan office space that had high- versus low-noise conditions. The distraction
caused by noise may be key to understanding the short-term effects of noise
on behavior, including increased alcohol consumption (Stafford, Fernandes, &
Agobiani, 2012). If negative feelings from hot temperatures can lead to aggression
under the right circumstances, then noise, which also can produce negative feelings
in people, should lead to aggression at times, too. This is indeed the case (Geen &
McCown, 1984). Lastly, with respect to hearing health, a study in Michigan found
that 70 percent of participants were exposed to typical noise levels that exceeded
Environmental Protection Agency guidelines; such exposure levels could negatively
impact their hearing over the long term (Flamme et al., 2012).

LIGHTING

Lighting also helps structure our perceptions of an environment, and these percep-
tions may influence the type of messages we send. If we enter a dimly lit or candle-
lit room, we may talk more softly, sit closer together, and presume that more
personal communication will take place (Meer, 1985). When dimly lit university
counseling rooms were compared with those that had brighter lighting, students
reported feeling more relaxed in the dimly lit rooms. The dimly lit counseling
rooms also elicited more self-disclosure from the students and higher ratings of the
counselors in those rooms (Miwa & Hanyu, 2006).

When a dimly lit environment is suddenly brightened, it tends to invite less
intimate interaction. For example, the flashing of bright lights in nightclubs that
previously maintained dim lighting is often a signal that closing time is near, and
this allows patrons some time to make the transition from one mood to another.
Carr and Dabbs (1974) found that the use of intimate questions in dim lighting
with nonintimates caused a significant hesitancy in responding, a significant
decrease in eye gaze, and a decrease in the average length of gaze. All of these
nonverbal behaviors appear to be efforts to create more psychological distance
and decrease the perceived inappropriateness of the intimacy created by the light-
ing and questions.

The absence of light seems to be a central problem for people who suffer from
seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression particularly acute in winter
months (Rosenthal, 1993). Therapists have successfully treated those who suffer
from seasonal affective disorder by exposing them to extremely bright light for
several hours each morning. Artificial lighting that provides a full-range light
spectrum, like that of the sun, is most effective in this therapy (Lewy et al., 1998).
In view of this need for sunlight, it has been postulated that cities with the lowest

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 113

amount of annual sunlight might also have the highest suicide rates, but findings
do not provide support for this hypothesis (Lester, 1988).

MOVABLE OBJECTS

If we know that the arrangement of certain objects in our environment can help
structure communication, it is not surprising that we often try to manipulate
objects to elicit specific responses. Politicians and government officials do this rou-
tinely, when choosing backdrops for their speeches. Manipulating objects in the
environment to communicate particular messages also occurs in personal living
spaces. In preparation for an intimate evening at home, a person may light candles;
play soft, romantic music; fluff the pillows on the couch; and hide the dirty dishes,
clothes, and other unpleasant reminders of daily living.

Employees often use objects to personalize their offices. These signs of personal
identity make them feel more satisfied with their work life and provide visitors with
information to initiate a conversation. Because the company also wants to commu-
nicate its identity, the amount and kinds of personal objects employees display
must also be consistent with the image the company wants to project. Objects in
our work environment can also be arranged to reflect certain role relationships, to
demarcate boundaries, or to encourage greater affiliation. The interior of an execu-
tive suite may clearly indicate the perceived status of the inhabitant; for example,
expensive paintings, a large desk, plush sofas and chairs, and drapes display success
(Monk, 1994). Such an atmosphere may be inappropriate for a personal counseling
situation, but it can be rearranged to make it more conducive to such a purpose. Of
course, we sometimes are able to communicate well in seemingly inappropriate set-
tings by blocking out the messages being sent by the environment, as when lovers
intimately say good-bye in relatively cold and public airport terminals.

Desks seem to be important objects in the conduct of interpersonal communi-
cation. An early experiment in this area, set in a doctor’s office, suggests that the
presence or absence of a desk may significantly alter the patient’s “at ease” state
(White, 1953). With the desk separating doctor and patient, only 10 percent of the
patients were perceived at ease, whereas removal of the desk increased the percent-
age of at-ease patients to 55 percent. Student-to-student interaction in classrooms
can be constrained by eliminating any possible movement of the student desks or
seats (see Figure 4-5). And student–teacher relationships can also be affected by
desk placement (Zweigenhaft, 1976). Faculty members were asked to sketch the
furniture arrangement of their offices. These sketches were collected and analyzed
with other information obtained from the professors, and a schoolwide teacher
evaluation was conducted. It was found that 24 of 33 senior faculty members put
their desks between themselves and their students, but only 14 of 30 junior faculty
members did so. Furthermore, students rated the “unbarricaded” professors as
more willing to “encourage the development of different viewpoints by students,”
ready to give “individual attention to students who need it,” and less likely to
show “undue favoritism.” Because another study did not find the desk barrier
related to undesirable experiences in student–professor interactions, we are
reminded that other factors may neutralize or override the potentially troublesome
effects of the desk barrier (Campbell & Herren, 1978). For example, students

114 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

expect greater formality in student–teacher relationships in some situations, and the
basis for an effective working relationship may have been established outside the
professor’s office, so the barrier is not perceived as such. The podium separating
the president’s press secretary from the press during White House press briefings
also has been perceived both as appropriate and as a barrier to effective communi-
cation. During the Nixon administration, press briefings were formal, and the press
secretary stood behind a podium. Ron Nessen, President Ford’s press secretary, felt
that the podium contributed to an unproductive “us and them” feeling, which
prompted him to conduct briefings without the obstacle.

The arrangement of other furniture items can facilitate or inhibit communica-
tion. The location of the television set in a room will likely affect the placement of
chairs and, in turn, the patterns of conversation in that room. Sommer and Ross
(1958) found that some residents in a geriatric ward were apathetic and had few
friends in spite of a generally cheerful and bright environment. They were able
to double the frequency of resident conversations by rearranging the chairs so
more of them faced each other. Even when conversational possibilities have been
maximized, not everyone will talk to everyone else. Consider the arrangement of
Figure 4-6. Without considering other factors, such as the relationship of the inter-
actants or their knowledge of the subject, we would predict exchanges marked by
the arrows to be most frequent. The four people seated on the couch, as well as
persons F and G, will probably talk to each other less frequently. The four on one
end are not likely to communicate very often with the four on the other end.

In some environments, people are not expected to linger, so chairs are deliberately
designed without comfort in mind. Hotel owners and airport designers are well aware
of the “too comfortable” phenomenon. You may have noticed the slightly uncomfort-
able nature of the 10 degree forward angle of chairs in some fast-food restaurants.

FIGURE 4-5
A classroom design with immovable chairs discourages student-to-student interactions.

Fo
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CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 115

This feature encourages customers to eat and move along quickly to provide seats for
others. The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York replaced its old wooden seats
with folding plastic seats only 8 inches deep that “require so much concentration to
balance that sleeping or even sitting for long is impossible.” This was done to keep
homeless people from sleeping in the terminal (Rimer, 1989).

STRUCTURE AND DESIGN

We pass much of our time in buildings. Most of us spend the day in a dwelling
supposedly designed for effective performance of our work; in the evening, we
enter another structure supposedly designed for the effective conduct of our per-
sonal and family life. The architecture of these buildings can go a long way toward
determining who meets whom, where, and perhaps for how long.

The life of domestic animals is controlled through, among other things, the
erection of fences, flap doors, litter boxes, or the placement of food and water in
particular locations. Although verbal and nonverbal actions help control human
situations, manipulation of barriers, openings, and other physical arrangements is
also helpful. Meeting places can be appropriately arranged to regulate human traf-
fic and, to a certain extent, the network of communication.

U.S. office buildings often are constructed from a standard plan that reflects a
pyramidal organization. A large number of people are under the direction of a few
executives at the upper levels. These executives generally have the most space, the
most privacy, and the most desirable office locations, usually on the highest floor
of the structure. Achieving a height above the masses and occupying a significant
amount of space are only two indications of power. Corner offices, large picture
windows, and private elevators also are associated with status and power (Monk,
1994). An office next to an important executive may also be a formidable power
base. A similar pattern seems to exist in academic settings as well, with the higher-
ranking professors normally accorded more space, windows, privacy, and choice of
office location (Farrenkopf & Roth, 1980). The offices of top-level executives are
often hard to reach, the assumption being that the more complicated the path to
get to the executive, the more powerful he or she seems. Figure 4-7 is a hypothetical,

BA C D

F G

FIGURE 4-6
Conversation flow and furniture arrangement.

14
C
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g
ag

e
Le

ar
n
in
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A
ll
R
ig
h
ts

R
es

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ve

116 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

but not far-fetched, example of the long and circuitous route to a president’s office.
To get to the office, the visitor must be screened by a receptionist and a private sec-
retary and, in either or both places, may be asked to sit and wait. So, although the
status and power of an executive may be related to his or her inaccessibility, secretar-
ies and receptionists may value open views that allow them to act as lookouts and
defenders against unwanted intrusions. It is common for people on the lowest rungs
of the organizational ladder to find themselves in a large, open “pit.” These so-called
offices—really only desks, sometimes encompassed by a temporary enclosure—have
little or no privacy, and complaints are common. Although privacy is minimal, com-
munication opportunities are plentiful.

Some dormitories are built from floor plans that resemble many office build-
ings and old hotels. It has been speculated that these corridor-type dorms tend to
encourage bureaucratic management, which seems to fit the orderly and uniform
structure. Rigid rules are easier to enforce in these structures, and interaction
among the residents is discouraged. Compared with suite-type dorms, corridor-
type dorms are perceived by residents as more crowded, less private, and more
conducive to avoiding others (Baum & Valins, 1979). The sense of community
and the resulting responsibility for the living space are difficult to achieve. Lounges
are sometimes intended to facilitate such interaction, but their usefulness has been
questioned by architects and behavioral scientists. Lounges, like other design
features, must be integrated into the entire architectural plan developed from
an analysis of human needs—not inserted in places where they fit nicely or look
good for parents and visitors.

If you look carefully, you can see many environmental structures that inhibit or
prohibit communication. Fences separating yards create obvious barriers, even if they
are only waist high; locating laundry rooms in dark, isolated areas of apartment
buildings and public housing discourages their use, particularly at night; providing
access to patios only through a bedroom probably discourages their use; and so on.

FIGURE 4-7
Getting to the president’s office. A, receptionist; B, private secretary; C, president; D, private
room with rear exit.

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 117

Other environmental situations seem to facilitate interaction. Homes located in
the middle of a block seem to draw more interpersonal exchanges than those
located in other positions. Houses with adjacent driveways seem to have a built-in
structure that draws the neighbors together and invites communication. The likeli-
hood of interaction between strangers at a bar varies directly with the distance
between them. As a rule, a span of three bar stools is the maximum distance over
which patrons will attempt to initiate an encounter. Most bars are not designed
for optimal interaction. Note that the three bar designs in Figure 4-8 provide very
different opportunities for facing an interaction partner, for mutual eye gaze, and
for getting physically close. Most bars are similar to type B, which seems to dis-
courage interaction the most.

Some recent designs for housing the elderly have taken into consideration the
need for social contact. In these apartment dwellings, the doors of the apartments
on each floor open onto a common entranceway. This greatly increases the proba-
bility of social exchange compared to buildings where apartment doors are
staggered on either side of a long hallway with no facing doorways. If you want a
structure that encourages social interaction, you must have human paths that cross,
but if you want people to interact, there must be something that encourages them
to linger. Differences in interaction frequency are often related to the distances
people must travel between activities. For example, consider this comparison made
between two high schools: One was “centralized” with classrooms in one or two
buildings and one was “campus style” with classrooms spread among several
buildings. The campus design prompted 5 to 10 percent more interactions in the
halls, stairs, and lobbies but 7 to 10 percent fewer interactions in the classrooms
than the centralized design. There also were 20 percent fewer interactions between
students and teachers before and after class in the campus-style high school
(Myrick & Marx, 1968). It is no secret that the architecture of a school can affect
a student’s motivation to learn, a teacher’s motivation to teach, how much students
and teachers talk to each other, how long they talk, and, to a certain extent, what
they talk about. Older school designs were often based on how to maintain strict
discipline, emphasize status differences between students and teachers, and mini-
mize informal talking.

Architects and social scientists have even been experimenting with new prison
designs. The older structures, which had linear tiers of steel cages, are being
replaced with modular units that have fewer inmates and fewer barriers between
them and their guards. These new designs, coupled with new ways of managing
prisoners, seem to result in more positive behavior on the part of both guards

FIGURE 4-8
Designs for drinking.

118 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

and prisoners, provide more opportunities for rehabilitation, and reduce costs
(Cronin, 1992).

Furthermore, an environment’s design may encourage or discourage certain
types of communication; that is, the structure may determine how much interaction
takes place and the general content of that interaction. Drew (1971) reports a study
of three different designs for nursing stations within a mental hospital. In one,
interaction had to take place by opening a door; in another, interaction was con-
ducted through a glass-enclosed counter; and in the third, interaction took place
over an open counter. Although substantially more patients entered the nursing
station through the door, interactions occurred less frequently there than in the
other two stations. An average of only 1 interaction per each 15-minute observa-
tion period occurred with the door, 5.3 interactions occurred in the glass-enclosed
counter, and 8.7 occurred with the open counter. Although interaction was higher
for the open counter, the author noted a preponderance of social conversation
here; the door design seemed to encourage more item requests and permission
interactions. In short, the more inaccessible setting decreased interaction frequency
and increased task-oriented messages; the more accessible setting increased interac-
tion frequency and increased the amount of small talk.

A more complete analysis of physical proximity and spatial distance appears in
Chapter 5, but it is clearly relevant to this discussion on environments as well.
Over 60 years ago, Stouffer (1940) made this observation, which holds true today:

Whether one is seeking to explain why persons go to a particular place to get jobs,
why they go to trade at a particular store, why they go to a particular neighborhood
to commit a crime, or why they marry a particular spouse they choose, the factor of
spatial distance is of obvious significance. (p. 845)

Many studies have confirmed Stouffer’s remark. Students tend to develop stronger
friendships with students who share their classes, dormitories, and apartment
buildings, or who sit near them than with others who are geographically distant.
Workers tend to develop closer friendships with those who work near them.
The effect of proximity seems to be stronger for employees with less status in the
organization; managers, however, are more likely to choose their friends at the
office according to their status rather than their proximity (Schutte & Light,
1978). Some believe that increased proximity of ethnic groups will assist in reduc-
ing prejudice. Although close proximity may bring about positive attitude changes
between different ethnic groups, we must exercise caution in generalizing. If the
two groups are extremely polarized, or if they perceive no mutual problems or pro-
jects requiring cooperation, proximity may have little effect or may even magnify
hostilities.

Several studies show an inverse relationship between the distance separating
potential marriage partners and the number of marriages. Proximity allows us to
obtain more information about the other person. Obviously, obtaining more infor-
mation about someone may mean we soon learn that we are not attracted to the
person, but more often than not, proximity breeds attraction and, in turn, attrac-
tion leads to a desire to be in close proximity.

A number of studies have shown how proximity influences friendships. In one
study conducted in a townhouse development, most friendships occurred between

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 119

people who lived within 100 feet of each other. Next-door neighbors became close
friends 46 percent of the time; neighbors who lived two or three doors away
became close friends 24 percent of the time; and people who lived three or four
doors away became friends 13 percent of the time (Athanasiou & Yoshioka,
1973). Historically, the most famous study of proximity, friendship choice, and
interpersonal contact was conducted by Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950) in a
housing development for married students. Concern for what the authors called
functional distance led to data clearly demonstrating that architects can have a
tremendous influence on the social life of residents in these housing projects.
Functional distance is determined by the number of contacts that position and
design encourage; for example, factors such as which way apartments face, where
exits and entranceways are located, and location of stairways, mailboxes, and the
like all have an impact. Figure 4-9 shows the basic design of one type of building
studied.

The researchers asked the residents of 17 buildings, with the design of
Figure 4-9, which people they saw most often socially and what friendship choices
they made. Among the findings from this study, the following are noteworthy:

1. There seemed to be a greater number of friendship choices for those physically
close to one another, such as on the same floor or in the same building. It was
rare to find a friendship between people separated by more than four or five
houses.

2. People living in apartments 1 and 5 gave and received from the upper-floor
residents more friendship choices than the people living in any other apart-
ments on the lower floor.

3. Apartments 1 and 6 exchanged more friendship choices than apartments 2
and 7. Similarly, apartments 5 and 10 exchanged more friendship choices than
apartments 4 and 9. Although this represented the same physical distance,
functional distance differed.

4. Because of the mailboxes, apartment 5 chose more upper-level friends, more of
those choices being apartments 9 and 10.

Making friends takes many forms these days. In the physical world, functional
distance seems to be highly influential, and it is sometimes the result of architec-
tural design. However, the importance of such factors may be diminishing in the
age of the Internet. People start relationships with others through online services,

FIGURE 4-9
Design influences the social lives of residents in apartment buildings.

120 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

such as Match.com and eHarmony. The number of people who get married to
someone they met through online dating services is growing. Because of physical
distance or lack of opportunity to cross paths with each other, these couples might
never have met in the pre-Internet days. Moreover, people can start and maintain
friendships with others via their Facebook accounts. In modern classrooms, for
example, college students can stay in touch with someone from their hometown
while ignoring someone who is sitting nearby. By logging in to a Facebook
account, the current design and structure of the setting the student is in, whether it
is the dorm, classroom, or student lounge area, may not matter—he or she is in
cyberspace.

REGULATING ENVIRONMENTS AND COMMUNICATION

It should be clear by now that our communication is often affected by the social
and physical environment. And we have some control over structuring these envir-
onments; we can paint our walls a different color, substitute candles for electric
lights, and so on. But our communication environments are influenced by others,
too. Earlier in this chapter, we noted how architects and furniture designers affect
our social interaction, but laws and government regulations also play an important
role in creating the environments that affect our communicative behavior. It is
important to conclude the chapter with this reminder because gaining control over
the environment that affects our communication may mean becoming a community
activist or leader.

Zoning laws, for example, determine whether a part of our environment will
be used for industrial, commercial, or residential activity. Zoning laws also deter-
mine the population density of an area by defining how many housing units per
acre are allowed. Laws prohibiting adult bookstores from operating too close to
churches are essentially saying the two environments generate quite different forms
of communication and are not likely to happily share the same territory. When
business hours of operation are regulated, it affects when streets are empty, when
they are crowded, and what segment of the population occupies the street. Some
communities have specific laws governing signs and billboards, where they can be
placed, their size, materials, and colors that can be used, and so on. Obviously
these and similar regulations governing parking areas, parks, display windows,
and vending machines impact our social lives.

In addition, there are penal codes that punish loitering, smoking, drinking
alcoholic beverages, and other behaviors. Smoking regulations have changed
things such as where smokers are allowed to congregate. As a consequence,
smokers today may have a greater feeling of us (namely, the in-group of smo-
kers) versus them (namely, the out-group of nonsmokers) than did smokers of
the past. Moreover, in places that prohibit smoking, including college campuses,
smokers may be viewed as, and feel deviant for, the practice of lighting up.
Thus, in an effort to safeguard the well-being of those who occupy it, an
environment may be restructured both in a physical way (designated smoking
areas) and in a psychological way (e.g., regulations that recast the behavior of
smoking).

CHAPTER 4 THE EFFECTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 121

SUMMARY

The environment in which people communicate
frequently contributes to the overall outcome of
their encounters. We have seen that both the
frequency and the content of our messages are
influenced by various aspects of the setting in
which we communicate. We have seen how the
environment influences our behavior, but we
also know that we can alter environments to elicit
certain types of responses. As our knowledge of
environments increases, we may deliberately use
them to help us obtain desired responses. In many
respects, we are products of our environment, and
if we want to change behavior, we need to learn to
control the environment in which we interact.

Throughout this chapter, we referred to a
number of different types of environments: class-
rooms, dormitories, offices, prisons, fast-food
restaurants, homes, and bars. We suggested sev-
eral different ways of looking at environments.
Mehrabian (1976), following research in other
areas of human perception, commented that
all environments could profitably be examined

by looking at emotional reactions to them.
These emotions or feelings, says Mehrabian,
can be plotted on three dimensions: arousing–
nonarousing, pleasant–unpleasant, and dominant–
submissive. We suggested six perceptual bases
for examining environments: formal–informal,
warm–cold, private–public, familiar–unfamiliar,
constraining–free, and distant–close. We also
pointed out that people perceive temporal aspects
of their environments: when things happen, how
long they last, how much time exists between
events, and the pattern or rhythm of events.

Each environment seems to have three major
characteristics: (1) the natural environment,
(2) the presence or absence of other people, and
(3) the architectural design and movable objects,
including lighting, sound, color, and general
visual-aesthetic appeal. The quality and quantity
of the research in each of these areas vary consid-
erably, but it is clear that any analysis of human
behavior must account for the influence of envi-
ronmental features.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Select a familiar environment that effectively
encourages or discourages human interaction.
Now indicate all the changes you would make
so this environment would have the exact
opposite effect.

2. Assume the role of a stranger entering your
own apartment or your family’s home. What
messages does the environment communicate?

3. The impact of environmental features on
human behavior will vary as a function of

context, but what features do you think
play a large or small role across different
contexts? Explain your choices.

4. How do people communicate time-related
messages by their behavior?

5. To get an idea of your time perspective, take
the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory,
which is available online.

122 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL

SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 5 ]

“If you can read this, you’re too close,” announces a familiar automobile bumper
sticker in an attempt to regulate the amount of space between vehicles for traffic
safety. Signs reading “Keep Out,” “Private Property,” and “Authorized Personnel
Only” are also attempts to regulate space among human beings. We do not put up
signs in daily conversation, but we use other signals to avoid uncomfortable crowd-
ing and other perceived invasions of our personal space. Our use of space—our
own and others’—can dramatically affect our ability to achieve certain desired
communication goals, whether those goals involve romance, diplomacy, or aggres-
sion. A fundamental concept in any discussion of human spatial behavior is the
notion of territoriality. An understanding of this concept provides a useful perspec-
tive for our later examination of conversational space.

THE CONCEPT OF TERRITORIALITY

The term territoriality has been used for years in the study of animal and bird
behavior. Generally, it means behavior characterized by identification with a geo-
graphic area in a way that indicates ownership and often involves defense of this
territory against perceived invaders. For humans, territoriality concerns physical
items (“my book”) and physical space (“my dorm room”), objects or ideas (“my
proposed solution”) that we feel we have psychological ownership of, as well as
some combination of the two (plagiarism is stealing another person’s thoughts by
using his or her words and claiming them as your own).

Spatial changes give a tone to a communication, accent it, and at times even
override the spoken word.

—E. T. Hall

123

There are many kinds of territorial behavior, and frequently such behaviors
perform useful functions for a given species. For instance, territorial behaviors may
help coordinate activities, regulate density, ensure propagation of the species, hold
the group together, provide a sense of well-being, and offer hiding places. Most
behavioral scientists agree that territoriality exists in human behavior. It helps reg-
ulate social interaction, but it also can be the source of social conflict. Like other
animals, the more powerful, dominant humans seem to have control over more
territory—as long as the group or societal structure is stable.

Altman (1975) identified three types of territories: (1) primary, (2) secondary,
and (3) public. The key distinction is the extent of ownership felt or warranted.
Primary territories are clearly the exclusive domain of the owner. They are central
to the daily functioning of the owner, and they are guarded carefully against intru-
ders. For this reason, the invisible buffer zone surrounding our body also qualifies
as a primary territory. It is not stationary and visible, like other territories, but the
degree of ownership is extremely high, access to others is often very limited, and
the defense against intrusions can be particularly fierce.

Homes or bedrooms often qualify as primary territory. Goffman’s (1971)
description of possessional territories—which include personal effects such as jackets,
purses, and even dependent children—also seems to fit the requirements of primary
territory. In this same category, Goffman discusses objects that can be claimed tem-
porarily by people, for example, a magazine, television set, or eating utensils. These
objects, however, seem to be more representative of what Altman calls secondary
territories, which are not as central to the daily life of the owner, nor are they per-
ceived as clearly exclusive to the owner. The neighborhood bar or those objects like
magazines or television sets are examples of secondary territories. More frequent
conflicts are apt to develop over these territories because the public–private bound-
ary is blurred. The following exchange is an example of this conflict: “Let me watch
my program on TV. I was here first.” “It’s not your TV. You don’t own it.”

Public territories are available to almost anyone for temporary ownership. Parks,
beaches, streets, seats on public transportation, telephone booths, a place in line, or an
unobstructed line of vision to see a particular object of interest are examples. The terms
temporary occupancy or ownership are important. A cleaning person who enters our
office to clean without our permission might be offensive because permission was not
granted, but the intrusion is temporary and job related. It would be a different story,
however, if this person occupied the office all day or used it for noncleaning activities,
such as eating lunch. The chairs in a classroom are theoretically available to anyone in
the class for temporary occupancy, but frequent use or a desirable location can result
in greater perceived ownership and territorial behavior (Kaya, 2007).

Territorial behavior seems to be a standard part of our daily contact with
others, and it also is evident when sufficient social contact is denied. Altman and
Haythorn (1967) analyzed the territorial behavior of socially isolated and noniso-
lated pairs of men. For 10 days, two individuals lived in a small room with no out-
side contact while a matched group received outside contacts. The men in the
isolated groups showed a gradual increase in territorial behavior and a general pat-
tern of social withdrawal; they desired more time alone. Their territorial behavior
first evidenced itself with fixed objects, areas of the room, and personal objects such
as beds. Later they began to claim more mobile and less personal objects. When the

124 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

two men living together were incompatible with respect to dominance and affiliation,
this resulted in greater territorial behavior.

TERRITORIALITY: INVASION AND DEFENSE

We have to deal with the potential of other people invading our physical territory
at many different levels, including our bodies, our personal belongings, our per-
sonal space, our home, our neighborhood, our work/school environment (Brown &
Robinson, 2011), and our nation. For example, instructions to police interrogators
sometimes suggest sitting close to the suspect without the intervention of a desk
that might provide protection or comfort. This theory of interrogation assumes
that invasion of the suspect’s personal territory, with little opportunity for defense,
will give the officer a psychological advantage. Other examples of human territorial
invasion and defense include members of adolescent gangs and ethnic groups who
stake out territory in urban areas and defend it against intruders. Preserving
national boundaries often underlies international disputes. What happens when
somebody invades your territory? For instance, how do you feel when the car
behind you is tailgating? When you have to stand in an overpopulated theater
lobby or bus? When somebody sits in “your” seat? What do you do? Researchers
have asked similar questions, and their answers help us understand further how
we treat the objects and space around us.

Obviously, not all territorial encroachments are the same. Lyman and Scott
(1967) identify three types:

1. Violation involves the unwarranted use of another’s territory. This may be done
with the eyes (staring at somebody eating in a public restaurant); with the voice
or other sounds (somebody talking loudly nearby on a cell phone or construc-
tion noise next to a classroom); or with the body (taking up two subway seats).

2. Invasion is more all-encompassing and permanent. It is an attempt to take
over another’s territory. This may be an armed invasion of another country or
the act of a wife who has turned her husband’s den into her computer room.

3. Contamination is defiling another’s territory, not by our presence but by what
we leave behind. When we take temporary occupancy of a hotel room, for
instance, we do not want to find the previous “owner’s” toilet articles and soiled
sheets. Similarly, we are frequently upset when someone else’s dog leaves feces in
our yard, or when we find food particles on “our” silverware in restaurants.

Encroachments on our territory do not always produce defensive maneuvers.
The intensity of our reaction to territorial encroachment varies depending on a
number of factors, including the following:

1. Who violated our territory? We may have very different reactions to friends’
or acquaintances’ violations as opposed to those of strangers. We may be more
inclined to share personal things, including our space, with people we know
(Kaya & Weber, 2003). We may also react differently depending on the gen-
der, status, and age of the violator.

2. Why did they violate our territory? If we feel that the violator “knew better,”
we might react more strongly than if we felt he or she “couldn’t help it” or
was naive.

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 125

3. What type of territory was it? We are more likely to perceive a violation of
our primary territory as far more serious than the violation of a secondary or
public territory we are occupying, although people sometimes attribute more
ownership to secondary and public territories than they deserve.

4. How was the violation accomplished? Was it done in a threatening way? If our
body is touched, we may be more aroused and defensive than if someone walks
across our yard. On the other hand, sometimes any intrusion, whether made in a
threatening manner or not, will be perceived as a threat (Ruback & Kohli, 2005).

5. How long did the encroachment last? If the violation is perceived as tempo-
rary, reactions may be less severe.

6. Do we expect further violations in the future? If so, the initial territorial
defense may be more intense.

7. Where did the violation occur? The population density and opportunities for
negotiating new territorial boundaries will surely affect our reaction.

The two primary methods for territorial defense are prevention and reaction.
Prevention is a means of staking out our territory so others recognize it as ours
and go elsewhere. We may position ourselves in such a way so as to keep others
away from “our” space (see Figure 5-1). A person’s mere presence in a place can
keep others from entering it. If we stay in a place long enough or often enough,

FIGURE 5-1
Territorial defense.

T
er
re
n
ce

H
o
rg
an

126 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

others think we “own” it (e.g., a seat in a classroom). Sometimes we ask others to
assist us in staking out and defending territory: “Would you hold my seat while I
go get some popcorn?”

Objects are also used as territorial markers to designate “your” spatial area. In
places with relatively low density, markers such as umbrellas, coats, and notebooks
are often effective; indeed, sometimes these markers will reserve not only a seat in a
public area but also an entire table. Markers that appear more personal may be more
effective in preventing violations but are also vulnerable to theft. If the marked terri-
tory is highly desirable to many others in the immediate area, markers probably will
maintain their effectiveness for shorter periods of time. In public territories, it may be
more effective to leave several markers, as these areas are open to nearly everyone.
Commuters on trains with a seating arrangement that requires three passengers to sit
side by side illustrate how territorial intrusion is sometimes the result of the combined
behavior by the protector of the territory and the intruder. Passengers seated on the
inside and outside of the three-seat arrangement position their legs, belongings, news-
papers, and so on, to convey the idea that sitting in the middle seat in “their” territory
is forbidden. At the same time, many commuters who could sit in the vacant middle
seats with two strangers on each side decide that taking the middle-seat territory is
less desirable than standing or sitting on the floor—unless, of course, they are so tired
that this is a less desirable course of action (McGeehan, 2005; see Figure 5-2).

Sometimes the uniforms people are wearing identify a territory that can be
legitimately used by a particular person. Often we construct fences and grow
hedges to demarcate territory. And sometimes we stake out territory simply by the
way we conduct our verbal interaction; a special jargon or dialect can warn others
that a particular space is reserved for those who “know the language.”

If the prevention of territorial violations does not work, how do people react?
When people come close to us in face-to-face encounters, we are physiologically

FIGURE 5-2
Seating on a commuter train.

S
u
sa

n
S
ta
va

/T
h
e
N
ew

Y
o
rk

T
im

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 127

aroused, and heart rate and galvanic skin responses increase (Finando, 1973;
McBride, King, & James, 1965). (Note that these are generalized arousal responses,
not sexual ones.) Men take longer to start urinating when another man is standing
at a closer compared to a farther-away urinal (Middlemist, Knowles, & Matter,
1976). These arousal responses are not restricted to approaching humans; Llobera,
Spanlang, Ruffini, and Slater (2011) found that people also showed signs of increased
physiological arousal the closer they were approached by virtual characters.

Once aroused, we need to label our state as positive (liking, love, relief) or neg-
ative (dislike, embarrassment, stress, anxiety). If the aroused state is labeled posi-
tively, according to Patterson (1976), we will reciprocate the behavior; if it is
labeled negatively, we will take measures to compensate. If someone is aroused by
another person’s approach and identifies it as undesirable, we could predict behav-
ior designed to restore the proper distance between the interactants: looking away,
changing the topic to a less personal one, crossing the arms to form a frontal bar-
rier to the invasion, covering body parts, rubbing the neck to point the elbow
sharply toward the invader, and so on. Russo conducted a 2-year study of invading
the territory of female college students seated in a college library (Sommer, 1969).
The study compared the responses of those invaded and a similar group that was
not invaded. Several different invasion techniques were used: sitting next to sub-
jects, across from them, and so on. The quickest departure or flight was triggered
when the researcher sat next to a subject and moved her chair closer by approxi-
mately a foot. Other researchers have suggested that when strangers are involved,
males feel more stress from frontal invasions, whereas women react more unfavor-
ably to adjacent invasions (Fisher & Byrne, 1975). After approximately 30 minutes,
about 70 percent of the people Russo approached at the 1-foot distance moved.
From Russo’s study, a whole vocabulary of defense was developed. For instance,
defensive and offensive displays included the use of position, posture, and gesture.
Position refers to location in the room; a newcomer to the room will interpret the sit-
uation differently if the other person has selected a corner position rather than one in
the middle of the room. Posture refers to indicators such as whether a person has
materials spread out like he or she owned the space or whether they are tightly orga-
nized. Gestures can be used to indicate receptivity or rejection of communication, for
example, hostile glances, turning or leaning away, and blocking with hands or arms.
Although verbal defense is not a common first reaction, requests or even profanity
can be effectively used. Russo’s work is summarized by Sommer (1969):

There were wide individual differences in the ways victims reacted—there is no single
reaction to someone’s sitting too close; there are defensive gestures, shifts in posture,
and attempts to move away. If these fail or are ignored by the invader, or he shifts
position too, the victim eventually takes to flight.… There was a dearth of direct verbal
responses to the invasions.… Only one of the eighty students asked the invader to
move over. (pp. 35–36)

It is worth remembering that the norm of politeness is strong enough to inhibit
such direct verbal responses. This demonstrates one important feature of nonverbal
communication: It is often off the record and can convey messages subtly without
provoking confrontation. The person who glares, shuffles papers, or leans away
does not have to acknowledge publicly his or her irritation. Barash (1973)

128 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

conducted a study similar to Russo’s, but the library invaders’ status was manipu-
lated. Students fled more quickly from more formally dressed, “high-status” inva-
ders. Knowles (1973) also experimented with a familiar type of invasion: talking
to somebody in a hallway leaving other people to decide whether to walk through
the conversants or around them. Only 25 percent of the people in this study
walked through, but when the conversants were replaced with barrels, 75 percent
of the passersby walked through. The fewest intrusions occurred with four-person
groups, rather than a dyad, and “high-status” conversants (i.e., those older and
more formally dressed). This study illustrates that, besides not wanting others to
violate our territory, we generally do not want to violate others’ territory either, as
the mumbled apologies and bowed heads of some of Knowles’s invaders testified.

Increasing population density also results in territorial violations. What hap-
pens when the population becomes so dense that we cannot exercise the usual terri-
torial behavior?

DENSITY AND CROWDING

During the 1960s, many people were alarmed about the rapidly increasing world
population. The first edition of Erlich’s (1971) best-selling book, The Population
Bomb, was published in 1968. It pointed to a rapidly increasing birth rate and pre-
dicted the death of hundreds of millions of people due to the effects of an overpopu-
lated world. The growth of urban areas and increasing violence in inner-city areas
also fueled concern for the effects of population growth. The central question was
this: If worldwide population were to increase dramatically, would there be dire con-
sequences? Some highly publicized research with rats seemed to fully support the fear
that bad things would happen in highly dense populations (Calhoun, 1962).

Calhoun noted that with plenty of food and no danger from predators,
Norway rats in a quarter-acre outdoor pen stabilized their population at about
150. His observations, covering 28 months, indicated that spatial relationships are
extremely important. He then designed an experiment in which he could maintain
a stressful situation through overpopulation while three generations of rats were
reared. He labeled this experiment a behavioral sink, an area or receptacle where
most of the rats exhibited gross distortions of normal behavior. Some of Calhoun’s
observations are worth noting:

1. Some rats withdrew from social and sexual intercourse completely; others
began to mount anything in sight; courtship patterns were totally disrupted,
and females were frequently pursued by several males.

2. Nest-building patterns, ordinarily neat, became sloppy or nonexistent.
3. Litters of young rats became mixed; newborn and young rats were stepped on

or eaten by invading hyperactive males.
4. Unable to establish spatial territories, dominant males fought over positions near

the eating bins; the hyperactive males violated all territorial rights by running
around in packs and disregarding any boundaries except those backed by force.

5. Pregnant rats frequently had miscarriages; disorders of the sex organs were
numerous; only a fourth of the 558 newborns in the sink survived to be weaned.

6. Aggressive behavior increased significantly.

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 129

Can we generalize from rats to people? Some early studies that found moderate
correlations between various socially undesirable outcomes such as crime, delin-
quency, mental and physical disorders, and high population density seemed to sug-
gest so. Others facetiously contended that the only generalization we could make
from Calhoun’s work was “Don’t crowd rats!” But even this is an overstatement.
Judge (2000), who analyzed numerous studies of high density among animal popu-
lations, would probably say “Don’t crowd rats with aggressive tendencies.” In his
own words:

The individual characteristics and aggressive tendencies of animals that compose popu-
lations can influence aggression more so than increasing population density. Even the
results of Calhoun’s (1962) influential rat studies were dictated by the unique behavior
of a few individuals. The infamous “behavioral sinks” developed when a few dominant
adult males established breeding territories in quarter sections of the compartmental-
ized pens used in the experiments. The remainder of the colony became restricted to
single compartments. In colonies in which males did not establish territories or did so
in a manner that did not restrict the rest of the colony, no “behavioral sinks” devel-
oped (Calhoun, 1962). This outcome of increased density is rarely cited. (p. 144)

Other studies show that animals do not always respond to high density in neg-
ative or aggressive ways (Freedman, 1979; Judge & de Waal, 1993). In one study,
the number of aggressive acts performed by monkeys living in environments of dif-
fering densities, from cages to free-ranging activity on an island, was compared
(Judge & de Waal, 1997). Aggression was not significantly more prevalent in
high-density environments, but coping behavior was. As density increased, the fol-
lowing types of coping behavior also increased: mutual grooming, rapid reconcilia-
tion after a fight, and the use of specific facial expressions to indicate the desire to
avoid trouble. This tendency to develop ways to cope with high-density life in ways
other than aggression is much like the human adaptations reported in the next two
sections. Behavioral sinks are not an inevitable result of unchecked population
growth. Stress and aggression among those in high-density situations may also be
affected by the amount of space available, the duration of the high-density experi-
ence, the ability to enact coping behavior, the extent to which key relationships
can be maintained, and other factors. In other words, the widely publicized results
of Calhoun’s work, which suggested unequivocally harmful consequences of
increasing population density, are incorrect. Based on human-density and crowding
research conducted thus far, the results are complex and do not lend themselves to
a simple “crowding is bad” conclusion. To understand the effects of population
density on human beings, we must first distinguish between the terms density and
crowding. Density refers to the number of people per unit of space; crowding is a
feeling state that may develop in high- or low-density situations. Perceptions of
being crowded may be elicited by the following factors:

1. Environmental factors, such as reduced space; unwanted noise; the lack of
needed resources or the ability to obtain them; and the absence of territorial
markers, such as screens and partitions.

2. Personal factors, such as gender (males may feel the effects of density more
acutely than females); personality characteristics reflecting low self-esteem,
high dominance, or high need for control; a low desire for social contact; and
prior unpleasant experiences with high density.

130 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

3. Social factors, such as a high frequency of unwanted social contact from many
people at close quarters and the inability to change such patterns; inescapable
interactions with people from an unfamiliar group; and unpleasant interactions
that may be perceived as hostile or competitive. As one example, aggression at
night clubs may be due, in part, to interior designs that lead to crowding; specifi-
cally, Macintyre and Homel (1997) found that high-risk clubs for aggression had
interior designs that resulted in more cross-flow traffic (i.e., people going in two
directions) and thus more opportunities for unintended contact (e.g., bumping)
between people.

4. Goal-related factors, such as the inability to accomplish what is desired.

The central theme characterizing most of the research in this area is that perceptions of
crowding tend to increase as we perceive a decrease in our ability to control and influ-
ence our physical and social surroundings. Although the factors in the preceding list
may contribute to perceptions of crowding, most high-density situations are character-
ized by some factors that decrease control and some that do not. Given these condi-
tions, what can we say about the effects of high density and human reactions to it?

THE EFFECTS OF HIGH DENSITY ON HUMAN BEINGS

Definitions of density are complex and varied. Correlational studies have used the
number of people per city, per census tract, or per dwelling unit; the number of
rooms per dwelling unit; the number of buildings per neighborhood; and so on.
Experimental studies sometimes put the same-sized group into different-sized
rooms; others vary the number of people in the same room. Laboratory studies
that vary density to analyze its effects on perceptions of crowding may have rele-
vance only to those situations in which high density is a temporary condition,
such as on elevators and buses. Few studies have considered the rate at which high
density evolves, or whether participants feel they had any control over the develop-
ment of a high-density situation. To sort through these variations in measurement,
the following conclusions seem warranted.

First, it seems clear that increased density does not automatically increase stress or
antisocial behavior in human beings. Sometimes we even seek the pleasures of density
(see Figure 5-3). Football games and rock concerts are familiar examples. If we take
responsibility for our presence in a highly populated situation, and if we know the
condition will terminate in a matter of hours, the chances of negative effects seem to
be greatly reduced. Nevertheless, negative effects of density do occur. In one study,
classroom density decreased girls’ academic achievement and negatively affected
boys’ behavior (Maxwell, 2003). In another study, residential density was positively
associated with the likelihood of adolescents being overweight in Nanjing, China (Xu
et al., 2010). Other studies have found results—such as aggression, stress, criminal
activity, hostility toward others, and a deterioration of mental and physical health—
that might fit well into a behavioral-sink theory. However, we find other studies in
which other environmental factors may offer greater explanatory power or that fail
to confirm these highly negative effects altogether. With regard to adolescents, it may
be that their proximity to crime contributes more to their substance abuse problems
than does the population density of their neighborhoods (Mason & Mennis, 2010).
When negative outcomes are not found, the explanation usually lies in the fact that

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 131

the environmental, personal, social, and goal-related factors mentioned earlier could
provide a form of control that was influential in offsetting undesirable influences. For
example, Altman (1975) cites a study by Rohe and Patterson (1974), which found that
if children were provided with enough of the toys they wanted, increased density
would not produce the withdrawal and aggression suggested by previous studies.
Some high-density neighborhoods that are highly cohesive actually have a lower inci-
dence of mental and physical health problems.

Second, we sometimes blame high density for undesirable effects, either
because it is an obvious feature of the situation and has a reputation for causing
problems, or because the real causes are things we do not wish to face. Students
who took a long time to complete their college registration tended to perceive the
large number of students trying to register as the cause for their delays. They did
not attribute their delays to forgetting needed forms, filling out forms incorrectly,
and not preparing alternative course selections prior to registration (Gochman &
Keating, 1980). High density can produce a host of problems, but human beings
do not stand by passively in situations that demand a long-term commitment to
high density; instead, they try various methods to cope with or offset potentially
harmful effects. What are some of the methods of coping?

COPING WITH HIGH DENSITY

City dwellers are often exposed to an overload of information, people, things, pro-
blems, and so forth. As a result, they engage in behavior designed to reduce this

FIGURE 5-3
A high-density beach.

A
le
ss

an
d
ro

O
liv

a/
P
h
o
to
s.
co

132 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

overload, which sometimes causes outsiders to see them as distant and emotionally
detached from others. Here are some of the methods for coping in populated cities:

1. Spending less time with each input, for example, having shorter conversations
with people

2. Disregarding low-priority inputs, for example, ignoring the drunk on the side-
walk or not talking to people seen on a commuter train every day

3. Shifting the responsibility for some transactions to others, for example, reliev-
ing bus drivers of the responsibility for making change

4. Blocking inputs, for example, using attendants to guard apartment buildings

Nigerian students used nine different strategies to cope with high-density con-
ditions in their residence halls (Amole, 2005). Strategies used to clearly define per-
sonal territory and studying in less dense locations were two of the most common.
Evans and colleagues (2010) showed in both a U.S. and a UK sample that the link
between household crowding, measured as the number of people per room, and
children’s lack of readiness for school may be due, in part, to a reduction in mater-
nal responsiveness. Now let us shift our attention from spatial relationships in
overpopulated conditions to those involved in a two-person conversation.

CONVERSATIONAL DISTANCE

As children, we are exposed to gradually increasing distances for various communi-
cation situations. The first few years of life provide a familiarity with what is known
as intimate distance; the child then learns appropriate conversational distances for
an increasing number of acquaintances and friends; and by about age 7, the child
may have incorporated the concept of public distance into his or her behavioral rep-
ertoire. So by about the third grade, children have learned that conversational dis-
tance has meaning. As they age, children will gradually reflect adult norms for their
culture as they make spatial adjustments for interactants who are known or
unknown, tall or short, higher status or lower status, and so on. What are these
adult norms? What are comfortable conversational distances? (see Figure 5-4).

To answer these questions, first we turn to the astute observations about
human spatial behavior made by anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1959, 1966).
Hall identified several types of space, but our concern here is with what he called
informal space. Others have referred to this as personal space, but because the
space between people is the result of negotiating their personal preferences, it is
more appropriately labeled interpersonal space. The informal space for each indi-
vidual expands and contracts under varying circumstances, depending on the type
of encounter, the relationship of the communicating persons, their personalities,
and many other factors. Hall identified four types of informal space: (1) intimate,
(2) casual–personal, (3) social–consultative, and (4) public. According to
Hall, intimate distances range from actual physical contact to about 18 inches;
casual–personal extends from 1.5 to 4 feet; social–consultative, for impersonal busi-
ness, ranges from 4 to 12 feet; and public distance covers the area from 12 feet to
the limits of visibility or hearing. Hall was quick to note that these distances are
based on his observations of a particular sample of adults from business and profes-
sional occupations, primarily white middle-class males native to the northeastern

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 133

FIGURE 5-4
Variations in conversational distance and position.

Je
ff
G
re
en

b
er
g
/P
h
o
to
E
d
it

M
o
n
ke

y
B
u
si
n
es

s
Im

ag
es

/S
h
u
tt
er
st
o
ck

.c
o
m

134 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

United States, and any generalization to other ethnic and racial groups in the
United States should be made with considerable caution. Sommer (1961) also
sought answers to questions about comfortable conversational distance. He studied
people who were brought into a room and told to discuss various impersonal
topics. Two sofas were placed in the room at various distances, and subjects were
observed to see whether they sat opposite or beside each other. It was hypothesized
that when they began to sit side by side, it would mean the conversational distance
was too far to sit opposite each other on the two couches. From 1 to 3 feet, the
subjects sat on different couches facing each other. Beyond 3.5 feet, people sat
side by side. If we measure distance “nose to nose,” this would make the partici-
pants 5.5 feet apart when they started to sit side by side, assuming they were not

DO YOU WALK THIS WAY?

Walking is another area in
which interpersonal distance
and spatial arrangement
have been investigated. In a
naturalistic study, Costa
(2010) filmed people as
they walked by a designat-
ed area in one of two Ital-
ian cities. He examined the
alignment (i.e., the degree
to which people were
walking side by side), spa-
tial arrangement (i.e., how
people were positioned in
relation to one another),
and walking speed of peo-
ple as a function of the size
(two to five people) and

gender composition of the group (only males, only females, mixed gender). The findings for alignment
and spatial arrangement follow:

• Mixed-gender dyads were the most aligned (e.g., when looking at the two people from the side, the
horizontal distance between their heads was the shortest). Male–male dyads were the most out of align-
ment. And female–female dyads were somewhere in between.

• In mixed-gender dyads, males were more likely than females to be the person walking ahead of the other.
• The spatial arrangement found in triads, from the most to the least likely, was as follows: (1) The two

side people were walking aligned and ahead of the middle person (see photo above); (2) all three were
out of alignment with the middle person behind one person on one side and ahead of the other person
on the other side; (3) the two people on the sides were walking in alignment behind the middle person;
and (4) all three people were walking in alignment.

• In triads, there was greater alignment when the walkers were all females than when they were all males
or when there were members of both sexes present.

T
er
re
n
ce

H
o
rg
an

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 135

leaning forward or backward. In a follow-up study, Sommer used chairs, which
allowed him to vary side-by-side distance as well as the distance across. Here he
found that people chose to sit across from each other until the distance across
exceeded the side-by-side distance; they then sat side by side.

How generalizable are these findings? A critical look at this study immediately
leads us to question what other variables may affect the distance relationship. For
instance, this study was conducted with people who knew each other slightly,
were discussing impersonal topics, and were in a large lounge. How would other
factors affect the distance relationship? For a long time, researchers have theorized
that distance is based on the balance of approach and avoidance forces. What are
some of these forces? Burgoon (1978) and Burgoon and Jones (1976) say that the
distances we assume in a given conversation are a function of our cultural and
personal expectations for appropriate distances. When someone violates these
expectations, it garners our attention. Sometimes the violation is so immediately
aversive that we flee or become very defensive. On other occasions, we mentally
process the nature of the violation and the violator to determine our response. The
violation of personal space may be judged to be more positive or more negative
than the expected behavior, and we adapt accordingly. When the positive or nega-
tive nature of the violation is not clear, we assess our perceptions of the violator.
A positive evaluation of the violator should lead to a positive evaluation of the
space violation in such cases and vice versa. What are some of these expectations
for conversational distance, and how do they develop? What factors lead us to
assume certain conversational distances?

Answering these questions is the focus for the remainder of this chapter. Again,
however, we must sort through conflicting results due to variations in research meth-
odology and conceptualization of personal space. Logically, we know that conversa-
tional distance is the product of both interactants’ negotiations. But some research is
based on the behavior of a single person; some does not distinguish between actual
physical distance and perceptions of distance; some measures distance by floor tiles
or space between chair legs and totally ignores the ability of the communicators to
vary the “psychological distance” by changes in topic, eye gaze, and body angle;
and most research does not distinguish between initial distance and changes that
take place over the course of a conversation. Because the methods of measuring per-
sonal space vary, we even have to be cautious about results that agree with other
studies. Sometimes people complete questionnaires about preferred distances; some-
times they are asked to approach nonhuman objects, such as coat racks and
life-sized photographs; sometimes people are unknowingly approached at various
distances by others; and sometimes they are asked to arrange miniature dolls, photo-
graphs, or silhouettes as if they were in various communication situations. With
these factors in mind, we selected the following important sources of variation in
conversational distance. They encompass much of what Sommer (2002) called the
“best-substantiated” findings about personal space.

1. Sex
2. Age
3. Cultural and ethnic background
4. Topic or subject matter
5. Setting for the interaction

136 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

6. Physical characteristics
7. Attitudinal and emotional orientation
8. Characteristics of the interpersonal relationship
9. Personality characteristics

SEX

Many studies have looked at sex differences in interpersonal space using all the
methodologies listed earlier. Hall (1984) has summarized this research. In natural-
istic interaction, settings in which people are interacting more or less naturally and
are not aware of being observed, females predominantly choose to interact with
others of either sex more closely than males do, as long as the conversations are
neutral or friendly. When the conversations are threatening or alienating, females
assume a greater conversational distance (Bell, Kline, & Barnard, 1988).

Another way of understanding sex differences in interpersonal distance is to
examine how the other person’s sex influences the distance set. (The preceding dis-
cussion applies only to the influence of one’s own sex on that distance.) The research
shows very convincingly that people approach females closer than they approach
males, and this remains true no matter what kind of methodology is used. When
the effects for one’s own sex and those for the other’s sex are combined, they show
that female–female pairs interact most closely, male–male pairs interact most dis-
tantly, and mixed-sex pairs set intermediate distances. This pattern shows up fre-
quently in research, especially in Anglo-American samples. Several theories have
been put forth to explain these sex differences in conversational distances. One pop-
ular notion is rooted in the different amounts of space children experience. It has
been noted, for example, that the same stimuli may cause parents to put male infants
on the floor or in a playpen but to hug the females or put them in a nearby high
chair. Boys are frequently given toys or balls that seem to encourage activities
demanding more space, often away from the confines of the home itself (e.g., cars,
trains, and a football). Girls, in contrast, may receive dolls, dollhouses, and other
toys that require less space. Some observational studies have confirmed that young
boys at play utilize more space than young girls, but this does not explain those
instances in which women want greater interaction distance. The oppression hypothesis
suggests that women choose a closer interaction distance because people with
less status in society are accorded less space, but Atsuko (2003) did not find evidence
to support this theory. Using social orientation as the basis for explaining the interac-
tion distances chosen by women has the advantage of explaining both closer and
more distant interaction preferences. Women, these theorists argue, are more socially
oriented than males, so they should prefer distances that connote warmth, trust,
and friendship. Eagly (1987), using social role theory, believes women play a more
person-oriented and prosocial role in society, which manifests itself in various kinds of
behavior, including interaction distances consistent with that role.

AGE

If distance reflects our general comfort with a person, it seems reasonable to predict
that we would interact more closely to people in our own general age range. The
exceptions, of course, are the very old and very young who, for various reasons,

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 137

often elicit interaction at closer quarters. Generally, interaction distance seems to
expand gradually from about age 6 to early adolescence, when adult norms seem
to be reflected (Aiello & Aiello, 1974). Adults are also more likely to hold older
children responsible for understanding adult norms. When 5-year-olds invaded the
personal space of people waiting in line to see a movie, they were received posi-
tively; but when 10-year-olds were the invaders, they were met with negative
responses (Fry & Willis, 1971). Obviously, these reactions are modified by the
communicative context, but these studies do suggest that adults expect the norms
for conversational distance to be learned before the child is 10. Children are able
to decode proxemic meanings before they encode them in their daily interactions,
as is true of many behaviors.

CULTURAL AND ETHNIC BACKGROUND

Volumes of folklore and isolated personal observations suggest that spatial rela-
tionships in other cultures with different needs and norms may produce very differ-
ent distances for interacting.

Infants reared in different cultures learn different proxemic patterns. A group
of Japanese mothers spent more time in close contact with their infants than a com-
parable group of mothers in the United States. Mother, father, and infant in Japan
usually sleep in the same room. In the Nyansongo culture of Kenya, infants are
always in close proximity to a family member, and the infant sleeps in the mother’s
arms at night (Caudill & Weinstein, 1972). It is not hard to see how such patterns
provide a different sense of distance when compared to the patterns of children
who are put into a separate room to sleep several times during the day as well as
at night. Hall (1966) used the terms contact and noncontact to distinguish the
behavior of people from different cultural groups. Compared to noncontact cul-
tures, interactants in contact cultures are expected to face one another more
directly, interact more closely with one another, touch one another more, look one
another in the eye more, and speak in a louder voice. In a study by Watson (1970),
contact cultures were Arabs, Latin Americans, and southern Europeans. Noncon-
tact cultures were Asians, Indians, Pakistanis, northern Europeans, and people liv-
ing in the United States. Studies by Watson and others have found support for
these predicted differences, but it is important to remember that these broad cul-
tural norms may or may not manifest themselves in any particular conversation
within a culture (Remland, Jones, & Brinkman, 1991). Whether interactants know
each other, whether they are arguing, whether they are talking to a person of their
same sex, and a host of other factors may sometimes offset these broad cultural
tendencies. For example, Sanders, Hakky, and Brizzolara (1985) found few differ-
ences between the comfortable conversational space of Egyptian and American
males, but Egyptian females were not like their American counterparts. A comfort-
able interaction distance for male friends of the Egyptian women was nearly as dis-
tant as that for male strangers. In another study, close seating of two brothers was
more comfortable to Saudi students than to American students, but when the inter-
actants were a brother and sister, it was the American students who found a com-
fort zone in closer interaction distances (Hewitt & Alqahtani, 2003). Shuter’s
(1976, 1977) systematic field observations in contact and noncontact cultures

138 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

remind us that somewhat different proxemic norms may apply for groups within
the larger culture. He found, for instance, significant differences within the so-
called Latin American cultural group. Costa Ricans interacted more closely than
did Panamanians or Colombians. And contrary to predictions, he found no signifi-
cant differences in interaction distance and touching for women in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, and Venice, Italy. Italian men did not manifest closer interaction posi-
tions or face their interaction partners more directly than German men, but they
did engage in more touching. Variations in proxemic patterns in the United States
have been the subject of several research projects. For example, the question of
whether black Americans interact at closer distances than white Americans has
been studied. Developmental studies show that when entering elementary school,
black children may exhibit closer interaction distances than white children, but by
the fifth grade, these differences are minimized; and by age 16, black Americans
tend to maintain greater conversational distances (Aiello & Thompson, 1980;
Halberstadt, 1985). Obviously, the racial composition of the schools and the socio-
economic class of the students will also play an important role in determining com-
fortable interaction distances. Most studies reveal that interactions involving black
and white communicators occur at greater distances than those involving persons
of the same race. Another large cultural group in the United States, Hispanic
Americans, has also been observed. These studies generally support the prediction
that Hispanic Americans interact at closer distances than do Anglo Americans.
Scherer (1974) contended that any differences between blacks and whites, and pre-
sumably also Hispanic Americans, may be confounded by socioeconomic factors
not attributable to ethnic background. This study found that middle-class children
maintained greater conversational distance than lower-class children, but there
were no differences between middle-class blacks and whites or lower-class blacks
and whites. Because proxemic norms are learned, it is reasonable to assume that
people who grow up in the same neighborhood—no matter what their skin color
or ethnic heritage—will share more expectations for comfortable conversational
distance than those raised in different parts of a city, state, or country.

TOPIC OR SUBJECT MATTER

Erickson (1975) wanted to find out if proxemic shifts forward or backward were
associated with any other events in a conversation. By coding co-occurring behav-
ior, he determined that proxemic shifts may mark important segments of the
encounter, such as beginnings, endings, and topic changes.

Earlier we noted that in his efforts to examine the limits of conversational dis-
tance, Sommer tried to use impersonal topics that would presumably not influence
the distances chosen. For intimates, personal topics may demand less conversa-
tional distance unless other factors, such as an impersonal setting, neutralize such
inclinations. Leipold’s (1963) work demonstrates how anticipated treatment of the
same general topic can influence conversational distance. Students entered a room
and were given either a negative comment (“Your grade is poor, and you have not
done your best”); praise (“You are doing very well, and Mr. Leipold wants to talk
to you further”); or a neutral comment (“Mr. Leipold is interested in your feelings
about the introductory course”). Students given the negative comment sat farthest

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 139

from the experimenter; those who were praised sat closest. Following insults, peo-
ple may want to assume a greater distance than they normally would with that
person, particularly if the person giving the insult is perceived as a higher-status
person (O’Neal, Brunalt, Carifio, Troutwine, & Epstein, 1980). Regardless of
topic, very close distances may result in generally less talking (Schulz & Barefoot,
1974).

SETTING FOR THE INTERACTION

Obviously, the social setting makes a great deal of difference in how far we stand
from others in conversation. A crowded cocktail party demands a different distance
than a comfortable evening in the living room with a spouse or significant other.
Lighting, temperature, noise, and available space affect interaction distance. Some
authors have hypothesized that as room size increases, people tend to sit closer
together. Noisy urban street locations outside an office building may prompt peo-
ple to stand closer to one another than they do when conversing inside the build-
ing. And if the setting is perceived as formal or unfamiliar, we would predict
greater distances from unknown others and closer distances to known others.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Height seems to make a difference in the distance people select for interacting. Irre-
spective of sex, shorter individuals seem to invite smaller interpersonal distances
than taller individuals (Caplan & Goldman, 1981). When the two communicators
are vastly different in height, the distance has to be adjusted so faces can be seen.
Evidence also indicates that obese people are accorded greater interaction distances
(Lerner, Venning, & Knapp, 1975).

Studies by Kleck (1969) and Kleck and Strenta (1985) showed that people
interacting with stigmatized individuals (a left-leg amputation was simulated with
a special wheelchair) choose greater initial speaking distances than with nonstigma-
tized persons, but that this distance decreases as the length of the interaction
increases. Similar results have been found for perceived epileptics and people with
facial disfigurations such as scars and port-wine stains. Kleck points out that when
people with physical disabilities expect others to behave in a distant manner, they
may prepare themselves for such reactions and thereby increase the chances it will
happen.

ATTITUDINAL AND EMOTIONAL ORIENTATION

Some experiments have been conducted by telling a person that he or she was
going to interact with a person who was either “warm and friendly” or
“unfriendly.” Not surprisingly, greater distances were chosen when interacting
with a person perceived to be unfriendly. Similarly, when told to enter into conver-
sation with another person and to behave in a friendly way, people chose closer
distances than when told to “let him/her know you aren’t friendly.” This friendly/
unfriendly relationship to distance seems to manifest itself even with preschool chil-
dren (King, 1966). In some instances, our anger will cause us to withdraw from

140 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

others, but if we seek retaliation, we may increase proximity (Meisels & Dosey,
1971).

Variations in our emotional states, such as depression, fatigue, excitement, or
joy, can sometimes make vast differences in how close or far away we want to be
from others. The traumatic experiences of abused children probably explain why
they assumed significantly greater conversational distances than their nonabused
peers in one study (Vranic, 2003). This was true for males and females and was
exacerbated by frontal approaches by males. A study reported by Patterson (1968)
indicates that we may make a variety of interpersonal judgments about others
based on distance. People were told to interview others and secretly rate them on
traits of friendliness, aggressiveness, dominance, extraversion, and intelligence. The
interviewees were actually confederates who approached the interviewers at differ-
ent distances and gave standard answers to the questions asked. The mean ratings
for all the traits at four different distances were tabulated, and they revealed that
the most distant position yielded significantly lower, less favorable ratings. So bar-
ring any contradictory information, people choosing closer distances are often seen
as warmer, more likeable, more empathic, and more understanding. When we seek
to win another’s approval, we reduce conversational distance as opposed to
instances when we are deliberately trying to avoid approval. Females seeking
approval maintained a mean distance of 57 inches; those trying to avoid approval
averaged 94 inches. When the distance was held constant at 5 feet, approval-
seekers compensated by smiling more and engaging in more gestural activity
(Rosenfeld, 1965, 1966).

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP

A number of studies also show that conversational distance varies as a function of
our relationship with the other person. Strangers begin conversations at a greater
distance than acquaintances, and acquaintances are a bit more distant than friends.
In a study of 108 married couples, husbands were asked to walk toward their
wives and stop when they got to a comfortable conversational distance. The more
dissatisfied the husbands were with their marriage, the greater the distance they
chose (Crane, Dollahite, Griffin, & Taylor, 1987). Preschoolers seem to be able to
use distance as a criterion for determining liking or disliking. Like adults, children
seem to maintain greater distances with unknown adults, unfriendly or threatening
persons, teachers, and endomorphs (i.e., those with a heavyset body type).

These and other studies suggest that closer relationships are likely to be associ-
ated with closer interaction distances. Obviously, there is a point at which we
would not expect interactants to get any closer, no matter how close their relation-
ship. And even people who are very close will not always interact at close distances
due to the ebb and flow of their relationship.

PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS

Much has been written about the influence of introversion and extraversion on
spatial relationships. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions, but the bulk of
the evidence seems to indicate that introverts tend to stand farther away than

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 141

extroverts and to generally prefer greater interpersonal distances. Other studies
suggest that anxiety-prone individuals maintain greater distances, but closer dis-
tances are seen when people have a high self-concept and affiliative needs or when
they are low on authoritarianism, high on interdependence, and “self-directed.”
People with various personality abnormalities can probably be counted on to
show greater non-normative spatial behavior, choosing interactive distances both
too far away and too close.

In addition to studying human spatial behavior in high-density situations and
in conversation, some researchers have examined such questions in the context of
small groups, particularly in regard to seating patterns.

SEATING BEHAVIOR AND SPATIAL ARRANGEMENTS IN SMALL GROUPS

People will select a place to sit on a long-term basis, such as returning to the same
seat again and again in a course they are taking in college, or on a short-term basis,
such as when they go to a movie theatre. Regarding the long term, as you might
have guessed from your own behavior, college students tend to prefer a particular
seat in a classroom and experience greater feelings of comfort, confidence, and
being in control when they are able to return to it (Avni-Babad, 2011). Okubo
(2010) wanted to explore whether short-term sitting preferences among partici-
pants varied as a function of handedness. Right-handed participants (but not
mixed-handed or left-handed participants) tended to prefer seats in the movie the-
atre that were to the right of the screen, but only when they were motivated to see
the movie.

Interest in seating arrangements extends beyond the academic world to real-
world settings, including medicine, business, and education (Li & Robertson, 2011;
Robson, Kimes, Becker, & Evans, 2011; van den Berg, Segers, & Cillessen, 2012).
For example, owners of restaurants probably do not want their patrons to sit at
tables that are too close to other tables when they know that these people want to
have a romantic night out (Robson et al., 2011). On the other hand, educators
might consider having grade-school children who do not get along sit closer to each
other in the classroom, as this may promote liking and lead to fewer problems
related to victimization (van den Berg et al., 2012).

The specific body of work dealing with seating behavior and spatial arrange-
ments in small groups is known as small group ecology. What is clear from this
research is that our seating behavior is not generally accidental or random. Expla-
nations for why we select a particular seat in relation to the other person or per-
sons vary according to the task at hand, the degree of relationship between the
interactants, the personalities of the two parties, and the amount and kind of
space available. We can summarize the findings about seating behavior and spatial
positioning under the following categories:

• Leadership
• Dominance
• Task
• Sex and acquaintance
• Introversion–extraversion

142 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

LEADERSHIP

It seems to be a norm, in the United States at least, that leaders are expected to be
found at the head or foot of the table. In households in which the husband is con-
sidered the head of the household, he is likely to be found sitting at one end of a
rectangular dinner table. Elected group leaders generally put themselves in the
head positions at rectangular tables, and the other group members try to position
themselves so they can see the leader. In mock jury deliberations, the man seated
on the end position is more likely to be chosen as the leader. The reaction to
women who are positioned at the head of a table of men and women has, in the
past, been less consistently linked to the leadership role (Porter & Geis, 1981). As
long as the group consisted of all women, the one at the head of the table was per-
ceived as the leader. With the recent growth of women in positions of leadership in
business and government, we would expect women seated at the end position in
groups of men and women to be more consistently chosen as the leader, too.

Howells and Becker (1962) added further support to the idea that a person’s
position in a group is an important factor in leadership emergence. They reasoned
that spatial position determines the flow of communication, which in turn deter-
mines leadership emergence. Five-person decision-making groups were examined:
Three people sat on one side of a rectangular table, and two sat on the other side.
Because previous work suggested that communication usually flows across the
table rather than around it, the researchers predicted that the side with two people
would be able to influence the most people, or at least talk more, and therefore
emerge more often as group leaders. This hypothesis was confirmed. An experi-
ment by Ward (1968) helps unravel how seating position can create leaders. Col-
lege males were assigned at random to sit in particular seats at a round table. The
experimenters arranged it so that more people were seated around one half of the
table than the other; only two people sat at the less populated end, and these two
seats were considered visually central because their occupants would receive more
undivided gaze from people at the other, more densely occupied end. As predicted,
occupants of these visually central seats received higher ratings of leadership after
discussions had taken place. But were they really leaders or just perceived to be?
Other research (Taylor & Fiske, 1975) does indicate that the person on whom atten-
tion is centered will appear to be an initiator and a person causally responsible for
the course of the conversation. But in Ward’s study, evidence indicated that those
who were visually central actually behaved differently: They talked more. It would
be interesting to unravel further the complex routes by which seating position might
affect leadership. For example, does the visually central person think, “I’m in a cen-
tral position; I’d better start acting like a leader”? Or do the attention and subtle
cues of the other members of the group trigger leadership behaviors, perhaps without
the visually central person even realizing it? People seem well aware of the different
perceptions and communicative potentials associated with different seating positions.
When people were asked to select seats to convey different impressions, they chose
end positions to convey leadership or dominance; positions with the closest distances
to convey interpersonal attraction; and seats that afforded the greatest interpersonal
distance, and the least visual accessibility vis-à-vis the end positions, to indicate they
did not wish to participate (Reiss & Rosenfeld, 1980).

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 143

DOMINANCE

The end positions also seem to carry a status or dominance factor. Russo (1967)
found that people rating various seating arrangements on an “equality” dimension
stated that one person seated at the head and one on the side indicated more unequal
status than if they were seated side by side or both on the ends. In an analysis of
talking frequency in small groups, Hare and Bales (1963) noted that people in posi-
tions 1, 3, and 5 (see figure) were frequent talkers. Subsequent studies revealed that
these people were likely to be dominant personalities, whereas those who avoided
the central or focal positions by choosing seats 2 and 4 were more anxious and
actually stated they wanted to stay out of the discussion. These self-selection effects
demonstrate the importance of conducting randomized studies, such as Ward’s
(1968) study mentioned earlier. We do not know whether the communication of non-
dominant persons placed in focal positions would radically change their behavior.

Positions 1, 3, and 5 also were considered positions of leadership, but leader-
ship of different types, depending on the position. The two end positions, positions
1 and 5, attracted task-oriented leaders, whereas the middle positions attracted
socioemotional leaders, those concerned about group relationships and getting
everyone to participate.

TASK

The tasks performed in a courtroom are especially important to a defendant, particu-
larly the testimony of witnesses against him or her. In 2006, the two primary defendants
in the collapse of the Enron Corporation, Skilling and Lay, petitioned the court to give
them the ability to face their accusers by moving them from a table that obstructed their
view of the witnesses. By law, defendants have a right to face their accusers, a condition
that presumably has a positive effect on truth telling. Seating preferences of students
and nonstudents engaged in the accomplishment of different tasks have also been stud-
ied (Cook, 1970; Sommer, 1969). In each case, people were asked to imagine sitting at
a table with a same-sex friend in each of the following four situations:

1. Conversation. Sitting and chatting for a few minutes before class, or before
work for nonstudents

2. Cooperation. Sitting and studying together for the same exam, or sitting doing
a crossword together, or some similar activity for nonstudents

3. Coaction. Sitting studying for different exams, or sitting at the same table
reading for nonstudents

4. Competition. Competing to see who will be the first to solve a series of puzzles

Each person was shown a round table and a rectangular table. Each table had six
chairs. The combined results for all the groups surveyed in these two studies are
presented in Table 5-1 for rectangular tables and Table 5-2 for circular tables.

There are many similarities among the different groups concerning their order of
preference. Conversations before class or work involved primarily corner or “short”
opposite seating at rectangular tables and side-by-side seating at round tables. Coop-
eration seems to elicit a preponderance of side-by-side choices. Coaction—that is,
studying for different exams or reading at the same table—necessitated plenty
of room between the participants, and the most distant seating positions were
generally selected. Most participants wanted to compete in an opposite seating

144 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

arrangement. However, some students wanted to establish a closer opposite rela-
tionship; apparently this would afford them an opportunity to see how the other
person was progressing and would also allow them to use various gestures, body
movements, and eye contact to upset their opponents. The more distant opposite
position would presumably prevent less spying.

SEX AND ACQUAINTANCE

The nature of a relationship may make a difference in spatial orientation and hence
in seating selection. Cook (1970) conducted a questionnaire study and obtained
some observational data of people interacting in a restaurant and several bars.
People in the questionnaire study were asked to select seating arrangements in the
following situations:

• Sitting with a casual friend of the same sex
• Sitting with a casual friend of the opposite sex
• Sitting with a boyfriend or girlfriend

The predominant seating pattern, as stated by questionnaire respondents using

a bar as a referent, was corner seating
x

x for the same-sex friends and casual

friends of the opposite sex. However, intimate friends appear to require side-

by-side seating
x x

. In a restaurant, both nonintimate relationship categories

selected predominantly opposite seating
x

x
, but as intimacy increased, other types

of seating became more acceptable. Some very practical reasons may be

TABLE 5-1 SEATING PREFERENCES AT RECTANGULAR TABLES

x
x

x x
x x

x
x

Conversation 45% 36% 12% 1% 4% 2%

Cooperation 23 13 42 8 10 4

Coaction 8 8 10 21 34 19

Competition 6 22 7 40 19 6

TABLE 5-2 SEATING PREFERENCES AT ROUND TABLES

xx x
x

Conversation 60% 27% 13%

Cooperation 68 13 19

Coaction 18 32 50

Competition 12 23 65

Source: (Tables 5-1 and 5-2) From “Experiments in orientation and proxemics” by M. Cook, Human Relations
Vol. 23, pp. 61–76. Copyright © 1970, The Tavistock Institute. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 145

offered for opposite seating in restaurants. For instance, other patrons will not have
to sit opposite you, which might create some uncomfortable situations with respect
to eye contact and overheard conversation. In addition, you will not poke the other
person with your elbow while eating. Actual observations of seating in a restaurant,
presented in Table 5-3, seem to validate the questionnaire responses. Most people do
select opposite seating in restaurants. However, the observations of people sitting
in bars do not agree with the questionnaire study of seating preferences in bars (see
Table 5-4). Although questionnaire preferences favored corner seating, actual obser-
vations show a marked preference for side-by-side seating. Cook suggests this may
have been because the bars he studied were equipped with many seats located against

TABLE 5-3 OBSERVATIONS OF SEATING BEHAVIOR IN A RESTAURANT

x x x

Two males 6 0 0

Two females 6 0 1

Male with female 36 7 1

Total 48 7 2

TABLE 5-4 OBSERVATIONS OF SEATING BEHAVIOR IN THREE BARS

x
x

x x

Bar A

Two males 7 8 13

Male with female 6 4 21

Total 13 12 34

Bar B

Two males 1 0 9

Male with female 4 3 20

Total 5 3 29

Bar C

Two males 0 11 7

Male with female 1 4 10

Total 1 15 17

Overall

Two males 8 19 29

Male with female 11 11 51

Total 19 30 80

Source: (Tables 5-3 and 5-4) From “Experiments in orientation and proxemics” by M. Cook, Human Relations
Vol. 23, pp. 61–76. Copyright © 1970, The Tavistock Institute. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications.

146 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

the wall. Supposedly this allowed persons to sit side by side, not have their backs to
anyone, and have a good view of the other patrons. Thus, paper-and-pencil prefer-
ences were overruled by environmental factors. Nevertheless, this study allows us to
conclude that the person’s sex and his or her acquaintance with the other person do
have an effect on his or her actual and preferred seating position.

INTROVERSION–EXTRAVERSION

We have already discussed the possible influence of introversion and extraversion
on conversational distance. Some evidence indicates that this personality variable
also affects seating preferences. Extraverts are likely to choose to sit opposite of
others, either across the table or down the length of it, and disregard positions
that would put them at an angle to another person. Extraverts may also choose
positions that would put them in close physical proximity to another person. Intro-
verts generally choose positions that would keep them more at a distance, visually
and physically, from others.

CONCLUSION

A discussion of the shape of the negotiating table at the 1968 Paris peace talks that
attempted to end the Vietnam War is a most appropriate way to conclude this
chapter. It incorporates elements of territoriality and seating arrangements that

FIGURE 5-5
Proposals for a table to be used at the Paris peace talks, 1968.
Source: From Mccroskey & Larson. An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, 1st Edition, © 1971. Reprinted
by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 147

are influenced by culture, attitudes, leadership perceptions, and the type of task
undertaken. It took negotiators 8 months just to reach an agreement on the shape of
the table. The diagrams in Figure 5-5 mark the chronology of the seating proposals.

The United States (U.S.) and South Vietnam (S.V.) wanted a seating arrangement in
which only two sides were identified. They did not want to recognize the National Lib-
eration Front (NLF) as an equal party in the negotiations. North Vietnam (N.V.) and
the NLF wanted equal status given to all parties, represented by a four-sided table. The
final arrangement was such that both parties could claim “victory.” The round table
minus the dividing lines allowed North Vietnam and NLF to claim all four delegations
were equal. The existence of the two secretarial tables (interpreted as dividers), the lack
of identifying symbols on the table, and an AA, BB speaking rotation permitted the
United States and South Vietnam to claim victory for the two-sided approach. Consid-
ering the lives lost during the 8 months needed to arrive at the seating arrangement, we
must certainly conclude that proximity and territoriality are far from trivial concerns in
some human encounters. (McCroskey, Larson, & Knapp, 1971, p. 98)

SUMMARY

Our perceptions and use of space contribute
extensively to the various communication out-
comes we seek. Some of our spatial behavior is
related to a need to stake out and maintain terri-
tory, and territorial behavior can be helpful in
regulating social interaction and controlling den-
sity; it can also be the source of conflict when
territory is disputed or encroached upon without
permission. We identified three different types of
territories—primary, secondary, and public—and
several different levels at which territorial behav-
ior exists: individual, group, community, and
nation. Although we often think people vigor-
ously defend their territory, the type of defense
depends very much on who the intruder is, why
the intrusion is taking place, what type of
territory is being intruded upon, what type
of intrusion occurs—violation, invasion, or
contamination—how long the intrusion takes,
and where it occurs. We often try to prevent peo-
ple from moving into our territory by marking it
as “ours.” This can be achieved by our physical
presence, the presence of a friend who agrees to
watch our territory, or by using markers—fences,
coats, and the like—or a special kind of lan-
guage. When someone does invade another per-
son’s territory, we sometimes find the “owner’s”
physiological arousal increased, and various
defensive maneuvers may be used, such as flight,

hostile looks, turning or leaning away, blocking
advances with objects or hands and arms, and
verbal behavior. Just as people do not like others
to invade their territory, we also find they are
reluctant to invade the territory of others, often
apologizing when it cannot be prevented.

We examined density and crowding in both
animal and human interaction. Some animal
studies showed undesirable effects from overpop-
ulation. High-density human situations, how-
ever, are not always disruptive; sometimes we
want the company of many people. The best pre-
dictor of individually stressful and socially unde-
sirable outcomes seems to be the number of
people per room rather than other density mea-
sures. When people do feel the stress of a
crowded situation, they seek ways to cope with
it. We also distinguished between density, or the
number of people per unit of space, and crowd-
ing, a feeling brought on by the environment,
personal, or social factors. Our examination of
spatial behavior in conversations revealed many
ways of conceptualizing and measuring this
behavior. As a result, some generalizations
about conversational space remain tentative.
We do know that each of us seeks a comfortable
conversational distance that varies depending
on age, sex, cultural and ethnic background,
setting, attitudes, emotions, topics, physical

148 PART II THE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT

characteristics, personality, and our relationship
with the other person. We also know that con-
versational distance changes during the course of
a conversation. Finally, we discussed seating
arrangements in small groups. Distances and
seats chosen do not seem to be accidental.

Leaders and dominant personalities tend to
choose specific seats, but seating position also
can determine a person’s role in a group. Seating
also varies with the topic at hand, the nature of
the relationships among the parties, and certain
personality variables.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Identify a secondary territory you have experi-
enced in which ownership was disputed. Dis-
cuss what happened, why it happened, and
how the conflict could have been prevented.

2. What factors are likely to cause a person
who comes to the United States from another
culture, with different norms for conversa-
tional space, to maintain the norms from
his or her culture of origin? What factors
are likely to cause an immigrant to manifest
conversational space that is more typical of
the United States?

3. When is a woman’s purse likely to be per-
ceived as a primary territory? When can it
become a secondary territory?

4. Do you think the findings associated with
leadership, dominance, and seating behavior
apply to females as well as males? Why or
why not?

5. The next time you are walking with two
other people, note the spatial arrangement
of the group. Does this pattern change
when the age, status, or gender composition
of the group changes?

CHAPTER 5 THE EFFECTS OF TERRITORY AND PERSONAL SPACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 149

THE COMMUNICATORS

[ P A R T III ]

Much of our nonverbal behavior is characterized by change and movement during
a conversation. But some of the nonverbal signals we bring to each interaction
remain relatively unchanged during the course of the interaction. These are the
individual features of each communicator: skin color, hairstyle, facial features,
height, weight, clothes, and so forth. These features affect how others perceive us
and how they communicate with us.

151

THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL

CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 6 ]

Picture the following scene: Mr. and Mrs. American wake and prepare to start the
day. Mrs. American takes off her nighttime bra and replaces it with a “slightly
padded uplift” bra. After removing her cosmetic chin strap, she further pulls herself
together with her girdle. Then she begins to “put on her face.” This may involve
foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow, false eyelashes, mascara, lipstick, and blush. She
has removed the hair under her arms and on her legs. She takes a curling iron to
her hair. False fingernails, nail polish, and tinted contact lenses precede the deo-
dorant, perfume, and numerous decisions concerning clothes. Mr. American shaves
the hair on his face and puts a toupee on his head. He removes his false teeth from
a solution used to whiten them, gargles with a breath sweetener, selects his after-
shave lotion, puts on his elevator shoes, and begins making his clothing decisions.
This is an extreme hypothetical example, of course. Nevertheless, people do go to
great lengths to make themselves attractive. And it is not just an American obsession.
Venezuela, a country that has won more international beauty contests than any
other country, spends more than a billion dollars each year on cosmetic products,
and some teenage girls get a breast enlargement as a coming of age present when
they are 15 years old (Pearson, 2006).

Surgery to enhance physical attractiveness is increasing. Plastic surgeons
perform a number of procedures on people: reconstruct a nose; change breast size;
eliminate bags, wrinkles, or birthmarks; flatten ears; “tuck” thighs or tummies;
vacuum fat from the body by liposuction, or insert fat by lipofilling; or even
remove the upper layer of skin via a “chemical peel” or microdermabrasion if it

By a man’s finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by
the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs—by
each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail
to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost unconceivable.

—Sherlock Holmes

153

appears too blotchy, red, or rough. Over a million Americans have cosmetic
surgery each year, including adult women/men and adolescents. For example, the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons reportedly did 1.2 million procedures on
men in 2004 (Heine, 2005). Why do men and women expend so much effort and
invest so much money trying to improve their physical attractiveness?

OUR BODY: ITS GENERAL ATTRACTIVENESS

People care a great deal about their appearance. If a friend tells you about someone
you have not met, you are likely to ask what the person looks like—you want a
face to associate with the information you are receiving. Why? Novelists present
intricately detailed descriptions of their characters’ appearance. Why? Publishers
put photos of book authors on book jackets and in book ads. Why? Most news-
papers publish photos of newsmakers. Why must readers see the person being
discussed in an article on airline deregulation, stock fraud, or the manufacture of
computer chips? Because people think they learn things from appearance. We take
looks as indicators of a person’s background, character, personality, talents, and
likely future behavior.

Although it is not uncommon to hear people muse about inner beauty being
the only thing that really counts, research suggests that outer beauty, our physical
attractiveness, plays an influential role in determining responses for a broad
range of interpersonal encounters. The evidence from our culture overwhelmingly
supports the notion that initially we respond much more favorably to those we per-
ceive as physically attractive than to those we see as unattractive. Such positive
reactions run the gamut from the sound of our voice to the judgments we make
(Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986; Herman, Zanna, & Higgins, 1986; Hughes, Farley, &
Rhodes, 2010). Numerous studies reveal that physically attractive people are
perceived to exceed unattractive people on a wide range of socially desirable
evaluations that include success, personality, popularity, sociability, sexuality, per-
suasiveness, and, often, happiness. Our behavior toward unattractive people seems
to be largely negative, however. For example, unattractive patients in hospitals are
reportedly visited less, remain hospitalized longer, are judged to be less pleasant,
and are less involved with others.

Judgments linked to a person’s attractiveness begin early in life. One study
found that children as young as 2 to 3 months looked significantly longer at an
attractive face (as judged by adults) than at an unattractive one. This preference
for attractive faces among infants occurs regardless of the age (young, old), gender,
or race (black, white) of the face or whether the infant’s mother is attractive or
unattractive (Gamé, Carchon, & Vital-Durand, 2003; Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, &
Vaughn, 1991; Langlois et al., 1987; Slater et al., 1998). Another study found that
6-month-old infants were able to categorize faces based on their similarities in
attractiveness (Ramsey, Langlois, Hoss, Rubenstein, & Griffin, 2004).

Cultural guidelines for physical attractiveness are well established by age 6
(Cavior & Lombardi, 1973; Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). It is not surpris-
ing, then, to find peer popularity and physical attractiveness highly correlated in a
number of elementary and secondary schools. The perceptions of attractiveness in
a child’s world are not limited to his or her peers. Teachers tend to see attractive

154 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

children as more intelligent, more socially adept, higher in educational potential,
and more positive in their attitudes toward school—even when the unattractive
children had similar academic performance. As children develop, they are exposed
to these attitudes and evaluations made by teachers and parents. Teachers interact
less, and less positively, with the so-called unattractive elementary schoolchild.
There are many occasions in a child’s life when adults ask in a punitive tone of
voice, “Who did this?” If an unattractive child is available, the chances are stronger
that he or she will be pointed out as the culprit. As unattractive children grow
older, they probably are not discriminated against if their task performance is
impressive, but as soon as performance declines, less attractive people receive more
sanctions than attractive ones. Antisocial behavior, such as throwing a brick
through a window, was seen differently for attractive and unattractive children
(Dion, 1972). The transgression was seen as an enduring trait of the unattractive
child but only a temporary problem for the attractive one. The act was also evalu-
ated more negatively for the unattractive child. It does not surprise us, then, to find
that juvenile delinquents were also rated as lower on attractiveness. In a study of
9- to 14-year-old boys, differences in perceived physical attractiveness were system-
atically related to social acceptance (Kleck, Richardson, & Ronald, 1974).

Although much evidence testifies to the existence of a norm that says “what is
beautiful is good,” physical attractiveness also may be associated with undesirable
traits; for example, vanity, egotism, snobbishness, unsympathetic attitudes toward
oppressed people, and a greater likelihood of having marital problems (Dermer &
Thiel, 1975). These negative attributions, and the knowledge that beautiful people
sometimes experience appearance-related problems, suggest all is not perfect for
these people. The research to date, however, still suggests it is far better to be
attractive than unattractive. In fact, women who were average in looks were rated
higher when evaluated from a photograph in which they were posed alongside other
women who were attractive. Subsequently, these average-looking women were evalu-
ated from photos of them posed with other average-looking women and were perceived
as more attractive by those who had seen them with the attractive women. So it
appears that women can boost their attractiveness ratings by being seen with more
attractive women, and this association does not seem to decrease the attractive
women’s ratings (Geiselman, Haight, & Kimata, 1984).

Although there are some who would like us to believe that “everything is
beautiful in its own way,” there are many reasons to believe that things are
often beautiful in the same way to many people. Within the United States, people
are constantly exposed to standards for male and female beauty through the mass
media, so it is not surprising to find a great deal of agreement on standards for
beauty within American culture. For instance, Lee, Loewenstein, Ariely, Hong, and
Young (2008) showed that there tends to be consensus about the attractiveness of
photographed members of online picture-rating sites that does not depend on the
raters’ own level of judged attractiveness.

There is also evidence that there may be some inherent standards for physical
attractiveness that cut across cultures. Studies involving people from Australia,
Austria, China, England, India, Japan, Korea, and Scotland have found significant
agreement on facial attractiveness (Etcoff, 1999; Langlois et al., 2000). Dion
(2002) points out, however, that agreement is higher when the judges are students

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 155

from other countries who are studying in the United States and when comparisons
are made among different ethnocultural groups within a culture. Agreement is not
as high with more geographically isolated groups. Even if there is a universal and
biologically based standard for human beauty, cultures or environmental cir-
cumstances (e.g., availability of food) may impose certain variations (Anderson
et al., 1992). Nevertheless, participation in global activities like the Miss World
contest may affect local standards. Miss World 2001 was Miss Nigeria. In her
home country, she was far too skinny to be considered attractive, even though
many young Nigerians reportedly favored the new look.

DATING AND MARRIAGE

Physical attractiveness is probably more important to dating partners than it is to
friends or married couples, although perceptions of physical attractiveness still can
play an important role in marital relationships. Physical attraction may be most
important when dating involves short-term goals and more public, rather than
private, activities. Online daters, for example, may be particularly aware of the
importance of physical appearance to enticing visitors to their profile page. Toma
and Hancock (2010) found that individuals who were lower in attractiveness were
more likely to enhance their physical appearance by altering their profile picture
and misrepresenting descriptions of their physical characteristics on online dating
sites. And, perhaps due to greater societal pressures to be attractive, it appears
that women are more likely than men to post photos of themselves on dating Web
sites that have been presented in such a way as to increase their physical attractive-
ness (Hancock & Toma, 2009).

Concern about one’s attractiveness is not limited to females on the dating mar-
ket. In recent years, males have become increasingly vested in their own physical
appearance, such as their fitness and muscularity as well as the need for periodic
“manscaping.” Men, in fact, often think physical appearance is more influential in
women’s preferences for them than women indicate. One group of women—those
who are physically attractive and financially independent—did, however, place a
high value on male physical appearance (Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994).
Apparently, highly attractive females “want it all,” preferring a man who is
masculine, sexy, and rich in resources (e.g., money or the potential for wealth),
who will be a loving and caring partner, and who shows a desire to establish
a home and raise children (Buss & Shackelford, 2008).

Based on the preceding information, we might suspect that actual dating pat-
terns would reflect the preference for a physically attractive partner. This hypothe-
sis was confirmed by a series of “computer dance” studies at the universities of
Texas, Illinois, and Minnesota, in which physical attractiveness superseded a host
of other variables in determining liking for one’s partner and a desire to date in
the future (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottmann, 1966). Brislin and Lewis
(1968) replicated this study with 58 unacquainted men and women and again
found a strong correlation (.89) between “desire to date again” and “physical
attractiveness.” In addition, this study asked each person whether he or she would
like to date anyone else at the dance. Of the 13 other people named, all had previ-
ously, and independently, been rated as very attractive. Lastly, Luo and Zhang

156 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

(2009) found that physical attractiveness was the best predictor of men’s and
women’s interest in someone in an actual speed-dating situation.

In light of the many findings that seem to favor the physically attractive, it is
worthwhile to note that there are times when the very physically attractive do not
enjoy all the benefits. For example, women who had more variable attractiveness
ratings—that is, they were not uniformly judged as very attractive or unattractive—
were the group most satisfied with their socializing in general with both men and
women. They also had as many dates as the most attractive women. Some men did
not seek dates with the extremely attractive women because they felt the chances of
rejection were high and that the women might perceive their interest as limited to
their physical attractiveness (Reis, Nezlek, & Wheeler, 1980; Reis et al., 1982).
When less attractive women are in the company of attractive women, this also
seems to increase the chances that they will be seen as a good choice for a date.

So it seems that although there is a strong preference for people who are phys-
ically attractive, other forces enable those who fall short of the ideal in physical
attractiveness to date, marry, and have satisfying relationships. One of these forces
that exerts a powerful influence is called the matching hypothesis, which argues
that each person may be attracted to only the best-looking partners, but reality
sets in when actual dates are made. If you select only the best-looking person
available, you may face an unwanted rejection, so the tendency is to select a person
similar to yourself in physical attractiveness—preferably a little above your self-
perceived attractiveness (Hinsz, 1989). Since this hypothesis was presented, other
studies have confirmed its validity, including a study that included users of an
online dating site (Taylor, Fiore, Mendelsohn, & Cheshire, 2011). So it seems the
least good-looking people must settle for each other after all the very good-looking
people choose each other (Kalick & Hamilton, 1986). However, if you have high
self-esteem, you might seek out highly attractive partners in spite of a considerable
gap between your looks and theirs (Berscheid & Walster, 1969). Self-esteem, in this
case, may buffer the perception of, and possible reaction to, rejection.

Sometimes we observe couples whose physical attractiveness seems to be mis-
matched. One study suggests that evaluations of males may change dramatically
if they are viewed as married to someone very different in general attractiveness
(Bar-Tal & Saxe, 1976). Unattractive men who were seen with attractive women
were judged, among other things, as making more money, being more successful
in their occupations, and being more intelligent than attractive men with attractive
partners. Judges must have reasoned that for an unattractive man to marry an
attractive woman, he must have offset this imbalance by succeeding in other areas.
Unattractive women seen with attractive men, however, did not receive compensating
attributions. This study raises the question of what “other resources” unattractive
women are perceived to have to offset deficits in their physical attractiveness.

Even though physical attractiveness may be valued by both men and women, it
seems to play a more dominant role in the perceptions of women by men. Buss
(1994) found this gender difference reflected in every one of the 37 different
cultures he studied. Women may desire physical characteristics, such as strength or
facial attractiveness, but often rank characteristics like ambition, social and eco-
nomic status, dependability, and stability above physical features—particularly for
mate selection.

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 157

The relative importance of physical attractiveness for males and females is also
likely to vary with age, desired length of relationship, and possibly even budgetary
concerns.

• For adolescent boys and girls, the attractiveness, not the social status of a
potential partner, is important to their desire to date that person (Ha,
Overbeek, & Engels, 2010).

• For short-term or casual sexual relationships, both adult men and women
place a high value on physical attractiveness, even though women more than
men would also like to have some desirable social and personality characteris-
tics to go along with the physical attractiveness. For long-term relationships,
both sexes value other characteristics over physical attractiveness, even though
adult men still rate it as more important. In one study, male college students
said they were interested in different characteristics in a woman depending on
whether it was a purely sexual relationship or one expected to be long term.
A wide range of features associated with physical attractiveness were chosen
for the sexual partner, but such features played a far less important role for
long-term partners. Female students wanted virtually the same qualities in a
long-term relationship as the men—honesty, fidelity, sensitivity, warmth,
personality, kindness, character, tenderness, patience, and gentleness—but
unlike the men, they also wanted more than mere physical attractiveness for
the sexual relationship (Nevid, 1984).

• Li, Bailey, Kenrick, and Linsenmeier (2002) had men and women design their
marriage partner by purchasing spouse attributes with play money under one
of two budgetary conditions. When they were given a lot of money to spend,
men spent somewhat more on physical attractiveness than did women,
whereas women spent somewhat more on social status than did men. Impor-
tantly, these gender differences were even greater when each sex had only a
little money to spend.

Two physical features of men preferred by women for short-term or casual
sexual relationships were features of masculinity in the face—thicker eyebrows,
smaller eyes, thinner lips, and a squarer jaw, as in Figure 6-1—and a high
shoulder-to-waist ratio. Broader shoulders and a smaller waist may be perceived as
markers of “good genes” (Kruger, 2006; Braun & Bryan, 2006), and these features
may be most attractive during periods when conception is most likely (Little, Penton-
Voak, Burt, & Perrett, 2002). Perhaps not surprisingly then, unattractive men tend to
have fewer children than do their more attractive counterparts (Jokela, 2009).

Apparently the face also reveals a lot about a person’s sexual attitudes as well
as his or her suitability as a long-term partner. Boothroyd, Jones, Burt, DeBruine,
and Perrett (2008) photographed students and asked them to fill out a question-
naire about their past sexual behavior and their attitudes toward sex. Women
were less attracted to men who professed a strong interest in casual sex, but men
preferred the faces of females who had a high “sociosexual orientation” (i.e., a
greater willingness to have sexual relations with minimal commitment to and from
their partner). In another study, men’s testosterone levels were measured and they
were asked to fill out a questionnaire dealing with interest in infants. Photos of
these men were shown to women who rated their physical attractiveness, their

158 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

masculinity, the extent to which they perceived them as kind, their potential as a
short- or long-term lover, and whether they seemed to like children. Women were
skilled at distinguishing the men with high testosterone and those who liked
children. Furthermore, they perceived the more masculine faces as attractive for
short-term relationships, but were drawn to the faces of the men who scored higher
on an interest in children for long-term relationships (Roney, Hanson, Durante, &
Maestripieri, 2006).

ON THE JOB

Several studies suggest that physical attractiveness may be an advantage in obtain-
ing a job, or obtaining a more prestigious job, and being hired at a higher salary
(Cash, Gillen, & Burns, 1977; Dipboye, Arvey, & Terpstra, 1977; Hamermesh &
Biddle, 1994). Unless the job is deemed inappropriate or irrelevant to the applicant’s
level of attractiveness, the more attractive applicants are more likely to get the job,
assuming all other qualifications are equal. Sometimes attractiveness provides an edge
even when the less attractive competitor is more qualified for the position. Once a
position has been obtained, less attractive workers may be discriminated against on
performance appraisals, unless they maintain a consistently high level of productivity.

Even though both men and women can profit from their physical attractiveness
in the workplace, it is not always beneficial for a number of reasons:

• Highly attractive job applicants might be evaluated negatively by same-sex
evaluators who feel threatened by them (Agthe, Spörrle, & Maner, 2011).

• Attractive workers might worry that positive evaluations of their work
are based on how they look rather than how they actually did on a task

FIGURE 6-1
Left: 50% feminized male composite; right: 50% masculinized male composite.
Source: Facial Attractiveness, Gillian Rhodes. Copyright © 2002 by Ablex Publishing. Reproduced with permission of
Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 159

(Major, Carrington, & Carnevale, 1984). Because physically attractive
women are more likely than men to have their physical attractiveness
viewed in a social context by men in corporate environments, physically
attractive women may feel the need to dress so that their physical beauty is
not the immediate focus of attention (Heilman & Saruwatari, 1979). And
even though sexual harassment charges brought by unattractive women may
garner less credibility with a jury (Seiter & Dunn, 2000), the attractiveness
of both parties involved and the gender of jury members are factors that
may work against advantages normally associated with physical attractive-
ness (Wuensch & Moore, 2004).

PERSUADING OTHERS

Getting others to agree with you or do something for you is often based on the
extent to which you can demonstrate your knowledge or expertise as well as your
ability to marshal effective supporting arguments (Maddux & Rogers, 1980).
But as several research projects show, being physically attractive also may help
(Chaiken, 1986), and people may strategically use their attractiveness around
those they expect to persuade successfully (Vogel, Kutzner, Fielder, & Freytag,
2010). Persuasion success is especially likely when the persuader seeks compliance
on topics of low personal relevance to the to-be-persuaded person; when the per-
suasion involves a relatively short, perhaps onetime, request; and when the effects
of initial impressions are crucial to achieving influence. Although most of this
research has been done with college students, the association of persuasive
effectiveness with physical attractiveness has been documented in the behavior of
10- and 11-year-old children (Dion & Stein, 1978).

One of the earliest studies of physical attractiveness and persuasion used cos-
metics to make one woman look more and less attractive. In the unattractive condi-
tion, in which she wore loose-fitting clothing, her hair was messy, makeup was
conspicuously absent, a trace of a mustache was etched on her upper lip, and her
complexion was oily and “unwholesome looking,” she was seen as repulsive by
independent observers. The experimenter suggested to a group of students that
they would complete some questionnaires more quickly if a volunteer would read the
questions aloud and indicate what they meant. The volunteer was either the attractive
or the unattractive woman. The attractive woman, especially when she stated her
desire to influence the audience, was far more effective in modifying the opinions of
college students toward issues dealing with higher education (Mills & Aronson,
1965). Other studies also support the influence of physical attractiveness in persuasive
situations (Horai, Naccari, & Faloultah, 1974; Widgery, 1974).

The preceding research focused primarily on female communicators, but
attractiveness also seems to help male persuaders. Independent assessments of
their verbal performance, as well as their ability to obtain signatures on a campus
petition, showed attractive men and women outperforming those who were rated
as unattractive. In another study, physically attractive men and women were
judged to have better sales skills, were treated more cordially, and elicited more
willingness by people to contribute to a charitable organization (Reingen &
Kernan, 1993).

160 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

Is the persuasiveness of attractive communicators due solely to their looks, or
do they actually have persuasive skills? An examination of previous tests showed
attractive students to have higher grades, higher SAT scores, better self-concepts,
and better communication skills (Chaiken, 1979).

In summary, then, physically attractive persuaders, as compared with unattrac-
tive ones, initially elicit higher credibility and expectations for a skilled performance,
although some evidence indicates that physically attractive people seem to have these
skills already. But the advantages derived from one’s physical attractiveness are
probably strongest during the initial stages of a persuasive effort.

SELF-ESTEEM

Is physical attractiveness associated with high self-esteem? One would think so.
But the answer seems to be, for the most part, no. Being physically attractive does
not guarantee high self-esteem or even happiness (Diener, Wolsic, & Fujita, 1995;
Feingold, 1992; Langlois et al., 2000). In fact, it may be linked to lower self-
esteem among children entering adolescence (Mares, de Leeuw, Scholte, & Engels,
2010).

This does not mean that efforts to enhance one’s appearance have no positive
effects on people. Women aged 18 to 60 who used cosmetics to improve their
appearance also reported psychological benefits from doing so. Greater attractive-
ness for those between the ages of 40 and 60 was perceived as most beneficial for
masking the aging process and improving one’s physical and mental health
(Graham & Jouhar, 1982). And training in the use of cosmetics for elderly women
has reportedly had a positive effect on their self-image. What might be more impor-
tant, though, is understanding who might make us feel better about ourselves by
positively evaluating our looks. According to Hatfield and Sprecher (1986), these
are people who have a great deal of self-esteem themselves, people who are sexu-
ally aroused by us, people who look like us, people who know us, and people
who are not likely to compare our looks with media idols.

ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

What happens when attractive and unattractive people are charged with commit-
ting a criminal act? Are judges and juries influenced by a person’s looks? As
expected, a number of studies show that attractive defendants are less likely to be
judged guilty and, if convicted, are more likely to receive a shorter sentence
(Downs & Lyons, 1991; Efran, 1974; Kulka & Kessler, 1978; Weiten, 1980). The
evidence for attractive defendants receiving lighter sentences is stronger than the
evidence linking attractiveness to guilt or innocence. Although much of the research
is based on the results of simulated juries and cases, Stewart (1980) had the attrac-
tiveness of 67 actual defendants rated. The less attractive defendants were charged
with more serious crimes and were given longer sentences, but attractiveness did
not significantly affect judgments of conviction or acquittal.

Obviously, a defendant’s attractiveness is rarely assessed in isolation in the
courtroom, and other factors interact with attractiveness; for example, the extent
to which the defendant expresses repentance, the degree of commitment jurors

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 161

have toward impartiality, the extent to which jurors discuss the case, the perceived
similarity of jurors and defendant, defendant verbalizations, and the nature of the
crime being examined. For some crimes, attractiveness may be a liability for the
defendant, as when it is used to commit a crime such as a swindle. For the crime
of rape, the relative attractiveness of the victim and the defendant may influence
the jury. Attractive rape victims may be perceived as more likely to have provoked
the attack (Jacobson, 1981; Seligman, Brickman, & Koulack, 1977).

Once a person has been convicted and sent to prison, some feel that antisocial
behavior can sometimes be reduced by radical changes in appearance. It is
reported, for instance, that a 19-year-old woman with a face “so deformed that lit-
tle kids ran away crying” threw a brick through a bank window and waited for
police to arrest her. “I was willing to die to get a better face,” she said. The judge
ordered extensive plastic surgery (“Deformed Brick-Thrower,” 1975). The same
reasoning launched a massive plastic surgery program for reshaping noses, remov-
ing tattoos, tightening sagging skin, disguising ugly scars, reducing extensive ear
protrusion, and removing other deformities of convicts at the Kentucky State
Reformatory (Watson, 1975). Authorities at this institution reasoned that everyday
social ridicule and potential discrimination in hiring might lead to a feeling of rejec-
tion and frustration that could manifest itself in antisocial behavior. There is some
evidence that facial unattractiveness in children may play a role in their criminality
as adults, and college-aged students seem to think that unattractive individuals
are more likely to commit murder and armed robbery than their more attractive
counterparts (Bull, 1982; Saladin, Saper, & Breen, 1988). However, programs by
doctors at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins have not shown significant
changes in postinstitutionalized behavior for convicts with changes in their appear-
ance. Obviously, appearance is only one factor that might contribute to antisocial
behavior.

THE POWER OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS:
SOME IMPORTANT QUALIFICATIONS

As the preceding sections attest, much research supports the benefits and power of
physical attractiveness. No doubt it can be discouraging to the great majority of us
who do not perceive ourselves as highly physically attractive. Without ignoring the
potentially powerful effects of physical attractiveness in some situations, the goal of
this section is to review research that shows that physical attractiveness is not
always such a dominant factor in constructive interpersonal outcomes.

THE EFFECTS OF INTERACTION

Methodological issues may provide some comfort to those who perceive themselves
as less attractive. Although it is not true of all studies of physical attractiveness,
most use frontal facial photographs that had been judged prior to the study by a
panel of experts to fall into the beautiful or ugly category. Hence, in most cases
we are not reporting results from living, moving, talking human beings in a partic-
ular environment, nor are we generally dealing with subtle differences in physical
attractiveness that lie between the extremes of beautiful and ugly.

162 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

We know little about the socially skilled but homely person whose communica-
tive beauty is greater than perceptions of his or her photographic beauty. We do
know that talk can significantly affect perceptions. We also know that interaction
behavior and facial beauty are the two primary contributors to overall judgments
of physical attractiveness (Riggio, Widaman, Tucker, & Salinas, 1991). When we
talk to others, we become a part of the object we are evaluating, and this involve-
ment has the potential to change the way we see our partner. Berg (2004) found
that even a 6-minute get-acquainted conversation could significantly affect percep-
tions of the physical attractiveness of moderately attractive people—positively
or negatively. College students’ photos were rated prior to a brief interaction
and then rated again later, after that interaction. This brief interaction significantly
changed perceptions of physical attractiveness, and for most of them—75 percent—
the change was positive. An examination of the verbal and nonverbal behavior
indicated a variety of behaviors that may have been influential change agents; for
example, giving agreement and support, showing interest in the other person, shar-
ing information, and showing a sense of humor. Behavioral mimicry during an
interaction can also affect our judgments. Guéguen (2009) found that men rated a
woman as more sexually attractive if she had (as opposed to not) mimicked his ver-
bal and nonverbal behavior during speed dating. Lastly, interaction often elicits
information about a person’s personality, and that information can significantly
change initial perceptions of physical attractiveness not only for physically attrac-
tive people but also for neutral and unattractive ones (Lewandowski, Aron, &
Gee, 2007).

Many romantic partners tell stories about how their initial perception of their
partners’ physical attractiveness was not particularly high when compared with
their ideal. But they report that continued positive interaction changed this percep-
tion. A man who had been married for 20 years told this story about his courtship:

Initially, I saw her as pretty average in physical attractiveness. I remember telling a
friend soon after I met her that she was kind of chunky. But after we dated and I fully
appreciated how well we related to each other, I saw her as much more physically
attractive. I actually saw her differently. Now I can’t see her as any less physically
attractive.

Increased liking for a person also may follow from merely being exposed to a per-
son more and more, something fittingly referred to as the mere exposure effect
(Moreland & Beach, 1992; Zajonc, 1968).

We also know that people who want to divorce each other find it hard to see
their partner as physically attractive in the face of so much negative verbal behav-
ior. Exactly how verbal behavior affects our perceptions of physical attractiveness
is not clear at this time, but there are indications that it plays an important role in
how we see another person’s beauty (Albada, Knapp, & Theune, 2002).

THE EFFECTS OF CONTEXT

The perception of appearance may be relative to the context in which it is judged.
For example, we may perceive a popular singer on stage or television as sexy, but
the same person in our living room may seem much less glamorous. Similarly,

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 163

a person who looks good in an isolated rural setting may not look as good in a city
environment, where he or she is compared with a far greater variety of potential
partners.

Bars also provide a unique context for judging physical attractiveness. One
research team wanted to find out if the song about how “all the girls get prettier
at closing time” had any validity to it. Pennebaker and colleagues (1979) obtained
information about the general attractiveness of bar patrons at several different bars
at different times leading up to closing time. True to the lyrics of the song, both
men and women perceived a significant increase in the attractiveness of others as
closing time drew near. Although the gradually dwindling pool of potential part-
ners may have had some effect, especially for those not in a committed relationship
already (Madey, Simo, Dillworth, & Kemper, 1996), research also shows that even
moderate alcohol consumption tends to increase the ratings of physical attractiveness
of the opposite sex (Jones, Jones, Thomas, & Piper, 2003).

Who you associate with may also provide a context that affects your perceived
physical attractiveness. Men who rated the attractiveness of middle-aged women
tended to give lower ratings when they were in the presence of other men and
their rating was made public than they did when in the company of women or
when their ratings were kept private (Berman, O’Nan, & Floyd, 1981). Attraction
ratings also may vary as a function of the rater’s gender. Often the highest evalua-
tions of attractiveness come from the opposite sex.

STEREOTYPES ARE NOT ALWAYS VALID

Even though people often judge another person’s physical attractiveness similarly,
the self-ratings of the people being judged may be quite different. Thus, people we
think are physically attractive may not perceive themselves that way and, as a
result, may manifest very different characteristics than we think they have. Physi-
cally attractive people are typically perceived as having a wide range of socially
desirable characteristics, and although actual measures do show physically attrac-
tive people to be more socially skilled and popular, only a negligible relationship
appears to exist between perceptions of a highly attractive persons’ personality
and mental ability and their actual traits (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo,
1991; Feingold, 1992).

ATTRACTIVENESS OVER TIME

Judgments of attractiveness may change over the course of a lifetime. Ratings of
facial attractiveness appear to be somewhat stable from about age 16 to age 50,
but the overall ratings of attractiveness for both men and women tend to decline
as we reach middle and old age, and the decline is more severe for women.

Aging also may reveal changes associated with self-esteem and attractiveness.
Middle-aged women who had been identified as attractive college students seemed
to be less happy, less satisfied with their lives, and less well-adjusted than their
plainer counterparts (Berscheid & Walster, 1974).

In one study of the effects of time on attractiveness, the high school pictures of
1,300 males and females were rated for attractiveness. The lives of these people

164 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

were examined 15 years later. Attractive females in high school had husbands with
more education and higher salaries, but their own occupational status and income
were not significantly different from those of their less attractive counterparts. The
least attractive males in high school had more prestigious occupations and more
education, and they married women with more education than the men who were
judged attractive in high school. The authors speculate that the social ostracism of
the less attractive men in high school may have turned their attention to educa-
tional achievements that paid off later in life (Udry & Eckland, 1984).

Because appearance can be changed, people judged unattractive are not necessar-
ily doomed to a long list of pitfalls or problems. Changes in makeup and hairstyle
have been shown to increase ratings of general attractiveness as well as ratings of
desired personality characteristics (Graham & Jouhar, 1981). Cosmetics have even
been used to aid the recovery and adjustment of people recuperating from illnesses.

Now that we have examined the global concept of attractiveness, we can ask,
what specific aspects of another’s appearance do we respond to? Does it make any
difference how we perceive our own body and appearance? We focus on the
answers to these questions in the remainder of this chapter.

OUR BODY: ITS SPECIFIC FEATURES

ATTRACTIVENESS AND THE FACE

Even though the face had long been the specific body feature most commonly
examined in studies of physical attractiveness, a basic question remained unan-
swered: What is facial beauty? Some features, such as smooth skin and youthful-
ness, make intuitive sense to us (Rhodes, 2006); others, such as averaged or
symmetrical features, not so much. For example, Langlois and Roggman (1990)
found that physically attractive faces approximate the mathematical average of all
faces in a particular population. These researchers took pictures of 96 college
males and 96 college females. The photos were scanned by a video lens connected
to a computer that converted each picture into a matrix of tiny digital units with
numerical values. The male and female faces were subsequently divided into three
subsets of 32 faces each. From each subset, the computer randomly chose two
faces and mathematically averaged their digitized values. It then transformed this
information into a composite face of the two individuals. Composite faces then
were generated for 4, 8, 16, and 32 members of each set. Ratings by students
showed that composite faces were more attractive than virtually any of the individ-
ual faces, and the most attractive faces were composites of 16 and 32 faces (see
Figure 6-2). There is an important qualification to this effect, though: It depends
on the initial attractiveness of the faces used to form the composites (Braun,
Gruendl, Marberger, & Scherber, 2001). Specifically, if the faces used are unattrac-
tive, the composite remains unattractive, too.

Langlois and her colleagues acknowledge that in some cases, people are
perceived as attractive by large numbers of people even though their features obvi-
ously are not the population average. In fact, the most attractive faces are not likely
to be average at all. The most attractive faces tend to emphasize those features
associated with physically attractive faces. A woman, for example, would have a

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 165

higher than average forehead, fuller than average lips, shorter than average jaw,
and smaller than average chin and nose. Other female facial features often associ-
ated with physical attractiveness are clear skin, high cheekbones, lustrous hair,
and big eyes. A woman of any age who has small eyes, a relatively large nose, and
wide, thin lips will look older, more masculine, and be seen as less attractive.
A powerful jaw and facial hair, although indicators of male facial attractiveness,
may need large eyes and a wide smile to avoid being seen as too masculine.

2-face composite 4-face composite

8-face composite

32-face composite

16-face composite

FIGURE 6-2
Progression of mathematically averaged faces, from 2 faces to 32 faces.
Source: Facial Attractiveness, Gillian Rhodes. Copyright © 2002 by Ablex Publishing. Reproduced with permission
of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.

166 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

One study found that during the time of the month when women were more
likely to conceive, they were more receptive to men with more rugged, masculine
features. During the other 3 weeks of the month, including the menstrual period,
women chose faces that were smoother and more feminine (Jones et al., 2008;
Penton-Voak et al., 1999).

Another promising approach to identifying facial attractiveness is based on the
principle of symmetry (Grammer & Thornhill, 1994). Photographs of male and
female students were precisely measured at numerous points to determine whether
features on one side of the face are equidistant to a midpoint as the same features
on the other side of the face. For example, to what extent does the midpoint
between the corners of your mouth match up to the midpoint between the corners
of your eyes? On perfectly symmetrical faces, all the midpoints meet and roughly
form a vertical line. Movie actor Denzel Washington has a very symmetrical face,
whereas musician Lyle Lovett does not. Some asymmetry is desirable; otherwise,
the face may not look real. Horizontal symmetry was also calculated, and the
most symmetrical faces were also those chosen as the most attractive. The research-
ers believe these results are consistent with findings that show symmetry is also a
powerful attractant for other animal and insect species. Indeed, it influences how
attractive people find animals (dogs) and objects (cars), too (Halberstadt &
Rhodes, 2003). It may be that across species symmetry reflects better health, and
thus, better genetic fitness in an evolutionary sense (e.g., Shackelford & Larsen,
1999). Of importance, symmetry, like averageness, is likely to garner high ratings
of facial attractiveness, but neither is a guarantee of the most attractive faces
(Cunningham, Barbee, & Philhower, 2002).

JUDGMENTS OF THE FACE

Because the face is so central in judgments of attractiveness, it is no surprise that it
is the source of stereotyping—often based on glances of 1 second or less. People’s
judgments suggest that they believe the human face reveals important information
about a person’s personality (Hassin & Trope, 2006; Laser & Mathie, 1982).
Laser and Mathie, for example, engaged an artist to prepare nine charcoal draw-
ings of a male face, varying the thickness of the eyebrows and lips and the shape
of the face. People rated these faces with adjectives. The features had marked
effects on these ratings: The face with thick eyebrows was seen as less warm,
angrier, sterner, less cheerful, and less at ease than those with thin or normal
brows; thicker lips connoted warmth and less tension than thinner lips; and narrow
faces were seen as more tense and suspicious. But it is important to remember that
not all facial stereotypes reflect actual behavior. We will not know if the stereo-
typed characteristics of people with thick eyebrows and thin lips have any validity
until we actually test this hypothesis.

There is evidence that some of our face-based judgments are accurate, whereas
others are not. It seems that we might be able to tell whether people are dominant
or submissive, whether they are criminals, as well as their sexual and sociosexual
orientation by simply looking at pictures of their face (Berry & Wero, 1993;
Boothroyd, Cross, Gray, Coombes, & Gregson-Curtis, 2011; Rule & Ambady,
2008a; Valla, Ceci, & Williams, 2011). What might account for this accuracy?

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 167

Maybe we bring out what we expect to see from others due to shared stereotypes
we have about the meaning of their facial features. Another interesting possibility
is that people who are very high or very low in particular personality traits, such
as extraversion, share configural properties of the face that we can reliably detect
(Penton-Voak, Pound, Little, & Perrett, 2006).

Of course, our face-based judgments of others are not always accurate. One
study tested perceptions of baby-faced individuals, who were perceived as more
suggestible or persuadable, but this does not seem to be the case (Bachmann &
Nurmoja, 2006). People think they can accurately judge intelligence and health
from physically attractive faces, but they are not very good at it. This false belief
seems to be the result of overgeneralizing based on an accuracy in judging intelli-
gence and health in unattractive faces (Zebrowitz & Rhodes, 2004).

Whether a stereotype reflects actual behavior or not, people often act as if it
does. As an example, let us continue our examination of baby-faced people.
McArthur and her colleagues examined the facial features associated with age and
the kinds of interpretations people make of faces that have more or less youthful
features; in particular, they focused on the adult with baby-faced features such as
a large forehead, short chin, and big eyes. McArthur and Baron (1983) proposed
that people correctly differentiate traits that accompany younger age but then
incorrectly ascribe these traits—that is, they overgeneralize them—to people with
younger-looking faces, even though they are not necessarily young. Berry and
McArthur (1986) found, in support of this, that people rated babyish adult faces
as weaker, more submissive, and more intellectually naive than mature-looking
faces.

These investigators also simulated a courtroom trial in which a male defendant
was charged with an offense that was marked either by negligence or by deliberate
deception; the defendant’s appearance was manipulated to be either baby-faced or
mature-faced. Subjects acting as jurors more often convicted the baby-faced man
for crimes of negligence and the mature-faced man for intentional crimes. This
result was predicted based on the earlier finding that adults with babyish features
were perceived as more naive and more honest.

Facial babyishness has also been found to affect judgments of attractiveness
(Berry, 1991b). Facially attractive people are rated higher on characteristics such
as honesty, warmth, and sincerity when facial babyishness is high and lower
on those same traits when facial babyishness is low. Because all the faces were
perceived as attractive, this suggests the possibility of different types of facial
attractiveness.

So it seems that a number of social outcomes are consistent with the principle
that baby-faced people are more likely to acquire influence, jobs, and judicial
convictions when the influence strategies, job descriptions, or alleged crimes fit the
characteristics they are expected to have (Zebrowitz, 1997).

In sum, there is no doubt that the way a person’s face is structured and
contoured creates strong impressions on others. Facial endowment may harm or
benefit a person, depending on the stereotypes associated with the features. Future
research may be able to tell us to what extent actual personality and ways of
expressing ourselves will override initial impressions based on facial stereotypes.
We suspect such initial impressions are easily overturned by behavioral evidence.

168 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

As one example, baby-faced soldiers are not expected to be very brave. As a conse-
quence, when mature-faced and baby-faced soldiers exhibit valor, the baby-faced
soldier is more likely to be decorated (Collins & Zebrowitz, 1995).

BODY SHAPE

To add a personal dimension to some of the theory and research in this section, a
short Self-Description Test follows. By taking this test, you can gather some data
on yourself, which can be compared with that of others who have taken it.

Instructions: Fill in each blank with a word from the suggested list following
each statement. For each of the three blanks in each statement, you may select
any word from the list of 12 immediately following. An exact word to fit you may
not be on the list, but select the words that seem to fit most closely with the way
you are.

1. I feel , , and most of the time.

calm

anxious

cheerful

contented

relaxed

confident

tense

impetuous

complacent

reticent

energetic

self-conscious

2. When I study or work, I seem to be , , and .

efficient

enthusiastic

reflective

placid

sluggish

competitive

leisurely

meticulous

precise

determined

thoughtful

cooperative

3. Socially, I am , , and .

outgoing

affable

tolerant

gentle-tempered

considerate

awkward

affected

soft-tempered

argumentative

shy

talkative

hot-tempered

4. I am rather , , and .

active

warm

domineering

introspective

forgiving

courageous

suspicious

cool

sympathetic

serious

softhearted

enterprising

5. Other people consider me rather , , and .

generous

adventurous

withdrawn

dominant

optimistic

affectionate

reckless

detached

sensitive

kind

cautious

dependent

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 169

6. Underline one word out of the three in each of the following lines that most
closely describes the way you are:

(a) assertive, relaxed, tense
(b) hot-tempered, cool, warm
(c) withdrawn, sociable, active
(d) confident, tactful, kind
(e) dependent, dominant, detached
(f) enterprising, affable, anxious

This test has been given to numerous individuals in studies on the relationship
between certain personality and temperament characteristics and certain body types
or builds. Generally, these studies are concerned with a person’s physical similarity
to three extreme varieties of human physique, shown in Figure 6-3.

Because most people do not fit these extremes exactly, a system has been devel-
oped for specifying body type based on the assumption that they may have some
features of all three types. Let us assume a person’s physical characteristics are
rated on a scale from 1 to 7, with 7 representing the highest correspondence with
one of the three body types. The first number refers to the degree of endomorphy,
the second to the degree of mesomorphy, and the third to the degree of ectomorphy.
A grossly fat person, then, would be 7/1/1; a broad-shouldered, athletic person
would be 1/7/1; and a very skinny person would be 1/1/7. Reportedly, Jackie
Gleason was roughly 6/4/1, Muhammad Ali 2/7/1 (in his prime), and Abraham
Lincoln 1/5/6.

Now look at the test you took earlier. The test has shown a high correspon-
dence between self-reported temperament characteristics and measures of physique
(Cortes & Gatti, 1965). To calculate your score on the Self-Description Test,
simply add the number of adjectives you chose from each of the endomorph, meso-
morph, and ectomorph categories listed in Table 6-1. If you chose 6 adjectives
from the endomorph list, 12 from the mesomorph, and 3 from the ectomorph,
your temperament score would be 6/12/3. If we assume a high correlation with
body features, we would assume you are primarily mesomorphic with a leaning
toward endomorphism. Temperament scores like body shape may change with the
passage of time: The first author of this text was 5/11/5 in 1978, 8/10/3 in 1982,
8/9/4 in 1988, 10/7/4 in 1996, 8/10/3 in 2001, 6/12/3 in 2004, 10/9/3 in 2008,
and 8/10/3 in 2012. Although this test is able to make some reasonably accurate
predictions about physique for some people, it is, like all predictive tests, based on
probabilities and hence less accurate for other people.

We should not assume from this work that the body causes temperament
traits. The high correspondence between certain temperament traits and body
builds may be due to life experiences, environmental factors, self-concept, and a
host of other variables, including other people’s expectations. If there are clearly
defined and generally accepted physique–temperament stereotypes, we can reason
that they will have much to do with the way people are perceived and responded
to by others and with the personality traits expected of people by others. Wells
and Siegel (1961) uncovered some data supporting the existence of such stereo-
types. A group of 120 adults were shown silhouette drawings of the endomorph,
ectomorph, and mesomorph and were asked to rate them on a set of 24 bipolar

170 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

FIGURE 6-3
(a) The endomorph: soft, round, fat; (b) the mesomorph: bony, muscular, athletic;
(c) the ectomorph: tall, thin, fragile.

g
ag

e
Le

ar
n
in
g
A
ll
R
ig
h
ts

R
es

er
ve

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 171

adjective scales, such as lazy–energetic, fat–thin, intelligent–unintelligent, and
dependent–self-reliant. The investigators deliberately chose people who had not
attended college, assuming these people would not be contaminated with informa-
tion from previous studies that might structure their answers. Their results show
the following:

1. The endomorph was rated fatter, older, shorter (silhouettes were the same
height), more old-fashioned, less strong physically, less good looking, more
talkative, more warmhearted and sympathetic, more good natured and agree-
able, more dependent on others, and more trusting of others.

2. The mesomorph was rated stronger, more masculine, better looking, more
adventurous, younger, taller, more mature in behavior, and more self-reliant.

3. The ectomorph was rated thinner, younger, more ambitious, taller, more sus-
picious of others, more tense and nervous, less masculine, more stubborn and
inclined to be difficult, more pessimistic, and quieter.

Clearly, the evidence shows we do associate certain personality and temperament
traits with certain body builds. These expectations may or may not be accurate,
but they do exist, and they are a part of the psychological mortar in interpersonal

TABLE 6.1
THREE PHYSIQUE CATEGORIES AND TEMPERAMENT

STEREOTYPES

Endomorphic Mesomorphic Ectomorphic

Dependent Dominant Detached

Calm Cheerful Tense

Relaxed Confident Anxious

Complacent Energetic Reticent

Contented Impetuous Self-conscious

Sluggish Efficient Meticulous

Placid Enthusiastic Reflective

Leisurely Competitive Precise

Cooperative Determined Thoughtful

Affable Outgoing Considerate

Tolerant Argumentative Shy

Affected Talkative Awkward

Warm Active Cool

Forgiving Domineering Suspicious

Sympathetic Courageous Introspective

Softhearted Enterprising Serious

Generous Adventurous Cautious

Affectionate Reckless Tactful

Kind Assertive Sensitive

Sociable Optimistic Withdrawn

Soft-tempered Hot-tempered Gentle-tempered

172 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

communication. We must recognize these stereotypes as potential stimuli for com-
munication responses so we can deal with them effectively.

As early as kindergarten, children seem to prefer the more muscular mesomorphs
to either the thin or fat body types (Johnson & Staffieri, 1971; Lerner & Gellert,
1969; Lerner & Korn, 1972; Lerner & Schroeder, 1971; Staffieri, 1972). Youngsters
seem to have a particular aversion to the fat physiques. Older children who select
descriptive adjectives for these body types tend to see the mesomorph as “all things
good,” with ectomorphs and endomorphs attracting a host of unfavorable descriptors.
In fact, 10- and 11-year-olds seemed to consider body build as a more important
characteristic in judging physical appearance than deformities, disfigurements, and
handicaps (Richardson, Goodman, Hastorf, & Dornbusch, 1961). The psychological
aversion to chubby figures results in children maintaining a greater physical distance
from them (Lerner, Karabenick, & Meisels, 1975; Lerner, Venning, & Knapp, 1975).
In turn, we find that chubby children often tend to have a negative perception of their
own bodies, which may later generalize to a negative self-image (Walker, 1963). Even
the elderly rate the endomorph as a less desirable communication partner, both
socially and for working on tasks together (Portnoy, 1993).

Negative reactions to overweight individuals are frequently reported. Such indi-
viduals report being discriminated against when seeking to obtain life insurance,
adopt children, get jobs, and gain entrance to college (Channing & Mayer, 1966).
Although only a small amount of empirical evidence supports the bases of these
claims (Dejong & Kleck, 1986), it is safe to say that being excessively overweight in
our culture is often a handicap. Researchers who followed 10,000 people between the
ages of 16 and 24 for 7 years found obesity meant you were less likely to marry, more
likely to have a lower income, and more likely to receive less schooling (Gortmaker,
Must, Perrin, Sobol, & Dietz, 1993). In certain domains, the gender of the overweight
person matters; for example, women’s weight seems to impact the quality of their inti-
mate relationships more than does men’s (Boyes & Latner, 2009).

Although heavier women might represent the ideal in other cultures (Anderson,
Crawford, Nadeau, & Lindberg, 1992), the cultural ideal for U.S. women has
tended toward thinness. This ideal might apply more to white women in this cul-
ture, however, as heavy women are judged more harshly in terms of their looks by
white female students than by black female students (Hebl & Heatherton, 1998).
As a result, women have tended to be more conscious of their weight than have
men. In recent years, though, there seem to be more media portrayals—and a gen-
erally greater acceptance—of female bodies that are not extremely slender (e.g.,
model Christina Schmidt). And men are increasingly concerned about their weight, as
popular male stars often sport cut, muscular physiques (e.g., Taylor Lautner). Another
trend in recent years has been toward the development of healthy bodies—“eating
right,” exercising, and developing muscle strength. These body standards apply to
both men and women and will probably constitute some of the features that make up
the next cultural standard for the ideal body shape.

Research has shown that women view the mesomorphic male body type
as more attractive than either the ectomorphic or endomorphic types (Dixson,
Dixson, Bishop, & Parish, 2010). Women say their favorite male physique has a
medium-wide upper trunk, a medium-thin lower trunk, and thinner legs—a
V-shaped look (Singh, 1993, 1995). The most disliked male physique has a thin

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 173

upper trunk and a wide lower trunk, or a pear-shaped look. Women who see
themselves as traditionally feminine and conservative in their lifestyle seem to
favor “muscle men”; more liberated women liked thinner, more linear bodies; and
big women tended to go for big men. The best clue to a woman’s favorite male
physique, however, is the type of physique belonging to the man who is “most
important to her at that time” (Beck, Ward-Hull, & McLear, 1976; Lavrakas,
1975; Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994; Wiggins & Wiggins, 1969). The
fact that women tend to like the physique of the man who is currently most impor-
tant to them suggests that romantic partners are selected for many reasons besides
physical attractiveness, and that people can favor an ideal body type but still be
happy with a person who does not match that ideal.

The waist-to-hip ratio of women plays an important role in men’s judgments
of women’s physical attractiveness (Singh, 1993, 1995; Streeter & McBurney,
2003). A waist-to-hip ratio of .70 means the waist is 70 percent the size of the hips,
which is considered the ideal. By contrast, the ideal ratio for men is between .80
and .95. Singh says early Greek paintings, ancient Indian sculptures, Miss America
winners, and Playboy centerfolds all show waist-to-hip ratios very close to the .70
ideal. He has surveyed people of many age groups, cultures, and ethnic groups, and
their preferences are for the .70 waist-to-hip ratio. A recent study using eye-tracking
techniques showed that, although men looked at the breasts of a female target more
often and longer than her waist, face, pubic area, and legs, they rated the female
target with the .7 waist-to-hip ratio as the most attractive irrespective of her breast
size (small, medium, large) (Dixson, Grimshaw, Linklater, & Dixson, 2011).

Women with a lower waist-to-hip ratio seem to be healthier and more fertile
than those with a higher waist-to-hip ratio. Other research, however, reveals that
in a few cultures, women with a greater waist circumference and a higher waist-
to-hip ratio are preferred by males. Some evidence also indicates that women with
higher waist-to-hip ratios and greater waist circumference are more likely to have
sons (Manning, Trivers, Singh, & Thornhill, 1999; Yu & Shepard, 1998).

Others argue from their research that the preferred waist-to-hip ratio will
increase as body size and weight increase, even though small and medium waists
and hips are preferred regardless of weight (Forestell, Humphrey, & Stewart,
2004; Tassinary & Hansen, 1998). There is no doubt that the waist-to-hip ratio is
one of several features that affect perceptions of female attractiveness. Another fea-
ture, which has not received as much research attention, concerns the leg-to-body
ratio of females (i.e., length of legs relative to height) (Frederick, Hadji-Michael,
Furnham, & Swami, 2010; Swami, Einon, & Furnham, 2006). Findings are mixed
as to whether longer or more mid-range leg-to-body ratios are seen as most attrac-
tive. Another feature is age of the face. One study found that the perceived age of a
woman’s face had a greater overall impact on judgments of her physical attractive-
ness than did her waist-to-hip ratio (Furnham, Disha, & McClelland, 2004).

HEIGHT

Height also influences interpersonal responses. People seem to know that height
can be important to their social and work lives. Pediatricians report that parents are
often concerned that their child is not as tall as he or she should be at a certain age.

174 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

Children themselves are asked to focus on height when their teachers tell them
to line up by height. Adults seem to overestimate their height, and shorter males
do so to a greater extent than taller males (Bogaert & McCreary, 2011; Cameron,
Oskamp, & Sparks, 1978). In some areas of the country, police officers and fire-
fighters are required to meet minimum height requirements. Some applicants,
according to newspaper accounts, have actually bludgeoned their heads in the
hope that the swelling would make up the difference between their height and the
required height.

Height derives its importance from a widespread belief that major deviations
from median heights—about 5 feet, 4 inches for women and 5 feet, 9 inches for
men—will incur negative judgments from others. Although some may believe it is
possible to be too tall, most negative judgments are thought to be associated with
shortness. As Stabler, Whitt, Moreault, D’Ercole, and Underwood (1980) noted,
“There is a pervasive social attitude which associates tallness with positive charac-
teristics and assigns negative attributes to shortness.”

Is there any truth to this? The anecdotal evidence is far more plentiful than the
empirical research, and most of the research focuses on men only (Roberts &
Herman, 1986). In a study of 956 students in grades 6 through 12, Sandberg,
Bukowski, Fung, and Noll (2004) concluded that being too tall or too short had a
minimal impact on peer perceptions of social behavior, friendship, or acceptance.
Some psychiatrists echo the belief that sometimes short kids are teased, but that
they get over it and do not experience lasting psychological problems. And there
seems to be little evidence supporting significant differences in the lives of short
children whose parents have authorized giving them human growth hormone to
increase their stature. Still, the belief that tallness is favored in the United States
persists, so we will examine some dominant perceptions associated with height:
status; attractiveness, marriage, and sex; and competence.

HEIGHT AND STATUS Height has long been a metaphor for power and prestige. Some
evidence suggests that height is positively related to authority status on the job for
men but not for women (Gawley, Perks, & Curtis, 2009). The taller of the two
U.S. presidential candidates has usually won since 1900, with Jimmy Carter and
George W. Bush as notable exceptions. When Carter debated President Ford, his
campaign advisers did not want him to be seen standing next to the 6-foot-1-inch
president. Consequently, they asked that the debates be conducted from a sitting
position. Ford’s advisers refused. The compromise involved placing the lecterns far
apart. Further testimony to the stigma associated with shorter people and power is
that behavior labeled competitive for a taller man is labeled a Napoleonic complex
for a shorter one.

If status and power inhere in taller people, are they also more persuasive? One
study indicates they are not (Baker & Redding, 1962). Photographs were taken of
the same person, a male, from two different angles: one designed to make him look
short, one to make him look tall. These pictures, plus a tape-recorded persuasive
speech, were the stimuli for various student groups. Attitude measures indicated
no statistically significant difference between the tall and short speakers.

It is more likely that tallness interacts with other factors, such as general body
size, girth, and facial features. In your own experience, you probably can recall

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 175

some tall individuals who seemed almost frighteningly overpowering, whereas
others of the same height did not have this quality. Science has not yet established
a clear-cut relationship between a person’s actual height and his or her social
status. Nevertheless, the connection is often made when, without any other infor-
mation, people are asked to make a judgment about height and status. We know
of a woman who earned her doctoral degree under a famous psychologist and
believed, while she was his student, that he was a tall, imposing figure. Later, she
was genuinely surprised to realize he was actually a short man. He had merely
seemed tall to her.

HEIGHT AND ATTRACTIVENESS, MARRIAGE, AND SEX Taller men are frequently perceived as
more attractive than shorter men. The ideal male lover is not described as “short,
dark, and handsome.” Male romantic leads in movies are usually either tall or
made to look tall by camera angles. Numerous sources attest to the important
role of height in perceptions of attractiveness, but obviously we do not make
judgments of another’s attractiveness based on height alone. Therefore, we can con-
clude that height is one important feature involved in judgments of attractiveness,
but we cannot say that tallness is always associated with the highest judgments of
attractiveness. We do know that moviegoers are often taken aback when they learn
that a male icon of physical attractiveness and masculinity is much shorter than he
is portrayed in his movies.

You have probably noticed that shorter people are more likely to be romanti-
cally involved with each other, and taller people are similarly paired up. It seems
that romantically involved couples do indeed tend to be more similar to each other
in height than randomly paired couples (Warren, 1966). Sure, there are exceptions
to this, and they tend to be striking to us when we see them. Sometimes they are
even a source of amusement, as when the 5-foot-11-inch Nicole Kidman stated
that “I can wear heels again” after her marriage was over to the 5-foot-7-inch
Tom Cruise. Perhaps not surprisingly then, advertisements for romantic partners
often give height as a critical piece of information about themselves (Harrison &
Saeed, 1977).

There are benefits and burdens associated with height for men and women in
relationships. Pawlowski, Dunbar, and Lipowicz (2000) have found that married
men tend to be taller than their unmarried counterparts. And taller adult men
report having more frequent sexual intercourse (Eisenberg, Shindel, Smith, Breyer, &
Lipshultz, 2010). Short and tall women, on the other hand, appear to be more
jealous and competitive toward other women than are women of average height
(Buunk, Poliet, Klavina, Figueredo, & Dijkstra, 2009).

HEIGHT AND COMPETENCE Several reports indicate that tall males are perceived as more
competent on the job and are rewarded with higher salaries. Before salary becomes
an issue, a person has to be hired, and some evidence suggests this is more difficult
for a shorter man. In one study, 140 sales recruiters were asked to choose between
two men just by reading their applications for employment. The applications were
exactly the same except that one listed a height of 6 feet, 1 inch and the other 5 feet,
5 inches. Only 1 percent favored the shorter man (Kurtz, 1969). Another study indi-
cated that men who were selected to advance in corporate training programs were

176 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

significantly taller than average (Farb, 1978). An analysis of similar studies led Judge
and Cable (2004) to conclude that taller people have higher self-esteem, are more
likely to be in leadership positions, make more money, and get better performance
evaluations at work than shorter people. This was more likely to be the case with
men, but there was a strong relationship for women as well.

However, the relationship between height, income, and performance on the job
may not be as simple as the preceding studies suggest. For example, actual perfor-
mance records showed few differences between shorter and taller police officers, but
their supervisors felt shorter police officers were more aggressive law enforcers and
more likely to be a source of discontent in the police department (Lester & Sheehan,
1980). Persico and Postlewaite (2004) found that taller white male adults did make
more money than their shorter colleagues, but when their analysis was controlled
for height as a teenager, this difference disappeared. In other words, there was no
income gap for short male adults who were not considered short in high school.

BODY IMAGE

So far we have discussed our perceptions of others. An equally important dimen-
sion of interpersonal communication is what we think of ourselves. Self-image is
the root system from which our overt communication behavior grows. Our overt
communication behavior is an extension of the accumulated experiences that have
made up our understanding of self. In short, what you are—or rather what you
think you are—organizes what you say and do. An important part of your self-
image is body image, perhaps the first aspect of self-image formed in young
children.

A study of Australian men and women showed that women were in general
less satisfied with their bodies (Mellor, Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, McCabe, & Ricciardelli,
2010). Adult males seem to be most satisfied with their bodies when they are some-
what larger than normal; females are most satisfied when their bodies are smaller
than normal but when their busts are larger than average. In an effort to test the
belief that larger bust sizes were more desirable to others, photographs were taken
of three women who artificially altered their bust size. The woman with the smal-
lest bust, about 34 inches, received the highest ratings on competence, ambition,
intelligence, morality, and modesty (Kleinke & Staneski, 1980).

Sex researchers have frequently noted emotional problems in males stemming
from a perceived incongruence between their genital size and the supposed masculine
ideal perpetuated by our literary and folklore heritage. However, more than 71
percent of the women in one survey agreed or strongly agreed that “men seem too
concerned with the size and shape of their genitals” (Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison,
1994). For women, reduced sexual satisfaction may stem from greater dissatisfaction
with the appearance of their genitals (Schick, Calabrese, Rima, & Zucker, 2010).

As we develop, we learn the cultural ideal of what a body should be. This results
in varying degrees of satisfaction with the body, particularly during adolescence.
Wolf (1991) and others believe the standards of beauty promulgated in the mass
media are oppressive and create an undesirable yearning for often unreasonable
goals. Such standards can influence viewers’ current level of self-esteem. The self-
esteem of neurotic women seems particularly vulnerable to the effects of being

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 177

exposed to thin models in the media (Roberts & Good, 2010). A national survey of
several thousand adults indicated that between 1972 and 1986, both men’s and
women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies rose sharply. Weight was a major factor
of dissatisfaction (Cash, Winstead, & Janda, 1986). If the prediction of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention holds true, that 42 percent of Americans
will be classified as obese by 2030, dissatisfaction with weight will likely continue to
increase.

A number of studies show, however, that we are not always accurate in our
perceptions of our own body size and weight. In some cases, constant exposure to
ideal body images on television contributes to misperceptions of body shape and
size (Bissell & Zhou, 2004; Myers & Biocca, 1992). In addition to misjudgments
of our own body size and weight, we may also misjudge the body type that is
most appealing to the opposite sex. Women seem to think men prefer a thinner
woman than men actually report; men seem to think women want a heavier man
than women actually report. Men thought that having an attractive face and body
build was more important to women than women said it was (Fallon & Rozin,
1985; Pertschuk, Trisdorfer, & Allison, 1994).

BODY COLOR

We do make some judgments about temporary color changes that show up on
people’s bodies. On light-skinned people, for example, a pale color may indicate
illness, a rosy flush may indicate embarrassment, and a red neck can appear with
anger. But in many respects, permanent skin colors have been the most potent
body stimulus for determining interpersonal responses in our culture. Some Asian
Americans use whitening creams and lotions on their faces, arguing that the desire
for pale skin is an ancient Asian tradition associated with delicacy and femininity.
Younger Asian Americans wonder if this is really an effort to blend into a culture
where there is less discrimination against white-skinned individuals, or even a man-
ifestation of prejudice against those with darker skins. There is no need to review
the abuses heaped on black people in America on the basis of skin color alone.
These abuses are well documented. The words of a white man who darkened his
skin pigmentation and experienced the dramatic and unforgettable life of a black
man in America is sufficient reminder:

When all the talk, all the propaganda has been cut away, the criterion is nothing but
the color of skin. My experience proved that. They judged me by no other quality.
My skin was dark. That was sufficient reason for them to deny me those rights and
freedoms without which life loses its significance and becomes a matter of little more
than animal survival.

I searched for some other answer and found none. I had spent a day without food and
water and for no other reason than that my skin was black. I was sitting on a tub in
the swamp for no other reason. (Griffin, 1960, pp. 121–122)

As U.S. demographics change and the number of mixed-racial marriages goes up,
the variety of skin colors manifested by the people around us will continue to
increase, and sharp distinctions among people’s skin colors will become increas-
ingly difficult to make. Still, there will always be those who want a simple method

178 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

of classifying their social world, and skin color is easily observed. We can only
hope that the number of people who believe skin color to be an accurate gauge
for identifying friend and foe will continue to decrease.

The standards for beauty are usually set by the economically dominant group
within a society. People in less dominant groups are judged by the standards of
the dominant group and, seeing the reward value, may try to mimic the standards
of the dominant group. The standards in the United States have traditionally been
those associated with the features of the people whose ancestors immigrated here
from northern and western Europe. Among other features, they had “white” skin.
There is nothing inherently more attractive about “white” skin or the features
shared by these Americans who had a northern or western European heritage. In
fact, pale skin is more likely to have freckles and is more prone to skin cancer and
wrinkles earlier than the skin of many Asians and Africans. Interestingly, women’s
desire to tan drops when they are reminded of their own death and exposed to
fashion information about the attractiveness of pale skin (Cox et al., 2009).

In time, the dominant group will change, and no doubt some of the standards
for physical attractiveness will change with it. One example concerns the growing
number of children being born to parents from different racial groups. Earlier we
discussed that averaged faces are perceived as more attractive. Given that children
of mixed-racial parents may have a blend of facial features from each race, one
wonders if these children will be perceived as more attractive. Rhodes et al. (2005)
found that white and Japanese participants perceived a mixed-race composite face
(i.e., white, Japanese) as more attractive than faces depicting either exaggerated
white or Japanese features.

BODY SMELL

It is obvious that vision and hearing are the most important sensors for social
situations in Western societies, but the sense of smell also may influence responses.
The scientific study of the human olfactory system is in its infancy, but we know
other animals obtain a great deal of information from their sense of smell: the pres-
ence of an enemy, territorial markers, finding members of the same species or herd,
sexual stimulation, mate selection, and emotional states. Dogs are well known for
their ability to sense fear, hate, or friendship in human beings and to track them
by only the scent from clothing. The difficulty dogs seem to have in distinguishing
between the smells of identical twins prompted Davis (1971) to suggest that we
each have an “olfactory signature.”

Americans do not seem to rely consciously on their sense of smell for much
interpersonal information, unless perspiration odor, breath, or some other smell is
unusually strong or inappropriate to the situation. It is believed that all of us
could enhance our olfactory sensitivity if we learned the words needed to differenti-
ate among various odors. We have a rather limited vocabulary for discussing subtle
differences in smells, which in turn may hinder their identification. If it is true that
we tend to neglect our olfactory skills, it seems ironic that we spend so much time
and money on artificial scents. Each year American men and women spend millions
of dollars on deodorants, soaps, mouthwashes, breath mints, perfumes, aftershave
lotions, and other products to add to or cover up natural body scents. Publicly, the

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 179

so-called natural scent seems to have a low priority in our cultural development,
but we are not at all reluctant to buy a commercial product that will purportedly
make us smell natural or sexy.

Artificial scents are not always designed for pleasant reactions. During World
War II, scientists developed a noxious-smelling compound they called Who Me?
This product was put into collapsible plastic tubes and distributed to Chinese
children in cities occupied by the Japanese. The children squirted the odorous sub-
stance onto the trouser seats of Japanese officers. The foul-smelling result was more
than just a temporary irritant—it was nearly impossible to wash out (Russell,
1981). Odors so foul smelling as to be capable of emptying buildings and even
incapacitating people may have contemporary applications in law enforcement and
the military.

What is the role of human odors in daily interaction? Our reactions may be
consciously or unconsciously processed, but the message can be quite strong.
During heightened emotional arousal, chemical olfactory signals may even assume
an importance that rivals the normally dominant visual and auditory channels.
Human odors are primarily emitted through glands found in the anal-genital region
and in secretory glands in the face, hands, feet, and sometimes across the chest.
Odors collect in the mouth and in regions of the body with hair. Several experi-
ments attest to the fact that people are usually able to identify the odors of specific
other human beings. These “dirty T-shirt” studies instructed people to wear a
cotton T-shirt for periods ranging from 1 day to 1 week and to avoid using any
perfumes and deodorants. Seventy-five percent of the people tested were able to
sniff out their own T-shirt and those of a male and female stranger; 50 percent of
spouses were able to identify their mate’s T-shirt. Parents can identify their
children’s T-shirt, some only 2 hours old, with accuracy rates that sometimes
exceed 90 percent, and children are generally able to identify their siblings’
(Lord & Kasprzak, 1989; Porter, Cernoch, & Balogh, 1985; Porter, Cernoch, &
McLaughlin, 1983; Porter & Moore, 1981; Russell, 1976). By the age of 6 weeks,
infants respond to the odor on a breast pad from their mother but not from a
stranger. One study even found people able to identify gender from hand odors.
An important qualification is in order: Although we do seem to be able to identify
others by smell, the accuracy rate depends a great deal on how many competing
stimuli we have to judge from. It may be much easier to choose a spouse’s T-shirt
from 2 than from 20.

Smells not only help us identify people, but may also play a role in relationship
development and maintenance. When unmarried women were asked to select a
male’s T-shirt that had an odor that they would like to smell if they had to smell
it all the time, they selected T-shirts from males who were genetically similar, but
not too similar, to their fathers (Jacob, McClintock, Zelano, & Ober, 2002).
Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) appears to be a factor. MHC is made
up of genes that influence tissue rejection in the immune system, and if a child is
conceived with a person who is too similar in MHC, the fetus is at a greater risk
of rejection. Animals often use smell to detect MHC differences in potential mates,
and now we know humans can, too. Women preferred the smell of male T-shirts
that were safely different in MHC from their own, even though women taking
birth control pills were not nearly as consistent in selecting safely different MHC

180 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

based on the smell of male T-shirts (Garver-Apgar, Gangestad, Thornhill, Miller, &
Olp, 2006; Wedekind & Füri, 1997; Wedekind, Seebeck, Bettens, & Paepke,
1995). With respect to relationship maintenance, Lundström and Jones-Gotman
(2009) found that the more women expressed love for their current boyfriend,
the less able they were to identify the body odor of a male friend, suggesting that
this might be a means of deflecting attention away from other males as potential
mates.

Homosexual men seem to react differently to male pheromones than heterosex-
ual men, and they prefer the odors of gay men. Heterosexual men and women, as
well as lesbians, did not prefer the odor from homosexual males (Martins et al.,
2005; Savic, Berglund, & Lindström, 2005). Heterosexual males also seem to be
affected by different odors given off by females at different times in the ovulation
cycle. Eighteen strippers (lap dancers) recorded their tips over the course of
60 days. When they were ovulating, they earned $67 an hour; when they were not
ovulating or menstruating, they earned $52 an hour; when they were menstruating,
they earned $37 an hour. Strippers who were taking a contraceptive pill did not
show a peak in earnings during estrus (Miller, Tybur, & Jordan, 2007).

Odor also seems to play a role in synchronizing female menstrual cycles. It was
discovered that friends and college roommates moved from an average of 8.5 days
apart in their menstrual cycles to less than 5 during the school year. Another exper-
imenter attempted to explain why by taking odor samples from the underarm of a
female colleague, which was called Essence of Genevieve. This odor was dabbed on
the upper lips of female volunteers three times a week for 4 months. Another group
of women were dabbed with alcohol. The alcohol group showed no change, but
the group receiving Essence of Genevieve tended to synchronize their cycles with
Genevieve’s. This group went from an average of 9.3 days apart in their cycles to
3.4, with four women moving to within 1 day of Genevieve’s cycle. Subsequent
work has examined the role of a man’s perspiration odor on women’s menstrual
cycles. The procedures used in the Essence of Genevieve study were replicated
using women whose cycles were longer than normal and shorter than normal.
Those whose upper lips were dabbed with the male odor developed cycles closer
to normal; the control group did not (Cutler et al., 1986; McClintock, 1971;
Russell, 1976; Stern & McClintock, 1998).

In addition to affecting the menstrual cycle, male perspiration also seems to
have a positive effect on women’s moods in the form of stress reduction and relax-
ation (Preti, Wysocki, Barnhart, Sondheimer, & Leyden, 2003). Additionally,
people may be sensitive to competitive signals (and thus potential threat) that are
being communicated via male sweat. Larger skin conductance responses were
observed from people when they were exposed to the sweat of males who had par-
ticipated in a competitive sport (and thus had higher levels of testosterone) relative
to those in a sports control condition (Adolph, Schlösser, Hawighorst, & Pause,
2010). The preceding studies are important reminders of the connection between
physiological processes and odor. Physicians have long known that people with
certain illnesses tend to give off certain odors, but now we are finding that certain
physiological processes can be modified by odor. It does not surprise us that such
effects take place in the animal or insect worlds, but until recently we have not
thought of human behavior in this way. Today, some people even practice

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 181

aromatherapy, using odors to alleviate anxiety, headaches, and hypertension, for
example.

Another source of odor is flatulent air, generally adding a negative or insulting
aura to an interpersonal encounter in our culture (Lippman, 1980). In fact, antici-
pation of expelling flatus may lead to rapid termination of an interpersonal con-
tact. Under certain conditions, however, emission of flatulent air may be used
deliberately to draw attention to oneself. The extent to which odors attributed to
flatus or unpleasant body odors are evaluated negatively is probably related to the
extent to which others believe people are aware of it and whether it is controllable.

The role of odors in human interaction varies considerably from culture to
culture. Asians are reported to manifest underarm odor only rarely, but odor
seems to play a prominent role in some Arab countries:

Olfaction occupies a prominent place in Arab life. Not only is it one of the distance-setting
mechanisms, but it is a vital part of a complex system of behavior. Arabs consistently
breathe on people when they talk. However, this habit is more than a matter of different
manners. To the Arab good smells are pleasing and a way of being involved with each
other. To smell one’s friend is not only nice but desirable, for to deny him your breath is to
act ashamed. Americans, on the other hand, trained as they are not to breathe in people’s
faces, automatically communicate shame in trying to be polite. (Hall, 1966, pp. 159–160)

In addition to human odors, environmental odors also may affect human encoun-
ters by setting the mood or bringing back memories associated with the smell. For
the first author of this book, a distinct smell is associated with high schools; each
time he enters one, it triggers a chain of memories from his own history.

BODY HAIR

The length of a person’s hair can dramatically affect perceptions and human inter-
action. In 1902, the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent out an order to forc-
ibly, if necessary, cut all male Indians’ hair so they would look civilized.
Historically, this is only one of many instances in which hair length triggered an
undesirable response.

During the 1960s, white males who allowed the hair on their head to grow
over their ears and foreheads, and sometimes to their shoulders, found they fre-
quently attracted abuse similar to that leveled at African Americans. Cases of dis-
crimination in housing, school admittance, jobs, and commercial establishments,
to mention a few, were numerous.

The media have regularly reported stories involving reactions to, or regulations
directed toward, human hair, mostly male hair. The examples we provide next are
from 1973 to 2004. Although some of the events discussed in these news stories
might not take place today, they show how hair choices have the potential to
arouse strong feelings in people.

AUSTIN, TEXAS (1973) Long hair on boys and men is the “sign of a sissy” and
should be banned from American athletic fields, according to the lead article in
the May issue of the Texas High School Coaches Association’s magazine. A head
football coach at a junior high school in Houston said God made man to dominate
woman and, therefore, meant for man to wear short hair. Simpson told his fellow

182 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

coaches in the article that “a good hair code will get abnormals out of athletics
before they become coaches and bring their ‘losers’ standards into the coaching
profession.”

NEW JERSEY (1973) The headmaster of a well-known preparatory school, who
sported a beard and a mustache, said about 60 seniors would be suspended if
they did not cut their hair to meet regulations on hair grooming. One student
reported he was told by the headmaster, “I hold your diploma. Either you get a
haircut or [you] don’t get your diploma.”

CONNECTICUT (1975) A woman was fired from her waitressing job because she
refused to shave her legs.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (1980) The national police were ordered to refrain from arrest-
ing males because of their long hair. During the first 8 months of the year, 14,911
men were arrested on such a charge.

LUBBOCK, TEXAS (1990) A mother in Texas did not see how the rat-tail hairdo her
11-year-old son had been wearing for 3 years was suddenly in violation of the
Lubbock Independent School District’s dress code. School officials were enforcing
a policy that prohibited boys from having longer than shoulder-length hair, pony-
tails, rat tails, patterns shaved into their hair, and braids. Her son, a Boy Scout
and honor student before his withdrawal, was being tutored at home because he
refused to conform to the new policy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (1994) A woman with a moustache alleged that her facial hair
was the reason she was fired.

COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA (1995) Prisoners at a correctional institution stabbed five
guards and took three hostages to protest a policy that would require them to cut
their hair.

BASTROP, TEXAS (1996) A state appeals court ruled that school officials were out of
bounds when they sent a ponytailed 8-year-old to the equivalent of solitary con-
finement. The school district’s claims that its hair rule was needed to prevent
gangs, teach gender identity, and maintain discipline were sheer nonsense, the
Third Court of Appeals said. “[The boy] wore the same hairstyle during the previ-
ous school year without causing any disruption,” the court said. The school dis-
trict’s lawyer said he would recommend the district take the case to the Texas
Supreme Court. Later, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the school board had
the power to set regulations for hair length for their students.

HARLINGEN, TEXAS (2004) A 16-year-old student who had several cases of cancer in
his family wanted to grow his hair long and donate it to Locks of Love, a non-
profit organization that uses donated hair to create custom-fitted hairpieces for
children suffering from medical hair loss. School officials said this would violate
the policy that forbids males to grow hair that hangs below their shoulders.

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 183

The school superintendent said that the school district’s success is rooted in not
making exceptions to the policies in place.

Most of the negative reactions against long hair are directed at males. As noted
earlier, men are increasingly concerned about their appearance, including their
hair (Ricciardelli, 2011). For example, some men are concerned that baldness will
detract from their own attractiveness, but just as often, women report that it does
not. Negative reactions against hair that is too short (“microbuzzes”) are more
likely to be directed at females, unless, of course, the male is suspected of being a
skinhead. The motivation for negative responses to these extreme hairstyles by
some members of our culture is an important question but not our major concern
here. The fact that hair length, in and of itself, elicits feelings of either appreciation
or repugnance is the important point (see Figure 6-4).

Other body hair also seems to be important in judgments of attractiveness as
well. One study that looked at male facial hair from a historical perspective sug-
gests that men sport more facial hair when they want to be more attractive to
women, during times when marriage is valued and the competition for brides is
intense (Barber, 2001). But another study indicates that male beards may not be
much of an asset in obtaining a management-trainee position (Shannon & Stark,
2003). Although men with a lot of body hair are attractive to some women and
repulsive to others, women in California and New Zealand found men as more
and more unattractive as the amount of hair increased on the men’s chest and
abdomen (Dixson, Dixson, Bishop, & Parish, 2010). Nonetheless, it appears that
preference for male body hair among women might be shaped by experience. For
instance, Finnish women showed a preference for male torso hairiness that was cor-
related with that of their fathers and current romantic partners (Rantala, Pölkki, &
Rantala, 2010).

What about the hair on women’s bodies? For years, Playboy magazine neatly
airbrushed or did not display pubic hair on its models. Even magazines depicting
figures in nudist colonies were so well known for such alterations of pubic hair
that many subsequently advertised their magazines as unretouched. And the prac-
tice of shaving or trimming one’s pubic hair is common among college-aged
women (e.g., bikini or Brazilian wax) and men in the United States and Australia,
even though the reasons for doing so may be different for each sex (Smolak &
Murnen, 2011).

When nude photographs of the pop singer Madonna appeared in two national
magazines, many people commented more about the hair under her arms than
about her lack of clothing. Some liked the underarm hair; others did not. Many
people in the United States find underarm hair unattractive on women even though
this perception is not shared in other countries. It is reported that the Cacobo
Indians of the Amazon rain forest carefully trim and groom their head hair but
feel that other body hair is unattractive; they methodically eliminate eyebrows by
plucking them. The lack of eyebrows on the Mona Lisa is some evidence that at
one time it may have been desirable to pluck them for beauty’s sake.

The shape of our bodies, our skin color, our smell, and the hair on our bodies
are probably the major factors affecting our responses to our own and others’ per-
sonal appearance. Still, many other body features, in any given situation, may play

184 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

an important role; for example, freckles, moles, acne, and so-called beauty marks.
The numerous individuals who have had surgery to improve the appearance of
their noses, popularly dubbed “nose jobs,” must have felt that a large nose created
a sufficiently undesirable impression in face-to-face interaction to have it changed.
We now turn to how we alter our body’s appearance with clothing, decorations,
and artifacts such as eyeglasses, jewelry, and piercings.

FIGURE 6-4
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CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 185

OUR BODY: CLOTHES AND OTHER ARTIFACTS

As early as 1954, Hoult’s experiments verified what we take to be common sense
today—that you can change people’s perceptions of someone by changing that person’s
clothing. We do not have to look far to find evidence in our daily world to confirm
Hoult’s finding. The Associated Press once reported that the Lutheran Church believed
the attire worn by clergy in the pulpit was responsible for some churchgoers’ switching
denominations. Many tailors, manufacturers, and sellers of clothes claim to be
“wardrobe engineers” who structure their clients’ outward appearance to increase
their sales, assert their authority, or win more court cases. Career specialists tell us that
a job applicant’s attire and grooming are important indicators of his or her attitude
toward the company and that appropriate dress aids career advancement. Major
League Baseball recently passed a dress code that prohibits members of the media, such
as reporters, from wearing flip-flops, short skirts, and tank tops on the job. Apparently
the ruling authorities of Major League Baseball believe that outfits that show more skin
do not communicate the level of professionalism expected of reporters.

Some research supports the belief that clothes are an important factor in first
impressions. Males and females were asked what they notice about people when
they first meet them, and they were given 10 characteristics of appearance from
which to choose. Females noticed clothes first for both same- and opposite-sex
people; males also looked at clothes first for same-sex people, but for members of
the opposite sex, clothes took third place behind figure and face (“First Impres-
sions,” 1983). Positive first impressions of a person’s clothing style are also more
likely if the styles of the person being judged and the person doing the judging are
similar (Reid, Lancuba, & Morrow, 1997).

School dress codes also provide clear testimony that people believe clothes com-
municate important messages. The Associated Press reported in 1994 that several
Houston-area school districts outlawed what they called the grunge look. Students
were prohibited from wearing baggy pants; untucked shirts; piercings in the lips,
nose, and eyebrows; torn or ripped clothing; duster-type coats; or trench coats.
Earrings were prohibited for boys, and girls could not wear miniskirts; tank tops;
cutoffs; halter tops; strapless garments; or casual pants, dress slacks, or skirts worn
on hips. These school administrators, like administrators in other school districts
with similar dress and grooming restrictions, wanted to ban clothing that could
hide weapons, that might convey gang or drug-related messages, or that seemed sex-
ually provocative, and to encourage clothing that would convey what they believed
to be a safe, respectful, and positive learning environment. Although many second-
ary school students agreed with some of these restrictions, they did not perceive
others as detracting from a positive learning environment—for example, beards,
elongated arm holes on shirts, hair not its natural color, tank tops, and sunglasses.

We can make two important conclusions from the preceding examples: (1) right
or wrong, many people believe clothes communicate important messages; and
(2) clothing communicates most effectively when it is adapted to the wearer’s role
and the attendant surroundings. This second conclusion relates to the earlier testi-
mony about how to dress for job interviews and make positive first impressions. It
is also supported by research in which well-dressed participants and participants
who were dressed sloppily asked strangers for money to make a phone call. When
well dressed, those requesting aid received more cooperation in a clean, neatly

186 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

appointed airport, where most of the people were also well dressed; when partici-
pants were poorly dressed, the greatest cooperation was obtained from strangers in
a bus station, where the people and surroundings more closely resembled the partici-
pant’s state of poor dress (Hensley, 1981). Sometimes we are very much aware of
what attire fits the situation. Most people know, for example, that the business out-
fits of working women on television programs are sexier and often inappropriate for
women who do not work “on camera” (White, 1995). Other situations are not so
clear, as Victoria Clarke, then assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, found
out in 2003. She was criticized by some for wearing bright colors while answering
questions about the war in Iraq. Some, mainly men, argued that pink is not an
appropriate color in a time of war (Givhan, 2003).

Examine the clothing types shown in Figure 6-5. What are your first impressions?

FIGURE 6-5
Four clothing styles.

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CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 187

The following is a list of 20 characteristics that may be associated with one or more
of these clothing types. Check the spaces you think apply to specific clothing types,
and compare your impressions with those of your friends, family, and associates.

Males Females

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

1. Has smoked marijuana

2. Is shy, doesn’t talk much

3. Is a fraternity or sorority member

4. Is a Democrat

5. Is involved in athletics

6. Is married

7. Is generous

8. Drives a sports car

9. Is a Republican

10. Is vocationally oriented

11. Is active politically

12. Is dependable

13. Listens most to classical music

14. Lives with parents

15. Has long hair

16. Has many friends

17. Is intelligent

18. Is religious

19. Is open-minded

20. Is older

Did you find any similarities in your responses and those of your peers? Were there
any major differences between your responses and the responses of people with dis-
tinctly different backgrounds? Later in this chapter, we focus on what specific mes-
sages and impressions clothes communicate, but first let us consider the fundamental
question: Is clothing, in and of itself, an important factor in communicating?

FUNCTIONS OF CLOTHING

To understand the relationship between clothes and communication, we must be
familiar with the various functions clothes can fulfill: decoration, physical and
psychological protection, sexual attraction, self-assertion, self-denial, concealment,
group identification, persuasion, attitude, ideology, mood reflection or creation,
authority, and status or role display (Barnard, 2001). For example, Tiggermann
and Lacey (2009) reported that women’s dissatisfaction with their body was related
to the greater use of clothing for camouflage purposes.

188 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

Other functions are related to norm adherence and gender-role expectations
and opportunities. Because some widely accepted cultural rules and social norms
apply for combining certain colors and styles of dress, clothes can function to
inform the observer of a person’s knowledge or awareness of such rules (see “The
Lowdown on Fashion Trends”). Intrasex recreation that stems from gender-linked
opportunities may explain females’ greater interest in clothing. Griffiths (1988)
argues that females have fewer choices than do males for recreational activities.
Learning about fashion is something that females spend a lot of time on, especially
during adolescence through young adulthood. This activity may thus function as a
common, acceptable form of recreation for them (Bloch, 1993). It is interesting to
note that this behavior is even observed in virtual settings; Guadagno, Muscanell,
Okdie, Burk, and Ward (2011) found that women were more likely than men to
buy clothes/objects for their avatars.

Clothing that functions as a means of persuasion has been the subject of
numerous studies. An old but classic study tested the ability of people dressed in
“high-status” clothing to get unsuspecting bystanders to violate a traffic light.
Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton (1955) found pedestrians much more likely to
violate a traffic light at an intersection if another person violated it ahead of them,
especially if that other person’s attire represented a person with social status. Other
studies have found that a variety of requests—to make change, accept leaflets, give
detailed street directions, return money left in a phone booth, and so on—are more
easily accomplished if the requester is dressed to fit the situation or is dressed in
what would be considered high-status clothing (Fortenberry, MacLean, Morris, &
O’Connell, 1978; Levine, Bluni, & Hochman, 1998). Bickman (1974a, 1974b),
for example, had four men stop 153 adults on the streets of Brooklyn and make
various requests. The men’s clothing varied and included civilian clothing,

THE LOWDOWN ON FASHION TRENDS

What nonverbal message is she communicating? As a
college student in the United States, she might be
signaling her awareness and acceptance of fashion
norms concerning how she can identify herself as
female through style of dress. Interestingly, what is
acceptable today—partially exposed butt crack
among women wearing low-rise jeans—was not a
while ago. It used to be referred to as plumber’s butt,
a decidedly pejorative label. This suggests that non-
verbal messages linked to fashion may be subject to
shifting conformity pressures. Chances are one day
wearing pants that lowwill no longer be fashionable.
Women who continue to do so might then be

communicating a different nonverbal message to others, such as “I’m old-fashioned.” In fact, this might be
starting to happen already, as this fashion trend appears to be fading.

g
o
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en

sh
aw

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ig

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to
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P
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to

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 189

comprising a sport jacket and tie; a milkman’s white uniform; and a guard’s uni-
form, with a badge and insignia but no gun. The men asked pedestrians to pick
up a bag, to put a dime in a parking meter for someone else, or to stand on the
opposite side of a bus-stop sign. In each case, when dressed in the guard uniform,
the men received greater compliance. In fact, 83 percent of those who were asked
to put a dime in the parking meter obeyed, even after the person in the guard uni-
form had left the scene. Uniforms do help people identify the wearer’s probable
areas of expertise, and this knowledge can be persuasive. In public service
announcements, the same woman dressed as a nurse or as a businesswoman asked
for contributions to fight leukemia. The nurse was judged to be more knowledge-
able and received more pledged contributions (Lawrence & Watson, 1991). Uni-
formed police officers want their uniform to be persuasive, but it is sometimes
difficult because of the different goals associated with their job. It was debated
whether the same uniform can communicate approachability and friendliness as
well as authoritativeness in enforcing the law (Young, 1999). Lawyers have long
known that their clients’ manner of dress can have a persuasive impact on the judg-
ments made by a judge or jury. Some defendants have even been encouraged to put
on a ring that simulates a wedding ring to offset any prejudice against single people.

CLOTHING AS INFORMATION ABOUT THE PERSON

To make a list of the things invariably communicated by clothes would be impossi-
ble; such a list would vary with the demands of each particular situation, ethnic
group, time of day and era, region of the country, and, for women, even the phase
of their monthly ovulatory cycle. Women, for example, may choose sexier clothes
to wear when they are close to ovulating (Durante, Griskevicius, Hill, Perilloux, &
Li, 2011). Making the task even harder is the fact that any given item of clothing
can be worn in such a way as to convey multiple meanings. The design of a tie
may convey sophistication and status, but the way it is knotted or worn—tight or
loose, thrown over the shoulder—can send other messages.

Some of the personal attributes communicated by dress include sex, age, nation-
ality, relation to a companion (e.g., matching sweaters), socioeconomic status, iden-
tification with a specific group, occupational or official status, mood, personality,
attitudes, interests, and values. Clothes also set our expectations for the behavior of
the wearer. When the target of our observations is a person well known to us, that
knowledge will guide our interpretations of clothing. We may, for example, see radi-
cal clothing changes as representing temporary moods rather than lasting personality
changes. Obviously, the accuracy of such judgments varies considerably; it is signifi-
cant to note that the more concrete items such as age, sex, and socioeconomic status
are signaled with greater accuracy than more abstract qualities such as attitudes,
values, and personality. In recent years, the “message” T-shirt has become a vehicle
for communicating some attitudes that might otherwise be more difficult to assess.

EFFECTS OF CLOTHING ON THE WEARER

Up to this point, we have established that clothing communicates a variety of mes-
sages, and the people we interact with respond in various ways to those messages.
But what about the effect of clothing on the self-image of the wearer? Some

190 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

authors feel that clothes help satisfy an image of a person’s ideal self. Gibbins, in
his work with 15- and 16-year-old girls, for instance, found a definite relationship
between clothes that were liked and ratings of ideal self. Clothing was a means of
communicating messages about the wearer, and liking for a particular outfit was
“related to the extent to which this message is similar to the subject’s ideal self-
image” (Gibbins, 1969). In another fascinating discovery, we see a potential link
between clothing and self-concept. High school boys who had higher achievement
test scores but who wore clothing deemed “unacceptable” by their peers were
found to have lower grade-point averages than those who wore “acceptable” cloth-
ing (Hamilton & Warden, 1966). This latter group also found themselves in less
conflict and in more school activities. Clothes, then, may encourage or discourage
certain patterns of communication. A new outfit may promote feelings of gaiety
and happiness, people may feel less efficient in shoes that hurt, and self-
consciousness may result from wearing an “inappropriate” outfit, a common feel-
ing for adolescents trying to grapple with their own self-image. Some graduate
teaching assistants wear suits to class to distinguish themselves from their students
who frequently are almost the same age. Some report that such attire gives them
added confidence or assurance in dealing with their students, but their attire seems
to have relatively little effect on the perceptions of their students when compared
with their behavior (Gorham, Cohen, & Morris, 1999; Roach, 1997).

The mutual effects of clothing on the wearer and on the perceiver were amply
demonstrated in a study of the uniforms worn by teams in the National Hockey
League and National Football League. In this study, teams with black uniforms
ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties, and those teams that switched from
nonblack to black uniforms incurred more penalties after the switch. The authors sug-
gest that wearers of black uniforms perceive themselves as more aggressive and that
this, coupled with similar perceptions by referees, leads to more penalties (Frank &
Gilovich, 1988). In a study involving nurses, wearing “patient clothing” led to feelings
of comfort as well as stigmatization and depersonalization Edvardsson (2009).

The issue of wearing uniforms to school has gained a great deal of notoriety
in recent years. One of the prominent arguments for adopting school uniforms is
that the style of dress changes how wearers feel about themselves and, in turn,
changes behavior. One large-scale study of 10th-grade students did not find any
direct effects of uniforms on substance use, behavioral problems, or attendance
but did find a negative effect on achievement (Brunsma & Rockquemore, 1998).
For some students, uniforms provide a needed form of structure and control, and
they are a symbol of school unity, but it is not realistic to expect uniforms to
eliminate most of the offensive behaviors manifested by troubled teens. School
uniforms by themselves—without the support of students, teachers, school admin-
istrators, and parents—are not likely to accomplish much.

CLOTHING AND PERSONALITY

Rosenfeld and Plax (1977) wanted to determine whether attitudes toward clothing
are related to certain personality characteristics. Their study obtained responses
from both males and females on a questionnaire about clothing attitudes. A massive
battery of personality tests also was given to this group of 371 men and women.

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 191

The results of these personality tests were then matched with the scores on four
dimensions of the clothing questionnaire. Results are listed for males and females
who scored high or low on one of the dimensions: exhibitionism (“I approve of
skimpy bathing suits and wouldn’t mind wearing one myself”).

• High males were aggressive, confident, outgoing, unsympathetic, unaffection-
ate, moody, and impulsive, and had a low self-concept regarding their familial
interactions.

• High females were radical, detached from interpersonal relationships, and had
a high opinion of their own self-worth and moral/ethical beliefs.

• Low males were guarded about self-revelations. They had a low self-concept
regarding their familial interactions, and they believed people could be easily
manipulated.

• Low females were timid, sincere, accepting of others, and patient, and had a low
motivation for heterosexual relationships. They also had feelings of inferiority.

Can we accurately perceive some personality traits from the way people dress? It
appears that a person’s style of dress may offer diagnostic clues to his or her
personality traits (Back et al., 2010; Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1993a); Vazire,
Naumann, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2009). Stylish clothes and haircuts can lead us
to accurately see the trait of extraversion in others Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A.
(1993b). Fancy clothes can also contribute to the initial positivity that we feel
toward those whose personality traits can be problematic to us in the long run,
such as is the case with narcissists (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2010).

ARTIFACTS AND BODY DECORATIONS

People adorn themselves with badges, tattoos, masks, earrings, personal aids and
devices (glasses, watches), accessories (hats), and jewelry, among other things. We
must take these artifacts and decorations into consideration in any discussion of
clothing because they are also potential communicative stimuli. A ring worn on a
particular finger, a fraternity or sorority pin worn in a particular configuration,
and a single earring worn in a particular ear all may communicate something
about the nature of a person’s relationships and self-image.

We know that people around the world choose to decorate and alter their
bodies in a variety of ways, sometimes temporarily with body paint, sometimes
permanently with tattoos (see Figure 6-6 and Figure 6-7). The body can be scarred,
mutilated, or painted, and in the case of binding infants’ feet or heads, the bone
structure, reshaped. In our society, we circumcise many male children, and the
piercing of various body parts with rings has become increasingly popular with
young adults in recent years. And, as you probably have noticed on your campus,
the use of tattoos to decorate the body is widely practiced (Sanders, 1989).

We know people sometimes react strongly to a particular artifact or decora-
tion. These reactions may be positive, negative, or a mixture of the two depending
on your point of view. For example, lipstick may be used to enhance the redness of
females’ lips due to its positive association with greater femininity and attractive-
ness (Stephen & McKeegan, 2010). Due to concerns that jurors would not give a
man accused of murder a fair trial, his lawyer convinced the court to have his

192 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

client’s offensive tattoos cosmetically covered up during trial, suggesting that auto-
matically negative associations of guilt and criminality are linked to the presence of
specific tattoos. Lastly, Wohlrab, Fink, Kappeler, and Brewer (2009) observed that
tattooed avatars were viewed as more adventure-seeking, less inhibited, and having
more previous sexual partners than their nontattooed counterparts.

Of course, we should not assume that we know for certain how people will
respond to even the most common of personal artifacts. Consider the following ques-
tion: Do people who wear eyeglasses seem more intelligent to us? Surprisingly, given
the frequent depictions of smart but nerdy bespectacled people on TV, the answer to
this question is not clear (Harris, Harris, & Bochner, 1982; Lundberg & Sheehan,
1994; McKelvie, 1997). Furthermore, some of our strong reactions to artifacts may
be only short-lived. Once we have had a chance to interact with a person, our overall
impression of him or her is likely to be based on additional appearance-related
features as well as the verbal and nonverbal behavior that we see from him or her.

FIGURE 6-6
A face temporarily altered with body paint.

W
ad

d
el
l
Im

ag
es

/S
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u
tt
er
st
o
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.c
o
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CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 193

SUMMARY

Appearance and dress are part of the total non-
verbal stimuli that influence interpersonal
responses, and under some conditions, they are
the primary determinants of such responses.
Physical attractiveness may be influential in
determining whether a person is sought out,
and it may have a bearing on whether a person
is able to persuade or manipulate others. It is
often an important factor in the selection of
dates and marriage partners, it may determine
whether a defendant is deemed guilty or inno-
cent, and it may even have an effect on whether
a prisoner is able to decrease the antisocial
behavior responsible for his or her imprisonment.

It may be a major factor contributing to how
others judge personality, sexuality, popularity,
success, and often happiness. Fortunately for
some, and unfortunately for others, such judg-
ments begin early in life. Not all children are
conventionally beautiful. There are indications
that teachers not only make attractiveness judg-
ments about young children but also treat the
unattractive ones with fewer and less positive
communications. A sizable proportion of the
American public still thinks of the ideal man or
woman in terms of physical attractiveness.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that
physical attractiveness is a highly desirable

FIGURE 6-7
People around the world use tattoos to decorate their bodies.

P
at
ri
zi
a
T
ill
y/
S
h
u
tt
er
st
o
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.c
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194 PART III THE COMMUNICATORS

quality in interpersonal situations, other factors
temper these general findings. For instance, all
positive findings for attractiveness are based on
probabilities, not certainty. Many less attractive
people are not evaluated unfavorably. For exam-
ple, judgments can be tempered by who people
are seen with, the environment in which they are
judged, other communicative behavior they
engage in, or the time of life at which they are
evaluated. In addition, many attractiveness
studies have used photographs rather than live,
interacting human beings, and we know that the
dynamics of interaction influence perceptions.

In addition to the importance of general phys-
ical attractiveness in influencing the responses of
others, we have some information on stereotyped
responses to specific features: general body build,
facial appearance, skin color, odor, hair, and

clothes. These specific features may have a
profound influence on a person’s self-image
and hence on patterns of communication with
others.

The way we clothe our bodies may also com-
municate important messages in our work and
social lives, and it is one of the first things people
perceive about us. We can judge age, sex, and
socioeconomic status from clothing with more
accuracy than we can a person’s attitudes or
beliefs. Wearing attire that others perceive as
similar to theirs, appropriate to the situation, or
representative of an expert or authority figure
gives a persuasive element to clothing. We also
know that clothing and the other ways we deco-
rate our bodies—with jewelry, colors, tattoos,
and so on—affect how we feel about ourselves,
which in turn affects how we communicate.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Can our verbal behavior affect the way peo-
ple perceive our physical attractiveness?
What verbal behavior might cause people to
perceive us as less physically attractive?
What verbal behavior might make us appear
more physically attractive? Do the answers
to these questions vary with context? If so,
give examples.

2. Do you know romantic couples in which the
female is significantly less attractive than
the male? If so, develop photos that reflect
this difference, and ask people what it is
about the female that the male is likely
attracted to?

3. Do we see physical attractiveness differently
in photos and videos with no sound? Do
your own experiment: Obtain ratings of the
physical attractiveness of people in photos

and the same people shown interacting.
They should all interact with the same person
and talk about the same subject. How do you
explain the differences or the absence of
differences?

4. People have been refused employment or
fired from their jobs because of perceived
problems with their height, weight, odor,
skin color, clothing, hair, or general attrac-
tiveness. Under what conditions if any do
you think such characteristics are legitimate
reasons for not hiring a person or for firing
an employee?

5. Do you think a person can be physically
attractive in one situation but not in another?
Test this idea with both males and females by
showing photos of the same people in differ-
ent situations.

CHAPTER 6 THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 195

THE COMMUNICATORS’
BEHAVIOR

[ P A R T IV ]

Most of our nonverbal behavior involves change or movement. We exhibit different
gestures, postures, and body movements during an encounter; sometimes we touch
others, and sometimes we do not. Our face, eyes, and voice also are displayed in
various patterns. Part IV examines these behaviors individually, but in everyday
conversation, these signals work in concert with one another to communicate
various messages. The ways various nonverbal signals work together is the subject
of Part V.

197

THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE

ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 7 ]

Sapir’s view, quoted above, aptly characterized the prevailing view of gestures
during the first part of the 20th century. If he were alive today, his assessment
would no doubt be somewhat different. Spoken language and gestures are commonly
acknowledged as building blocks of human interaction, both in informal conversa-
tion and in more formal public discourse. But unlike language, gestures received rela-
tively little scholarly attention until the last part of the 20th century. Kendon (1981a)
identified only six scholarly books on gesture published between 1900 and 1979 in
the English language. Now, however, gestures are carefully scrutinized by scholars
from around the world, and the academic journal Gesture, specifically devoted to
gesture research, was launched in 2001. As a result, our knowledge of how people
use and respond to gestures has greatly increased.

Even though gestures are the primary focus of this chapter, it should be noted
that the way people walk and their posture may also play an important role in
communicating information to themselves and others. Several studies have shown
that various emotions such as sadness, anger, and happiness can be accurately iden-
tified by a person’s gait (Janssen et al., 2008; Montepare, Goldstein, & Clausen,
1987; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1993; Montepare & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988).
The amount of arm swing, stride length, heavy-footedness, and walking speed play
a central role in these perceptions. Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010) showed that a
state of greater dominance (e.g., elevated testosterone levels, increased feelings of
power) was induced in those who assumed a high-power (open and expansive) pos-
ture compared to those who assumed a low-power (closed and contractive) posture.

We respond to gestures with an extreme alertness and, one might say, in
accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known
by none, and understood by all.

—Edward Sapir

199

Here, postural cues likely informed that person how he or she should feel—more
versus less powerful or in control—with biological and psychological changes
occurring that were in keeping with each felt state. We also derive information
from observing another person’s posture. For example, Hadjikhani and de Gelder
(2003) found that perceptions of fear communicated solely by a person’s body,
with the expressor’s facial features blurred, activated the same areas of a perceiver’s
brain that are activated when responding to facial expressions of emotion. And
Gilbert, Martin, and Coulson (2011) demonstrated that people can identify an
angry body posture more quickly than a happy body posture located in a neutral
crowd. This finding pertaining to postural cues is in line with other research show-
ing that we have an attentional bias for threatening nonverbal cues, such as angry
faces and insulting gestures (Flaisch, Hacker, Renner, & Schupp, 2011; Hansen &
Hansen, 1988).

Typically, gestures are thought of as arm and hand movements, but head ges-
tures are also well known. In fact, some head gestures seem to transcend culture
and language. In some studies, Arabic, Bulgarian, Korean, and African-American
speakers all used lateral head movements to accompany expressions of inclusivity,
changed their head position for each item on a list, oriented their head toward a
specific location when referring to absent or abstract entities, and used head nods
to elicit active listening nods from their listeners (McClave, 2000; McClave, Kim,
Tamer, & Mileff, 2007). Nevertheless, as you will soon discover, culture matters
with respect to the use and interpretation of gestures. Kita (2009) has identified
four cultural factors linked to such differences in gestures, including the meaning
ascribed to emblems, which we discuss shortly, as well as how language is used to
express spatial information. Normally gestures are produced without bodily touch,
but touching does occur. For example, a pointing gesture may touch the speaker’s
own body or that of the listener. The movements involved while actually perform-
ing tasks such as grooming, smoking, eating, drawing, or hammering a nail are not
considered gestures, but arm and hand movements that allude to and represent the
performance of such behaviors are definitely considered gestures. In fact, people
whose daily work involves a variety of manual manipulations, like the work of a
car mechanic, may develop a gestural repertoire that emanates from this work
(Streeck, 2002).

Gestures perform many intrapersonal and interpersonal functions. One way of
thinking about this is to ask the question, “Who benefits from gestures, the person
doing the gesturing or the person being gestured to during an interaction?” The
answer is both. However, who benefits the most in any given interaction depends
on a variety of factors. For example, gestures help speakers retrieve certain words
or describe objects that move as part of their function, and thus serve a greater
intrapersonal function. Listeners may benefit more from a speaker’s gestures when
these gestures add emphasis or clarity to speech, help characterize and make mem-
orable the content of speech, and act as forecasters of forthcoming speech; such
gestures serve a greater interpersonal function. Hostetter (2011) reviewed a number
of studies and concluded that the speaker’s gestures do enhance a listener’s compre-
hension of the message, especially when a gesture is not redundant with the speech
or the person being gestured to is a child as opposed to an adult. Hostetter also
found that abstract ideas are harder to communicate via gestures. Of course, we

200 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

must recognize that gestures are going to be equally important to both interactants
at times, such as when they regulate the flow and rhythm of an interaction between
the two people. One example would be gestures that communicate the following:
“I’m done talking; it’s your turn.”

Many types of gestures are commonly employed in everyday interaction, and
these gestures have been categorized in many ways (McNeill, 2000; Morris, 1977,
1994; Kendon, 2004). This chapter uses a classification system based on the extent
to which a gesture is dependent on speech for its meaning. This is a useful dis-
tinction, and we can learn a lot about gestures by classifying them as either speech
independent or speech dependent. At the same time, it is important to recognize the
difficulties in neatly categorizing a behavior which, on the surface, may seem rela-
tively uncomplicated. Take, for example, the head shake (Kendon, 2002). Sometimes
we use the head shake as a speech-independent gesture meaning “no,” although a
side-to-side head wobble in parts of India and Bulgaria means just the opposite.
And while a “no” meaning can be communicated without speech, sometimes people
will say “no” during the shake. The meaning of the shake has a greater dependence
on the accompanying speech when it is used to signal disapproval or doubt, which
may occur while saying “Well, I guess I could talk to her ….” In addition, the head
shake also accompanies statements to underscore intensity or impossibility, as in
“You just wouldn’t believe how buff he was.” The head shake, like all the gestures
discussed in this chapter, can be used and interpreted in different ways, depending
on the way it is enacted and the context in which it occurs. With this in mind, let us
examine those gestures that are less dependent on speech for their meaning.

SPEECH-INDEPENDENT GESTURES

Speech-independent gestures are also known as emblems (Ekman, 1976, 1977) or
autonomous gestures (Kendon, 1984, 1989a,b). They are nonverbal acts that have
a direct verbal translation or dictionary definition, usually consisting of a word or
two or a phrase. There is high agreement among members of a culture or subcul-
ture on the verbal translation of these signals. These gestures are the least depen-
dent on speech for their meaning and most commonly occur as a single gesture.
The “ring gesture” in Figure 7-1 is an example of a speech-independent gesture
found in several cultures (see “Decoding Decisions”).

Children are able to decode some of these speech-independent gestures by the
time they are 3 years old, and this ability increases dramatically by age 5 (Kumin &
Lazar, 1974; Michael & Willis, 1968, 1969). In one study, 4-year-olds of both
sexes accurately decoded the emblems for “yes,” “no,” “come here,” “quiet,”
“good-bye,” “two,” “I won’t listen,” “blowing a kiss,” “I’m going to sleep,” and
“I won’t do it.” But none of the 4-year-olds was able to accurately decode “crazy.”
Generally, children at this age understand and decode accurately more speech-
independent gestures than they actually use in their own interactions. Yet, with
prompting and support by caregivers, babies who have not learned to talk can effec-
tively use between 10 and 60 communicative signs (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1996).

Adult awareness of speech-independent gestures is about the same as that of
word choice. It is a behavior we are usually very conscious of enacting. These ges-
tures often are produced with the hand, but not exclusively. A nose wrinkle may

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 201

say “I’m disgusted!” or “Phew! It stinks!” To say “I don’t know,” “I’m helpless,”
or “I’m uncertain,” we might turn both palms up, shrug the shoulders, or do both
simultaneously. Ekman believes that facial emblems differ from facial expressions
of emotion in two ways: They are more stylized; and they are enacted for either a
longer or shorter duration than the emotional expression. When people talk about
their experiences, they may portray certain feelings emblematically by selecting and
emphasizing a single feature of a multifeatured facial expression of emotion. Exam-
ples include smiling to indicate happiness, and mechanically dropping the jaw or
dramatically raising the eyebrows to indicate surprise.

In some cultures, speech-independent gestures are strung together to form a
sequential message, but this is unusual in the United States. But it could happen if
you were on the phone when a visitor enters your office and you needed to indicate
the following in succession: “Wait a minute,” “come in,” and “sit down.” Sometimes
an entire system of speech-independent gestures develops, such as with underwater
divers, umpires, and television directors. Even though these gestures form a system of
signals related to performing a specific task, such systems can grow beyond the bound-
aries of those tasks. In the sawmills of British Columbia, for example, the noise level
made spoken communication very difficult. A system of task-related gestures devel-
oped that eventually came to include messages not associated with the tasks of the
sawmill (Meissner & Philpott, 1975). Gesture systems not limited to a specific task
are known as sign languages. Sign language is commonly thought of as a form of
communication for the hearing impaired, but sign languages also develop in other
contexts. Examples include religious orders in which vows of silence are taken as well
as social situations in which some are forbidden to speak to others, such as has been
reported for Armenian wives in the presence of their husbands (Kendon, 1983).

Speech-independent gestures may be used when verbal channels are blocked or
fail, but they also are used during verbal interaction. A person may be telling the
story of another person’s strange behavior and may conclude by making a gesture

FIGURE 7-1
The ring gesture signifies “A-okay” or “good” in the United States as a speech-independent
gesture. It may stand for “zero” or “worthless” in other cultural contexts.

th
ep

ri
n
t/i
st
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p
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g
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e
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ar
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in
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A
ll
R
ig
h
ts

R
es

er
ve

202 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

that communicates “he’s crazy.” In this case, the circular gesture at the side of the
head is a substitute for the statement. This gesture also could be used to complete an
utterance: “If you ask me, I think ….” In this case, the verbalizations are redundant
and unnecessary for understanding the message being communicated. In this example,
the speech-independent gesture occurred at the end of a speaker’s turn, but others may
occur at the beginning. Ekman’s study of the “shrug” emblem finds that it occurs most
often at the beginning of a speaker’s turn (see Figure 7-2). Listeners may also use
speech-independent gestures to comment on or qualify what the speaker is saying.
“Yes” and “no” gestures are common listener responses during another’s speech.

Thus, even though speech-independent gestures can communicate messages
without attendant speech, their meanings are still influenced by context. Giving
someone “the finger” can be humorous or insulting, depending on who performs

DECODING DECISIONS

How would you interpret these gestures? As
discussed already, there is generally high agree-
ment about the verbal meaning of speech-
independent gestures in a culture. Nevertheless,
even within a culture, there may be uncertainty
regarding the meaning of such gestures. Contex-
tual, regional, and ethnic background factors may
alter the emotional valence or verbal translation
of them. In the picture on the left, the “L” shape
near the forehead means “loser” in the United States. As a college student, you probably know that someone
might do that in jest if the goal is to playfully tease another person about not succeeding at something he or she
should have. It also might be a display of derision about another person’s lack of success or low station in life.

As reported in the news in 2006, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia cupped a hand under his chin
and flicked his fingers out in response to a question about his critics. This speech-independent gesture is
shown in the picture on the right. For the Italian Scalia, this was meant to signal that these critics were not
worthy of his consideration. For others who were present, though, Scalia was signaling that he would say
“f**k off” to them. If you had to rule on this one, what decoding decision would you have made?

S
co

tt
G
ri
es

se
l/P

h
o
to
s.
co

B
o
st
o
n
H
er
al
d

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 203

it, who the target is, and what other behaviors accompany it. Facial expressions
and eye movement accompanying speech-independent gestures are likely to expand
the range of possible meanings associated with a hand gesture. And it is always
possible that the meaning associated with a gesture in the absence of speech will
be modified if it is accompanied by speech, including those occasions when the
accompanying speech is seemingly redundant. Some of these emblematic gestures
are specifically adapted to particular subgroups within a given culture. In the
United States, for example, the finger-wag gesture indicating “no-no” is used pri-
marily when adults are addressing children; the “shame on you” gesture seems lim-
ited to usage by children (see Figure 7-3).

Sherzer’s (1974) detailed work on the pointed-lip gesture used by the San
Blas Cuna of Panama and the thumbs-up gesture used by urban Brazilians illustrates
how gestures may have a general meaning that is modified by context. For example,
the thumbs-up gesture has a general meaning of “good” or “positive” (see Figure 7-4).
Context, however, expands the range of its meanings. It can be used to indicate
understanding the point of what someone said or did; to acknowledge a favor granted;
to greet someone; to indicate knowledge of the next move in an interactional sequence
and who is going to perform it; to request permission to carry out an action, as when a
customer signals a waiter about the availability of a table; and as a sexual insult.

Sometimes the context does not affect the meaning so much as the slight
changes in the way the gesture is performed. When the forefinger is extended, with
the rest of the hand in a fist, and is held motionless about 12 inches in front of
one’s chest, the meaning is “wait a minute.” When the finger repeatedly moves up

FIGURE 7-2
The shrug gesture.

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204 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

and down, the meaning shifts to one of emphasis or reprimand. When the same
finger and hand are put perpendicularly in front of the lips, it means “be quiet.”

There are published lists of emblematic gestures for cultures around the
world (Armstrong & Wagner, 2003; Axtell, 1991; Barakat, 1973; Creider, 1977;
Johnson, Ekman, & Friesen, 1975; Morris, Collett, Marsh, & O’Shaughnessy, 1979;
Poggi, 2002; Saitz & Cervenka, 1972; Sparhawk, 1978; Trupin, 1976; Wylie,
1977). Kendon’s (1981b) analysis of over 800 emblematic gestures contained in
some of these lists revealed three broad categories of meaning that accounted for
80 percent of the speech-independent gestures observed in the United States,

FIGURE 7-3
Finger emblems used in the United States for “no” (left) and “shame on you” (right).

FIGURE 7-4
The thumbs-up gesture by 2008 presidential candidate John McCain.

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Colombia, France, southern Italy, and Kenya and 66 percent of those found in Iran.
These categories were (1) interpersonal control, (2) announcement of one’s current state
or condition, and (3) an evaluative response to the actions or appearance of another.
Ekman’s studies of five cultures indicate that each has emblematic gestures for greeting
and departing, replying, directing locomotion (all forms of interpersonal control), insult-
ing or evaluating another’s actions or appearance, referring to a person’s physical and
affective state, or announcing a person’s current condition or state. As yet, no speech-
independent gestures have been found that are made the same and have the same mean-
ing in every culture studied. Future research may identify some, however. The most
likely candidates are gestures having to do with affirmation and negation; stopping; not
knowing; and sleeping, eating, and drinking (i.e., functions all human beings share).

Far more common are examples of gestures of similar form that differ in meaning
from culture to culture. From 1877 through 1878, Bulgaria and Russia combined
forces to fight Turkey. The alliance discovered a real problem in that the Russian way
of saying “no” was to shake the head from side to side, but a very similar Bulgarian
gesture, a head sway or wobble, meant “yes” (Jacobson, 1972). The ring gesture,
with the thumb and forefinger touching to make a circle (see Figure 7-1), indicates
“you’re worth zero” in France and Belgium; “money” in Japan; “asshole” in parts of
southern Italy; and in Greece and Turkey, it is an insulting or vulgar sexual invitation.
Of course, to many U.S. residents, it means “A-okay.” Things certainly would not be
“A-okay” if the ring gesture was used in cultures that attach other meanings to it.

The thumb signals the number 1 for Germans, whereas it does not for French or
English Canadians (Pika, Nicoladis, & Marentette, 2009). The thumbs-up gesture
pictured in Figure 7-4 is usually decoded as positive, meaning “good” or “okay” in
the United States, but in the Middle East, it is an obscene gesture. The thumb
inserted between the index and middle fingers—the “fig” gesture—is an invitation
to have sex in Germany, Holland, and Denmark but is a wish for good luck or pro-
tection in Portugal and Brazil (see Figure 7-5). During World War II, Winston
Churchill made the “V for victory” gesture world famous, and it continues to mean
“victory” in some cultures. But if the palm is facing toward the performer, it is a sex-
ual insult in Great Britain—a meaning former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
learned the hard way, when she essentially said “screw you” to a crowd of people,
thinking she was giving a sign of victory. In the United States, the British meaning
of sexual insult is not associated with the “V” sign facing inward; it simply means
“two.” Nor is there any distinction the other way—with the palm facing outward—
between the “V” for victory and the “V” for peace, a meaning that gained popular-
ity during the anti–Vietnam War protests of the 1960s (see Figure 7-6).

FIGURE 7-5
The “fig” gesture.

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206 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 7-6
(a) “V” gesture used as an insult in Britain and (b) illustrated by Winston Churchill. (c) Richard
Nixon makes the “V for victory” gesture at the 1968 Republican Convention in Miami.
(d) People at an anti-Persian Gulf War demonstration in Washington, DC, using the “V”
gesture to signify “peace.”

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The vertical horn sign pictured in Figure 7-7 is normally decoded “cuckold” in
Portugal, Spain, Italy, and places in Central and South America (“cuckold” mean-
ing a man whose wife has cheated on him). Students from cultures in which this
gesture indicates “your wife has been unfaithful to you, and you are either too stu-
pid to know it or not man enough to satisfy her” would indeed be surprised if they
were to attend the University of Texas. Here, and throughout Texas, the horn sign
is used to show identification with the university and represents school spirit. It is
modeled after longhorn cattle and literally represents the University of Texas
Longhorns. Consider the reaction of people who associate the sign with “cuckold”
viewing a University of Texas football game with 85,000 fans making the sign
vigorously, repeatedly, and in unison! Another sign that is similar, but has
the thumb thrust out instead of tucked in, is decoded by many people around the
world as “I love you.” The origin of this sign is in the American Sign Language
(ASL) finger spelling used by deaf communicators.

Many autonomous gestures have no equivalent in other cultures. In France, for
example, one can signal drunkenness by making a fist around the nose and twist-
ing. Many messages have different gestural forms from culture to culture. Notice
how the gestures for suicide in Figure 7-8 reflect the most common methods of
suicide in each culture. The number of speech-independent gestures used within a
culture may vary considerably, from fewer than 100 in the United States to more
than 250 identified with Israeli students.

FIGURE 7-6 (continued)

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208 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 7-7
(a) The vertical horn gesture. (b) The “I love you” sign. (c) University of Texas football player,
Colt McCoy, gives the school’s “Hook ’em Horns” gesture. (d) Miss America 1995, Heather
Whitestore, a former Miss Alabama, walks down the runway and signs “I love you” to the
crowd after winning the 74th annual pageant in Atlantic City. (e) The double horn gesture in
Naples means “cuckolded.”

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 209

One of the problems in comparing studies of speech-independent gestures
across cultures is the lack of a uniform method for identifying them. Johnson,
Ekman, and Friesen’s (1975) study of American emblematic gestures offered a sys-
tematic procedure that other researchers may want to use. The authors asked mem-
bers of a particular group or culture to produce emblems associated with a list of
verbal statements and phrases. They reported that after about 10 or 15 informants
had been tested, a great majority of the emblems had been identified. To qualify as
a “verified” emblem, at least 70 percent of the encoders must have performed the
action in a similar way. The emblems similarly encoded were then presented to a
group of decoders, who were asked to identify the meaning of the gestures and the
extent to which they reflect natural usage in everyday conversation. Gestures used
primarily for games like charades normally were not considered “natural.”
Inventions and performances that require speech were also eliminated. At least
70 percent of the decoders also had to match the encoder’s meaning and judge the
gesture to be used naturally in everyday communication situations. The index fin-
ger pointed at the head can mean “smart” or “stupid” depending on the context,
but if 70 percent of those in a given community say it means “stupid” without
accompanying contextual information, then this is considered a verified emblem

FIGURE 7-7 (continued)

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210 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

for “stupid” among this group. It does not, however, prevent context from chang-
ing the meaning.

SPEECH-RELATED GESTURES

Speech-related gestures, sometimes called illustrators or co-speech gestures, are
directly tied to or accompany speech. The meanings and functions of these
gestures are revealed as we examine how they relate to the attendant spoken
language. Attempts to classify the various types of speech-related gestures have
used different terminology (Efron, 1941, 1972; Ekman, 1977; Kendon, 1989a,b;
McNeill, 1992, 2000; Streeck & Knapp, 1992), but four common types have
emerged:

1. Gestures related to the speaker’s referent, concrete or abstract
2. Gestures indicating the speaker’s relationship to the referent
3. Gestures that act as visual punctuation for the speaker’s discourse
4. Gestures that assist in the regulation and organization of the spoken

dialogue between two interactants

FIGURE 7-8
Cultural variations in suicide gestures: the South Fore, Papua New Guinea (top left); Japan
(bottom); the United States (top right).

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 211

REFERENT-RELATED GESTURES

As we talk, we use gestures to characterize the content of our speech. Sometimes
these movements depict fairly concrete referents, whereas other times, vague and
abstract ideas.

Pointing movements, for instance, can help indicate a specific person, place, or
thing being discussed. In toddlers, the pointing may involve the whole hand or only
the index finger depending on what the child is attempting to communicate (Cochet
& Vauclair, 2010). The referent may be in the immediate conversational environ-
ment or may be more distant, as is the case when an adult says, “And where did
you come from before that?” while pointing his or her finger in the direction of the
referred-to place. Gestures that draw the referent’s shape or movement, and ges-
tures that depict spatial relationships, can be used to help a listener visualize fea-
tures associated with concrete referents. When you say, “I had to bend the branch
way back” or “she was eating her food like an animal” while illustrating how these
events occurred, the gesture bears a close relationship to the concrete semantic con-
tent of your speech. When referent-related gestures outline the referent by drawing
a picture in space, such as making an hourglass figure to signify a shapely woman,
it may be asked whether this is truly speech related. The test for determining
whether such a picture may be speech independent is if 70 percent of the members
of the usage community respond with “shapely woman” when shown the gesture
portrayal without any speech context.

More abstract referents are characterized when we sketch the path or direc-
tion of an idea in the air, when we make a series of circular movements with the
hand or arm to suggest we mean more than the specific words used, and when
we use expansion and contraction gestures such as those of an accordion player
to indicate the breadth of the subject being discussed. Sometimes we represent
abstract content via gestural metaphors. For example, cup-shaped gestures in the
following sample of discourse (McNeill, 1985) represent containers of what could
be supposed. When they spread apart, they seem to convey the idea that anything is
possible, and their sudden disappearance suggests that what might have been did
not happen:

“Even though one might [both hands form cups and spread wide apart] have supposed
[cups vanish abruptly] ….”

Thus far the focus has been on the speech-related referents of our gestures.
However, we also gesture when we are trying to solve a problem in silence. These
co-thought gestures reflect our internal thought processes and are not necessarily
intended to communicate information to others. Chu and Kita (2011) found that
when participants were experiencing difficulties in solving a spatial-visualization
problem, such as a mental rotation task, their co-thought gestures went up, and
that these gestures eventually helped them to solve more problems.

GESTURES INDICATING A SPEAKER’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE REFERENT

These gestures comment on the speaker’s orientation to the referent rather than char-
acterizing the nature of the thing being talked about. The positioning of the palms
can show quite different orientations toward one’s own message (see Figure 7-9).

212 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

For example, palms up show more uncertainty (“I think” or “I’m not sure”), palms
down show certainty (“clearly” or “absolutely”), palms out and facing the listener
show assertion (“Let me say this” or “Calm down”), and palms facing the speaker
allude to embracing a concept (“I’ve got this great idea …”). Palm positions can have
other speech-related associations, such as a speaker’s palms-up gesture when pleading,
begging, or even anticipating closeness in greetings.

Oscillating hand movements suggest that a speaker is unsure or could go either
way. Charles de Gaulle, former president of France, was noted for his grasping
gesture, which many felt signified his desire to control the subject under discussion
(see Figure 7-10).

FIGURE 7-9
Palm gestures.

FIGURE 7-10
Former French President Charles de Gaulle’s characteristic gesture, perceived by many as “grasping
for control of an idea.”

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 213

PUNCTUATION GESTURES

Punctuation gestures accent, emphasize, and organize important segments of the
discourse. Such a segment may be a single word or a larger utterance unit, such as
a summary or a new theme. When these gestures are used to emphasize a particular
word or phrase, they often coincide with the primary voice stress. Punctuation
gestures can also organize the stream of speech into units. When we speak of a
series of things, we may communicate discreteness by rhythmic chopping hand ges-
tures, for example, “We must consider A (gesture), B (gesture), and C (gesture).”
Sometimes a single chopping gesture after C indicates C will be considered sepa-
rately, or it may mean that A, B, and C will be considered as a group. A slight
downward movement of the head may accompany the hand gestures. Pounding
the hand or fist in the air or on another object also acts as a device for adding
emphasis and visually underlining a particular point being made (see Figure 7-11).

Punctuation can, of course, be accomplished with body movements other than
the hands. The “eye flash” (not the “eyebrow flash” discussed in Chapters 2 and
10) is one such display (Bull & Connelly, 1985; Walker & Trimboli, 1983). The
momentary widening of a speaker’s eyelids, without involving the eyebrows, has
been found to occur most often in conjunction with spoken adjectives and is used
for emphasis.

INTERACTIVE GESTURES

Thus far, the gesture categories discussed have focused on the content of the speaker’s
monologue. Interactive gestures acknowledge the other interactant relative to the
speaker and help regulate and organize the dialogue itself. Because they are directed
at the ongoing involvement and shared roles of the interactants, these gestures occur
only in the presence of others. The main function of interactive gestures, then, is to
include the interaction partner in the dialogue. This is usually done through some
form of pointing gesture in the partner’s direction.

Bavelas (1994) and her colleagues (Bavelas, Chovil, Coates, & Roe, 1995;
Bavelas, Chovil, Lawrie, & Wade, 1992) identified four different types of interac-
tive gestures and the functions they serve.

FIGURE 7-11
Punctuation gestures.

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214 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

1. The speaker and the person spoken to are in the process of exchanging
information so it is natural that this relationship be acknowledged with several
types of gestures that acknowledge the delivery of information. These are
called delivery gestures. These gestures may refer to the delivery of new infor-
mation as in the gestures accompanying “Here’s my point” in Figure 7-12.
They may also accompany information that the speaker thinks the addressee
already knows with the meaning, “As you know …” Other forms of delivery
gestures are also interpreted by the addressee as asides (e.g., “Oh, and by the
way …) or an indication that the speaker is asking the addressee to extra-
polate additional information not given as in “or whatever.”

a. General delivery: “Here’s my point.”

c. Seeking help: “What’s the word . . . ?”

b. Citing: “As you said earlier . . .”

d. Giving turn: “You go ahead.”

FIGURE 7-12
Interactive gestures.

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 215

2. Several types of speaker gestures refer to a previous comment made by
the addressee. These are called citing gestures with one type illustrated in
Figure 7-12 when the speaker says, “As you said earlier ….” Citing gestures
also acknowledge an addressee’s response to a speaker and essentially mean
“I see that you understood me.”

3. Some interactive gestures are designed to seek a specific response and are appro-
priately called seeking gestures. For example, in Figure 7-12 the speaker’s ges-
ture is seeking help in identifying a word or phrase he or she wants to use. The
“thinking face” is a facial gesture that may also elicit participation from one or
more addressees in a speaker’s word or idea search. Sometimes, however, the
speaker is seeking agreement from the addressee rather than help and the gesture
means, “Do you agree?” Gestures that query the addressee’s understanding are
the verbal equivalent of “ya know?” at the end of a unit of talk. While seeking
gestures invite responses from an audience, the Goodwins point out that self-
touching contributes to a state of conversational disengagement or the opposite
of inclusion (Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986).

4. Turn gestures, as noted in more detail in Chapter 12, occur during the
exchange of speaking turns. This may signal “you go ahead and talk” as illus-
trated in Figure 7-12, but turn gestures may also accompany the taking of a
turn or an awkward transition when no one is assuming the turn at talk.

Although the preceding fourfold classification of speech-related gestures is useful for
understanding how gestures and speech work together, some gestures may not be limited
to a single function. For example, a speaker’s relationship with the referent may be highly
intense. Some of the gestural displays illuminating this relationship, however, may also
emphasize or punctuate certain specific message units. Nevertheless, we must recognize
that different types of speech-related gestures exist that may serve different functions for
the parties involved. Efron’s (1941, 1972) cross-cultural comparison shows how helpful
gestural distinctions can be. He found that as southern Italians talked, they made exten-
sive use of gestures that had a close resemblance to their referent (e.g., pictorial),
whereas eastern European Jews made very little use of such gestures. It seems reasonable
that different cultures value different kinds of information, and gestures vary accord-
ingly. Even the number of gestures in all categories may vary from culture to culture.

GESTURE FREQUENCY

The frequency of gesturing can be influenced by several key factors.

1. We would expect to find more gestures in face-to-face communication and when
the speaker expects the recipient will see his or her message (Alibali & Don,
2001; Bavelas, Kenwood, Johnson, & Phillips, 2002; Cohen, 1977; Cohen &
Harrison, 1973). We do, of course, use some gestures when our listeners cannot
see us, for example, when talking on a cell phone (see Figure 7-13). We may do
so because the gesturing helps us retrieve a particular word from our mental
lexicon or describe an object (Hadar, 1989; Pine, Gurney, & Fletcher, 2010).
Continued communication without visible contact, however, may reduce the
number of gestures we use in general.

2. Gestures are also likely to increase when a speaker is enthusiastic and involved
in the topic being discussed.

216 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

3. We would expect speakers concerned about their listeners’ comprehension of
their messages to use more gestures, too—especially in difficult or complex
communicative situations, as when the listener is perceived as not paying
attention, the listener is not comprehending, or the speaker cannot find
the right words to express an idea (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002;
Goldin-Meadow, 2003; Holler & Beattie, 2003). Even though exposure to
gestures that accompany speech may often facilitate more accurate decoding
on the part of the listener, there are some occasions when the contribution is
negligible (Krauss, Dushay, Chen, & Rauscher, 1995).

4. Speakers trying to dominate conversations would be expected to use more
speech-related gestures.

5. Speech content also plays a role in the number of gestures used. When
answering questions about manual activities—such as “Explain how to change
a car or bicycle tire,” or “Explain how to wrap a box for a present”—we
would expect more gestures than when answering questions about visual or
abstract images (Feyereisen & Havard, 1999).

6. A communicator’s cognitive abilities can affect gesture production. In one
study, the rate of gesturing by speakers with a combination of low phonemic
fluency and high spatial skill was especially high (Hostetter & Alibali, 2007).

7. Cultural background is related to gesture frequency. Americans, for instance,
gesture more than do the Chinese when telling stories (So, 2010).

FIGURE 7-13
Gesture made while speaking on the telephone.

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 217

8. When people share information that has been learned verbally and visually,
they use more representational gestures compared to when they learn this
information only verbally (Hostetter & Skirving, 2011). Thus, having a mental
image of the to-be-shared information may facilitate gesturing.

As we note in the next section, speech and gesture are intimately linked, and
it would be hard for anyone to abstain completely from gesturing while speaking
for very long. Even if it were possible, it would be ill advised, because gestures
play an important role in communication and cognition. An experiment reported
in a 1931 Soviet publication asked subjects to talk while inhibiting all gestures of
the head, hands, face, and body. It is reported that no one was able to carry out
the instructions completely, and “the speech … lost its intonation, stress and
expressiveness; even the very selection of words needed for the expression of
content became labored; there was a jerkiness to the speech, and a reduction of
the number of words used” (Dobrogaev, 1931). Without gestures, speakers also
would have to increase the number of phrases and words used to describe spatial
relations and would probably pause more often (Graham & Heywood, 1976).
Rimé (1982) found speakers’ fluency to be adversely affected when their gestures
were restricted. Lastly, adults and children enjoy certain cognitive and memory
benefits from gesturing; for example, gesturing can help children learn a new
concept, recall information they had previously learned, and verbally report
more details of a story they are not familiar with (Cameron & Xu, 2011; Cook,
Mitchell, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008; Cook, Yip, & Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Ping
& Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Stevanoni & Salmon, 2005). Listeners are also likely
to experience a serious loss from not seeing gestures because gestures, like
speech, are listener adapted (Beattie & Shovelton, 2006; de Ruiter, 2007). For
example, when a speaker talks to others who have experienced the event the
speaker is talking about, the speaker’s gestures are smaller and less precise than
when the same event is communicated to people who have not experienced the
event (Gerwing & Bavelas, 2004). Since gestures are listener adapted, it is no
surprise that they often facilitate comprehension and help listeners access linguis-
tic cues in their memory (Berger & Popelka, 1971; Church, Garber, & Rogalski,
2007; Rogers, 1978; Woodall & Folger, 1981). Actually, a more accurate state-
ment is that gestures synchronized with and supporting the vocal/verbal stream
increase comprehension. This is accomplished through the functions we have
outlined by vivifying ideas, intensifying points, maintaining listener attention
and focus, and marking the organizational structure of the discourse. Gestures
out of synchrony with the vocal/verbal stream are distracting and interfere with
listener comprehension (Woodall & Burgoon, 1981). Experiments conducted by
Krauss and his colleagues (Kraus et al., 1995; Krauss, Chen, & Chawla, 1996)
argue that gestures may not be aiding listener comprehension by contributing
semantic information. Instead, they say, speech-related gestures are more likely to
aid listener comprehension by getting attention, activating images or motoric
representations in the listener’s mind, and aiding recall. Moreover, Pine and her
colleagues (2010) would argue that some gestures are bound to the semantic prop-
erties of specific words, and thus do not depend on the presence of a listener. They
found that participants gestured more when describing objects that are more
manipulable (e.g., scissors) versus less manipulable (e.g., a rug), and that this did

218 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

not depend on whether they could see the person they were describing the object
to in the study. Simply put, if physical manipulation is part of the semantic prop-
erties of a word, then speakers are more likely to gesture when describing it.

THE COORDINATION OF GESTURE, POSTURE, AND SPEECH

Earlier we said that speech-related gestures are tied to, or accompany, speech. That
they are connected to speech is easily understood, but the exact nature of that con-
nection is more difficult to understand. Most scholars agree that body movements
and gestures are not randomly produced during the stream of speech but are inex-
tricably linked as parts of the same system. The disagreements among scholars in
this area focus on how to define coordination, or synchrony, of speech and move-
ment. Must two things happen at exactly the same time to be in sync? Must they
happen for the same length of time? If speech and gesture are closely coordinated,
does the same part of the brain control both systems? Is there a synchrony of
speech and movement between two speakers, as well as within the behavior of a
single speaker? This section focuses on the research on these issues. The first part
addresses the coordination of a single speaker’s speech and movement, and the sec-
ond examines the coordination of two speakers’ behavior.

SELF-SYNCHRONY

In the early 1960s, William S. Condon began a microscopic analysis of the coordi-
nation between movement and speech. By examining individual frames of a
16-millimeter film, he was able to match body movements with a speech transcript.
This allowed him to observe speech–body orientation accurate to l/24th of a sec-
ond. Condon (1976) and Condon and Ogston (1966) showed that speech and
movement are rhythmically coordinated even at the most microscopic levels, for
example, in syllables and even smaller sections. This means a change in one behav-
ior, such as the movement of a body part, will coincide or be coordinated with the
onset of change in another behavior, such as in a phonological segment, or in some
other body part. Just as speech units can be grouped together to form larger units,
so can movement units. A sweep of the arm or a turn of the head may occur over
an entire phrase of several words, but we may see movements of the face and fin-
gers coordinated with smaller units of speech. At every level, however, the phrases
of speech production and the phrases of movement seem closely coordinated. Using
digital video annotation, Loehr (2007) examined the rhythmic relationship between
the hands, head, and voice of four speakers during spontaneous interaction. He,
too, found a complex process of self-synchrony. Stressed syllables often aligned
with gestural strokes and even eye blinks.

The smallest idea unit in spoken language is called the phonemic clause. This
group of words, averaging about five in length, has only one primary stress—
indicated by changes in pitch, rhythm, or loudness—and is terminated by a juncture.
This unit commonly has shown systematic relationships to body movements. Slight
jerks of the head or hand often accompany the primary stress points in the speech
of American English speakers. Gestures also seem to peak at the most salient part of
the idea unit. At the junctures or boundaries, we also find movements of the head or
hands that indicate completion or initiation.

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 219

Birdwhistell’s (1966) analysis of nonverbal activity that accompanies verbal
behavior led him to postulate the existence of what he calls kinesic markers. These
nonverbal behaviors mark a specific oral language behavior. Markers seem to operate
at several different levels. For instance, we might see an eye blink at the beginning and
end of some words, or a microlateral head sweep may be seen during the expression of
a compound word we would hyphenate in the written form. Figure 7-14 shows head,
hand, and eyelid markers occurring at the end of statements and questions. Similarly,
after making a point, speakers may turn the head to one side or tilt, flex, or extend the
neck, signaling the transition to another point.

Another level of markers is characterized by gross shifts in postural behavior,
involving half the body, indicating or marking a sequence of points or a point of view
expressed by the speaker. One marker on this level is simply the shift from leaning back
when listening to leaning forward when speaking. The observation that postural shifts
mark new stages of interaction or topic shifts, particularly at the beginning or ending of
speech segments, has been made by several researchers (Bull & Brown, 1977; Erickson,
1975; Scheflen, 1973). Markers on the next level are frequently complete changes in
location, following the presentation of one’s total position during an interaction.

Kendon’s (1972b, 1980, 1987, 1988, 2004) detailed analyses of speech and
body movement confirm the notion of self-synchrony. He also supports the idea of

FIGURE 7-14
Some postural-kinesic markers of syntactic sentences in the United States.

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220 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

a hierarchy of body movements that acts in conjunction with our speech behavior.
Kendon found that the wrist and fingers tended to change positions most often, fol-
lowed by the forearm, then the upper arm. Elements of the face generally changed
more often than the head, and trunk and lower limb movements were rare. The
larger units of body movement were related to the larger units of speech, and the
smaller body units were related to the smaller verbal units.

Kendon also made some important observations of when movements occur in
relation to the speech stream. Some movements accompany speech, but many precede
speech units. The time between the speech-preparatory body movement and the onset
of speech is apparently related to the size of the impending speech unit, with earlier
and more extensive behavior, involving more body parts, for larger speech units.
A change in body posture, for instance, may precede a long utterance and may be
held for the duration of the utterance. Like other researchers in this area, Kendon
believes that the hierarchically structured body movements probably convey informa-
tion about verbal structure and communicative involvement. The positions of the
head, limbs, and body sometimes forecast information to a listener, such as the length
of utterance and change in argument strategy or viewpoint. The act of forecasting
upcoming components of speech through gesture is a crucial function in social inter-
action. Speakers often shift their gaze to their hands during the production of iconic
gestures, thereby calling them to the attention of the listener. Speaker gaze returns to
the listener as the speech unit projected by the gesture is completed. In this process,
gaze acts as a gesture pointer (Streeck, 1993; Streeck & Knapp, 1992).

The linkage of gestures to speech has also been demonstrated in studies that
show how gestures help speakers access and retrieve words from their mental lexi-
con (Hadar, 1989; Krauss & Hadar, 1999; Krauss et al., 1996; Morrel-Samuels &
Krauss, 1992). Support for the word-retrieval function of gestures has been found
using children, adults, and those with a language disability (Hanlon, Brown, &
Gerstman, 1990; Pine, Bird, & Kirk, 2007; Rausher, Krauss, & Chen, 1996).
Hanlon et al. showed that they could improve word retrieval in a picture-naming
task by training aphasies to perform gestures just prior to the naming task. This
important role of gestures in lexical retrieval and speech production is often
overlooked and underemphasized, but it is clear that gestures facilitate both the
invention of messages and their organization and delivery.

The preceding research leads us to conclude that speech and gesture are coordi-
nated. But why? It is most likely because they are two components used in the
expression of a single unit of content. Both systems are being guided by the same
overall purpose, and both systems seem to be under the governance of the same
parts of the brain (Cicone, Wapner, Foldi, Zurif, & Gardner, 1979; Gentilucci &
Dalla Volta, 2008; Kimura, 1976). As Kendon (2000, p. 61) said, “[A]lthough
each expresses somewhat different dimensions of the meaning, speech and gesture
are co-expressive of a single inclusive ideational complex, and it is this that is the
meaning of the utterance.” It is not unreasonable, then, to assume a pathological
state for people manifesting out-of-sync behavior (Condon, 1980). Nor should it
surprise us that gestures and speech both break down in aphasia (McNeill, 1992).

Developmentally, gesture and speech also appear to grow up together and fol-
low similar developmental trajectories (Göksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2010;
Graham & Kilbreath, 2007). Because these gestures occur throughout the lifespan,

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 221

they can offer clues to the development or deterioration of a person’s cognitive and
linguistic skills Goldin-Meadow & Iverson (2010). For instance, Petitto and
Marentette (1991) argue that manual infant “babbling,” rather than oral babbling,
may serve as a precursor to language learning. Several other studies indicate that
children use more gestures as they develop, just as they use more words, and the
nature of that gesticulation varies with the changing nature of speech production
(McNeill, 1992). Children eventually learn how to combine words and gestures.
Because gesture–speech combinations (pointing at food and saying “eat”) occur
earlier than speech–speech combinations (“eat food”) in children, they can serve as
a developmental marker of sorts (Bates & Dick, 2002). Boys, for example, tend to
produce gesture–speech combinations later than girls, and thus also produce speech–
speech combinations later than girls do (Ozcaliskan & Goldin-Meadew, 2010).

INTERACTION SYNCHRONY

The preceding section revealed a speech–body movement coordination within the
actions of a single speaker. This section provides information about a speech–body
movement coordination between two speakers—a kind of social rhythm (Bernieri &
Rosenthal, 1991). This behavior has been studied in two ways, which we call
matching and meshing.

MATCHING Without always being very aware of it, human beings commonly tend
to mimic the mannerisms, facial expressions, postures, and other behaviors of the
people they interact with. This has been called the “chameleon effect” (Chartrand
& Bargh, 1999)—not because people, like chameleons, change colors to match
their environment, but because people change their postures, gestures, and manner-
isms to match those of their interaction partners. Interestingly, some individuals
are more chameleon-like than others, such as those who tend to see their “self” as
more connected to other people (van Baaren, Horgan, Chartrand, & Dijkmans,
2004).

Mimicry usually occurs completely outside of our conscious awareness, even
though we might use matching behavior intentionally when we are trying to com-
municate affiliation. Also, situational factors can affect mimicry; van der Schalk
and colleagues (2011) showed that people are more likely to mimic the facial dis-
plays of members of their ingroup than those of outgroup members. It is worth
noting here that mimicking the behavior of outgroup members, such as people
from a different racial group, may be one way of reducing prejudice toward them
(Inzlicht, Gutsell, & Legault, 2011).

Matching the behavior of our fellow interactant may occur in several different
ways. Sometimes a speaker’s behavior is followed in kind by the listener when he
or she becomes the speaker (Cappella, 1981). Here the matched behavior occurs
not simultaneously but in sequence. Chapter 11 reports research that shows how
we tend to match our partner’s utterance duration, loudness, precision of articula-
tion, latency of response, silence duration, and speech rate. We also appear to
mimic the cospeech gestures of others (Holler & Wilkin, 2011). Of importance,
when we mimic gestures we might better understand their meaning (Alibali &
Hostetter, 2010). In some instances, though, the speaker’s behavior elicits an offsetting

222 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

or compensatory behavior from the other person. For example, if a speaker is lean-
ing toward a listener and the listener perceives the interaction distance to be too
close, the listener will likely lean away or increase the interaction distance in other
ways (see Chapter 5).

Other researchers have been interested in those occasions when both interac-
tion partners exhibit the same behavior at the same time. Postural congruence is
one of those frequently matched behaviors. It may involve crossing the legs and/or
arms, leaning, head propping, or any number of other positions. Notice the variety
of postural congruence in Figures 7-15, 7-16, and 7-17. When the listener’s
behavior is a mirror image of the speaker’s, this form of matching is called
mirroring.

Postural congruence has been observed to occur during periods of more posi-
tive speech, is rated by observers as an indicator of rapport and cooperation, and
has been established as an act that is influential in creating rapport (Charney,
1966; LaFrance, 1979, 1985; LaFrance & Broadbent, 1976; Trout & Rosenfeld,
1980). Nonconscious mimicry has also been found to occur more often with people
who enter an interaction with the goal to affiliate or establish rapport (Lakin &
Chartrand, 2003), and interpersonal synchrony is stronger among those with a

FIGURE 7-15
Postural congruence. The pair facing each other in the foreground is showing matching postures; the pair facing each
other in the background is showing mirror-image postures.

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 223

prosocial (versus proself) orientation (Lumsden, Miles, Richardson, Smith, &
Macrae, 2011). Of course, a stronger desire to affiliate makes mimicry even more
likely (Yabar, Johnston, Miles, & Peace, 2006). In one study, a trained actor selec-
tively mimicked postures and gestures of only some students in an interview situa-
tion. In a post-interview assessment of their partner, the actor, students who had

FIGURE 7-16
Examples of postural congruence through head propping and leaning.

A
ve

ry
K
.
D
av

is
Fu

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/J
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224 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 7-17
Notice the postural congruence exhibited by cabinet official Joseph Califano and former President
Jimmy Carter, 1977.

A
P
P
h
o
to

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 225

been mimicked evaluated their partner significantly more favorably and indicated
they “identified” with him or that he “thought like me” (Dabbs, 1969). None of
the students reported an awareness of the mimicry. Chartrand and Bargh (1999)
also found mimicry to increase the degree of liking on the part of an interaction
partner. In short, mimicry seems to occur more often when we are other-oriented;
for example, when we want to be liked by others, feel concerned about others,
seek a closer relationship with others, show dependence on others, and see our
“self” as more connected to other people.

Bavelas and her colleagues would agree that postural mimicry is most likely to
occur when we are other oriented, but they did not find that it was a sign of rapport
or cooperation. Instead, they found that postural mimicry occurred during periods of
conversational involvement rather than during cooperation or periods of rapport.
Bavelas maintains it is a signal that the participants are talking with each other
rather than at each other, performing symmetrical roles rather than complementary
ones. From this perspective, the matching of an interaction partner’s nonverbal
behavior reflects the moment-to-moment aspects of conversational involvement.

Bavelas has also studied a related phenomenon she calls motor mimicry.
A common example of motor mimicry is when a person you are near drops a
heavy weight on his or her foot. As the injured party reacts in pain, your wincing
facial expression seems to register an empathic response (see Figure 7-18). For
many years, scholars believed this was a purely empathic reaction based on one
person vicariously experiencing what another person is going through. The work
of Bavelas and her colleagues does not deny this inner experience, but their
research also shows that motor mimicry is primarily a communicative phenome-
non. Wincing in reaction to another’s injury, for example, depended strongly on
the visual accessibility of the injured party (i.e., to what extent can the two make
eye contact with each other?) in Bavelas’s experiments. Specifically, more motor
mimicry was seen as the probability of eye contact went up. Furthermore, the pat-
tern and timing of the wincer’s reaction was determined by the probability of eye
contact with the victim (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, Lemery, & Mullett, 1988; Bavelas,
Black, Lemery, & Mullett, 1986). In a related study, Kimbara (2008) found that
visual accessibility to another interactant during a joint description of previously
viewed video clips also led to a greater similarity in the shape of their hand gestures
than the same task without visual access to their partner.

This tendency to match and mimic the behavior of others posturally, facially,
vocally, and so forth, sometimes leads to a condition known as emotional conta-
gion, which occurs when an emotional experience is triggered as a result of mim-
icking someone else’s behavior. Two of the essential conditions for this process to
occur include strongly felt emotions and communicators who are skilled encoders
and decoders (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Some people are more sus-
ceptible to emotional contagion than others, which might be a good or bad thing
depending on the emotion being decoded. More susceptible people might feel better
around a happy friend, and more miserable around a sad one. As evidence of this,
Magen and Konasewich (2011) noted that women’s positive emotion state was
more likely to suffer than men’s after interacting with a troubled friend, thus show-
ing the potential costs associated with women’s greater susceptibility to another
person’s negative emotion state.

226 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

MESHING Another way of examining the phenomenon of interaction synchrony has
been to observe the ongoing co-occurrence of changes in movement and speech by
each of two interactants. In this type of research, changes refer to the initiation,
termination, speed, and/or direction of the behaviors under study. Like matching
behavior, meshing has also been linked to conversational satisfaction and liking
for one’s interaction partner (Cappella, 1997).

FIGURE 7-18
(a) Former President Ronald Reagan and former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger exchange
similar facial expressions. (b) An onlooker winces in pain as another experiences it.

Jo
se

R
.
Lo

p
ez
/T
h
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N
ew

Y
o
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T
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es
©

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CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 227

The study of meshing behavior arose out of Condon’s earlier work on self-
synchrony. He observed how both interactants seemed to coordinate their actions.
One person (Davis, 1971) who viewed his films reported this:

The third film clip Condon showed me was an example of heightened synchrony. A
man and a woman—employer and job applicant—sat facing each other in a sequence
that at normal speed seemed merely to involve rather a lot of shifting around, as the
man first uncrossed and then recrossed his legs and the woman stirred in her chair. But
when the film was run through a few frames at a time, their synchrony became clear.
In the same frame, the two began to lean toward each other. They stopped at the same
split second, both raised their heads, and then they swept backwards together into their
chairs, stopping in the same frame. It was very like the elaborate courtship dances of
some birds, or—in Condon’s favorite analogy—they were like puppets moved by the
same set of strings. Condon told me that this kind of heightened synchrony happens often
between male and female. During courtship, it’s one of the ways in which vast statements
can be made between a man and a woman without a word being said. (p. 103)

As Condon suggests, this kind of interaction synchrony may reflect the nature
of the ongoing relationship, whether it is the extent of involvement and rapport or
the degree of intimate, interpersonal knowledge about the other. In some instances,
this relationship is dramatically visible by the kind of synchrony taking place. At
other times, the coordination may be seen only in the microscopic analysis of indi-
vidual film frames. Out-of-sync partners are not likely to value the experience. The
fact that out-of-sync experiences tend to stand out for us reminds us how often we
operate in synchrony with others. Out-of-sync behavior may reflect decreased lis-
tening, a lack of knowledge of one’s partner, and ultimately influence what we
remember about the other person (e.g., Miles, Nind, Henderson, & Macrae,
2010). Interaction synchrony may also be a precursor of language learning.
Condon and Sander (1974) found babies 12 hours old whose head, hand, elbow,
hip, and leg movements tended to correspond to the rhythms of human speech.
When the babies were exposed to disconnected speech or to plain tapping sounds,
however, the rhythmic pattern was not observed. If this finding is validated by
other researchers, it may mean an infant has participated in, and has laid the
groundwork for, various linguistic forms and structures long before formal lan-
guage learning begins (see Bernieri, Reznick, & Rosenthal, 1988).

Sometimes our responses as listeners and the feedback we provide in the form
of facial expressions or head movements appear at specific junctures in the speech
of our partner. Vocalizations such as “mmm-hmm” and “I see,” and head nods
and movements of hands and feet tend to occur at the ends of rhythmical units of
the speaker’s utterance, that is, at pauses within phonemic clauses but mainly at
junctures between these clauses. Vocally stressed words also tend to be accompa-
nied by movements. Listener gestures and movements are often indications that
the listener understands, appreciates, or anticipates speaker behavior.

Dittmann (1972) noticed that adults sometimes believe children are not listen-
ing to them and badger them with questions like “Did you hear me?” Dittmann
reasoned that this common adult perception of children may be associated with
the absence of what he calls “listener responses” such as head nods, some eyebrow
raises, some types of smiles, and verbal acknowledgements such as “yeah,” and
“I see”. His study of children in grades 1, 3, and 5 found these listener responses

228 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

to be nearly absent except under “the strongest social pull” by the other interac-
tant. Subsequent studies indicated the major deficiencies were in “mmm-hmm” and
head-nod responses. By 8th grade, a dramatic increase in these listener responses
was found. By early adolescence, peers begin to lengthen their response duration,
providing more opportunity for such listener responses. The “response pull” from
adult interactants is increasing, and a continuing movement away from a purely
self-orientation toward imagining what others are experiencing occurs. The detailed
observations of researchers like Condon, Dittmann, and Kendon offer clear evi-
dence that human interactants do exhibit a speech–body movement interaction syn-
chrony. It is also clear that this synchrony may take place on very microscopic
levels. Still, there are questions: How much of this synchrony is due to an ordered
relationship between speech and body movements, and how much is due to coinci-
dence? Are there social contexts that intensify the degree of synchrony? How much
synchrony is desirable? At least one study suggests that moderately rhythmic social
interactions are evaluated most positively (Warner, Malloy, Schneider, Knoth, &
Wilder, 1987). Is it possible to predict which behaviors will synchronize with
which other behaviors at certain times? And, finally, what is the best method of
measuring these minute behavioral changes (Gatewood & Rosenwein, 1981;
McDowall, 1978a,b; Rosenfeld, 1981)?

SUMMARY

Although gestures are difficult to define, we often
seem to know what movements a person is using
to communicate and what movements are merely
nervous mannerisms, expressions associated with
emotion, and task-related movements. Gestures
help us communicate in many ways: They replace
speech when we cannot or do not want to talk
and help us regulate the back-and-forth flow of
interaction. They establish and maintain atten-
tion, add emphasis to our speech, and assist in
making memorable the content of our speech.
Although we do gesture when interaction part-
ners are not visible, such as over the telephone,
gestures are more frequent when both interac-
tants are visible to each other. We seem to use
more gestures when we are knowledgeable
about the topic being discussed, highly motivated
to have our listeners understand our message,
trying to dominate a conversation, excited and
enthusiastic about the topic being discussed,
and speaking about manual activities. Gestures
also play an important role in word retrieval
and speech production. So the absence of ges-
tures may negatively affect the speaker’s message
as well as a listener’s comprehension.

Two major types of gestures were discussed:
speech independent and speech related. Speech-
independent gestures are operationally defined
as gestures that 70 percent of the usage commu-
nity decodes in a similar way. They have an
almost direct verbal definition. We are normally
keenly aware of using this type of gesture.
Culture affects the number, frequency, and mean-
ings associated with speech-independent gestures.
Although no universal gestures of this type have
been found—that is, none have the same meaning
and form in every culture studied—the most likely
candidates would be gestures of affirmation and
negation and those meaning “stop” and “I don’t
know” and gestures that indicate sleeping, eating,
and drinking. Some speech-independent gestures
are culture specific; that is, they are not found in
the same form in other cultures. Many gestures
have basically the same form but different mean-
ings from culture to culture, and these different
meanings are often the source of cross-cultural
misunderstandings.

The other major category of gestures is
speech-related gestures. Some of these gestures
characterize the content of speech, and some

CHAPTER 7 THE EFFECTS OF GESTURE AND POSTURE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 229

show the speaker’s relationship to the referent
by indicating whether the speaker is certain or
uncertain, embracing an idea or distancing her-
self or himself from it, and the like. Some speech-
related gestures are used to accent or emphasize
speech units. Interactive gestures, unlike the other
speech-related gestures, focus on the dialogue
rather than the speaker’s monologue. Interactive
gestures focus on the ongoing involvement of the
interactants and their shared roles.

The last part of this chapter examined the
coordination and synchrony of speech and body
movements. This synchrony between the larger
and smaller units of speech and body is called
self-synchrony. Gesture and speech, then, seem
to be different outward manifestations of a pro-
cess controlled and guided by the same parts of

the brain. Gesture and speech both play a role in
communicating the same content. In addition
to a self-synchrony, interactants also seem to
display coordinated exchanges of behavior in
many ways that suggest the existence of an inter-
action synchrony as well. Interaction synchrony
can manifest itself through matching behavior—
similar behavior occurring at the same time (pos-
tural congruence or motor mimicry) or similar
behavior occurring in sequence (one speaker raises
his or her voice, followed by the next speaker rais-
ing his or her voice). Interaction synchrony can
also manifest itself in the moment-to-moment
coordination of changes in the direction and tim-
ing of speech and movement, even though we do
not yet know exactly what behaviors will change
and how they will change.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Spend some time during the day interacting
without using hand gestures. What problems
did you encounter, if any? What does your
experience tell you about the relationship of
gestures and speech?

2. Some researchers have found matching
behavior to be associated with rapport
between the interactants. Can you think of
a situation in which rapport would not
involve matching behavior? Can you think

of a situation in which matching occurred
but there was not much rapport?

3. Can you think of any instance in which ges-
tures might pose a challenge to the doctrine
of freedom of speech?

4. Select a speech-independent gesture. Discuss
the meaning of this gesture when accompa-
nied by different facial expressions and
speech.

230 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 8 ]

The scene is a university library, but it could just as easily be the local supermarket,
bank, or restaurant. What happens takes about half a second and is not noticed by
those experiencing it. Remarkably, however, this event affects their evaluation of
their experience in the library. What could be so mysterious and so powerful?

The answer begins with three researchers at Purdue University (Fisher, Rytting,
& Heslin, 1976), who wanted to investigate systematically the effects of a brief,
seemingly accidental touch in a nonintimate context. They had male and female
clerks return library cards to some students by placing their hand directly over the
student’s palm, making physical contact; other students were not touched. Outside
the library, a researcher approached the students and asked questions about their
feelings toward the library clerk and the library in general. Students who were
touched, especially the females, evaluated the clerk and the library significantly
more favorably than those who were not touched. This was true for students who
were aware of being touched and those who were not.

Awareness of the power of a seemingly insignificant touch may be one reason
why politicians are so eager to press the flesh (shake hands in political slang).
Touch serves many functions and conveys many messages (Hertenstein, 2011). It
is a crucial aspect of most human relationships, except for those that are exclu-
sively online. The act of touching is like any other message we communicate: It
may elicit positive, neutral, or negative reactions, depending on the configuration
of the touch, the people involved, and the circumstances. We can find happiness in
another person’s arms. We may feel indifferent to a handshake done out of

We often talk about the way we talk, and we frequently try to see the way we see,
but for some reason we have rarely touched on the way we touch.

—Desmond Morris

231

convention. And we can be provoked into anger from touching that seems inappro-
priate to us, and reciprocate with a not-so-subtle form of touching ourselves (e.g.,
push, slap, or punch). We know people who respond positively to touching and
need a lot of it, sometimes referred to as touchy-feely types. We also know others
who seem to evaluate almost all touching negatively. Variability in the need for
and to reaction to touch may be related to differences in temperament as well as
childhood experiences. In the next section, we discuss the importance of touching
throughout the life span.

TOUCHING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Tactile communication is probably the most basic and primitive form of communi-
cation. In fact, tactile sensitivity may be the first sensory process to become func-
tional, and it is the most developed sense at birth. In fetal life, the child begins to
respond to vibrations of the mother’s pulsating heartbeat, which impinge on the
child’s entire body and are magnified by the amniotic fluid. Interestingly, infants
of depressed mothers have been shown to benefit in utero from the massage ther-
apy that their mothers had received (Field, Diego, Hernandez-Reif, Deeds, & Fig-
ueiredo, 2009).

Research shows that touch is critical to normal physiological growth in new-
borns. Maternal licking of rat pups stimulates growth hormone production, and
massage with pressure stimulates weight gain in preterm infants and continues to
be associated with mental and motor development a year later (Field, 1998).
Parent–infant bonding may also be fostered by tactile contact during a critical
period in the first hours after birth, but the research on this is mixed (Hertenstein,
Verkamp, Kerestes, & Holmes, 2006).

Infants gain knowledge of themselves and the world around them through
tactile explorations with their mouths and hands. Their mental representations
depend on the integration of input from touching and seeing objects in their sur-
roundings; for example, a bowling ball is different from a beach ball because
they do not look or feel the same. During early childhood, words accompany
touch until the child associates the two; then words may replace touch entirely.
A mother may gently stroke or pat an infant to console him or her. As the child
grows older, the mother may stroke and pat the child while murmuring encour-
aging words. Eventually, instead of touching the child, the mother may simply
call from another room, “It’s all right, Mommy’s here.” As words replace
touch, an intimate closeness may still be present because of the earlier
associations.

Gender differences show up early. After 6 months of age, girls are not only
allowed but encouraged to spend more time touching and staying near their par-
ents than boys. Harrison-Speake and Willis (1995) gathered adults’ views on the
appropriateness of different kinds of parental touch with children of different ages.
Clear norms were evident: Touch was seen as increasingly inappropriate as chil-
dren grew from toddlers to young teenagers, especially for fathers and for boys.
White respondents were more approving of parental touch than were African-
American respondents, regardless of the kind of touch, the child’s age, or the gen-
der of the child or parent.

232 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Several observations of touching behavior have been made in the context of the
developing child’s school experiences. In one study, preschool boys tended to touch
their male teachers more than their female teachers; preschool girls touched tea-
chers of both sexes about equally. The teachers themselves usually touched children
of their own sex more (Perdue & Connor, 1978). However, in general, teachers
may be using nurturing forms of touch less these days because of concerns about
how their touch will be viewed by others (Owen & Gillentine, 2011). Willis and
his colleagues (Willis & Hoffman, 1975; Willis & Reeves, 1976) observed children
in elementary school and junior high school. From kindergarten through sixth
grade, the amount of touching steadily declined but still surpassed most reports of
adult touching. This same trend occurred in junior high, with about half as much
touching as in the primary grades. The most touching occurred between same-sex
dyads. African-American children, especially African-American females, tended to
exhibit more touching behavior. Although touching in the primary grades is more
often initiated with the hands, junior high students showed much more shoulder-
to-shoulder and elbow-to-elbow touching. Junior high females began to show
more aggressive touching, and junior high boys were touched in more places, pri-
marily because of the play fighting so common at that age. During adolescence,
tactile experiences with members of the same sex, and then the opposite sex,
become increasingly important.

The use of touch to communicate emotional and relational messages to the
elderly may be crucial, particularly as the reliance on verbal and cognitive messages
wanes. Although we seem to give the aged in the United States a greater license to
touch others, it is not clear how much others touch them. No doubt the infirmities
of age require more touching, but it may make a big difference whether this
increased touching is merely functional and professional or whether it expresses
affection. Observations of touching in four homes for the elderly revealed that in
such places, females tend to initiate more touching than do males. And, as in child-
hood, same-sex touch is more likely than touch between members of the opposite
sex (Rinck, Willis, & Dean, 1980).

The importance of touch early in life to children’s development and interac-
tions with others has been clearly documented (Feldman, 2011; Moszkowski,
Stack, & Chiarella, 2009; Stack & Jean, 2011). Moreover, even among physically
healthy infants, touch in the form of massage has benefits to infants that should
be of interest to parents, including positive effects on their patterns of sleep (Under-
down, Barlow, & Stewart-Brown, 2010). It seems that, in general, early tactile
experiences are crucial to infants’ later physical, mental, and emotional adjustment.
Youngsters who have little physical contact during infancy may be slower to learn
to walk and talk, and some instances of difficulties and retardation in reading and
speech are also associated with early deprivation of, and confusion in, tactile com-
munication. Physical violence in adults may also be related to deprivation of touch
during infancy.

Ashley Montagu (1971) cited many animal and human studies to support the
theory that tactile satisfaction during infancy and childhood is of fundamental
importance to subsequent healthy behavioral development. He maintained that it
is not possible to handle a child too much, as “there is every reason to believe
that, just as the salamander’s brain and nervous system develops more fully in

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 233

response to peripheral stimulation, so does the brain and nervous system of the
human being” (p. 188). Harlow’s (1958) famous “surrogate mother” experiments
offer supporting evidence from the animal world for the importance of touch for
infants in stressful situations. Harlow constructed a monkey mother figure out of
wire that could provide milk and protection; then he constructed another one out
of sponge rubber and terry cloth that did not provide milk. Because infant mon-
keys consistently chose the terry cloth mother, Harlow concluded that contact com-
fort was a more important part of the mother–child relationship for monkeys than
was sustenance per se. Psychologically, nursing was less important as a food source
and more important as a source of reassuring touch. Maternal touch also has been
shown to reduce the impact of stressful situations on human infants (Feldman,
Singer, & Zagoory, 2010).

WHO TOUCHES WHOM, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW MUCH?

The amount and kind of contact experienced in adulthood varies considerably with
the age, personality, sex, situation, culture, and relationship of the parties involved.
We explore these factors briefly here (see Chapter 12 for more discussion of gen-
der, dominance, and culture).

There are reports of married couples who have so little to say to each other, or
who find it so difficult to establish closeness through verbal contact, that physical
contact during sexual encounters becomes a primary mode of communication for
establishing closeness. Many factors in the development of American society have
led to a common expectation that touching is conducted only in extremely personal
and intimate relationships, which leads to the belief that all touching is somehow
sensuous in nature. The irony is that long-term intimates probably touch each
other less, and less intimately, than those who are either working to establish a
romantic relationship or working to restore one that is losing intimacy (Emmers &
Dindia, 1995; Guerrero & Andersen, 1991; McDaniel & Andersen, 1998). For
intimates in long-established romantic relationships, the quality of touch has likely
replaced the quantity needed to initially establish the relationship as an intimate
one. In married relations also, people are more likely to reciprocate touch than in
dating relationships (Guerrero & Andersen, 1994).

For some individuals, the contact occurring in a crowded commuter train or
theater lobby is very uncomfortable, especially opposite-sex contacts for women
and same-sex contacts for men. Explanations for such feelings are numerous.
Some children grow up learning not to touch a multitude of animate and inanimate
objects. They are told not to touch their own body and later not to touch the body
of their dating partner. Care is taken so children do not see their parents touch
each other intimately. Touching is associated with admonitions of “not nice” or
“bad” and is punished accordingly. Because of such experiences, some people
become nontouchers in any situation.

Studies have tried to identify the personality characteristics of people who
enjoy touching and those who do not (Andersen, Andersen, & Lustig, 1987;
Deethardt & Hines, 1983). Sometimes these studies rely on self-reports of touch
avoidance and reactions to touch. Fortunately, the self-description of oneself as
touch avoidant or not has proved to be quite valid in many studies.

234 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Touch-avoiders stand farther from others, respond negatively to touch in a live
interaction, touch their relationship partners less in public, tend to have lower self-
esteem, and are more likely to be Protestant than Jewish (Andersen, 2005). Non-
touchers, when compared with touchers, report more anxiety and tension in their
lives, less satisfaction with their bodies, and more suspicion of others; they are
also more socially withdrawn and more likely to be rigid or authoritarian in their
beliefs. Men are also more likely to describe themselves as touch avoidant than
women are. Dorros, Hanzal, and Segrin (2008) found that adults who reported a
more positive attitude toward touch had personalities that were more agreeable,
more open to experience, and less neurotic than those who had a more negative
attitude.

Certain situations have a facilitating or inhibiting effect on touching behavior.
Several studies have demonstrated that in public places, where most observational
research is done, touching can be quite infrequent. As an example, Hall and Veccia
(1990) observed 4,500 pairs of people in public places and found that only 15 per-
cent were already touching or engaged in touch during the observation period. Sim-
ilarly, Remland, Jones, and Brinkman (1991) observed dyads in public places in
several European locations and found that people touched in only 9 percent of the
interactions observed.

Henley (1977) gathered people’s opinions on touch patterns and concluded
that people think that the likelihood of touch is increased in the following situa-
tions, which imply underlying themes of power, intimacy, and emotion:

1. Giving information or advice rather than asking for it
2. Giving an order rather than responding to it
3. Asking a favor rather than agreeing to do one
4. Trying to persuade rather than being persuaded
5. Participating in a deep, rather than casual, conversation
6. Interacting at a party rather than at work
7. Communicating excitement rather than receiving it from another
8. Receiving messages of worry from another rather than sending such messages

Greetings and departures at airport terminals are communicative situations
that reflect a higher incidence of touching than would normally be expected. In
one study, 60 percent of the people observed in greetings touched; another study
reported that 83 percent of the participants touched (Greenbaum & Rosenfeld,
1980; Heslin & Boss, 1980). Heslin and Boss found that extended embraces and
greater intimacy of touch were more likely to occur during departures than greet-
ings. The stronger the emotion, as reflected in facial expressions, and the closer
the perceived relationship, the greater the chances of increased touching. Actual
relationship closeness, such as in romantic relationships as opposed to friendships,
has in fact been shown to predict the amount of interpersonal touching in public
(Afifi & Johnson, 1999; Guerrero, 1997).

Another situation likely to show a higher incidence of touch than normally
found in public settings involves team sports. In one study, the touching behavior
of bowlers during league play was observed and found to be far more frequent
than observations during normal social interaction (Smith, Willis, & Gier, 1980).
Similarly, Kneidinger, Maple, and Tross (2001) counted touches made on the field

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 235

during college baseball and softball games and found a high touching rate, averag-
ing more than 20 touches per inning.

Anthropologists and travelers, as well as researchers, have noted that touch
patterns differ according to culture and nationality. Some cultures seem very tactile,
and others are more “hands off” (DiBiase & Gunnoe, 2004; McDaniel & Andersen,
1998). We explore this topic further in Chapter 13, but let us note here that
cultures can differ in overall quantity of touch, the contextual rules that determine
when and how people touch, and in the meanings expressed by touch. Research
has not progressed far in mapping out these sources of variation. A strong likeli-
hood is that most touches have common meanings in different cultures, but the
norms for who can touch whom and when follow local customs. Most of our
knowledge about the psychology of touch and other nonverbal behaviors is based
on the study of white Americans.

Gender and relationships influence touching patterns. In his classic study,
Jourard (1966) asked what parts of the body people think are touched most often.
He administered a questionnaire to students, who indicated which of 24 body parts
they had seen or touched on others, or that others had seen or touched on them,
within the previous 12 months. The other people were specified as mother, father,
same-sex friend, and opposite-sex friend. Among other findings, Jourard’s study
found that females were perceived as considerably more accessible to touch by all
of the people specified than males were. Opposite-sex friends and mothers were
reported as doing the most touching. Many fathers were recalled as touching not
much more than the hands of the subjects. The likelihood of opposite-sex touching
of course depends greatly on the relationship between the parties, and this kind of
touch is more likely when intimacy and familiarity are high (Stier & Hall, 1984).

Jourard’s data were gathered over 50 years ago. A replication of this study
more than a decade later revealed about the same results—with one exception
(Rosenfeld, Kartus, & Ray, 1976). It seems that both males and females are per-
ceived as even more accessible to opposite-sex friends than they were in the preced-
ing decade, with increased touching reported for body parts normally considered
more intimate, such as chest, stomach, hips, and thighs. Of course, when people
are asked to recall where they have been touched and how often, there is always
the possibility that these recollections will not be accurate. Jones (1991) found
that the number of body parts actually contacted was consistently fewer than
those anticipated or recalled by students filling out a questionnaire.

We pursue the topic of gender differences in touch further in Chapter 12. Suf-
fice it to say here that the observation of gender differences in nonverbal behavior
raises many interesting questions about determinants. Henley (1977) proposed the
hypothesis that gender differences in touch, as well as several other nonverbal
behaviors, are closely tied to gender differences in dominance and power, with the
general hypothesis being that differences between men and women parallel differ-
ences between powerful and weak people in society at large. The evidence support-
ing Henley’s hypothesis is mixed and is undermined by the very inconsistent
evidence of systematic differences in nonverbal behavior, including touching,
according to the dominance–power dimension (Hall, 2011b; Hall, Coats, & Smith
LeBeau, 2005; see Chapter 12). For instance, gender differences have been found
among men and women in supervisory roles, with women reporting nonsexually

236 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

touching their subordinates more than their male counterparts (Fuller et al., 2011).
If power differences solely accounted for gender differences in touching behavior,
one might expect male and female supervisors to report similar levels of positive
touching behavior on the job.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF TOUCHING BEHAVIOR

Argyle (1975) listed the following kinds of bodily contact as most common in
Western culture*:

Type of Touch Bodily Areas Typically Involved

Patting Head, back

Slapping Face, hand, buttocks

Punching Face, chest

Pinching Cheek

Stroking Hair, face, upper body, knee, genitals

Shaking Hands, shoulders

Kissing Mouth, cheek, breasts, hand, foot, genitals

Licking Face, genitals

Holding Hand, arm, knee, genitals

Guiding Hand, arm

Embracing Shoulder, body

Linking Arms

Laying on Hands

Kicking Legs, buttocks

Grooming Hair, face

Tickling Almost anywhere

*We made the following alterations to the original list: (1) changed bottom to buttocks; (2) added genitals to four
categories; and (3) added shoulders to the shaking category.

Morris (1977) reported on field observations that led to the naming of 457
types of body contact, falling into 14 major types of public body contact occurring
between two people. Some of these forms of touch can be seen in Figure 8-1. Some-
times the specific nature of a relationship can be deduced by observing the way
touching is enacted. Morris’s major categories of nonaggressive touching include
the following:

1. The handshake. The strength of the tie or desired tie between the participants
can often be observed by watching the nonshaking hand.

2. The body-guide. Here, touching is a substitute for pointing. The person
guiding the other’s body is frequently the person in charge during that
encounter.

3. The pat. Morris says that when adults pat other adults, it is often a condes-
cending gesture or a sexual one. The well-known exception is the congratula-
tory pat, often on the buttocks, following a successful performance in men’s
team sports.

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 237

4. The arm-link. This may be used for support when one person is infirm, but it
is also frequently used to indicate a close relationship. The person in charge,
says Morris, is less likely to be the person grasping the other’s arm.

5. The shoulder embrace. This half-embrace is used in male–female romantic
relationships as well as to signify buddies in male–male relationships.

6. The full embrace or hug. This gesture frequently occurs during moments of
intense emotion, sporting events, romance, greetings, and farewells. It is also used
ritualistically to show a relationship closer than a handshake would indicate.

7. The hand-in-hand. When adults hold hands with children, it is designed for
support, to keep children close, or to protect them. As adults, handholding
suggests an equality within the relationship, because both parties are perform-
ing the same act. It is often thought of in opposite-sex relationships, but
same-sex handholding is not uncommon, even between males (e.g., children,
high-contact cultures).

8. The waist embrace. According to Morris, the waist embrace is frequently
substituted for the full embrace when the participants wish to signal more inti-
macy than handholding or a shoulder embrace yet still remain mobile.

9. The kiss. The location, pressure, duration, and openness of a kiss help signal
the closeness or desired closeness between two people at a particular moment.

10. The hand-to-head. Given the highly vulnerable nature of the head area, letting
someone touch us on the head shows a trusting, often intimate, relationship.

11. The head-to-head. Two people touching heads render them incapable of
regarding other ongoing activities in a normal manner, so this is usually
thought of as an agreement by both parties to shut out the rest of the world—
a condition especially common to young lovers.

12. The caress. This signal is associated with romantic feelings for a partner,
although like any signal, it can be used by nonintimates who are trying to
deceive others about the depth of their relationship.

13. The body support. Parents often support children by carrying, lifting, or let-
ting them sit in their laps. Such support may be sought among adults in play-
ful situations, or when one person feels physically helpless.

14. The mock attack. Aggressive-looking behaviors are sometimes performed in a
nonaggressive manner: for example, arm-punches, hair-rufflings, pushes,
pinches, and ear-nibbles. We sometimes allow or even encourage such gestures
with friends to show the range of behavioral understanding between us. And
sometimes these mock-attack touches are substitutes for more loving touches
that may be too embarrassing, such as in the case of some fathers wishing to
show love for their sons.

Another method of categorizing the various types of touching was undertaken
by Heslin and Alper (1983). This taxonomy is based on the functions of the mes-
sages communicated and ranges from less personal to more personal types of
touch. Accidental touches and aggressive touches seem to be a part of the intimacy
continuum but are not presented in this list.

1. Functional/professional. The communicative intent of this impersonal, often
cold and businesslike, touching is to accomplish some task or to perform some
service. The other person is considered an object or nonperson to keep any

238 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 8-1
Some common forms of touch. (a) Full embrace. (b) Shoulder embrace. (c) Arm-link. (d) Kiss.
(e) Head-to-head.

fS
to
p
/A
la
m
y

A
lis

ta
ir

B
er
g
/D
ig
ita

l
V
is
io
n
/G

et
ty

Im
ag

B
le
n
d
Im

ag
es

/G
et
ty

Im
ag

G
o
o
d
sh

o
t/J

u
p
ite

r
Im

ag
es

S
ir
i
S
ta
ff
o
rd
/G

et
ty

Im
ag

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 239

intimate or sexual messages from interfering with the task at hand. Examples
of such situations may include a golf pro with a student, a tailor with a cus-
tomer, or a physician with a patient.

2. Social/polite. This type of touching affirms the other person’s identity as a
member of the same species, operating by essentially the same rules of conduct
as functional or professional touch. Although the other is treated as a person,
there is still very little perceived involvement between the interactants. The
handshake is the best example of this type of touching. Although the hand-
shake is only about 150 years old, it was preceded by a handclasp, which goes
back at least as far as ancient Rome.

3. Friendship/warmth. This kind of touching behavior begins to recognize more
of the other person’s uniqueness and expresses a liking for that person. It is
oriented toward the other person as a friend. However, this type of touch may
engender uneasiness, because it can be misunderstood as intimate or sexual
touching. Private situations may exacerbate this problem, so it probably
will take place in public if the toucher anticipates the possibility of
misinterpretation.

4. Love/intimacy. When we lay a hand on the cheek of a person, or when we
fully embrace that person, we are probably expressing an emotional attach-
ment or attraction through touch. The other person is the object of feelings of
intimacy or love. The various kinds of touching at this point are probably the
least stereotyped and the most adapted to the specific other person.

5. Sexual arousal. Although sexual arousal is sometimes an integral part of love
and intimacy, it also may have characteristics distinct from that category. Here
we are primarily looking at touch as an experience of physical attraction only.
The other person is, in common parlance, a sex object.

Morris (1971) proposed that heterosexual couples in Western culture normally
go through a sequence of steps, similar to courtship patterns in other animal spe-
cies, on the road to sexual intimacy. Aside from the first three, notice that each of
the following steps involves some kind of touching: eye to body, eye to eye, voice
to voice, hand to hand, arm to shoulder, arm to waist, mouth to mouth, hand to
head, hand to body, mouth to breast, hand to genitals, and genitals to genitals or
mouth to genitals. Frotteurism is a clinical disorder that represents an extreme devi-
ation from this courtship pattern in which the afflicted person (usually male) may
quickly grab and rub the genitals of an unsuspecting person (usually female) in a
crowded place and fantasize about having an intimate relationship with her during
the contact.

It is a challenge to study touching behavior at all. Because people do not touch
much in public, at least in Western societies (see Chapter 13 for more on culture),
observers must wait long periods, and observe a great many people, to see many
touches. Furthermore, the private settings in which touch occurs more often tend to
be ones to which researchers do not have access. Therefore, naturalistic observation
is more difficult and time-consuming than for other kinds of nonverbal behavior.
For this reason, touch researchers use self-report methodology relatively more. To
demonstrate effects of touch, other challenges arise. Often, to create experimental
control, experimenters will train helpers (called confederates) to deliberately engage

240 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

in the behavior, or not, as in the library study mentioned earlier. Experiments are an
important way of studying the impact of specific behaviors. Lewis, Derlega, Shankar,
Cochard, and Finkel (1997) offer a valuable caution about the use of confederates
who are expected to control their behavior precisely. Despite training, confederates
may have difficulty controlling one behavior, such as touch, without simultaneously
changing other behaviors, such as smiling and gazing. It is sometimes hard, there-
fore, to know which behavioral cue was crucial in influencing the recipient of the
cues. A critical reader is wise to consider possible confounding effects of unintended
cues when evaluating research with these designs.

THE MEANINGS AND IMPACT OF INTERPERSONAL TOUCH

Data gathered by Jones and Yarbrough (1985) indicate a wide range of meanings
associated with touch. In their study, 39 male and female university students
recorded the details of each touch experience over a 3-day period. Over 1,500 acts
of social touching were analyzed. The following discussion incorporates their find-
ings, along with others.

TOUCH AS POSITIVE AFFECT

Positive touching may involve support, reassurance, appreciation, affection, and
sexual attraction, or, if the touch is sustained, it may send a message of inclusion
(i.e., “We’re together”). The enhanced positive affect that can be produced by
even fleeting touches may generalize to the entire local environment, as found in
the library study described at the beginning of this chapter and in the consumer
studies of Hornik (1991, 1992) in which shoppers touched by student greeters eval-
uated the store more favorably. A light, comforting pat by a female has been
shown to even increase the financial risk-taking behaviors of others, presumably
because they feel more secure (Levav & Argo, 2010).

Some kinds of touching behavior from nurses would fit into the category of
positive touching, if it is perceived as comforting and relaxing to the patient. Back
rubs and massages may also express positive feelings from a friend but may be per-
ceived as task related when performed by a professional massage therapist. Psy-
chotherapists, too, recognize the importance of performing touch in such a way
that it communicates positive regard but not too much intimacy. If touch is per-
ceived as an indication of interpersonal warmth, it may bring forth other related
behaviors, including increased verbal output from patients and improved patient
attitudes toward nurses (Aguilera, 1967; Pattison, 1973).

TOUCH AS NEGATIVE AFFECT

The students in Jones and Yarbrough’s study did not report many touches in this
category, but we clearly perceive some touches as an expression of negative atti-
tudes and emotions. An expression of anger or frustration may be conveyed by hit-
ting, slapping, pinching, or tightly squeezing another’s arm so the person cannot
escape. Generally, negative touch is much more likely among young children than
adults.

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 241

TOUCH AND DISCRETE EMOTIONS

Touch can do more than convey generalized positive and negative affect; it can
convey discrete emotions, and may even be the preferred channel for communi-
cating certain feelings, such as love and sympathy (App, McIntosh, Reed, &
Hertenstein, 2011). Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006)
videotaped participants (touchers) while they tried to convey different emotions
just by touching the hand and forearm of another person (recipients). Viewers
who watched the video were able to identify, at levels better than guessing, the
emotions of anger, fear, happiness, disgust, love, sympathy, and disgust. Analysis
of the videos provided insight into how these emotions were conveyed. For exam-
ple, sympathy was expressed with stroking and patting, anger with hitting and
squeezing, and disgust with a pushing motion. There were also differences in
intensity and duration.

Unlike other nonverbal cues, touch can be experienced both by seeing it and by
receiving it. Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006) also asked the
original recipients of the touch to guess what emotion was the toucher was trying
to convey. They could not see the touches, because the touching was done while
their arm was sticking through a curtain—they could only feel the touches. Anger,
fear, disgust, sympathy, love, and gratitude could be identified at better than gues-
sing levels, but some other emotions could not be accurately identified by those
receiving them, such as embarrassment, envy, pride, happiness, and surprise. In a
follow-up study by Thompson and Hampton (2011), though, romantic couples
but not strangers were able to communicate pride and envy to each other via
touch. This finding suggests that the relationship between two people may be
important to either the encoding or the decoding of emotions that are more self-
focused in nature among touchers.

People can also identify discrete emotions on another person’s face by feeling
that person’s face with their hands, as a blind person might do—another connec-
tion between touch and emotion. Even normally sighted individuals with no special
experience in doing this decoded six emotions at levels well above guessing, with
the highest accuracy for happiness, sadness, and surprise (Lederman et al., 2007).

TOUCH AS PLAY

Sometimes we interpret the touching we give and receive as attempts to reduce
the seriousness of a message—whether it is affection or aggression. When one
person goes through the motions of landing a knockout punch on the other per-
son, then stops the forward movement of the fist just as it makes contact with
the other person’s skin, the message is “I’m not fighting, I’m playing.” An accom-
panying smile or laugh may further reinforce this message. The ultimate in playful
touch is tickling, a phenomenon first addressed by psychologists nearly a century
ago and discussed even by Charles Darwin. One question is why we cannot tickle
ourselves, and whether the “other” who does the tickling must be human or
could as easily be a mechanical device. According to Harris and Christenfeld
(1999), a machine can tickle as well as a person provided there is an element of
unpredictability to it.

242 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

TOUCH AS INFLUENCE

Touch is associated with influence when its goal is to persuade the other to do
something. Jones and Yarbrough called these compliance touches, which may
include a variety of behaviors from fulfilling social obligations to actual helping
behavior, as evidenced by the following studies:

• Waitresses who touched diners got bigger tips (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).
• Relative to nontouched customers, those who were touched briefly by their

waitress drank more alcohol compared to their partners (Kaufman & Maho-
ney, 1999). Customers in stores who were touched by a greeter spent more
time shopping and bought more (Hornik, 1991, 1992).

• Psychologists who touched students on the shoulder when requesting help
obtained greater compliance (Patterson, Powell, & Lenihan, 1986), and people
who were touched after agreeing to fill out a survey answered a significantly
larger number of items than people who agreed but were not touched
(Nannberg & Hansen, 1994).

• Practitioners who had touched patients got greater medication compliance
from them relative to those whom they did not touch (Guéguen, Meineri, &
Charles-Sire, 2010).

• In one study, people were touched on the arm for 1 second or less by a
stranger who asked them to hold on to a very active, large dog for 10 minutes
while the stranger went into a pharmacy (Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2002);
even this very slight tactile contact produced a greater willingness to hold on
to the dog. Similarly, a female confederate asking for a cigarette from female
strangers was more likely to get one if she touched the stranger slightly on the
forearm (Joule & Gúeguen, 2007). In that study, unlike Fisher, Rytting, and
Heslin’s (1976) library study described at the beginning of the chapter, com-
pliance was greater among those who remembered being touched.

• Even without a direct request, being touched can increase helpfulness; when
a toucher walked away and then dropped his possessions as if by accident,
the person who was touched was more helpful (Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou,
2003).

The psychological mechanism accounting for these findings is likely to be positive
affect and the personal bonding that may be implied (nonconsciously) by even a
fleeting and seemingly insignificant touch between strangers. These findings suggest
that one could try to use touch manipulatively. For example, women could use
touch to attract men’s attention, given that a field study, which utilized a bar set-
ting, showed that men displayed stronger courtship intentions when they had been
touched (as opposed to not) by a woman confederate (Guéguen, 2010). Such
efforts would of course backfire if the touch recipients did not like the touch, if
they perceived a manipulative intent, or if the implied personal bonding was too
threatening. Regarding the latter, men in Poland were found to be less likely to
agree to a request from a man who had touched them first, presumably due to
homophobic attitudes (Dolinski, 2010).

Aside from using touch to achieve discrete goals, such as bigger tips or a
favor, people may also use touch for more general impression-management

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 243

purposes; for example, to convey the impression of strength, dominance, or self-
confidence. Barack Obama often grips another person’s upper arm with one
hand while shaking hands with the other. He may do this to convey an aura of
being in control, though he could also intend to convey warmth and friendliness.
Whatever the motive, the recipient might interpret it as either a welcome expres-
sion of solidarity or an offensive act of interpersonal control. Touch exemplifies
the ambiguous nature of much nonverbal communication: It is hard to know
what the toucher’s intention is, and the toucher may not be able to predict the
recipient’s reaction.

TOUCH AS INTERACTION MANAGEMENT

We try to structure or control conversations, or elements of conversations, in many
ways. These management touches may guide someone without interrupting verbal
conversation; get someone’s attention by touching or tugging at that person’s arm,
or tapping him or her on the shoulder; indicate or mark the beginning (greeting) or
end (good-bye) of a conversation; or fulfill some ritualistic function, such as touch-
ing a baby’s head at a baptism.

TOUCH AS PHYSIOLOGICAL STIMULUS

Obviously, touch is preeminently important at all stages of sexual interaction.
Touch is also a strong but complex stimulus in more mundane interactions. When
people are in experiments in which they are forewarned that they will be touched
in a professional, innocuous manner, researchers find predictable heart rate
decreases (Drescher, Gantt, & Whitehead, 1980), which is said to demonstrate
that touch is intrinsically calming and relates to the evolutionary importance of
mother–infant bonding. However, when touch is unexpected and/or unexplained,
the heart rate goes up; for example, when females were touched unexpectedly on
the wrist for 10 seconds by a male experimenter, a significant increase in heart
rate was found, and, moreover, all subjects showed increases in blood pressure in
this condition compared to a no-touch condition and a condition in which touch
was expected, such as taking a pulse (Nilsen & Vrana, 1998). Such research under-
scores that the impact of touch depends on social–contextual factors and on the
interpretations given to the touch.

TOUCH AS INTERPERSONAL RESPONSIVENESS

Sometimes the meanings attributed to touch concern the level of involvement,
responsiveness, or activity of the communicator (Afifi & Johnson, 1999). Some-
times touch simply means that the intensity of the interaction, or the interactants’
level of involvement in the conversation, is high. Interpersonal responsiveness may
be perceived as positive affect when it is mutually felt, or when one person feels he
or she contributed to the other’s behavior. Probably more than any other nonver-
bal behavior, acts of touch that are perceived as deliberate are extremely salient in
interaction; they are almost certain to be noticed and are likely to produce strong
reactions, either positive or negative.

244 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

TOUCH AS TASK RELATED

There are times when we need to help someone get out of a car, or our hands
touch as the result of passing something back and forth. These touches, associ-
ated with the performance of a task, are similar to what Heslin called functional/
professional touch. As people get older, they may need assistance walking, given
that falling is more likely among the elderly. It is interesting to note here that
even a light touch, something that might be done by aides in a nursing home,
has been shown to reduce postural sway in the elderly (Johannsen, Guzman-
Garcia, & Wing, 2009).

As with any other message, the two communicators may not share a similar
meaning for the touch—or one person may deliberately try to mislead another. A
not unfamiliar example of the latter is when one person touches another in a jok-
ing context but intends the touch to be a step toward intimacy. Such a blending of
functions has also occurred in studies, such as the library study described earlier:
the touch occurred during task performance (namely, while handing the library
card to the patron), but the effect was positive-emotional.

TOUCH AS HEALING

A miraculous cure is one that cannot be explained by recognized medical or phys-
iological therapy. Throughout recorded history, wondrous healings of the sick
and infirm by religious workers, royalty, and other charismatic persons have had
interpersonal touch as a major ingredient. Jesus was said to heal by touch, and he
was often described as being surrounded by crowds hoping for his touch. The
French and English kings were widely believed to be able to accomplish healing
by the laying on of hands. Edward I of England is documented to have touched
938 of his subjects suffering from scrofula in the 28th year of his reign (Older,
1982). In later centuries, including our own, healing touch became the province
of ministers and of others who attribute the healing touch to the power of God.
The healing power of touch in so-called miraculous cases has not been studied in
a controlled way that could establish its effectiveness or the mechanisms by which
it may work. Although it may be difficult to rule out the power of God or some
unknown physical forces, Older (1982) attributes inexplicable cures to psycholog-
ical factors:

• The patient feels a great need for improvement.
• The patient has profound trust in the healer’s powers.
• The patient is part of a group that increases pressure and adds encouragement.
• There is a shared, irrational belief system, usually of a religious nature.
• Emotions are at a high pitch in the patient and in any onlookers.

Currently, the medical and nursing professions have shown renewed interest
in touching as a form of therapy (Borelli & Heidt, 1981; Kerr, Wasserman, &
Moore, 2007; Krieger, 1987). Some touch therapies involving what researchers
call light touch have been shown to reduce pain (Kerr, Wasserman, & Moore,
2007). Massage, long known for its relaxing and pleasurable properties, has pos-
itive effects on other outcomes such as brain activity, attentiveness and alertness,

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 245

pain relief, anxiety and depression, stress hormones, sleep, appetite, pulmonary
function in asthmatic children, immune function, weight gain in preterm infants,
and other clinical indicators of health (Field, 1998, 2001, 2010; Field, Diego, &
Hernandez-Reif, 2007). It has been suggested that specific neurologic (electroen-
cephalogram) and parasympathetic nervous system activity (e.g., the pressure sti-
mulates the vagal nerve, which lowers physiological arousal and stress
hormones) may be the mechanisms underlying massage’s favorable impact on
people’s well-being (Field, 2010). Even a single massage-therapy session has ben-
eficial effects on anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate (Moyer, Rounds, &
Hannum, 2004).

Whether owning pets is, in general, associated with positive health outcomes is
not a settled empirical matter (Herzog, 2011; Wells, 2011). Nevertheless, the bene-
ficial effects of touch may partially underlie whatever positive physiological and
psychological effects pets have on us, because our relationships with pets typically
entail high levels of touching (Allen, 2003). Because touch can be so comforting
and physiologically beneficial, researchers in one study were surprised at how little
supportive touching took place between parents and their children with cancer dur-
ing painful medical procedures, such as a lumbar puncture. Based on videotape
analysis, over one-quarter of the children received no supportive touch when they
needed it most (Peterson et al., 2007).

Mental health professionals and physicians debate whether touch should be
incorporated into the therapeutic process (Hetherington, 1998; Smith, Clance, &
Imes, 1998; Young, 2007). Risk of sexual involvement, or simply risk that clients
will take offense, is weighed against the potential value of human physical contact
during stressful moments. Certainly therapists, and medical doctors as well, need to
be highly sensitive to the responses that clients may have to being touched.

According to some, especially in the nursing profession, healing can be accom-
plished even without any actual touch. The method called therapeutic touch (TT)
has been widely claimed as effective for many physical conditions when used by
practitioners who strongly endorse the concept. The TT practitioner moves the
hands above, not on, the patient’s body, and in so doing supposedly influences the
energy field surrounding the patient, with therapeutic benefit. Believers and skeptics
have debated whether this method is any better than a simple placebo, but little
empirical research has been conducted to settle the issue. One study, however, has
shown that TT training resulted in positive shifts in the self-reported health of
nurses (Tang, Tegeler, Larrimore, Cowgill, & Kemper, 2010). Nonetheless, a
study published in a prestigious medical journal casts serious doubt on one of
TT’s basic principles—that the experienced TT practitioner can detect the energy
emanating from another person’s body (Rosa, Rosa, Sarner, & Barrett, 1998).
Experienced TT practitioners serving as subjects were told that the experimenter
would hold her own hand over one of the subject’s hands—blocked from the sub-
ject’s view by a screen—and all the subject had to do was guess which of their
hands (left or right) the experimenter’s hand was over. Much to the subjects’ sur-
prise, guess was an apt word, because in fact, their accuracy was no better than
chance, meaning they could not detect an energy field around the experimenter’s
hand. Thus, this well-controlled study strongly suggested that TT adherents are
guided more by faith than science.

246 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

TOUCH AS SYMBOLISM

Perhaps because touch outside of intimate relationships is so infrequent, it is highly
salient when it occurs. Touch can be so fraught with meaning that the act of touch
itself comes to represent the significance of the relationship, ritual, or occasion. The
touch shown in Figure 8-2 between Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat on the day they announced an Israeli–Palestinian reconciliation
says more than words could. Ironically, that same handshake apparently sparked
Rabin’s assassin to plan the prime minister’s death (“With a Handshake,” 1995).

Sometimes, the symbolism of a touch is experienced at a very personal level
through one’s own experience of touch. We are all familiar with photographs of
screaming fans reaching out to touch a famous rock star or professional athlete
(e.g., the Lambeau Leap). Even in everyday situations, people often find value in
touching someone who is important to them. They might say proudly, “I shook
his hand!” The vicarious symbolic power of touch is sometimes evident even when
the actual touch is one step removed from the actual person, as when one can
touch or possess a remnant or other souvenir of the important person. Even an
autograph fits this description, because the important person has touched the pen
and paper. Certainly, throughout the history of Christianity, it has been very mean-
ingful to claim to own a piece of a saint’s body or clothing.

Figure 8-3 vividly portrays an audience reaching out to touch President Bush.
One study of touch patterns in a state legislature noted that though the governor
was touched by many, he was not seen to touch anyone during the observation
period (Goldstein & Jeffords, 1981). The daughter of the Buddhist Panchen Lama,
a holy man second in importance to the Dalai Lama, recollected a trip to Tibet
when she was 7 years old: “They told me that there were people lining the road

FIGURE 8-2
Rabin and Arafat shaking hands.

R
o
n
E
d
m
o
n
d
s/
A
P
P
h
o
to

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 247

for fifty miles. Thousands and thousands of people, all wanting to touch me”
(Hilton, 2004). On another trip, at age 17, she told of being exhausted by the
crowds surrounding her. But, she said, “I can’t complain, because it makes them
so happy to see me and to touch me.” But she had to ask her bodyguards to stop
them from lifting up her skirt to get to her legs.

Touching in these scenarios gives touchers the feeling of acquiring something
important: something has rubbed off on them. It does not always seem to matter
whether the significant other person is the toucher or the recipient of the touch.
What is rubbed off can vary, too. Sometimes it is vicarious power: One can feel
more important among peers after touching a famous person. Other times, what is
gained is less definable though no less important: We might say that one feels one
has acquired some piece of the other’s essence through touch. Whatever the valu-
able quality possessed by the other, people feel they have gained a bit of it through
even a very minor touch. This somewhat magical way of thinking has its reverse
side, too, when we feel contaminated by touching or being touched by undesirable
people. It is surely no coincidence that members of the lowest caste in traditional
Hindu society in India were called untouchables.

FIGURE 8-3
The audience is eager to touch President Bush after one of his speeches.

D
o
u
g
M
ill
s/
T
h
e
N
ew

Y
o
rk

T
im

es
/R
ed

u
x

248 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS IN THE MEANING
OF INTERPERSONAL TOUCH

The meanings of touch depend on many environmental, personal, and contextual
variables, as previous sections have made clear. Indeed, it is likely that much of
the time, the meaning of touch derives from such qualifying variables and not
from the nature of the touch per se. Often, touch intensifies ongoing emotional
experiences rather than conveying specific meanings or messages. The relation-
ship between the interactants provides important context for interpreting the
meaning of touch. A touch on the arm, which might be interpreted as a social/
polite or merely friendly gesture between strangers, may acquire sexual overtones
if a friendly relationship already exists. An embrace may take on different inti-
macy connotations if displayed by two men versus two women (Floyd, 1999), or
if two men embrace on the sports field versus in a bar (Kneidinger, Maple, &
Tross, 2001).

Interpretations of touch are also related to other contextual variables such as
duration, the specific form of the touch, other cues, and other contextual features,
singly and in combination; for example, a touch might seem more intimate if it is
accompanied by other signals, such as prolonged gaze, or if the touch is held an
instant too long, if the environment is private, and so forth. A brief shoulder
touch by waitpersons to their customers resulted in bigger tips, but especially if it
was opposite-gender touching in a bar (Hubbard, Tsuji, Williams, & Seatriz,
2003). Friendship/warmth touching may be more likely to occur in public settings
between people who are not intimate, because the same kind of contact in private
is more likely to take on connotations of love or sexual intimacy. Certain parts of
the body connote greater intimacy than other parts, but intimacy is also linked to
the manner of touch. For instance, a touch and release on any part of the body is
likely to be perceived as less intimate than a touch and hold.

Men and women may also attribute different meanings to similar types of
touch. In a hospital study by Whitcher and Fisher (1979), female nurses touched
patients during an explanation of procedures prior to surgery. Females reacted pos-
itively, showing lower anxiety, more positive preoperative behavior, and more
favorable postoperative physiological responses. But men who were touched in the
same way reacted less positively. A similar result was obtained by Lewis and collea-
gues (1995), who obtained ratings of photographic representations of nurses touch-
ing or not touching patients at the bedside. Men who looked at the photos rated
both male and female nurses as more supportive if they did not touch the patient,
whereas women viewers thought the nurses were more supportive if they did.

Heslin, Nguyen, and Nguyen (1983) found that men and women responded
differently in a questionnaire study regarding people from whom touching would
be considered the greatest invasion of privacy. Women indicated that touch from a
stranger would be the greatest invasion of privacy, whereas men felt that touch
from a same-sex person would be the greatest invasion of privacy. Men reported
themselves to be as comfortable with touch from women strangers as they were
with touch from women friends. Both men and women agreed that the most pleas-
ant type of touch was stroking in sexual areas by an opposite-sex friend. But the
second most pleasant type of touch reported by women was for a male friend to

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 249

stroke nonsexual areas, whereas the second most pleasant type of touch reported
by men was for a female stranger to stroke sexual areas.

Although sexual touching is often thought of as something people do in
romantic relationships, it appears that it is becoming increasingly common among
people who are just friends (friends with benefits [FWB]) as well as those who are
not even emotionally involved with each other and have no plans to be (a hookup).
One study found that 60 percent of women reported having had a hookup by the
end of their first semester of college (Fielder & Carey, 2010b). Here, sexual touch-
ing (hand to genitals, mouth to genitals, intercourse, etc.) must be mutually under-
stood as a means of achieving sexual satisfaction as opposed to romantic
relationship building or maintenance. This does not mean that the reasons for or
consequences of engaging in this type of touching are the same for men and women.
In an Internet-based study of people in FWB-type relationships, men reported being
more motivated by sex to begin such relationships, whereas women were more
motivated by the emotional connection (Lehmiller, VanderDrift, & Kelly, 2011).
Although both men and women appear to experience more positive than negative
emotional reactions to their FWB relationships, only women in one study reported
increased emotional distress from their hookups involving some form of penetra-
tion (Fielder & Carey, 2010a; Owen & Fincham, 2011). Marital status influences
how men and women interpret different kinds of touches. Over 300 individuals
who were in an intimate relationship, either married or not, reported on what it
meant to them when their significant other touched them on various parts of the
body (Hanzal, Segrin, & Dorros, 2008). Confirming results found by Nguyen,
Heslin, and Nguyen (1976), unmarried men found more pleasantness and warmth
or love in being touched than unmarried women did, but this pattern was reversed
among those who were married—in this group, the women found greater reward in
being touched. Moreover, this result was not due to the difference in age between the
unmarried and married groups.

TOUCH CAN BE A POWERFUL NONCONSCIOUS
FORCE IN INTERACTION

As studies cited earlier indicate, being touched can influence our perceptions,
moods, and behaviors even when it is fleeting, subtle, and possibly even unnoticed.
But just as the influence of touch can be nonconscious on the part of the person
being touched, so too can it be nonconscious on the part of the toucher. Ackerman,
Nocera, and Bargh (2010) showed that the weight or texture of objects being
touched (e.g., holding a light versus heavy clipboard) can nonconsciously influence
how the toucher views people and interactions. Another example can be found in
the phenomenon called facilitated communication, a technique developed for
improving the communication of individuals with autism, mental retardation, and
physical diseases that impair motor abilities and communication, such as cerebral
palsy. Facilitated communication was hailed on several continents as a break-
through in the ability of speech-impaired individuals to communicate, and it
became widely practiced and taught in the 1980s and 1990s (Jacobson, Mulick, &
Schwartz 1995; Spitz, 1997).

250 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

How does facilitated communication work? The technique is based on close
tactile contact between the facilitator and the communicator, as well as a close psy-
chological relationship in which trust is established. The facilitator holds and stead-
ies the communicator’s hands while the communicator types words or sentences on
a keyboard. Using this method, many communication-impaired clients typed out
highly revealing, often eloquent accounts of their feelings and thoughts. To many
observers, it seemed that at last individuals with impairments could overcome their
isolation and break out of their terrible enforced silence. Or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, facilitated communication proved not to reveal the impaired
communicators’ thoughts, but rather the thoughts of the facilitators themselves.
Research showed that the communicators were able to answer questions only
when their facilitator knew the question and its answer, and communicators’
responses often seemed much too verbally advanced for their intellectual level. In
fact, communicators could even type out answers to questions when they were not
looking at the keyboard (Kezuka, 1997; Spitz, 1997). Proceeding against a wave of
protest by those who believed in the system, researchers persisted in conducting
controlled experiments that ultimately revealed that often the facilitated communi-
cation effects were due to the facilitator nonconsciously guiding the communica-
tor’s hand to type out what was in the facilitator’s mind. Research showed that
when facilitators were fed incorrect information about the communicator’s back-
ground, and then had to ask the communicator about those same facts, the
answers given reflected the misinformation, not the true answers (Burgess et al.,
1998). Kezuka (1997), using mechanical methods of determining physical force
exerted by facilitators, demonstrated that facilitators did indeed use tiny muscle
movements of their hand, and sometimes facial and other cues, to influence the
position of the communicator’s hand. Thus, the facilitators were the real
communicators.

What makes facilitated communication fascinating and important for behavioral
science is the fact that, in all likelihood, the great majority of facilitators were not
frauds or charlatans but sincere believers (Spitz, 1997). Needless to say, the exposure
of the true nature of facilitated communication was a great disappointment to those
who believed in it. However, the actual—that is, nonconscious—mechanism of its
effect is no less astonishing than the original claims. How could the facilitators be
expressing their own thoughts without being aware of it?

Actually, this is not the first phenomenon involving nonconscious movement
that has been documented. In the 19th century, great interest was paid to pendu-
lums purported to swing in response to mysterious forces. Forked sticks called
dowsing rods are said to suddenly point downward when the person using them
walks over a place where there is underground water (Vogt & Hyman, 2000).
And furniture has suddenly moved or turned, supposedly under the influence of
spirits (Spitz, 1997). In all of these cases, there were no supernatural forces at
work, only strong expectancies that produced motor responses that were out of
awareness. According to Wegner, Fuller, and Sparrow (2003), all of these phenom-
ena depend on “authorship confusion,” whereby the true source of the action is
attributed to a wrong person or object. Read a fascinating example of this in
“Historical Hoofnote.”

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 251

HISTORICAL HOOFNOTE

Herr von Osten purchased a horse in
Berlin in 1900. When von Osten began
training his horse, Hans, to count by tap-
ping his front hoof, he had no idea that
Hans would soon become one of the
most celebrated horses in history. Hans
was a rapid learner and soon progressed
from counting to adding, multiplying,
dividing, subtracting, and eventually to
solving problems involving factors and frac-
tions. Even more startling, when von Osten
exhibited Hans to public audiences, he
counted the size of the crowd and the num-
ber of people wearing eyeglasses. Respond-
ing only with taps, Hans could tell time, use

a calendar, recall musical pitch, and perform numerous other seemingly fantastic feats. After von Osten taught
Hans an alphabet that could be coded into hoofbeats, the horse could answer virtually any question—oral or
written. It seemed that Hans, a common horse, had complete comprehension of the German language, the ability
to produce the equivalent of words and numerals, and an intelligence beyond that of many human beings.

Even without promotion by the mass media, the word spread quickly, and Hans became known
throughout the world. He was soon dubbed Clever Hans. Because of the profound implications for several
scientific fields, and because some skeptics thought a gimmick was involved, an investigating commission
was established to decide whether deceit tainted Hans’s performances. Professors of psychology and physi-
ology, the director of the Berlin Zoological Garden, a director of a circus, veterinarians, and cavalry officers
were appointed to this commission. An experiment with Hans, in which von Osten was absent, demon-
strated no change in the apparent intelligence of the horse. This was sufficient proof for the commission to
announce that no trickery was involved.

But the appointment of a second commission was the beginning of the end for Clever Hans. Von Osten
was asked to whisper a number in the horse’s left ear while another experimenter whispered a number in
the horse’s right ear. Hans was told to add the two numbers—an answer none of the onlookers, von
Osten, or the experimenter knew. Hans failed. And with further tests, he continued to fail. The experi-
menter, Pfungst (1911/1965), had discovered that Hans could answer a question only if someone in his
visual field knew the answer and was attentive to the situation.

When Hans was given a question, onlookers who knew the answer assumed an expectant posture,
increased their body tension, and bent their heads slightly forward. When Hans reached the correct number
of taps, the onlookers would relax and make a slight upward movement of their heads, which was Hans’s
signal to stop tapping. Evidence suggested that Hans could detect head movements as slight as one-fifth of
a millimeter. Subsequent experiments found that Hans also would cease tapping when a knowledgeable
onlooker raised his or her eyebrows or even showed a dilation of the nostrils.

Hans’s cleverness was not in his ability to verbalize or understand verbal commands but in his ability to
notice and respond to almost imperceptible and unconscious nonverbal movements by those surrounding
him (Spitz, 1997). These unwitting accomplices, like the facilitated communicators described in this chapter,
were completely unaware that their movements were producing the horse’s responses. Indeed, like the peo-
ple with impairments in the facilitated communication paradigm, Clever Hans could not answer questions
correctly unless the questioner or some other onlooker knew the correct response.

U
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In
c.

252 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

SELF-TOUCHING

People also communicate nonverbally through self-touching that includes nail
chewing, skin picking, twirling the hair, hand wringing, lip biting, holding, strok-
ing, and self-grooming activities. It is not clear what psychological functions are
served by these actions, though researchers generally agree that they are more an
out-of-awareness expression of personal needs than reflective of intentional
communication (i.e., more “signs” than “signals”). However, intentional communi-
cation sometimes involves self-touching, as when a sexual come-on includes
self-stroking. Various kinds of self-touching, or self-touching used in different
circumstances, may serve different functions. Figure 8-4 shows several kinds of
self-touching. Morris (1971) offered a list of different kinds of self-touching:

1. Shielding actions. These behaviors usually involve reducing input or output:
for example, covering the mouth or ears with the hands.

2. Cleaning actions. Sometimes we bring our hands up to our head to scratch,
rub, pick, or wipe—for literal cleaning. But sometimes similar self-touching is
used for attending to our appearance: for example, hair grooming, clothes
straightening, and other types of preening. Observations and subsequent inter-
views with people in public restrooms found women engaging in more of this
behavior than men. People in the process of building an intimate relationship
did more preening than those whose intimate relationship had been established
for some time (Daly, Hogg, Sacks, Smith, & Zimring, 1983).

3. Specialized signals. These gestures are used to communicate specific messages,
such as cupping the ear with the hand to signal an inability to hear, or holding
a hand under the chin to signal “I have had it up to here.”

4. Self-intimacies. Self-intimacies, according to Morris, are comforting actions
that generally represent nonconsciously reproduced acts of being touched by
someone else. They may involve holding one’s own hands, arm folding, leg
crossing, masturbation, and so on. Some actions, he maintains, are more likely
to be performed by women than men, such as the head-lowered-on-to-the-
shoulder posture and leg hugging. Thus, self-touching can be a substitute for
comfort that might otherwise be provided by others.

Some self-touching behaviors are what Ekman and Friesen (1972) called adap-
tors or self-manipulators. As the term implies, they are behavioral adaptations in
response to certain situations. There is consensus that adaptors are generally associ-
ated with negative feelings. Some useful classifications exist for different types of
adaptors, which include both the probable referent for the behavior—self, other,
or object—and the type of behavior, such as scratching or rubbing.

Research on psychiatric patients has found that self-adaptors increase as a per-
son’s psychological discomfort, anxiety, or depression gets worse (Ekman &
Friesen, 1972; Freedman, 1972; Freedman, Blass, Rifkin, & Quitkin, 1973;
Freedman & Hoffman, 1967; Waxer, 1977). If, however, the anxiety level is too
high, a person may freeze, engaging in little movement at all. The finding that self-
adaptors also were associated with guilt feelings in the patients studied illuminates
one aspect of the deception research we review in Chapter 12. Ekman and Friesen
(1972) also discovered picking and scratching self-adaptors to be related to a

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 253

FIGURE 8-4
Self-touching.

C
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es

y
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Ju

d
ith

A
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al
l

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254 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

person’s hostility and suspiciousness. Theoretically, this picking and scratching is a
manifestation of aggression against oneself or aggression felt for another person
that is directed inward. Other speculations and hypotheses about self-adaptors
include the possibility that rubbing is used to give self-assurance, that covering the
eyes is associated with shame or guilt, that self-grooming shows concern for one’s
self-presentation, or that self-touching is an outlet for nervous energy.

A number of studies have indicated that self-touching is associated with situa-
tional anxiety or stress. This is the case in baboons as well as in people (Castles,
Whitens, & Aureli, 1999). Ekman and Friesen (1974a) asked people to watch one
of two films, one highly stressful and the other quite pleasant. Viewers were then
instructed to describe the film as pleasant to an interviewer. Thus, those watching
the stressful film had to deceive, which in itself can be considered stressful. Partici-
pants in the second group engaged in more self-touch than those simply describing
the pleasant film as pleasant. In a study of physician–patient communication,
patients were more likely to touch their bodies when talking about anxiety-
producing hidden agendas than when talking about the primary complaint (Shreve,
Harrigan, Kues, & Kagas, 1988).

Interracial interaction is another context in which stress can produce self-
touching. Olson and Fazio (2007) coded any kind of self-manipulation—such as
scratching the head, playing with the hair, or kneading the hands—by white partici-
pants when interacting with black and white confederates. The participants’ general
racial attitudes were measured as well as their attitudes about the particular black
confederate they had interacted with. When these two kinds of attitudes were
discordant—such as when their general attitude was negative, but their attitude
toward the particular black confederate was positive—participants engaged in signifi-
cantly higher levels of self-touching. This study well illustrates the complexity of
interpreting the meaning of nonverbal communication. Though some authors have
emphasized prejudiced individuals’ communication of hostile attitudes through non-
verbal behaviors, this study reminds us that nonverbal behavior can also be a sign
of discomfort or internal conflict, and not due to interpersonal negativity per se.

Self-touching is also greater in people who are chronically anxious, a variable
known as trait anxiety, such as among people who are shy but also have a desire to
be sociable (Cheek & Buss, 1981). When trait anxiety is measured indirectly, using a
reaction-time task, it predicts self-touching and other behavioral signs of anxiety bet-
ter than an explicit self-report does. Perhaps on an explicit self-report, highly anxious
people deny their anxiety or are not fully aware of it (Egloff & Schmukle, 2002). An
interesting question is whether the self-touching associated with anxiety is simply an
indicator that anxiety is occurring, or whether such touching actually relieves stress.

Another source of body-focused movements is cognitive, or information-
processing, demand. When engaged in a monologue, people touched themselves
more than when simply sitting still. Heaven and McBrayer (2000) showed that
people touched themselves more when answering questions about a passage they
had heard than when simply listening to it. When asked to read the names of col-
ors that were printed in contradictory colors, such as the word red printed in blue,
people touched themselves more than if they were given color-consistent color
names to read (Kenner, 1993). These results suggest that mental concentration and
stress can lead to more self-touching.

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 255

Though not much direct evidence exists for how aware people are of their self-
touching, it is generally assumed that, compared to some other nonverbal beha-
viors, self-touching is low in awareness. Hall, Murphy, and Schmid Mast (2007)
found that, indeed, when asked how much of several nonverbal behaviors they
engaged in during a videotaped interaction, people were least accurate in remem-
bering how much they had engaged in self-touching, though they did remember
their self-touching at levels better than chance.

The concept of adaptors can be extended to behaviors other than self-touching.
Such behaviors are theorized to have been learned in conjunction with our early
experiences with interpersonal relations: giving and taking from another, attacking
or protecting, establishing closeness or withdrawing, and so forth. Ekman believes
that restless movements of the hands and feet, which have typically been consid-
ered indicators of anxiety, may be residues of adaptors necessary for flight from an
interaction.

Object-adaptors involve the manipulation of objects for no obvious functional
purpose. One example is rolling a paper clip around with your fingers. Object-
adaptor behaviors also may be derived from the performance of some instrumental
task, such as writing with a pencil or smoking. Some people engage in these man-
nerisms more than others. Although people are typically unaware of performing
self-adaptor behaviors, they are probably more aware of object-adaptors. These
movements are often learned later in life, and fewer social taboos seem to be asso-
ciated with them. As with self-adaptors, object-adaptors are likely to be associated
with anxiety, stress, or cognitive load.

Because there are social constraints on displaying some self-adaptors, they are
more often seen when a person is alone. At any rate, in public we would not expect
to see the full act. As an example, alone you might pick your nose without inhibi-
tion, but when around other people, you may just touch your nose or rub it
casually.

Individual and group differences in self-touching have been found. In a study
of children from four countries, those from England and Australia engaged in sig-
nificantly less self-touching during experimental tasks than did Italian children and
French-speaking children in Belgium. Possibly, touching of other people may paral-
lel these self-touching differences across these cultures. Also in those samples, sig-
nificant individual variation was revealed, meaning that some children were
consistently more likely to touch themselves during a variety of experimental tasks
(Kenner, 1993). Another group difference relates to gender: Women touch them-
selves in interpersonal interaction more than men do (Hall, 1984). It is not clear
to what extent this may reflect greater social anxiety or arousal on the part of
females, a heightened self-consciousness about appearance, or the simple fact that
women’s clothes and hair more often demand readjustment.

SUMMARY

Our first information about ourselves, others,
and our environment probably comes from
touching. The act of touching or being touched
can have a powerful impact on our response to a

situation, even if that touch was unintentional. In
some cases, touching is the most effective method
for communicating; in others, it can elicit nega-
tive or hostile reactions. The meanings we attach

256 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

to touching behavior vary according to what
body part is touched, how long the touch lasts,
the strength of the touch, the method of the
touch, and the frequency of the touch. Touch
also means different things in different environ-
ments—institutions, airports, and so on—and
varies with communicators’ age, gender, culture,
personality, and relationship. Indications are that
children in the United States touch more than
adults do, but there seems to be a decreasing
amount of touch from kindergarten through
junior high school. Investigators agree that early
experiences with touch are crucial for later
adjustment.

The common types of interpersonal touching
and self-touching may communicate a variety of
messages that include influence, positive affect,
negative affect, play, interpersonal responsive-
ness, interaction management, and task require-
ments. Touch can have powerful symbolism, and
its possible healing and therapeutic power has
received much attention throughout history and
in modern research laboratories. Touching can
also intensify whatever emotional experience is
occurring. Touch can be a powerful source of
behavioral influence, and both the toucher and
the recipient of touch may be unaware of its
occurrence and effects.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Think of a person you know personally who
does not like touching or being touched.
What analysis can you offer for this person’s
characteristic? How much do you think it
reflects personal history and personality ver-
sus social and cultural norms?

2. What do you think about the ethics of using
touch to achieve compliance or a favor from
someone? Is it different from using persua-
sive language or using other forms of nonver-
bal communication, such as smiling or
generally “being nice”?

3. Most studies find that touch is a rather infre-
quent event. Do you think this is correct?
Discuss exceptions to this generalization.
Why do you think touch might seem to be
not very common?

4. Sometimes people are eager to touch others
because they gain something of psychological

value by doing so, yet people often feel vio-
lated by being touched. Discuss these differ-
ent perspectives on the phenomenon of
touch.

5. It has been suggested that sometimes a
woman’s friendly intention touch is misper-
ceived by a man as being a sexual invitation.
Have you ever had such an experience? Do
you think this is a true phenomenon?

6. For a day, pay close attention to your own
and others’ use of self-touching. Try to ana-
lyze the circumstances under which people
engage in this behavior. Note what brings it
on, what situations it occurs in, and what
kind of people do it more or do it less. What
kind of psychological function do you think
self-touching serves?

CHAPTER 8 THE EFFECTS OF TOUCH ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 257

THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN

COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 9 ]

The face is rich in communicative potential. It is a primary site for communication
of emotional states, it reflects interpersonal attitudes, it provides nonverbal feed-
back on the comments of others, and some scholars say it is the primary source of
communicative information next to human speech. For these reasons, and because
of the face’s visibility, we pay a great deal of attention to the messages we receive
from the faces of others. Frequently, we rely heavily on facial cues when making
important interpersonal judgments. This begins when, as infants, we take special
interest in the huge face peering over our crib and tending to our needs. Most of
the research on facial expressions and various components of the face has focused
on the display and interpretation of emotional signals. Although this is the major
focus of this chapter, we also emphasize that the face may be the basis for judging
another person’s personality, and it can—and does—provide information on much
more than our emotional state.

THE FACE AND PERSONALITY JUDGMENTS

The human face and its features come in many sizes and shapes. As reviewed in
Chapter 6, people have long believed that certain personality or character traits
can be judged from the shape or features of a person’s face. For example, high
foreheads are believed to reveal intelligence, thin lips conscientiousness, and thick
lips sexiness (Secord, Dukes, & Bevan, 1959). Facial primacy, or the tendency to

Your face, my thane, is a book where men may read strange matters.
—Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I

258

give more weight to the face than to other communication channels, may stem in
part from these facial stereotypes.

But facial primacy probably stems even more from the dynamic nature of the
face—its ability to make practically an infinite number of expressions. Many differ-
ent muscles are used routinely in making facial expressions (Rinn, 1984). The look
of a person’s face is due in part to the genetic blueprint that endows it with certain
physical features, in part to transient moods that stimulate the muscles to move in
distinctive ways, and in part to the lingering imprint of chronically held expressions
that seem to set in and become virtually permanent over the years. The dynamic
face is the subject of the present chapter.

People make personality attributions based on facial expressions (Knutson,
1996). For example, a person who smiles at us warmly upon introduction is imme-
diately perceived to be nice. Likewise, we think a sour-faced old man is mean and
selfish. Little research exists on the validity of such stereotypes, though. It is cer-
tainly possible that the person with the warm smile is a cutthroat manipulator and
the mean-looking man is a tenderhearted soul. One study supporting the validity of
facial expression stereotypes found that college students believe facially expressive
individuals are more confident and likable, and indeed, in a sample of college
women, those with more expressive faces were more extraverted, according to sev-
eral self-report scales (Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Thus, there can be a kernel of
truth to some facial-expression-based stereotypes.

Another study lending support to the validity of facial-expression-based stereo-
types was done by Harker and Keltner (2001). The more women’s faces showed
positive emotional expression in their college yearbook pictures, the more observers
of the pictures thought the women would be rewarding to interact with. And
indeed, the women who had more positive expressions had more affiliative person-
alities and reported experiencing more positive affect, not only at age 21, but also
decades later, and they were more likely to be married by age 27 than women
who had less positive yearbook photos.

Research does not always support the validity of facial-expression-based
stereotypes, however. Gifford (1994) studied self-reported personality, others’
impressions of personality, and various nonverbal cues emitted during interaction.
Although smiling was positively related to observers’ impressions of extraversion,
agreeableness and ingenuousness, smiling was not related to the targets’ own per-
sonality ratings for any of these traits.

THE FACE AND INTERACTION MANAGEMENT

Our faces also are used to facilitate and inhibit responses in daily interaction. Parts
of the face are used to:

1. Open and close channels of communication
2. Complement or qualify verbal and/or nonverbal responses
3. Replace speech

Behaviors can, of course, serve several functions simultaneously. For example, a
yawn may replace the spoken message “I’m bored” and also may serve to shut
down other channels of communication, such as eye contact.

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 259

CHANNEL CONTROL

When we want a speaking turn, we sometimes open our mouths in readiness to
talk, which is often accompanied by an inspiration of breath. Others notice such
signals and decide whether to ignore or respect them. As noted in Chapter 2, the
eyebrow flash found in greeting rituals, which is frequently accompanied by a
smile, is another facial cue that signals a desire to interact. Interestingly, smiles
also are found in situations in which there is a desire to close the channels of com-
munication; for example, a smile of appeasement as a person backs away from
someone threatening physical harm. Smiling and winking, at least in popular
stereotypes, also are used to flirt with others—an invitation that not only opens
the channels of communication but also suggests the type of interaction desired.

Although we usually think of smiles as showing emotion or attitudes, they
actually have many complex functions. Brunner (1979) showed that smiles serve
as “listener responses” or “back channels” in conversation in that they signal
attentiveness and involvement just as head nods, “uh-huh,” and “yeah” do. These
smiles do not indicate joy or happiness in the sender but are meant to facilitate and
encourage the other person’s speech. These cues achieve channel control by keeping
channels open.

COMPLEMENTING OR QUALIFYING OTHER BEHAVIOR

In normal conversational give and take, there are instances when we wish to under-
line, magnify, minimize, or contradict messages. The speaker or listener may give
these signals. A sad verbal message may acquire added emphasis with eyebrow
movements that normally accompany the expression of sadness. A smile may tem-
per a message that could otherwise be interpreted as negative. The hand emblem
for A-OK may be accompanied by a wink, leaving little doubt that approval is
being communicated. Thus, facial cues can combine with other cues to avoid con-
fusion and magnify or qualify our messages.

REPLACING SPOKEN MESSAGES

Ekman and Friesen (1975) identified what they call facial emblems. Like hand
emblems, these displays have a fairly consistent verbal translation. Facial emblems
are different from the actual emotional expressions in that the sender is trying to
talk about an emotion while indicating he or she is not actually feeling it. These
facial emblems usually occur in contexts not likely to trigger the actual emotion;
they are usually held for a longer or shorter time than the actual expression and
are usually performed by using only part of the face. When you drop your jaw
and hold your mouth open without displaying other features of the surprise expres-
sion, you may be saying that the other person’s comment is surprising or that you
were dumbfounded by what was said. Widened eyes without other features of the
surprise and fear expressions may serve the same purpose as a verbal “wow!” If
you want to comment nonverbally on your disgust for a situation, a nose wrinkle
or raising one side of your upper lip should get your message across. Sometimes
one or both eyebrows communicate “I’m puzzled” or “I doubt that.” Other facial

260 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

messages with common verbal translations that are not associated with expressions
of emotion include the “You know what I mean” wink and sticking your tongue
out to convey insult or disapproval (Smith, Chase, & Lieblich, 1974).

Facial movements play an important role in managing conversation (Bavelas &
Chovil, 1997; Chovil, 1991/1992). According to Chovil, the most frequent function
is syntactic display. Syntactic facial displays act as markers, functioning as visible
punctuation for words and clauses; they are directed toward the organizational
structure of the conversation to mark beginnings, endings, restarts, continuations,
and emphasis. Raising and lowering the eyebrows is a central activity in syntactic
displays. Facial actions made by a speaker that are directly connected with the con-
tent of what is being said are called semantic displays. These displays may be
redundant with the verbal behavior or they may involve additional commentary
on the spoken words, such as personal reactions to what is being said. The face
also provides listener responses, as mentioned earlier. These are primarily facial dis-
plays that facilitate the flow of interaction but also include those that give personal
reactions and seemingly empathic displays in the form of behavioral mimicry.

The preceding discussion provides only a cursory overview of how the face is
used in managing interpersonal interactions. We did not deal with concomitant
gaze behavior and other subtle movements such as head tilts. We talked about
smiles as if there were only one variety. Brannigan and Humphries (1972) have
identified nine smiles, representing various types and degrees of intensity, many of
which seem to occur in distinctly separate situations. Ekman and Friesen (1978),
using an anatomically based coding system we will describe shortly, have found
over 100 distinctly different human smiles. Most recently, researchers have distin-
guished between smiles that are more and less likely to be indicative of true positive
affect, as discussed later in this chapter.

THE FACE AND EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION

The intellectual roots of our modern interest in facial expression stem from the
mid-19th century. Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals (1872), although not as famous as his other writings on natural selection,
was a major work of theory and empirical observation that largely focused on the
face (Ekman & Oster, 1982). To Darwin, the study of emotional expression was
closely tied to his case for evolution, for he held that the capacity to communicate
through nonverbal signals had evolved just as the brain and skeleton had. The face
becomes increasingly mobile as one moves up the phylogenetic ladder. In many ani-
mals, the face is a fixed mask with little to no capacity for mobility, but in primates
we see a great variety of expressions (Redican, 1982). Because it would support his
theory of evolution, Darwin considered it extremely important to document simi-
larities in the nature of emotional expression across species and across human cul-
tures. Several strands of contemporary facial research can be traced to Darwin’s
insights, including conducting judgment studies to find out what meanings obser-
vers ascribe to different expressions, undertaking cross-cultural studies, studying
the movements of particular facial muscles, and testing the hypothesis that making
facial expressions can intensify the expressor’s experience of emotion. We review
each of these topics here.

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 261

DISPLAY RULES AND FACIAL EMOTION EXPRESSION

Consider the following situations:

1. A student who feels sure he is doing “C” work is told by his instructor that he
is doing “A” work. His immediate reaction is total surprise, probably followed
by glee. But how does he react? His face shows mild surprise, and he com-
ments that he thought he was doing pretty good work in the course.

2. A poker player draws her fourth ace in a game with no wild cards. Her face
would lead the other players to believe she was unmoved.

3. A woman receives a holiday present that she likes, but it is nothing spectacu-
lar. Her facial expression and comments, however, lead the giver to believe it
was the only thing she ever wanted in her entire life.

4. The husband of a fledgling executive is forced to attend the boss’s party and is
told explicitly that his behavior will have a profound impact on the promotion
of his spouse. He is nervous and also annoyed. But, according to those who
describe the party later, he was the life of the party—happy, carefree, and
relaxed.

These four examples illustrate certain display rules we tend to follow (Ekman &
Friesen, 1969b). The student illustrated a deintensified affect—strong surprise was
made to look like mild surprise. The poker player was trying to neutralize her
feelings to make it appear there was no emotion at all. The person reacting to the
holiday present tried to make mild happiness appear to be strong happiness—an
overintensification of the affect. The husband of the fledgling executive was trying
to mask feelings of tension or annoyance with happiness and confidence. These
display rules are learned, but we do not always use them at a conscious level of
awareness. We learn culturally prescribed norms for when and how much emotion
to display. We also develop personal display rules based on our needs or perhaps
the demands of our occupation (e.g., as a politician or salesperson). We learn that
some affect displays are appropriate in some places but not others, for some status
and role positions but not others, and for one sex but not the other.

The existence of display rules helps explain why some anthropologists have
believed that emotions are expressed in sharply different ways from culture to cul-
ture. Although the same potential for showing a particular facial expression of
emotion may exist in all humans, such as with anger, cultural upbringing influences
when and how it is shown (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, 2010). Another example
concerns grief. In one society, people may weep and moan at a funeral, whereas in
another they may celebrate with feast and dance. However, the underlying emo-
tion, grief, is experienced and likely expressed similarly in private. The difference
is that in public, the cultural norms—display rules—regulate behavior. In the first
society, the rule says “Show how sad you are,” but in the second, it says “Affirm
social bonds” or “Show hope for the future.”

The topic of deception is taken up in a later chapter, but let us say here that
the face, along with other nonverbal cues, can certainly be used to deceive others
about our feelings and thoughts. Deception may be driven by situational factors,
such as when a customer does not want a salesperson to know how much he or
she really wants a costly product (Puccinelli, Motyka, & Grewal, 2010). The line

262 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

between deception and display rules can be fuzzy, but in general it can be said
that display rules, because they are shared, reflect a collective understanding of
socially appropriate behavior, whereas deception is generally considered to be
done for a person’s own self-advantage and to the disadvantage of others. There-
fore, basing our nonverbal behavior on display rules tends to be looked on with
approval, as an indication of social skill or maturity, whereas deception is gener-
ally disapproved of.

Display rules do not always have to be socially defined and shared. Such differ-
ences may stem from a person’s level of expressiveness and be related to neurologic
differences (Kunz et al., 2011). People also can have their own idiosyncratic
“rules” for expression. Ekman and Friesen (1975) developed a classification system
for various styles of facial expressions. The styles are heavily based on personal dis-
play rules and represent extremes. A style may be displayed in a less extreme fash-
ion in some situations or at certain times in the person’s life, but some people
manifest a given style with consistency. These styles include the following:

1. The withholder. The face inhibits expressions of actual feeling states. There is
little facial movement.

2. The revealer. This style is the opposite of the withholder. The face of the
person who lets it all hang out leaves little doubt how the person
feels—continually.

3. The unwitting expressor. This pattern usually pertains to a limited number of
expressions that a person thought were masked, hence this person might ask,
incredulously, “How did you know I was angry?”

4. The blanked expressor. In this style, the person is convinced an emotion is
being portrayed, but others see only a blank face.

5. The substitute expressor. Here, the facial expression shows an emotion other
than the one the person thinks is being displayed.

6. The frozen-affect expressor. This style manifests at least part of an emotional
display at all times. Some people are born with a facial configuration that in a
relaxed, neutral state shows the down-turned mouth associated with sadness;
others habitually experience an emotion so much that traces of the emotional
display are permanently etched into the face. (This is an idea that Darwin
proposed.)

Self-presentational desires can also produce distinctive styles of facial expres-
sion. Former President Clinton often used a smile we call his brave smile (Figure 9-1).
It is not a pure expression of happiness, as our discussion of blends and “felt” smiles
later in this chapter makes clear. Rather, we think Clinton was trying to convey a
complex mixture of pride, determination, concern, and modesty with the combination
of the paradoxically down-turned mouth, the set chin, and the “smile wrinkles”
around the eyes.

The preceding discussion of display rules and styles of emotional facial expres-
sion demonstrates that we have considerable control over our facial expressions,
and this control is manifested in a variety of ways. Although we can successfully
present facial messages that we do not feel, sometimes we lie imperfectly by enact-
ing an expression at the wrong time; by enacting it too often or for too long, as
when we insincerely display a smile too long; or by using various facial muscles

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 263

inappropriately. These factors may help us separate genuine emotions from pseu-
doexpressions of emotion on the face.

People undeniably are aware of the communicative potential of the face and
tend to monitor it carefully by inhibiting or exhibiting when desired. With the con-
stant feedback we receive about our facial expressions, we become rather proficient
at controlling them. We are also more accurate in reporting our facial expressions
than other head or body movements (Hall, Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2007).

The way we experience emotions can be quite complex. Sometimes we move
rapidly from one emotion to another. For example, people reporting the feeling of
jealousy indicate that the “jealous flash may move from shock and numbness to
desolate pain to rage and anger to moral outrage in a very brief time” (Ellis &
Weinstein, 1986). Sometimes we are not sure what emotion we are feeling, and at
other times, we seem to feel many emotions at once. Simultaneously felt emotions
may even be contradictory, as when one is both attracted and repulsed by a grisly
accident scene. When we experience more than one emotion, we sometimes try to
control one while we deal with the other. These are only some of the many ways
we experience emotions (Ellis, 1991).

Because emotional experience is complex, understanding emotion through
facial expression is correspondingly difficult. People do not always portray pure or
single emotional states, in which all the parts of the face show a single emotion.
Instead, the face conveys multiple emotions. These are called affect blends and
may appear on the face in numerous ways. For example, one emotion is suggested

FIGURE 9-1
Former President Clinton’s “brave” smile.

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264 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

by one facial area, and another is suggested by another area, as when brows are
raised as in surprise and lips are pressed as in anger. Or two different emotions
are shown in one part of the face, as when one brow is raised as in surprise, and
the other is lowered as in anger. Such displays may merely confuse a viewer, or
they may convey a new meaning that is different from either of the elements. The
brows just described might, for example, convey skepticism.

Figure 9-2 shows two examples of facial blends. One photograph shows a
blend of happiness, evidenced by a smiling movement in the mouth area, and also
surprise, evidenced by the raised eyebrows and forehead, wide eyes, and a slight
dropping of the jaw. Such an expression could occur if you thought you were
going to get an “F” on an exam, but you received an “A” instead. In the other
photograph, the eyebrow, forehead, and eye area show anger while the mouth
shows sadness. This combination might occur if your instructor told you that your
grade on an exam you considered unfair was an “F.” You feel sad about the low
grade and angry at the instructor.

A final note about the complexity of faces concerns what Haggard and Isaacs
(1966) called micromomentary facial expressions. While searching for indications
of nonverbal communication between therapist and patient, they ran films at slow
motion and noticed that the expression on the patient’s face would sometimes
change dramatically—from a smile to a grimace to a smile, for example—within a
few frames of the film. Further analysis revealed that when they ran the films at
4 frames per second, instead of the normal 24 frames per second, 2.5 times as
many changes of expression could be discerned. One hypothesis is that these micro-
momentary expressions reveal actual emotional states but are condensed in time

FIGURE 9-2
Facial blends.

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CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 265

because of repressive processes. They are often incompatible with both the
apparent expression and the patient’s words. One patient, saying nice things about
a friend, had a seemingly pleasant facial expression; however, slow-motion film
showed a wave of anger cross her face. Although agreeing that micromomentary
expressions may show conflict, repression, or efforts to conceal an emotion,
Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth (1982) actually found them to be “very rare events”
based on extensive analysis of facial movements. However, this does not mean they
do not have an impact, possibly a subliminal one, when they occur.

THE FACIAL EMOTION CONTROVERSY

One tradition, originating with Darwin and associated today with the work of Paul
Ekman and Carroll Izard, emphasizes the close connection between facial displays
of emotion and concurrently felt emotions with a corresponding emphasis on
emotion-expressive display linkages as being biologically grounded. This approach
has fueled ambitious programs of cross-cultural research on the recognition of
facial expression, as discussed in Chapter 2 and also later in this chapter. A sim-
plistic version of such a theoretical position would hold that, at least for certain
basic emotions, the emotion always produces a certain expression, which could be
a single muscle movement or a complex pattern of movements, and conversely that
this expression always signifies the occurrence of its associated emotion. According
to such a view, facial expressions are always a readout—an honest, unpremedi-
tated, uncontrolled indication—of internal emotional states.

A bit of reflection on everyday experience should make the reader skeptical of
such a view, however, and it is unlikely that any theorist holds such an extreme
position. As we discussed in the previous section, people can feign emotions by
willfully putting on different expressions. They also are sensitive to situations in
which it would be inappropriate to show certain expressions; for example, a win-
ner who shows too much happiness could be seen as gloating. A rising tide of
research now shows that a purely spontaneous nonverbal readout of emotional
states may be a rarer event than some think (Bonanno & Keltner, 2004; Russell,
Bachorowski, & Fernández-Dols, 2003). The term loosely coupled is used to
describe emotion and expression systems that coincide only occasionally or under
certain circumstances.

Many studies support this argument that expressions are not a perfect window
into emotional experience. Researchers have sought to create or observe situations
in which the experience of an emotion can be confirmed, so that they can see
what expressions are produced. People bowling with friends have been observed in
the United States and Spain. After a good roll, and at other moments when they
reported feeling happy, bowlers smiled much more when facing their friends than
when facing the pins. Similarly, soccer fans watching a match on television smiled
much more during happy moments when orienting directly to their friends than
during happy moments when they were not interacting with them directly. During
their noninteractive happy moments, they showed expressions indicative of several
different emotions not shown in the interactive happy moments (Fernández-Dols &
Ruiz-Belda, 1997; Kraut & Johnston, 1979; Ruiz-Belda, Fernández-Dols, Carrera, &

266 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Barchard, 2003). Thus, a person can be very happy yet not show it in a prototypi-
cally “happy” facial expression.

Further evidence that facial expression and experienced emotion are only
loosely coupled, and that the nature of the social situation is a strong determinant
of what is displayed on the face, is that facial motor mimicry—displaying what
another person is feeling, such as wincing when a friend stubs his toe—decreases
when no one is there to see the facial display (Bavelas, Black, Lemery, & Mullett,
1986; Chovil, 1991). Furthermore, college students watching emotionally provok-
ing slides were more facially expressive when they watched with a friend as
opposed to a watching with a stranger (Wagner & Smith, 1991), and college stu-
dents recounting positive and negative experiences showed facial expressions that
inconsistently matched their reported affect (Lee & Wagner, 2002). At the Olympic
Games, gold medal winners were filmed at three moments: while standing behind
the podium away from public view, while standing on the podium interacting with
authorities and the public, and while standing on the podium facing the flagpoles
and listening to their national anthem (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995).
Although their feelings of happiness probably did not vary across these three
closely spaced periods, the winners smiled the most during the public-interactive
period, suggesting again that a facial expression is not due solely to the emotion
being experienced.

Audience effects such as these may even occur when a person is alone and
behaving spontaneously, for even then a person may respond to fantasies or
memories of social interaction. In support of this notion, Fridlund (1991) found
that college students watching a pleasant film smiled more when watching with a
friend than when watching alone. But students who watched the film in a differ-
ent room from their friend and were aware that the friend was watching the
same film also smiled more than students who watched the film alone. Thus,
even the imagined presence or experience of others may serve to stimulate or
facilitate facial displays.

The impact of the audience on facial displays of emotion is also influenced
by the disposition of the person experiencing the emotion. People vary with
respect to how negatively oriented they are to pain, from low to high catastro-
phizing. Vervoort and colleagues (2011) had children undergo the cold pressor
pain task twice (i.e., dipping a hand in a container of very cold water for a min-
ute, which is moderately painful), once when the children thought they were
alone and once when they thought a parent was watching them. There was a
3-minute parent–child interaction in between the two tasks. The researchers
noted that higher levels of facial expressions of pain were observed when parents
did not talk about the child’s pain, but only among high-catastrophizing children; for
low-catastrophizing children, pain expressions were not related to parental talk
about pain. This suggests that high-catastrophizing children’s pain expressions were
influenced by how a parent was responding to their experience of pain.

Fridlund’s (1994, 1997) behavioral ecology theory of facial expression asserts
that facial expressions are virtually never simply emotional and are, instead, always
enacted for social purposes. In Fridlund’s view, spontaneous expression of emotion
would not have been a selected trait during evolution because showing all one’s

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 267

feelings would too often have not served the expressor’s interest, and it could
possibly have even served the interests of rivals by depriving the expressor of the
ability to deceive. Fridlund’s argument that facial expressions are meant to commu-
nicate rather than to simply reveal is consistent with many examples of functional
expressive behavior in the animal kingdom, as well as with everyday observation
of human interaction.

However, most researchers appear not to accept the extreme position that
facial expressions are mainly messages and are hardly ever purely spontaneous
readouts of one’s emotional life. There are certainly many instances when our
faces show feelings without our being aware of it—sometimes feelings that we
would very much have wanted to conceal. The fact that audience presence effects
can sometimes work in reverse, with people showing more facial expressions when
alone than with others present, suggests that people do indeed make spontaneous
emotional expressions (Buck, 1984, 1991; Wagner & Lee, 1999). Facial expressions
are not always only for social communication purposes.

Thus far, the approach described for testing whether expressions match inner
feelings involves comparing expressions in different social circumstances. Another
way of asking this question is to compare people’s expressions to what they say
about their emotional states. When viewers were asked about their emotions during
neutral or scary film excerpts, almost no matching occurred (Fernández-Dols &
Ruiz-Belda, 1997)—only 2 of 35 viewers who reported a basic emotion showed
the expression that theoretically should have been produced by that emotion,
and 3 showed expressions that suggested entirely different emotions from those
reported.

Similarly, Carroll and Russell (1997) first obtained good agreement from
viewers on which emotions were being expressed in over 100 scenes by actors in
Hollywood movies, and then they conducted a detailed analysis of the actors’
faces. Only for happy episodes did the expected “happy” pattern of facial move-
ments occur. For other emotions, although particular expected movements—such
as lowered brows in angry episodes—occurred more often than chance might
dictate, little evidence supported the idea that whole prototypical patterns of
expression actually took place. Considering that actors are likely to make more
stereotyped expressions than people in real life, these results give a strong indication
that the face and emotion do not necessarily have a close correspondence.

MEASURING THE FACE

ANATOMICAL DESCRIPTION For many years, descriptions of facial movements tended
to be impressionistic or idiosyncratic (Ekman, 1982; Rinn, 1984). This changed
dramatically with the work of Carroll Izard (1979) and of Paul Ekman and
Wallace Friesen (1978), who independently developed precise systems for describ-
ing facial action based on muscle movements. Izard’s work has focused on infant
expressions. The Ekman–Friesen Facial Action Coding System (FACS) has been
applied more generally and appears to be the most widely adopted. In this context,
the term widely is relative because learning a system comprehensive enough to
describe nearly any combination of muscle movements requires many hours of
training and practice and is extremely time consuming to apply.

268 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Ekman and Friesen developed the FACS by painstakingly learning how
to move all their facial muscles and by studying anatomy texts. They studied
the faces of other people who had learned how to control specific muscles and
considered what movements an observer could reliably distinguish—important
because observers would be the data-gatherers. These movements were called
action units. Sometimes an action unit involves more than one muscle, if those
muscles always work in tandem or if an observer cannot see the difference.
Altogether, the FACS can identify over 40 distinct action units in the face.
For illustration, Figure 9-3 presents the action units identified by Ekman (1979)
for the brow and forehead. Altogether, seven different muscles can influence this
region of the face.

The FACS allows emotion researchers to describe objectively what movements
have occurred on the face, and further work with this system allows a face to be
categorized as showing a given emotion based on extensive data relating those
movements to other criteria, mainly observers’ judgments of facial expressions.
Through years of collecting such judgments, Ekman and his colleagues developed
a catalogue of prototypical movements associated with seven different judged
emotions. For example, Ekman and Friesen (1978) determined that in the brow/
forehead region (shown in Figure 9-3), action units 1 or 1 þ 4 occur in sadness, along
with associated movements across the rest of the face. In surprise, we see 1 þ 2; in
fear, 1 þ 2 þ 4; in anger, 4; and so forth.

FIGURE 9-3
Action units for the brow/forehead.

Source: From P. Ekman, “About Brows: Emotional and Conversational Signals” in von Cranach, et al., eds.
Human Ethology, p. 174. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 269

Recall that we discussed the role of the face in interaction management. Ekman
tells us how the brow/forehead area contributes to these conversational signals as well:

• Accent a word, 1 þ 2 (Actor Woody Allen uses 1 þ 4 for this, according to
Ekman.)

• Underline a phrase, 1 þ 2 or 4
• Punctuate, like a “visual comma,” 1 þ 2 or 4
• Question mark, 1 þ 2 or 4
• Word search, 4
• Listener response (back channel), 1 þ 2
• Indicate lack of understanding, 4

Although the FACS method is laborious to apply, the results can be very inter-
esting and lessons derived from it can be possibly quite useful in daily life. For
example, facial muscle movements can reveal our implicit attitudes, our perception
of different tastes, as well as the occurrence of sexual excitement, pain, and even
different pain sources in us, such as pain from immersion of the hand in cold
water, from electric shock, and from surgery or other physical trauma (Fernández-
Dols, Carrera, & Crivelli, 2011; LeResche, 1982; Lynch, 2010; Patrick, Craig, &
Prkachin, 1986; Wendin, Allesen-Holm, & Bredie, 2011). The facial signs of pain,
measured in both infants and adults, include the following: a tightening of the mus-
cles surrounding the eyes, which narrows the eyes and raises the cheeks; the corru-
gator and other forehead muscles lower the eyebrows and wrinkle the bridge of the
nose; and the levator muscles raise the upper lip and may produce wrinkles at the
side of the nose (Prkachin & Craig, 1995). The faces of terminal cancer patients
differ according to the stage of disease progression. In the early stages, signs of
fear are more prominent (“whole eye tension combined with tension … in the
lower eyelid”), but these give way to signs of sadness (in the brow/forehead region)
in the late stage (Antonoff & Spilka, 1984–1985).

Some of the most subtle and fascinating work studying facial muscle move-
ments concerns different kinds of smiles, referred to as Duchenne smiles and non-
Duchenne smiles after the 19th-century neurologist who first described them. The
muscle called the zygomatic major, which stretches out the lips when we smile, is
the common denominator. Ekman has shown that the frequency, duration, and
intensity of action by the zygomatic major differentiated among facial displays
made by people watching different kinds of films, and it also correlated with how
much happiness people said they felt while viewing them (Ekman, Friesen, &
Ancoli, 1980). However, other muscles besides the zygomatic major are crucial to
understanding what the smile really means. Darwin proposed that in a “felt” or
genuinely happy (Duchenne) smile, the orbicularis oculi muscle—the muscle that
gives you crow’s-feet at the corner of your eyes—is involved, but that it is not
involved in a phony or mechanical (non-Duchenne) smile. Figure 9-4 shows the
difference between “felt” and “unfelt” smiles.

In another study, student nurses were shown either a pleasant or a stressful
film, and those shown the stressful film were asked to act as though the film were
pleasant. Thus, those who were watching the stressful film had to lie about their
experience. The smiles of those who saw the pleasant film were found to be felt,
happy smiles with no muscular activity associated with any of the negative

270 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

emotions. Those trying to look pleasant while watching the stressful film showed
more “masking” smiles, involving the zygomatic major but not the orbicularis
oculi, and they also showed more movements of the 10 or so muscles associated
with fear, disgust, contempt, sadness, or anger (Ekman, Friesen, & O’Sullivan,
1988). Can you tell which face in Figure 9-5 displays the felt smile? (See the end
of the chapter for the answer.)

FIGURE 9-4
Neutral face, “unfelt” smile, and “felt” smile.

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CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 271

In another demonstration of the value of such precise muscle coding, Matsumoto
and Willingham (2006) analyzed the expressions of athletes in the 2004 Olympic
judo competition. Compared to silver medal winners, both gold and bronze medal
winners showed many more Duchenne (enjoyment) smiles, especially the open-
mouthed variety, when receiving their medals and when on the podium. Although
we might have expected the silver medalists to be happier than bronze winners,
apparently coming in second felt like a defeat, whereas coming in third felt like a
victory over the many other athletes who did not win any medal at all. The distinc-
tion between enjoyment and more purely social smiles has been supported in
numerous studies, even among infants as young as 10 months of age (Ekman,
Davidson, & Friesen, 1990; Ekman & Friesen, 1982; Fox & Davidson, 1988).
Aside from the involvement of the eye muscle, Duchenne smiles are of less variable
duration and have a smoother quality than unfelt smiles. Moreover, the two

FIGURE 9-5
Which is the “felt,” happy smile?

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272 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

kinds of smiles can be distinguished from each other by naive viewers, even chil-
dren as young as 9 years old (Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993; Gosselin, Perron,
Legault, & Campanella, 2002; Scherer & Ceschi, 2000), although not always with
high levels of accuracy (Hess & Kleck, 1990).

What impact might these expressions have on others? The mind-set of the
viewer matters. Bernstein, Sacco, Brown, and Claypool (2010) showed that indivi-
duals who wrote about experiences related to social exclusion expressed a greater
desire (relative to control subjects) to work with people displaying Duchenne as
opposed to non-Duchenne smiles. This suggests that, in situations in which we are
feeling excluded, our interest in cues that encourage us to approach others, such as
those associated with a smile of enjoyment, might be temporarily heightened.

The distinction between enjoyment and social smiles, although very important,
is still a probabilistic one. This means that in any particular instance, there may be
uncertainty about the smile’s true meaning. Although it may be unlikely that a
smile involving only the mouth is a true expression of pleasure or happiness, it is
possible for a smile involving the eye muscles to be feigned by someone who has
good control over the facial muscles. The fact that an enjoyment smile can be
posed, as in Figure 9-4, underscores this point. Research shows that a sizable
minority of people can deliberately produce a Duchenne smile (e.g., Krumhuber &
Manstead, 2009).

AUTOMATED FACIAL MEASUREMENT Because anatomical description of the face, such as
that used in the FACS, is so time consuming to learn and employ, there is strong
interest in developing computer programs that can recognize emotions and
describe and produce facial movement. This is a major challenge because of the
many possible muscle movements and the existence of great differences between
individual faces in shape and musculature. The challenge is especially great for sti-
muli that are not standardized in terms of head position and other movement
parameters. Early systems were not very practical, because they required attaching
small dots to the face to serve as landmarks for the computerized analysis (Kaiser
& Wehrle, 1992). Automated systems that can analyze movement under more nat-
ural circumstances and in real time are currently being developed and have very
promising validity as tested against trained human coders for recognizing discrete
emotions (Cohn & Ekman, 2005). Recently, new software (FACSGen 2.0) has
been developed that may enable researchers to reliably create various facial expres-
sions of emotion by manipulating action units on humanlike faces (Krumhuber,
Tamarit, Roesch, & Scherer, 2012). Such a tool has practical applications as a
diagnostic and training tool for those who struggle with decoding facial
expressions.

Another approach that eliminates human judgment is based on the fact that
different emotions produce distinctive facial movements, even when the movements
are too slight to be seen with the naked eye. Electrodes attached to the face mea-
sure electromyographic (EMG) responses, that is, electrical activity indicative of
incipient or very slight muscle movements that are not visible to the naked eye.
Most consistent are results showing that the zygomatic muscle, which expands the
mouth, responds under happy conditions, and the corrugator muscle between the
brows responds under sad, angry, and fearful conditions (Matsumoto, Keltner,

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 273

Shiota, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 2008). Studies that use EMG recordings have shown
that facial muscles respond in predictable ways to simply seeing others’ emotional
expressions (Blairy, Herrera, & Hess, 1999; Dimberg, 1982; Lundqvist, 1995).
Thus, the face responds with corrugator activity to seeing angry expressions and
with zygomatic major activity to seeing happy expressions. The face also responds
in mimicking fashion to facial expressions of sadness and disgust. Nonemotion
states (e.g., confusion) as well as attitudes (e.g., positive affect in response to
images of slim people) are also detectable using EMG responses (Durso, Geldbach, &
Corballis, 2012).

MEASUREMENT BY SIMPLE OBSERVATION Although much is to be gained from the FACS’s
fine-grained anatomical analysis and EMG technology, researchers most often employ
less highly trained human observers for their facial measurement and judgment tasks.
Observers are frequently asked to count the frequency of facial expressions, rate their
intensity, or time their duration, either with or without a period of training (Kring &
Sloan, 2007). As long as adequate interobserver agreement is obtained, these simpler
approaches can have high validity. For example, Sato and Yoshikawa (2007) studied
unconscious mimicry of facial expressions by unobtrusively videotaping participants
while they watched videos of faces that were posing either angry or happy expres-
sions. In this study, untrained observers were just as good as trained FACS coders at
distinguishing which kind of video the participants had watched.

MEASURING EMOTION RECOGNITION

Emotions can be identified at levels much higher than chance from posed facial
expressions, as Ekman and colleagues (1987) have shown, and also from spontane-
ously expressed facial displays (Tcherkassof, Bollon, Dubois, Pansu, & Adam,
2007), though accuracy is lower for spontaneous expressions than for posed ones.
But before going further, measurement issues must be discussed.

FIGURE 9-6
How should these facial expressions be read?

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274 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

THE RESPONSE FORMAT Examine the three faces shown in Figure 9-6, then consider
the following methods of measuring your accuracy.

1. In the space provided, write in the emotion being expressed in each of the
faces you observed.

A. B. C.

2. From the choices given, select the one emotion that best describes Face A, Face B,
and Face C.

Face A Face B Face C

Rage Happiness Sadness

Anger Joy Despair

Wrath Delight Solemnity

Indignation Amusement Despondency

Resentment Pleasure Melancholy

3. From the following list, select the term that best describes Face A, Face B, and
Face C: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger.

This exercise illustrates one of the many problems involved in testing the accuracy
of judgments about facial expressions or other nonverbal cues. In this case, judgment
accuracy would depend a great deal on which set of instructions the judge received.
The first testing condition, involving a free response from the judge, will produce a
wide range of responses, and researchers will be faced with the problem of deciding
whether the judge’s label corresponds with their own “correct” label for the emotion.
The labels used by the experimenters or expressors and those used by the judges may
be different, but both may respond the same way to the actual emotion in real life or
may be thinking of the same emotion. To illustrate, some individuals may label an
angry face with the word disgusted, which, for them, means the person is thoroughly
fed up with something, whereas for others that word means the person finds some-
thing, such as a food item or an image, to be unpleasant or offensive.

In the second testing condition, the discrimination task is too difficult because
the emotions listed in each category are too much alike. We can predict low accu-
racy for judges given these instructions because different perceivers will make
slightly different construals. In contrast, the last set of instructions is the opposite
of the second set—the discrimination task may be too easy. Because the emotion
categories are discrete, we can predict high accuracy for the third condition.

Accuracy is also influenced by biases in judgment patterns. Consider a facial
judgment task with equal numbers of sad, happy, and angry faces. If a judge
guesses “happy” all the time, to state the extreme case, he or she would score as
very accurate on happy faces, and we might conclude that such a judge is an excel-
lent judge of happiness. But obviously the judge has no differential accuracy,
because she or he gave only one answer to all the items. For the same reason, the
low accuracy obtained by such a judge on the other emotions is less an index of
actual accuracy than of a rating bias. Researchers who employ multiple-choice
tests have fortunately developed ways of scoring that take rating bias into account
(Wagner, 1993). And of course we must keep in mind what level of accuracy

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 275

would be expected on the basis of guessing alone: with four choices, this level would
be 25 percent; with three, 33 percent; and so on. Therefore, any given level of accu-
racy cannot be evaluated in absolute terms but rather must be appraised in terms of
how much higher or lower it is than the guessing level.

Aside from these methodological factors, other factors also influence the levels
of accuracy that will be obtained by a researcher. The duration of exposure to the
facial expressions will likely have an impact, though accuracy can be obtained with
surprisingly short exposures (see Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Matsumoto
et al., 2000). Also, characteristics of the test-taker can interact with the nature of
the to-be-decoded facial expression of emotion. Children, for instance, show a pos-
itivity bias on emotion judgment tasks because happy faces are more salient to
them than angry faces, and depressed individuals show a response bias for expres-
sions of disgust (Surguladze et al., 2010; Todd, Evans, Morris, & Lewis, 2011).
Lastly, men appear more likely than women to show a response bias for labeling
faces as not depicting any emotion at all (Sasson et al., 2010).

CREATING THE FACIAL STIMULUS Researchers use various methods to elicit the emo-
tional expressions that observers are asked to identify. Some simply describe a
situation and tell the actor to behave as if he or she were in that situation, others
give a list of emotions and tell the actor to portray them, and others gather
examples of facial expressions of people in real situations that are not posed or
acted. One early study (Dunlap, 1927) went to an almost comic extreme: A
camera was set up in a laboratory, ready to catch the subject’s expressions at
the proper moment. To elicit an expression of pain, the experimenter bent the
subject’s finger backward forcibly; to produce a startled look, the experimenter
fired a pistol behind the subject at an unexpected moment; apprehension was
elicited by telling the subject the pistol would be fired again, close to his ear, on
the count of three—at the count of two, the photo was taken. Amusement was
captured when the experimenter told the subject some jokes; disgust resulted
from the subject’s smelling a test tube containing tissues of a dead rat; and
finally—unbelievably—to elicit an expression of grief, a subject was hypnotized
and was told several members of his family had been killed in a car wreck.
“Unfortunately,” says the experimenter, “the camera could not catch intense
grief because the subject bowed his head and cried,” so he had to settle for an
expression of mild grief to be used in the study.

The idea of presenting subjects with a controlled stimulus and then observing
their reactions, although carried to an extreme in Dunlap’s study, still underlies
much research on spontaneous expressions. Expressors are shown slides or films
that differ in their content—funny, disgusting, sexy, heartwarming, and so forth—
while a video camera unobtrusively records their facial reactions. Judges later
observe the expressors’ faces and try to guess which slide or film each subject had
been viewing (Buck, 1979; Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976). This
method can capture completely unpremeditated expressions. However, because
expressors are not in a truly communicative situation, their behavior may be no
more generalizable to real social interaction than are expressors’ attempts to pose
various emotions on the command of the experimenter. Another method, asking
subjects to reexperience an emotional event and then talk about it, has been used

276 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

sometimes as a more natural alternative that blends some elements of deliberate
and spontaneous communication (Halberstadt, 1986).

CONTEXT OR NOT? Though researchers might present faces of strangers out of con-
text, contextual factors obviously influence accuracy. Prior exposure to a face is
one such factor. If you are familiar with the face, and have seen it express other
emotions, you are more likely to correctly identify another emotion that you have
not seen on it before.

Observers can label facial expressions of emotion without any knowledge of
the context in which they occur, but co-occurring perceptions of the social context,
the environment, and other people will surely affect their judgments. In fact, several
studies make it clear that additional knowledge concerning the context in which a
particular facial expression occurs will affect how people judge an emotion being
expressed. The context can be visual, as when observers are shown the situation,
including people who may be in it. Or, the context can be narrative, as when
observers are told a background story and then shown a facial expression of a per-
son supposedly in the story.

Although a number of investigators have pursued the question of whether con-
text or expression dominates perceptions, the issue is far from resolved and replete
with methodological issues (Fernández-Dols & Carroll, 1997; Matsumoto &
Hwang, 2010). One consideration is cultural background; Kuwabara and Son
(2011) showed that Japanese children’s judgments concerning the proper emotional
expression of a face were more sensitive to changes in the accompanying context
than was the case with their counterparts from the United States.

Perhaps the study cited most often regarding the influence of context in face
judging is the classic one by Munn (1940). Facial expressions taken from popular
magazines were shown with and without background context. The background
information was very helpful in accurately identifying these facial expressions, as
were verbal cues describing the situation.

Another classic demonstration of context effects is Cline’s (1956) study of line
drawings to test the effect of seeing another face as part of the total context. He
found that the expression on one face influenced interpretation of the other face.
When the smiling face was paired with a glum face, the smiling face was seen as
that of a vicious, gloating, taunting bully. When the smiling face was paired with
a frowning face, the smiling face seemed peaceful, friendly, and happy. The influ-
ence of other faces has been demonstrated more recently by Neta, Davis, and
Whalen (2011), who showed that surprised facial expressions are seen as more
positively valenced when they appear in a sequence dominated by happy expres-
sions as opposed to angry ones.

Thus, the context in which a facial expression is embedded can influence our
interpretation of the expression. We may be consciously aware of and deliberating
using contextual information at times, whereas at other times this influence may
be automatic in that it occurs outside of our conscious awareness and control
(Aviezer, Bentin, Dudarev, & Hassin, 2011).

Although the question is often asked in terms of which matters more, expres-
sion or context (see the review by Fernández-Dols & Carroll, 1997), this either-or
approach is too simplistic. Often a judgment depends not on which source of

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 277

information wins out in observers’ judgments, but rather on whether the two
sources of information can be meaningfully integrated. Sometimes this is done by
reinterpreting the information from one source, for example, by deciding that a
“sad” story context might actually produce angry feelings, too. Other times, a true
integration is made, as when a facial expression of “fear” plus a context of
“anger” produces the overall interpretation of “pain” (Carroll & Russell, 1996).

EMOTIONS INFERRED FROM THE FACE

Many factors influence how emotions are inferred from the face, but the compel-
ling fact remains that they can be inferred and often with extremely high levels of
accuracy. Some emotions are more likely to be confused, but six basic emotions—
happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, and fear—are judged with very high
accuracy among observers in many studies. In one large database, the ordering of
accuracy from highest to lowest followed the list just given, but the emotions dif-
fered in how accuracy was influenced by how long the expression was shown
(Calvo & Lundqvist, 2008). Happiness was equally easy to judge across exposures
ranging from 25 to 500 milliseconds—that is, up to a half a second—but all of the
other emotions showed increases in accuracy as the exposures got longer.

Figures 9-7 to 9-12 show these six basic emotions with a description of their
characteristic facial actions, each of which can also be described in terms of which
action units are involved. These expressions are recognized at high levels not only
in the United States but also around the globe (see Chapters 2 and 3; Ekman,
Sorenson, & Friesen, 1969; Izard, 1971). More recently, Biehl and colleagues
(1997) demonstrated that seven emotions shown on the faces of both Japanese
and Caucasian individuals were judged with high levels of agreement by viewers in
Hungary, Japan, Poland and Sumatra, and by Caucasians and recently immigrated
Vietnamese in the United States. We can argue that in today’s world of global media
exposure and cross-cultural contact, such a result is not at all surprising. Ekman and
his colleagues set about to find out how remote tribal people in New Guinea, who
had not been exposed to Western facial expression norms, would respond. Even in
New Guinea, photos of U.S. citizens’ faces showing these six basic emotionswere
judged correctly for the most part. Moreover, some New Guineans were photo-
graphed while showing how they would react in different situations, such as
“you feel sad because your child died,” and U.S. respondents later guessed with
great accuracy which scenario was being communicated (Ekman & Friesen, 1971).

Most cross-cultural research has dealt with depictions of the face showing very
pure configurations for the major emotions. However, as noted earlier, facial
expressions can be complex blends, with different muscles simultaneously showing
elements of different emotions. The question of whether cross-cultural universality
also applies to secondary, more subtle expressions led Ekman and a team of collea-
gues to introduce a new methodology into the cross-cultural research. These
researchers obtained ratings of faces on a variety of emotions from subjects in 10
places around the world, including Estonia, Sumatra, Scotland, Japan, Italy, and
Hong Kong. There was dramatic agreement across cultures not only on the
primary emotion being shown by the faces but also on the secondary emotion
(Ekman et al., 1987).

278 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 9-7
Surprise: The brows are raised so they are curved and high. The skin below the brow is
stretched, and horizontal wrinkles go across the forehead. The eyelids are opened: The upper lid
is raised, and the lower lid is drawn down; the white of the eye—the sclera—shows above the iris
and often below as well. The jaw drops open so the lips and teeth are parted, but there is no
tension or stretching of the mouth.

FIGURE 9-8
Fear: The brows are raised and drawn together. The wrinkles in the forehead are in the center,
not across the entire forehead. The upper eyelid is raised, exposing the sclera, and the lower eye-
lid is tensed and drawn up. The mouth is open, and the lips are either tensed slightly and drawn
back or stretched and drawn back.

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CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 279

FIGURE 9-9
Disgust: The upper lip is raised. The lower lip is also raised and pushed up to the upper lip, or is
lowered and slightly protruding. The nose is wrinkled, and the cheeks are raised. Lines show
below the lower lid, and the lid is pushed up but not tense. The brow is lowered, lowering the
upper lid.

FIGURE 9-10
Anger: The brows are lowered and drawn together, and vertical lines appear between them. The
lower lids are tensed and may or may not be raised. The upper lids are tensed and may or may
not be lowered by the action of the brow. The eyes have a hard stare and may have a bulging
appearance. The lips are in either of two basic positions: pressed firmly together, with the corners
straight or down, or open and tensed in a squarish shape, as if shouting. The nostrils may be
dilated, but this is not essential to the anger facial expression and may also occur in sadness.
There is ambiguity unless anger is registered in all three facial areas.

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280 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 9-12
Sadness: The inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn up. The skin below the eyebrows is trian-
gulated, with the inner corner up. The upper eyelid inner corners are raised. The corners of the
lips are down, or the lips are trembling.

FIGURE 9-11
Happiness: The corners of the lips are drawn back and up. The mouth may or may not be
parted, with teeth exposed or not. A wrinkle, the nasolabial fold, runs down from the nose to the
outer edge beyond the lip corners. The cheeks are raised. The lower eyelids show wrinkles below
them and may be raised but not tense. Crow’s-feet wrinkles go outward from the outer corners
of the eyes (covered by hair in these photographs).

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CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 281

Although accurate recognition of certain emotions is generally well above
chance everywhere it has been tested, variability still exists between individuals
and from place to place. Variation within a culture and between cultures is still
being investigated. Young and Hugenberg (2010) observed that, for people in the
same culture, accuracy is better when they are judging facial expressions from
members of their in-group (namely, people who they think have the same personal-
ity type as themselves) as opposed to members from an out-group (namely, people
who they think have a different personality type).

There is some evidence that people from different cultures, such as East Asian
and Western Caucasian, have different expectations about the regions of the face
associated with the expression of basic emotions (Jack, Caldara, & Schyns, 2012).
In addition, Russell (1994) found that facial expressions, mainly of Westerners’
faces, were more accurately recognized by other Western groups than by
non-Western groups. An in-group advantage has been documented, showing that
people have an advantage when judging cues expressed by members of their own
cultural, national, or ethnic group (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, 2003).

One reason for such an advantage is the existence of “emotion dialects,” or cul-
turally learned ways of expressing different emotional messages through nonverbal
cues. Such dialects, when shared between senders and receivers, promote accurate
judgments. Elfenbein and Ambady (2003) measured accuracy in judging photographs
of mainland Chinese people in China and Caucasian Americans expressing different
emotions through the face. The groups whose accuracy was tested were mainland
Chinese people in China, mainland Chinese people in the United States, Chinese
Americans—that is, U.S. citizens of Chinese extraction—and non-Asian U.S. citizens.
These four groups’ accuracy conformed exactly to the authors’ “dialect” predictions:
The more the group was familiar with mainland Chinese expressions, the better they
were on Chinese compared to Caucasian expressions, and the more the group was
familiar with American expressions, the better they were on Caucasian compared to
Chinese expressions. In addition, an analysis of how long the Chinese-American fam-
ilies had been in the United States showed that the longer the families had been in the
country, the better they were at judging Caucasian compared to Chinese faces. These
data lend strong support to the emotion dialects concept.

Although researchers do not agree on how many basic emotions there are,
most research describing facial movements associated with emotion has concen-
trated on the six shown in Figures 9-7 to 9-12. Recently, attention has turned to
other expressions, including shame, embarrassment, compassion, contempt, and
pride. Whether these represent basic emotions signaled by universally recognizable
facial displays is debatable. Widen, Christy, Hewett, and Russell (2011), for exam-
ple, found that agreement on the emotions being communicated by facial displays
of shame, embarrassment, compassion, and contempt dropped when participants
had to freely choose an emotion label for each of the faces. Nonetheless, these and
other expressions are believed to be signaled by specific cues:

1. Contempt is thought to be signaled by a slight tightening and raising of the
corner of the lip on one side (Ekman et al., 1987).

2. Threat is conveyed by several facial signals, as shown in Figure 9-13. The faces
are ordered so that decreasing ratings of perceived threat go from left to right

282 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 9-13
Facial stimuli in which four cues to threat are manipulated.

Source: From Tipples, J. (2007). Wide eyes and an open mouth enhance facial threat, Cognition and Emotion, 21, 535–557,
© 2007 Psychology Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.informaworld.com).

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 283

in each row, with the highest ratings occurring for the face on the upper left
and the lowest ratings occurring for the face on the lower right (Tipples,
2007). V-shaped brows, wide eyes, open mouth, and down-turned mouth all
produced higher threat ratings.

3. Facial signs for anxiety have been shown to include increased blinking and
more facial movements associated with fear, such as a horizontal mouth
stretch and more facial movements overall (Harrigan & O’Connell, 1996).

4. Pride in its prototypical form includes a small smile in conjunction with other
cues: head tilted back slightly, expanded posture, and hands on the hips (Tracy
& Robins, 2004, 2007).

5. Embarrassment has been shown to be signaled by looking down, shifting the
eyes, turning the head away, touching the face, and engaging in “controlled
smiles,” which are smiles a person tries to counter with other facial move-
ments (Keltner, 1995). Keltner has also studied the temporal ordering and
relative duration of the components of facial embarrassment (Figure 9-14).

Lastly, it is important to remember that facial expressions that signal particular
emotional reactions (how you are feeling) might also signal important social information

FIGURE 9-14
Prototypical embarrassment response. The mean duration of each action is equal to the interval,
beginning with the leftmost edge of the photograph and ending with the end of the arrow.

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284 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

(what you think about a situation). Chapman, Kim, Susskinf, and Anderson (2009)
found that the same muscles used to signal bad taste (gustatory disgust) were activated
in response to unfair treatment (moral disgust), and Cannon, Schnall, and White (2011)
noted that displays of facial disgust in response to violations of fairness were related
to subsequent moral judgments. Thus, a facial expression of disgust might signal
that a situation, such as unfair treatment, is morally disgusting to you.

PHYSIOLOGY AND THE FACE

INTERNALIZERS AND EXTERNALIZERS

You must have at least one friend with a face that remains as still as a rock, no
matter how much excitement swirls around him or her. You also have friends
with faces that seem as sensitive as a butterfly’s wings to every shift of the emo-
tional winds. What you may not know is that these differences, aside from being
quite real and enduring, also are associated with differences in physiological func-
tioning. Internalizers, those who show little facial expression, experience high phys-
iological reactivity on measures such as heart rate and electrodermal responding;
externalizers, the expressive ones, show the opposite pattern (Buck, Savin, Miller, &
Caul, 1972; Lanzetta & Kleck, 1970; Notarius & Levenson, 1979). Most theorizing
about this relationship has pointed to learned factors; for example, the notion that
society encourages people to suppress their overt emotional reactions, and that
individuals who do so must experience their emotions or arousal in some other
way, perhaps through internal activation of the nervous system. The metaphor of
discharge can be applied: The emotion is released, either externally or internally
(Notarius & Levenson, 1979). However, research on newborns finds a similar nega-
tive relationship between expressiveness and physiological response, suggesting that
inherited temperamental factors may also be at work (Field, 1982).

FACIAL EXPRESSION AND HEALTH

Given these differences, it is intriguing to consider a possible connection between
expressiveness and physical health. Could restraining the outward expression
of emotion be damaging to health? Friedman and his colleagues (Friedman &
Booth-Kewley, 1987; Friedman, Hall, & Harris, 1985) pursued this idea and
found that, as predicted, a “repressed” style of expression was related to indica-
tions of coronary artery disease and even to the actual occurrence of a heart attack.
King and Emmons (1990) found some support for the hypothesis that ambivalence
over emotional expression would be associated with poorer health. Malatesta,
Jonas, and Izard (1987) found that women who showed less expression on their
face when talking about an angry experience had more arthritis symptoms, and
women who showed less facial expression during a sad account had more skin pro-
blems. Promising evidence for a relation of emotional expression/suppression to
health comes from research on alexithymia, a term used to describe patients who
have a pronounced inability to describe their own emotions. These patients are
deficient in facial expressiveness and also seem to suffer from a disproportionate
number of psychosomatic ailments (Buck, 1993).

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 285

FACIAL FEEDBACK

Adding to the complexity and fascination regarding the relation between the face
and physiology is the facial feedback hypothesis put forth by Darwin, who believed
that if an emotion is freely expressed, it will be intensified. The facial feedback
hypothesis states that expressions on the face can intensify emotional experience
via direct connections between facial muscles and emotion centers in the brain,
even without any conscious awareness of what the face is showing.

EMBODIED COGNITION

The mind and body used to be
thought of as two separate enti-
ties. Later, it was understood
that the human brain is respon-
sible for what we think of as
our mind, and that our mind
controls our bodies. We can
make the decision to smile, for
example, when we want to let
another person know that we
like him or her.

However, can our body
influence our mind? Yes,
according to those who sub-
scribe to the notion of embo-
died cognition (Lakoff &
Johnson, 1999). One example

is how motor processes, such as those involved in smiling, can influence our thoughts about emotion states.
Consider a situation in which you see a Duchenne smile on another person’s face. If you so happen to
mimic that expression, you are activating motor processes in your face that are linked to your cognitive-
based experience and understanding of happiness. This, in turn, might help you recognize happiness in the
other person. These ideas are currently being explored by those who are interested in applying the notion of
embodied cognition to the study of nonverbal behavior (Neidenthal, Mermillod, Maringer, & Hess, 2010).

The evidence for this perspective on emotion recognition is mixed. Facial mimicry does provide informa-
tion that aids the process of judging the meaning of a smile (Maringer, Krumhuber, Fischer, & Niedenthal,
2011). But what if your ability to mimic another’s facial expression was impaired (e.g., from Botox injec-
tions, which can paralyze muscles used in some facial expressions)? Would emotion recognition be impaired
as well? Research shows that we are slower at reading emotion-evoking sentences when we cannot facially
express the emotion that the sentences were designed to arouse in us (Havas, Gienberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli,
& Davidson, 2010). However, other research shows that feedback from facial expressions is not necessary
for the experience of emotion states or for the recognition of others’ emotion states (Bogart & Matsumoto,
2010; Davis, Senghas, Brandt, & Ochsner, 2010). It could be that facial mimicry is helpful—but not always
required—in identifying emotion states. When we cannot or do not mimic the other person’s facial expres-
sion, we may still be accurate by calling upon our beliefs about how a person should be feeling in a partic-
ular situation, or by drawing on our knowledge of what movements are associated with what emotions.

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286 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Is the facial feedback hypothesis valid? The idea that emotions can be regulated
via facial behavior—that we can create authentic emotional experience from inau-
thentic outward expressions—has important ramifications for child rearing,
psychotherapy, and many other domains (Izard, 1990). The facial feedback hypoth-
esis has been debated at length, in part because early studies had methodological
problems (Matsumoto, 1987). Such an experiment asks subjects to pose their faces
in various ways and then measures their emotional state through self-report (Laird,
1974; Tourangeau & Ellsworth, 1979). The flaw in such a study is that expressors
may realize their posed expression is meant to look like fear or happiness. If this
happens, it is no surprise that they obediently report feeling those emotions.

Fortunately, studies exist that do not share this problem. In a particularly well-
designed study, a group of investigators disguised the purpose of the facial posing
by telling participants they were helping develop ways for persons with disabilities
to hold a writing implement; it could be held between the teeth, which naturally
expands the lips, or it could be held by the lips, which contracts them. Figure 9-15
illustrates these mouth positions. Unknown to the participants, these two manipu-
lations differ in whether the smiling muscles around the mouth are activated.
Those holding the pen between their teeth, which activated the smiling muscles,
rated cartoons as funnier than the other participants did (Strack, Martin, &
Stepper, 1988). Thus, the position of the facial muscles can indeed “feed back” to
influence the expressor’s emotion state. Subsequent research using this same
pencil-in-the-teeth paradigm showed that inducing expressors to activate their eye-
corner muscles as well as their mouth-widening muscles, which produce Duchenne
smiles, resulted in higher levels of enjoyment when viewing positive video clips than
occurred when expressors made non-Duchenne smiles (Soussignan, 2002). This
makes sense when you consider that the Duchenne smile is said to reflect more gen-
uine positive emotion than the non-Duchenne smile.

FIGURE 9-15
Illustration of the technique used to contract the different facial muscles: left, lips condition;
right, teeth condition.

Source: Copyright © 2009 by the American Psychological Association. Figure 1, page 771, from Inhibiting and facili-
tating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Strack, Fritz; Martin,
Leonard L.; Stepper, Sabine. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 54(5), May 1988, 768–777.

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 287

Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1983), in a facial feedback experiment,
also demonstrated that moving particular facial muscles on command, as well as
“reliving” past emotional experiences, produces specific patterns of reaction in the
autonomie nervous system. Heart rate and finger temperature increased more in
anger than in happiness, and anger and fear were similar in terms of heart rate
increases but differed in finger temperature. Perhaps these results translate into the
familiar feelings of being flushed or hot when angry and of having cold hands
when afraid.

Strack and Neumann (2000) extended the facial feedback phenomenon beyond
emotional responses to the kinds of judgments we make about others. Under the
guise of studying how working on a computer produces tension, participants were
asked to furrow their brows or not while doing a computer judgment task. On the
task, participants made ratings of how famous various celebrities and noncelebri-
ties were. Those who maintained the furrowed brow rated the individuals as less
famous than those in the control group, presumably because the furrowed brow
unconsciously put them in a skeptical frame of mind.

Though most feedback studies have involved the face, other body parts can
also produce feedback effects. In one study, researchers manipulated upright versus
slumped postures using differently designed chairs and showed that if participants
were upright rather than slumped when hearing that they had performed well on
an earlier task, they experienced more pride in their performance (Stepper &
Strack, 1993).

Not much is known about the exact mechanisms that produce psychological
changes, such as emotions, following face and body movement. Although well-
designed studies can rule out a cognitive explanation—that is, that people simply
report the feelings they know their movements suggest—the nature of the physio-
logical mechanism is still an open question. Although most investigators assume
feedback occurs through the nervous system, a novel theory called the vascular the-
ory of emotional efference holds that certain facial movements and breathing pat-
terns change the temperature of the blood flowing into the brain, which then
influences affective state, suggesting that perhaps cooler blood produces more posi-
tive affect (Mclntosh, Zajonc, Vig, & Emerick, 1997; Zajonc, 1985).

Thus, it appears that our own expressions, whether deliberately put on or
spontaneously mimicked in response to others’ expressions, can produce corre-
sponding emotions or can intensify or deintensify experiences already in progress.
The process of “emotional contagion” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) may
contribute to our ability to experience empathy and understand others’ emotional
states. Indeed, when Surakka and Hietanen (1998) showed the “felt” and “unfelt”
smiles shown in Figure 9-4 to viewers, they found that EMG recordings of both eye
and cheek muscles were stronger for those who saw the felt smiles and that more
pleasure was subsequently experienced by those who saw those smiles.

Though mimicry of other’s facial expressions can occur entirely without aware-
ness, it is not immune to social influences. In a good demonstration of this, facial
EMG responses—specifically, the zygomatic major responding to a happy facial
expression and the corrugator responding to a sad facial expression—occurred only
when the participants had acquired positive associations to the target person by
being told she had traits such as niceness and likeability. When the target person had

288 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

negative traits, such as being “deceitful” and “aggressive,” participants’ faces showed
no mimicking activity (Likowski, Mühlberger, Seibt, Pauli, & Weyers, 2008).

Researchers studying the face and physiology also have discovered that posed
and spontaneous facial expressions are controlled by different pathways within the
brain. This has been demonstrated by certain forms of brain injury that result in a
person losing the ability to produce facial expressions deliberately but not losing
the capacity to laugh, cry, frown, and so on when genuinely experiencing an emo-
tion; the reverse form of disability also exists (Rinn, 1984). When brain damage
occurs, facial expressiveness is especially impaired when the damage is to the right
hemisphere of the brain, which is considered the more nonverbal hemisphere (Buck
& Duffy, 1980). Researchers have found that the left side of a person’s face tends
to be more expressive (Borod, Koff, Yecker, Santschi, & Schmidt, 1998; Nicholls,
Wolfgang, Clode, & Lindell, 2002; Skinner & Mullen, 1991) because the left half
of the face is controlled by the right hemisphere. However, consistent with the
notion of separate neural pathways, this asymmetry is present only for posed
expressions; spontaneous, more genuine ones tend to be symmetrical (Ekman,
Hager, & Friesen, 1981; Skinner & Mullen, 1991). Perhaps now you will think
differently about your friend with the crooked smile.

Thus far we have mostly examined the face in terms of what its movements
mean. But researchers also have asked broader questions about real-world corre-
lates of facial expression.

THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Facial expressions, both intended and spontaneous, exert many influences on other
people. In this section, we present only a sampling of this research. The strong
impact of facial expressions takes on special significance because people have a
great deal of control over their faces. Most discussions of the face center on emo-
tions and how the face reveals what emotions are being felt. But several times we
have mentioned the distinction between posed and spontaneous expressions. By its
very nature, a posed expression means that people need not actually feel what they
are showing. The face becomes a tool of self-presentation, something used to create
a desirable image in the eyes of others, and of social influence, something capable
of producing desirable impressions in someone else. Ironically, because people are
likely to assume that the face is an honest window into another’s true feelings,
they may be particularly vulnerable to manipulation by someone who uses his or
her facial expression to create a false impression.

An important application of knowledge of facial expressions occurs in the
helping professions. One such application is ascertaining the existence and sever-
ity of mental disorders. For example, when distressed, toddlers with autism
show less expressivity in their face than do those children without the disorder
(Esposito, Venuti, & Bornstein, 2011). Ekman, Matsumoto, and Friesen (1997)
noted that more contempt and more “unfelt” happy expressions at the time of
hospital admission were related to less improvement at discharge, and that dif-
ferent diagnostic groups showed different facial emotion patterns: People with
major depression showed more sadness and disgust; people in a manic condition
showed more “felt” and “unfelt” happiness and less anger, disgust, and sadness;

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 289

and people with schizophrenia showed fear and low levels of all the other coded
emotions.

In an even more precise and revealing investigation of depressive individuals’
expressions, Reed, Sayette, and Cohn (2007) asked how such individuals would
handle a situation in which a positive stimulus—in this case, a video clip of the
comedian Chris Rock—could not be avoided. Would they be unmoved by the stim-
ulus or would they respond with happy feelings and expressions, the same as indi-
viduals with no depressive tendencies? The answer was some of both. The video
affected all participants equally in terms of self-rated happiness and number of eli-
cited smiles. However, participants with current depression symptoms and a
depression history were five times more likely to try to control their smiles with
additional muscle movements than other participants (see Figure 9-16). It was as
though these individuals were fighting off the urge to smile.

The patient’s face may not be the only face that is important in a clinical situa-
tion, however. There is reason to believe that physicians’ and therapists’ facial
expressions have an impact on patients. Ambady, Koo, Rosenthal, and Winograd
(2002) found that the facial expressions of physical therapists predicted changes in
elderly patients’ physical and psychological functioning over the course of treat-
ment. Specifically, facial “distancing” or not smiling and not looking at the patient
was associated with decreases in functioning, whereas facial expressiveness—that
is, smiling, nodding, and frowning—was associated with increases in functioning.

Research shows that adults’ smiles and other expressions influence babies’
moods and responses to the environment (Cappella, 1981). Extensive work has
been conducted on the interaction between mothers who have depression and
their infants (Field, 2002; Lundy, Field, & Pickens, 1996). For example, depressed
mothers seem less able to identify happy expressions in infants, suggesting that they
may be less responsive to such cues, including reciprocating them (Arteche et al.,
2011). Infants of depressed mothers have less expressive faces than other infants, do
not orient as well visually to adults, and show more facial negativity. In Field’s
(2002) study, the depressed mothers displayed the same kinds of behaviors that
were then seen in their infants, such as more negative facial expressions and less
looking around, as well as less vocalization and less tactile stimulation.

FIGURE 9-16
Depressed person’s response to a funny film: neutral, to smile, to smile control. Numbers refer to
which muscle action units were activated.

Source: From Reed, Sayette, and Cohn, 2007.

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290 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Savitsky, Izard, Kotsch, and Christy (1974) were interested in whether facial
expressions of emotion by a victim would have any effect on the aggressor’s behav-
ior. When individuals thought they were controlling the amount of electric shock
that another person, the victim, would get, they gave more shocks to victims who
responded with expressions of happiness and smiles and fewer to victims who dis-
played expressions of anger.

Facial expressions also influence perceptions of trustworthiness (Krumhuber
et al., 2007; Stouten & De Cremer, 2010). Krumhuber and colleagues (2007)
manipulated a video of several potential partners in a game in which people could
choose to cooperate or not, where cooperation implied trust and where mutual
cooperation would result in higher monetary rewards for both. The partners’ faces
showed an authentic-looking smile, an inauthentic-looking smile, or a neutral
expression. Participants chose the authentically smiling person to cooperate with,
rating that person the most trustworthy.

Although defendants’ faces are scrutinized closely in the courtroom, their faces
are not the only influential ones. In a cleverly designed experiment, Hart (1995)
obtained videotapes of judges reading standard instructions to juries in real trials,
and he also found out how those judges personally leaned in terms of guilt or inno-
cence. These videotapes were then spliced onto a different trial, and the whole
sequence was shown to groups of role-playing jurors. Thus, these jurors were
being instructed by judges who were known to be biased, although about a differ-
ent case. Jurors’ verdicts of guilt and innocence were significantly influenced by the
judges’ facial expressions and tone of voice, thus demonstrating that judges’ expres-
sions can influence jurors even though the judges are supposed to remain impartial
in their behavior.

Children’s facial expressions and reactions to others’ expressions have implica-
tions for education and law. Berhenke, Miller, Brown, Seifer, and Dickstein (2011)
demonstrated that kindergartners’ expressions offered clues to their motivation,
and thus, potential readiness for success in school; for instance, shame expressions
(from facial, vocal, and behavioral cues) while working on challenging tasks were
linked to greater math and reading skills. With respect to the law, there has been
much interest and debate about whether children can give accurate eyewitness
reports, such as when they are interviewed about possible sexual abuse. In an inter-
view situation, it appears that the interviewer’s facial expressions, combined with
body movements, can influence a child’s responses. In a study by Almerigogna,
Ost, Akehurst, and Fluck (2008), an adult quizzed a child about what the child
could remember from a learning exercise the previous week. When the interviewer
smiled and refrained from fidgeting, the children gave more accurate and honest
answers than when the adult fidgeted and did not smile. Furthermore, children in
the nonsmiling-fidgeting situation were more likely to falsely report being touched
by the teacher in that exercise when asked a leading question.

Interactions between service providers and customers provide yet another
forum in which facial expressions can have impact. In an experiment in which
role-playing “customers” watched videos of hotel clerks interacting with someone
who was checking in, the clerk who displayed a smile that appeared authentic
received higher customer satisfaction ratings than the clerk whose smile appeared
inauthentic—but only when the clerk was performing his or her tasks competently.

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 291

When the clerk made errors, the kind of smile had no impact (Grandey, Fisk,
Mattila, Jansen, & Sideman, 2005). Thus, the context was an important qualifier
of whether the smile mattered.

Facial expressions are related to gender stereotyping as well as discrimination
against women in the media and small groups. Leppard, Ogletree, and Wallen
(1993) noted that, in medical advertisements, men were more often shown with
serious/neutral facial expression, whereas women were more often shown with
pleasant expressions. Butler and Geis (1990) investigated male and female leaders
in groups. Each group had a male or female leader who had, unknown to the
group members, been trained to offer identical suggestions and arguments.
However, the group members, who were the subjects of study, displayed more
pleased responses (smiling and nodding) and fewer displeased responses (furrowed
brow, mouth tightening, head shaking) when listening to the male leader than
when listening to the female leader. Group members were apparently unaware of
their gender-biased behavior or denied it, for they later revealed no gender bias in
written evaluations of the leaders. The potential importance of this finding in real
groups is obvious: Subtle signals of devaluation sent by audience members could
undermine a female leader’s performance and could even create negativity in audi-
ence members who were not initially biased against her.

Another connection between the face and sex discrimination was made by
Archer’s discovery of the “face-ism” or facial prominence phenomenon. Specifi-
cally, in magazine and newspaper pictures, proportionately more of the picture is
devoted to men’s faces, whereas pictures of women show more of the body.
Archer, Iritani, Kimes, and Barrios (1983) found this pattern in publications from
11 different cultures and in artwork over 6 centuries, as well as in people’s amateur
drawings. Both Archer and later researchers (Zuckerman, 1986) have made the
case that face-ism is a form of devaluing women. Consistent with the view that
depicting less of the face devalues the person in the picture, Zuckerman and Kieffer
(1994) demonstrated that face-ism favoring whites over blacks also exists in maga-
zines and art. Lastly, Matthews (2007) found higher facial prominence in magazine
photographs of individuals who had intellectually oriented as opposed to physically
oriented occupations, especially if the person in the photograph was a man.

The smile is a profoundly influential social cue that has been studied in many
contexts. People reciprocate smiles quite predictably (Hinsz & Tomhave, 1991;
Jorgenson, 1978). You can imagine how, after returning someone’s smile, facial
feedback or attributional processes could produce real changes in your emotional
state or your attitude toward the smiler (e.g., “I just smiled at Jim. I must really
like him!”). Smiles are positive reinforcers that can change behavior just as other,
more traditional reinforcers can. For example, receiving a smile from one stranger
can make you more helpful toward a different stranger (Guéguen & de Gail,
2003; Solomon et al., 1981), and receiving a smile from your waitperson can lead
you to leave a larger tip (Tidd & Lockard, 1978).

Angry faces are a potent stimulus, too. In a series of experiments, Hansen and
Hansen (1988) compared people’s ability to pick out an angry face in a crowd of
happy faces to their ability to pick out a happy face in a crowd of angry faces. As
they predicted, picking out the angry face was faster and more error free than pick-
ing out the happy face. Seeing angry faces might also encourage us to feel guilty

292 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

(perhaps we have done something wrong) as well as the desire to stop doing some-
thing that the angry person disapproves of (Giner-Sorolla & Espinoza, 2011;
Wilkowski, 2012). All in all, perhaps our survival as a species has some relation
to our sensitivity to possible threat, whether physical or social, signaled by others’
angry facial expressions.

The influence exerted on us by others’ facial expressions is not limited to those
faces that we consciously see and take note of. Nonconscious, subliminal percep-
tion effects have been uncovered as well. Murphy and Zajonc (1993) showed peo-
ple a happy or an angry face for only 4 milliseconds, an interval much too short to
allow for conscious perception of the faces, followed by unfamiliar stimuli—in this
case, written Chinese characters. When the experimenters asked the participants
how much they liked each Chinese character, they found that characters preceded
by a happy face were liked more than those preceded by an angry face. More
recently, Dimberg, Thunberg, and Elmehed (2000) found that subliminally expos-
ing people to happy or angry facial expressions produced corresponding facial
movements according to EMG measurements. In this case, both the stimulus (the
faces seen) and the response (the small facial movements picked up by EMG
recording) occurred nonconsciously.

SUMMARY

The face is a multimessage system. It can com-
municate information regarding personality,
interest, and responsiveness during interaction,
emotional states, and how people want to pres-
ent themselves to others. Although we know
that people associate certain personality charac-
teristics with certain expressions and facial
features, we do not fully know how accurate
these impressions are. We know the face is used
as a conversational regulator that opens and
closes communication channels, complements
and qualifies other behaviors, and replaces spoken
messages.

Facial expressions are very complex entities
to deal with. Of all the areas of the body, the
face seems to elicit the best external and inter-
nal feedback, which makes it easy for us to
follow a variety of facial display rules. Not all
facial displays represent single emotions; some
are blends of several emotions. Sometimes we
show aspects of an emotional display when we
are not actually feeling emotional, as with
facial emblems that represent commentary on
emotions. At other times the emotion we are
feeling is not very predictably shown on our
face. The question of how often the face

spontaneously reveals emotional experiences in
daily life is hotly contested.

We noted some measurement issues involved
in the study of facial expressions: the complexity
of the decisions observers are asked to make, sim-
ulated as opposed to real expressions, the method
of presenting the face to the observer—films,
photos, and the like—and knowledge of the con-
text. Naturally, all these factors may impinge on
our accuracy in identifying facial expressions of
emotion.

Accuracy in judging the face tends to be high,
at least when prototypic expressions are pre-
sented. Furthermore, certain basic emotions
have been found to be accurately judged in cul-
tures around the world: anger, fear, disgust, sad-
ness, happiness, surprise, and contempt. To
understand what the face actually does during
the expression of emotion, anatomically based
coding systems, such as the FACS, have been
developed. The FACS can identify which muscles
are involved in different kinds of expressions.

A psychophysiological approach has added
much to our understanding of facial behavior.
People with more expressive faces have less activ-
ity in their autonomic nervous systems than do

CHAPTER 9 THE EFFECTS OF THE FACE ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 293

less expressive people; this is interesting partly
because of its health implications. Under certain
circumstances, facial movements can influence
the emotions felt by the expressor; thus, the
face may not only read out emotions but also
actually produce them. Studies of minute facial
movements show that people unconsciously
mimic the facial expressions of others, even

those expressions too quick to be consciously
perceived. And researchers are finding out
more about which activities of the brain and
nervous system are associated with different
emotions. We concluded with a sampling of
studies showing that facial expressions can
have a strong impact on the people in our social
environment.

Answer to Figure 9–5: b. (All the others have traces of disgust or sadness.)

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Facial expressions can show emotions, but
they also are used for conversation manage-
ment. Give examples of each, and state
which function you consider the most
important.

2. Consider men’s and women’s nonverbal
behavior. Does the concept of display rules
help you explain any differences between the
sexes?

3. As noted in the chapter, the distinction
between a feigned or posed facial display
and an authentic or spontaneous one may be
hard to make. Discuss the issue of intention-
ality in facial expressions. Is it important to be
able to make such a distinction? Do you think
you can make such a distinction yourself, and
if so, how do you think you do it?

4. The chapter gives examples of how the face
is a potent influence on others. Think of

some other examples of this, and discuss
whether the face is more or less influential
than other nonverbal channels in terms of
its social impact.

5. Can you think of any occasions when you
might have experienced intensification, or
even creation, of an emotion as a result of
facial feedback?

6. Some people are more aware of the expres-
sions that occur on their faces than other
people. Discuss this phenomenon. What
kind of people do you think are more self-
observant than others? What impact do you
think this kind of self-accuracy has?

7. To see a demonstration of the FACSGen 2.0
program for generating facial expressions on
humanlike faces, go to the following Web
address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
wHg3a9z0alg.

294 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR

ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION

[ C H A P T E R 10 ]

Throughout history, we have been preoccupied with the eye and its effects on
human behavior. Do you recall the last time you heard or read one of these
phrases?

“It was an icy stare.”
“He’s got shifty eyes.”
“Did you see the gleam in his eye?”
“We’re seeing eye to eye now.”
“His eyes shot daggers across the room.”
“She could kill with a glance.”
It is common to associate various eye movements with a wide range of human

emotions or traits: downward glances are associated with modesty; wide eyes with
frankness, wonder, naivete, or terror; generally immobile facial muscles and a
rather constant stare with coldness; and eyes rolled upward with fatigue or to sug-
gest that another’s behavior is a bit weird.

In addition, our society has established a number of eye-related norms: We
must not look too long at strangers in public places; we must not make eye contact
for too long; and we are not supposed to look at various parts of the body except
under certain conditions, to name a few.

Fascination with eyes has led to the exploration of almost every conceivable
feature of the eyes and the areas surrounding them. We look at eye size, color,
position, eyebrows, and wrinkles around the eyes. Eye rings are found mainly in
other animals, but some speculate that human eyebrows are residual “rings,” to

He speaketh not; and yet there lies a conversation in his eyes.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

295

be raised during surprise or fear and lowered for focus during threat and anger.
Eye “patches” are the colored eyelids sometimes seen in primates, but these are
not a part of the natural human communicative repertoire, although women often
use eyeliner and eye shadow to achieve a similar effect. Another nonhuman feature
that has received scholarly attention is “eyespots,” eye-shaped images located on
various parts of some animals’ bodies. These can be seen on peacock feathers, but-
terflies, and certain fish.

Researchers have examined the degree to which eyes open or close as a reflection
of various emotional states. Some feel that excessive blinking may be associated with
various stages of anxiety—as if attempting to cut off reality. Psychiatrists report that
some patients blink up to 100 times per minute; normal blinking, needed to lubricate
and protect the eyeball, occurs about 6 to 10 times per minute in adults. Some evi-
dence shows that when a person is attentive to objects in the environment, or deep
in concentrated thought, the blinking rate decreases.

Further diversity in the significance of the eyes comes from research on eye
color. Blue eyes are a genetically based marker for inhibition and shyness, and peo-
ple perceive greater dominance in men with brown eyes than blue eyes (Kleisner,
Ko�cnar, Rubešová, & Flegr, 2010; Rosenberg & Kagan, 1987). Some eye-related
behaviors occur without much conscious awareness, such as the crinkles around
the eyes when a person is feeling genuine enjoyment, but others are used very delib-
erately. An example of the latter is the “eye flash,” in which the eyelids are briefly
opened without the accompanying involvement of the eyebrows, for less than a sec-
ond, used to emphasize particular words, usually adjectives (Walker & Trimboli,
1983). The eyebrow flash is yet another, but quite different gesture, discussed in
depth in Chapter 2.

Of the many eye-related topics of inquiry, this chapter focuses on two: The
first is known by terms such as eye contact, mutual glances, visual interaction,
gazing, or line of regard. The second concerns pupil dilation and constriction
under various social conditions.

GAZE AND MUTUAL GAZE

We begin by looking at the terminology we will be using: gaze and mutual gaze
(Argyle & Cook, 1976; Kleinke, 1986; Rutter, 1984). Gaze refers to an individual
looking at another person; mutual gaze refers to a situation in which two interac-
tants are looking at each other, usually in the region of the face (see Figure 10-1).
Eye contact—that is, looking specifically in each other’s eyes—does not seem to be
reliably distinguished by receivers or observers from gazing at the area surrounding
the eyes (von Cranach & Ellgring, 1973). In fact, much of what is considered
“looking someone in the eye” is a series of rapid, repeated scans of several parts
of the face. Indeed, if someone did look fixedly without moving the eyes, the
impression would be one of vacant staring. Gaze and mutual gazing can be reliably
assessed by observers. At a distance of 3 meters, face-directed gazing can be distin-
guished, and shifting the direction of the gaze by 1 centimeter can reliably be
detected from a distance of 1 meter. Furthermore, people tend to be accurate in
reporting the extent to which they gazed at someone during an interaction (Hall,
Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2007).

296 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

We know that we do not look at another person the entire time we are talk-
ing to him or her, nor do we avert our gaze 100 percent of the time. What are
considered normal gazing patterns? Obviously, the answer varies according to
the background and personalities of the participants, the topic, the other person’s
gazing patterns, objects of mutual interest in the environment, and so on. The
speaker’s fluency also affects gazing patterns. During fluent speech, speakers tend
to look at listeners much more than during hesitant speech. We will discuss some
of these factors in more detail later in this chapter. Keeping such qualifications in
mind, we can get a general idea of normal gazing patterns from research on
focused interaction between two people (e.g., Argyle & Ingham, 1972). Gener-
ally, people gaze about half the time; there are notable individual differences in
the amount of other-directed gaze; and people gaze more while listening than
while talking.

FUNCTIONS OF GAZING

Kendon (1967) identified four functions of gazing: (1) regulatory—responses may
be demanded or suppressed by looking; (2) monitoring—people may look at their
partner to indicate the conclusions of thought units and to check their partner’s
attentiveness and reactions; (3) cognitive—people tend to look away when having
difficulty processing information or deciding what to say; and (4) expressive—the
degree and nature of involvement or emotional arousal may be revealed through
looking.

FIGURE 10-1
Mutual gaze.

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CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 297

Our discussion follows a similar pattern, as gazing has been shown to serve
several important functions:

1. Regulating the flow of communication
2. Monitoring feedback
3. Reflecting cognitive activity
4. Expressing emotions
5. Communicating the nature of the interpersonal relationship

These functions do not operate independently; that is, visual behavior not only
sends information, it is also one of the primary methods for collecting it. Looking
at the other person as you finish an utterance may not only tell the other that it is
his or her turn to speak, it is also an occasion for you to see how he or she is react-
ing to what you have said.

REGULATING THE FLOW OF COMMUNICATION

Visual contact occurs when we want to signal that the communication channel is
open. In some instances, eye gaze establishes a virtual obligation to interact. When
you seek visual contact with your server at a restaurant, you are essentially indicat-
ing that the communication channel is open and that you want to say something to
him or her. You may recall instances when an instructor asked the class a question,
and you were sure you did not know the answer. Establishing eye contact with the
instructor was the last thing you wanted to do. Police use this knowledge to iden-
tify drivers who may be engaged in illegal activity because they consider drivers
who avoid eye contact to be suspicious. People routinely use gaze avoidance to pre-
vent unwanted social interactions. As long as we can avoid eye gaze in a seemingly
natural way, it is much easier to avoid interaction.

When passing unknown others in a public place, we typically acknowledge
them with a brief glance, but this initial glance is followed by the avoidance of
gaze unless further contact is desired, or unless the other person signals a desire
for further contact with us by gazing back or by smiling. However, the time it
takes us to look away from another person might vary as a function of a number
of factors, such as the person’s attractiveness and emotional state. Belopolsky,
Devue, and Theeuwes (2011) found that it took participants longer to visually dis-
engage from an angry face than a face with a neutral or happy expression.

A length of gaze that exceeds this acknowledgment glance is likely to signal a
desire to initiate a conversation (Cary, 1978), and violation of this civil inattention
norm—a term coined by Goffman (1963)—can produce negative feelings in the
recipients (Zuckerman, Miserandino, & Bernieri, 1983). When you want to dis-
avow social contact, your eye gaze will likely diminish. Thus, we see mutual gazing
in greeting sequences and greatly diminished gazing when we wish to bring an
encounter to an end.

Within a conversation, gazing at the other can command a nonverbal, as well
as verbal, response. Because speakers gaze less than listeners, it is the speaker’s gaz-
ing that determines moments of mutual looking. During these moments, it is highly
likely that the listener will respond with a listener response, also called a back-
channel response, that signifies attention (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002).

298 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

These responses can include smiles and other facial expressions, sounds such as
“mm-hmm,” and head nods. Thus, the speaker’s behavior is an important determi-
nant of the timing of these responses. However, gazing is not the only determinant:
Listener responses also occur when people do not see each other, as when talking
on a cell phone or telephone. In these situations, people are likely to increase their
level of verbal back-channel responses, such as “uh-huh,” as a means of communi-
cating their attention to the speaker (Boyle, Anderson, & Newlands, 1994).

In addition to opening and closing the channel of communication and com-
manding responses from the other, eye behavior also regulates the flow of commu-
nication by providing turn-taking signals. Speakers generally look less often than
listeners. But speakers do seem to glance during grammatical breaks, at the end of
a thought unit or idea, and at the end of the utterance. Although glances at these
junctures can signal the other person to assume the speaking role, we also use
these glances to obtain feedback, to see how we are being received, and to see if
the other will let us continue. This feedback function is addressed in the next sec-
tion. The speaker–listener pattern is often choreographed as follows: As the speaker
comes to the end of an utterance or thought unit, eye gaze toward the listener will
continue as the listener assumes the speaking role; the listener will maintain gaze
until the speaking role is assumed, when he or she will look away.

Research on naturally emerging and appointed leaders in three-person male
groups has found that the leader controls the flow of conversation using this cue
pattern: The leader shows an increased tendency to engage in prolonged gaze at
someone when he is done with a speaking turn, as if inviting, or possibly instruct-
ing, that person to take the floor. Thus, male leaders do not only keep the floor for
themselves more than others (Schmid Mast, 2002), they also orchestrate who gets
the floor and when (Kalma, 1992).

A speaker’s gaze at the completion of an utterance may help signal the yielding
of a speaking turn, but listener-directed gazes do not always accompany the
smooth exchange of speaking turns (Beattie, 1978; Rutter, Stephenson, & White,
1978). For instance, even though the speaker glances at the listener when yielding
a speaking turn, the listener delays a response or fails to respond. Further, when a
speaker begins an anticipated lengthy response, he or she is likely to delay gazing at
the other beyond what would normally be expected. This pattern of adult gazing
and looking away during speech seems to have its roots in early childhood develop-
ment. Observations of the gazing patterns of 3- to 4-month-old infants and their
parents revealed temporal similarities between their looking-at and looking-away
sequence and the vocalizing and pausing sequences in adult conversations (Jaffe,
Stern, & Peery, 1973).

Finally, we can use our gaze to signal the presence of socially meaningful infor-
mation in the interaction environment to another person, such as a friend. If you
notice the sudden appearance of a stranger, a quick glance at him or her can cue
your friend to look that way. The mutual acknowledgment of the stranger might
prompt a change in the topic of discussion, especially if it is of a private, sensitive
nature. Or the communication might come to a close altogether if the possible
threat in the environment is sufficient to warrant evasive action. Your use of gaze
here should help your friend (or whomever you are talking with) more quickly
notice looked-at information in the environment than information located in other

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 299

places (i.e., those areas that you are not gazing at), something referred to as the
gaze-cuing effect. The gaze-cuing effect has been observed not only in humans but
in a number of species, and is not limited to the assessment of environmental
threats (Brauer, Call, & Tomasello, 2005; Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007).

It appears that the gaze-cuing effect can be influenced by characteristics of the
gazer, perceiver of the gaze, and contextual factors. For example, females show
quicker cue-gazing responses than do males, and more dominant-looking female
faces seem to elicit greater cue-gazing effects (in this case, being quicker to identify
a letter in the location looked at by the face that preceded it than by the face that
did not look in that direction) among female observers (Alwall, Johansson, &
Hansen, 2010; Jones, Main, Little, & DeBruine, 2011). Seeing two people look at—
but not away from—each other before they both look in one direction leads to the
gaze-cuing effect (Böckler, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2011). Lastly, whether we look
where the gazer has looked may depend on the match between the gazer’s facial
expression and what we are searching for in the environment. Kuhn and Tipples
(2011) found that participants who were looking for a threatening target were more
likely to follow the gaze of a fearful face than a happy one.

MONITORING FEEDBACK

When people seek feedback concerning the reactions of others, they gaze at the
other person. If the other person is looking back, it is usually interpreted as a sign
of attention to what is being said. Listener facial expressions and gazing suggest
not only attention but also whether the listener is interested in what is being said.
Being seen is a profound form of social acknowledgment, and its lack—the experi-
ence of having others “look right through you”—undermines a person’s very exis-
tence as a social being. The averted gaze of another can lead to feelings of being
ostracized (Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg, & Williams, 2010). A child on a playground
who demands to be watched by his or her parent while doing feats on the jungle
gym is not simply asking for added safety or security. Far more importantly, the
parent’s gaze infuses meaning into the child’s actions. Without a witness, the
actions feel pointless or even unreal. People in low-status service occupations, such
as janitors and hotel maids, often feel that a lack of visual acknowledgment by the
people they serve is dehumanizing. On the other hand, under some circumstances
being seen—especially in the sense of being watched—can feel like a violation of
privacy and can be very uncomfortable, especially when one cannot look back at
the person watching.

Effective monitoring via gaze may have important practical consequences. In
studies of physician–patient interaction, those physicians who engaged in more
patient-directed gaze were more accurate at recognizing the patients’ degree of
psychosocial distress (Bensing, Kerssens, & van der Pasch, 1995), and a relation
between engaging in more patient-directed gaze and obtaining more psychosocial
information from the patient has been reported by van Dulmen, Verhaak, and Bilo
(1997).

Monitoring others’ reactions during group discussions is crucial to planning
responsive statements and maintaining group harmony and morale. Crosby,
Monin, and Richardson (2008) showed that when a white member of a group

300 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

made an offensive statement about blacks, visual attention was shifted to the black
member of the group, but only when listeners thought he could hear the offensive
remark. Presumably, group members wanted to know how the affected person
reacted before deciding how to respond themselves. Effective monitoring of group
members via gaze has been shown to be higher in women than men: Women
spread their gaze more evenly around a group than men do (Koch, Baehne, Kruse,
Zimmermann, & Zumbach, 2008).

REFLECTING COGNITIVE ACTIVITY

Both listeners and speakers have a tendency to avoid gazing at others when trying
to process difficult or complex ideas. This averted gaze, which may include closing
the eyes, reflects a shift in attention from external to internal matters, as well as an
effort to exclude or interrupt external stimulation, such as that inherent in the pro-
cessing of face-to-face social cues (Markson & Paterson, 2009). People avoid gaze
more on reflective questions than factual ones and on more difficult questions—
more difficult in factual content or in terms of the length of the temporal search
required, as in “Name a professor you currently have” versus “Name a professor
you had two semesters ago” (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998). Further-
more, when participants were required to answer factual questions, either with their
eyes closed or while looking directly at the experimenter, performance was better in
the eyes-closed condition, thus demonstrating the functional utility of excluding
external stimulation while engaging in difficult cognitive activity. Gaze aversion also
benefits children on difficult cognitive tasks, largely by helping them manage the
cognitive demands (Doherty-Sneddon & Phelps, 2005; Glenberg, Schroeder, &
Robertson, 1998). The use of gaze aversion while answering challenging questions
appears to be something that can be taught to very young children, resulting in
superior performance (Phelps, Doherty-Sneddon, & Warnock, 2006).

The nature of cognitive activity can also influence leftward or rightward eye
movements. When a person moves his or her eyes in a particular direction, it is
thought to reflect activity in the opposite hemisphere of the brain: Left hemisphere
activity, often involving intellectual and linguistic tasks, is associated with right-
ward glances, whereas right hemisphere activity, often involving spatial or emo-
tional processing, is associated with leftward glances (Ehrlichman & Weinberger,
1978; Weisz & Adam, 1993; Wilbur & Roberts-Wilbur, 1985). Studies show that
electroencephalic activity increases in the hemisphere opposite the direction of the
eye movement, and such activity can actually be stimulated by the movements.
Individuals vary in their leftward or rightward eye-movement tendencies, with left
movers being more susceptible to hypnosis, less scientifically oriented, more
involved with feelings and inner experience, more creative, and more prone to psy-
chosomatic symptoms and the psychological defenses of repression and denial.

EXPRESSING EMOTIONS

A glance at the eye area can provide us with a good deal of information about the
emotion being expressed. In fact, greater attention to the eyes might account for
why some (women) are better than others (men) at reading emotion states on the

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 301

face (Hall, Hutton, & Morgan, 2010). If we see tears near the eyes of a person, we
would likely conclude that he or she is emotionally moved, although without other
cues, we may not know whether the tears reflect grief, physical pain, frustration,
joy, anger, some complex blend of emotions, or feigned grief, as in crocodile tears
(i.e., tears that are not real expressions of grief). And, as we indicate later, cues such
as downcast or averted eyes are often associated with feelings of sadness, shame, or
embarrassment. The extensive studies of Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen have
given us valuable insights into facial configurations for six common, basic emotions,
shown in the photographs here. The descriptions shown pertain to the brow and
eye area, and the eye photographs are from Ekman and Friesen’s collection. As
the photographs illustrate, it may be difficult to judge what emotion is being
expressed without being able to see the brows. Similarly, some expressions may be
ambiguous unless the entire face can be seen. In everyday life, of course, we encoun-
ter dynamic as opposed to static facial expressions involving the eyes and mouth
as well as facial blends in which the eyes tell one story, and other parts of the face
tell another.

SURPRISE Brows are raised so they are curved and high. Skin below the brow is
stretched. Eyelids are opened; the upper lid is raised, and the lower lid is drawn
down; and the white of the eye shows above the iris, and often below as well.

FEAR Brows are raised and drawn together. The upper eyelid is raised, exposing the
white of the eye, called the sclera, and the lower eyelid is tensed and drawn up.

DISGUST Disgust is shown primarily in the lower face and in the lower eyelids.
Lines show below the lower lid, and the lid is pushed up but not tense. The brow
is lowered, lowering the upper lid.

ANGER The brows are lowered and drawn together, and vertical lines appear
between them. The lower lid is tensed and may or may not be raised. The upper
lid is tensed and may or may not be lowered by the action of the brow. The eyes
have a hard stare and may have a bulging appearance.

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302 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

HAPPINESS Happiness is shown primarily in the lower face and lower eyelids. The
lower eyelid shows wrinkles below it and may be raised but is not tense. Crow’s-
feet wrinkles go outward from the outer corners of the eyes.

SADNESS The inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn up. The skin below the eye-
brow is triangulated, with the inner corner up. The upper-eyelid inner corner is
raised.

The eye-tracking study of Eisenbarth and Alpers (2011) showed that participants
looked initially or relatively longer at different parts of the face when decoding specific
emotions; for instance, initial fixations to the eyes were more common with sad than
happy, angry, or fearful expressions, and longer fixations to the mouth were seen
with happy expressions. The authors interpreted this as evidence that we look at
those areas of the face that are most characteristic of each emotion state. But do the
eyes, for example, display emotion better or worse than other parts of the face?
Ekman, Friesen, and Tomkins (1971) demonstrated that the eyes were better than the
brows, forehead, or lower face for the accurate perception of fear but were less accu-
rate for anger and disgust. Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, and Jolliffe (1997) tested uni-
versity students’ accuracy at identifying 16 emotional states, posed by an actress, by
evaluating each area separately: the eye area, including brows; the mouth area; and
the whole face. The authors included “basic” emotions such as angry, afraid, and
happy, and “nonbasic” states such as admiring, flirtatious, arrogant, and thoughtful.
The eye region was not quite as accurately judged as the whole face for the basic
emotions but was indistinguishable for the nonbasic states (see Figure 10-2). Can you
identify the emotions posed by the person in this study? (Answers are at the end of the
chapter.) Both the eyes and the whole face were judged much more accurately than
the mouth. Consistent with the research by Ekman, Friesen, and Tomkins (1971),
accuracy for the mouth region, although not superior to the eye region, was similar
to that of the eye region for distinguishing disgust and anger and much lower than
the eye region for distinguishing fear.

Most research on recognizing facial expressions of emotion presents faces
with direct forward gaze. However, it has been shown that the direction in
which the eyes are gazing has an influence on judgments of emotion in the face
(Adams & Kleck, 2003, 2005). In one of the studies, a face shown with the eyes
gazing directly forward made viewers more likely to see approach-orientation
emotions, such as anger and joy, in the faces, but a face with an averted gaze
made them more likely to see avoidance-orientation emotions, such as fear and

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CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 303

FIGURE 10-2
Can you judge the emotions in these eyes? (a) happy or surprised, (b) angry or afraid, (c) sad or
disgusted, (d) distressed or sad, (e) arrogant or guilty, (f) thoughtful or arrogant, (g) flirting or
happy, (h) guilty or arrogant. (See answers at end of chapter.)
Source: From Baron-Cohen S.; Wheelwright S.; Jolliffe A. T. Is There a “Language of the Eyes”? Evidence from Normal
Adults, and Adults with Autism or Asperger Syndrome, Visual Cognition, Volume 4, Number 3, 1 September 1997,
pp. 311–331(21), reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.informaworld.com).

304 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

sadness. In another study, identical facial blends of fear and anger were presented
to viewers with direct versus averted gaze; more anger was attributed to the face
that had direct gaze, and more fear was attributed to the face that had averted
gaze. Thus, when the expression was ambiguous, gaze direction influenced
emotional perception (see Figure 10-3).

FIGURE 10-2 (continued)

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 305

COMMUNICATING THE NATURE OF THE INTERPERSONAL
RELATIONSHIP

The direct gaze of a live person is important to the initial stages of processing his
or her facial information, which obviously is relevant to the possibility of some
sort of relationship (Pönkänen, Alhoniemi, Leppänen, & Hietanen, 2011). Gazing
and mutual gazing are often indicative of the nature of the relationship between
two interactants. For instance, relationships characterized by different status or
dominance levels may be reflected in the eye patterns; one example was given
earlier—the way the leader in a group seems to pick the next speaker by gazing at
him or her. The gaze of observers also might reflect a sensitivity to status differ-
ences among people. Foulsham, Cheng, Tracy, Henrich, and Kingstone (2010)
found that participants watching a video of a decision-making group looked more
at the high-status than low-status individuals in the group.

Another indicator of status or dominance is the visual dominance ratio—the
percentage of time spent looking at another while speaking to him or her divided
by the percentage of time spent looking at him or her while he or she is speaking.
People with higher status or dominance gaze relatively more while speaking and
relatively less while listening, compared to people with lower status or dominance.
This has been observed in laboratory dyadic settings as well as in real-world work-
place settings involving groups of people (Koch, Baehne, Kruse, Zimmermann, &
Zumbach, 2010). Although subtle patterns such as these distinguish people with

FIGURE 10-3
The ambiguous fear–anger blend is judged differently depending on the direction of gaze.
Source: With permission from Reginald B. Adams from Adams, R. B., Jr., & Kleck, R. E. (2005). Effects of direct and
averted of direct and averted gaze on the perception of facially communicated emotion. Emotion, 5, 3–11.

306 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

higher and lower dominance, a simple measure of overall gazing does not, accord-
ing to numerous studies (as reviewed by Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005).
On the other hand, stereotypes about gazing and dominance indicate a belief in
such an association. When asked to imagine how much gazing people of high or
low dominance would display, in terms of either personality or rank in a work-
place, participants thought the higher dominant person would gaze more (Carney,
Hall, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). And across many studies, when shown video
excerpts of people gazing different amounts, viewers attributed higher dominance
to those who gazed more (Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005).

On the flip side of visual dominance is the notion of “visual egalitarianism”

(Koch, Baehne, Kruse, Zimmermann, & Zumbach, 2010). Here, equality among
members of a group might be revealed in gaze patterns that suggest all members
of the group are being looked at to relatively the same extent. Koch and colleagues
found that visual egalitarianism was greater in groups headed by a female team
leader than a male team leader.

Several studies testify that we gaze more at people and things perceived as
rewarding. Efran and Broughton (1966) found that males gazed more at other
males with whom they had engaged in a friendly conversation preceding an
experiment and with those who nodded and smiled during the person’s presen-
tation. Exline and Eldridge (1967) found that the same verbal communication
was decoded as being more favorable when associated with more gaze than
when presented with less gaze. Exline and Winters (1965) reported that people
avoided the eyes of an interviewer and disliked him after he had commented unfa-
vorably on their performance. Self-relevance influences responses to gaze, too.
Faces are considered more likable if the eyes are shown shifting toward the viewer
than if the eyes are shown shifting away (Mason, Tatkow, & Macrae, 2005).

Mehrabian (1972b) asked a group of people to imagine they liked a person
and to engage this person in conversation. Even in this role-playing situation,
increased gazing was associated with increased liking. Mutual liking, revealed in
the form of participants’ rating of rapport, was similarly related to gazing when
interactants debated a controversial topic (Bernieri, Gillis, Davis, & Grahe, 1996).
Interestingly, when engaging in a more cooperative discussion, eye contact was not
related to rapport judgments.

Increased gazing is often considered in the context of a courtship relationship.
The maintenance of mutual gaze longer than otherwise expected is a primary way
of signaling desire for heightened intimacy. In movies, we can almost always pre-
dict when a first kiss is coming because the characters share an unusually long
mutual gaze. An increased amount of gaze can both signal a wish for more involve-
ment and be an indication that heightened involvement has occurred. In one study,
for example, single men (but not single women) showed more gazing toward an
attractive than unattractive opposite-sex interaction partner (Van Straaten, Holland,
Finkenauer, Hollenstein, & Engles, 2010). Several sources confirm an increase in gaz-
ing between two people who are seeking to develop a more intimate relationship.
Rubin’s (1970) analysis of engaged couples indicated more mutual gaze, and Kleinke,
Bustos, Meeker, and Staneski (1973) found that longer glances or reciprocated glances
were perceived as an indicator of a longer relationship. It may be that the amount of
gazing increases as relationships become more intimate, but it may also be true that

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 307

after maintaining an intimate relationship for years, gazing returns to levels below
those observed during more intense stages of the relationship’s development.

Argyle and Dean (1965) proposed an intimacy equilibrium model to help
explain why and how much people gaze in an interpersonal interaction. This
model suggests that intimacy is a function of the amount of eye gazing, physical
proximity, intimacy of topic, and amount of smiling. Thus, gaze is part of a net-
work of other behaviors that have important relations to one another in a total sys-
tem reflective of the overall psychological intimacy in a given interaction. Clearly,
other variables might be inserted into the equation; for example, body orientation,
the form of address used, tone of voice, other facial expressions, and forward lean.
The central idea behind this proposal is that as one component of the model is
changed, one or more of the other components also will change in the opposite
direction, as a form of compensation to keep the overall intimacy or stimulation at
a constant, desired level. For example, if one person looks too much, the other may
look less, move farther away, smile less, talk less about intimate matters, and so on
to reestablish the initial desired level of intimacy. Also, when one person is forced
to increase the implied intimacy of a behavior—for example, by standing close to
another in a crowded elevator—the other will compensate by gazing less, talking
about impersonal topics, and so forth.

Cross-cultural research shows that in societies that emphasize a greater
amount of physical contact between mothers and infants, mutual gaze between
them is lower than in societies where the norms prescribe more physical auton-
omy and distance. Here again is evidence of a compensatory mechanism, whereby
the crucial psychological connection between mothers and infants is maintained
in different but equivalent ways. The same trade-off between physical contact
and mutual gaze has also been observed in chimpanzee mother–infant interac-
tions (Bard et al., 2005).

Although this compensatory model has received extensive support, there are
many occasions when, rather than counter or offset the other’s behavior, people
will reciprocate it; for example, gazing will elicit gazing, and smiling will elicit smil-
ing. This can be seen in personal interactions as well as between strangers, and
glancing at a passing stranger is likely to produce a glance in return (Patterson,
Webb, & Schwartz, 2002; Patterson et al., 2007).

Several scholars have proposed alternatives to the intimacy equilibrium model
(Cappella & Greene, 1982; Patterson, 1976) in an attempt to accommodate both
compensation and reciprocation. These theories argue that our tendency to
exchange the same behavior (i.e., to reciprocate) or to offset the other’s behavior
(i.e., to compensate) is a result of the type and amount of arousal we feel and
desire. A general rule suggests that we tend to reciprocate or match another’s non-
verbal behavior when the other’s behavior is perceived by us as congruent with our
own expectations and preferences, or when we want to initiate an upward or
downward spiral in intimacy. When our partner’s behavior is not congruent with
our expectations and preferences, we are more likely to enact compensatory or off-
setting behavior (see also Chapter 12).

When the relationship between the two communicators is characterized by neg-
ative attitudes, we might see a decrease in gazing and mutual gazing, but not
always. This is because gaze, like touch, can sometimes serve more to intensify or

308 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

highlight whatever feeling or intention is present at the moment than to communi-
cate a specific message. Also, gaze does not occur in isolation from other cues—a
threatening stare and a loving look may both be long, but the rest of the face is
likely to be doing quite different things.

To illustrate one of the preceding points, satisfied married couples in one study
tended to look at each other less than couples who were dissatisfied with their rela-
tionship, with this being particularly true when negative messages were exchanged
(Noller, 1980). Increased gazing served to emphasize the confrontational nature of
the relationship while simultaneously providing a way to monitor the other’s reac-
tions during critical moments. This is a good example of how the immediate con-
text can never be ignored when interpreting the meaning of nonverbal behavior.

A hostile or aggressive orientation may also trigger the use of staring to pro-
duce anxiety in others. A gaze of longer than 10 seconds is likely to induce irrita-
tion, if not outright discomfort, in many situations. In one study, drivers sped
away more quickly from an intersection when stared at by a pedestrian (Ellsworth,
Carlsmith, & Henson, 1972). Several studies confirm that mutual gaze is physio-
logically arousing. We can express our hostility toward another by visually and
verbally ignoring him or her, especially when the other person knows we are delib-
erately doing so. But we can insult another person by looking at that person too
much, that is, by not according him or her the public anonymity that each of us
requires at times. Sometimes you can elicit aggressive behavior from others just
because you happen to look too long at their behavior. Sometimes threats and
aggressive action can be elicited in zoo monkeys by human beings who stare at
them too long.

Thus, if we are looking for a unifying thread to link gazing patterns motivated
by positive and negative feelings toward the other, it would seem to be this: People
tend to look at those with whom they are interpersonally involved. Gazing moti-
vated by hostility or affection both suggest an interest and involvement in the inter-
personal relationship. We must rely on contextual information, and other verbal
and nonverbal cues, to decide whether to interpret extended gazing positively or
negatively.

CONDITIONS INFLUENCING GAZING PATTERNS

DISTANCE

As suggested by intimacy equilibrium theory, gazing and mutual gazing often
increase as the physical distance between two people grows. In this case, gazing
psychologically reduces the distance between communicators and allows for better
monitoring. Similarly, there may be less visual contact when the two parties feel
too close in terms of physical distance, especially if they are not well acquainted.
Reducing one’s gaze in this situation, then, increases the psychological distance.
Several studies by Aiello (1972, 1977) found that extending the conversational dis-
tances to as much as 10 feet produced a steady increase in gazing for men, but for
women, being more than 6 feet from their interactant brought a sharp decline in
their gazing. It is probable that because women prefer closer interaction distances
(see Chapter 5), they may find it difficult to define interactions at relatively great

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 309

distances as normal and friendly, and they may react by ceasing their attempts to
maintain involvement.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

We would think that when interacting with a person who is disabled or stigmatized
in some way, gaze would be less frequent. The evidence in support of this is mixed,
though, and may hinge on the nature of the disability or situational demands pres-
ent during the interaction. Bowers, Crawcour, Saltuklaroglu, and Kalinowski
(2010) noted that college-aged participants were more likely to look away from a
speaker’s eyes when he was stuttering as opposed to speaking fluently. Kleck
(1968), on the other hand, found that the amount of gazing between nondisabled
and disabled interactants did not differ significantly from interactions between
those considered nondisabled. Possible explanations are that in such situations, the
nondisabled person is seeking information that might suggest the proper mode of
behavior, or the disabled person is a novel stimulus that arouses curiosity. These
factors would counteract any tendency to avoid eye gaze. A subsequent study,
however, found that when a strong possibility arose that a nondisabled person
would have to engage a disabled person in conversation, gaze avoidance increased.
When conversation was not expected, people without disabilities tended to stare
more at people with disabilities than those without (Thompson, 1982).

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PERSONALITY

There are definitely stereotypes about gaze and personality. Kleck and Nuessle
(1968) showed a film of people looking at their partners either 15 or 80 percent
of the time to observers, who were asked to select characteristics that typified the
interactants. Those who looked at their partner only 15 percent of the time were
labeled as cold, pessimistic, cautious, defensive, immature, evasive, submissive,
indifferent, and sensitive; those who looked 80 percent of the time were seen as
friendly, self-confident, natural, mature, and sincere. Napieralski, Brooks, and
Droney (1995) presented viewers with 1-minute videotaped interactions in which
the target person gazed for 5, 30, or 50 seconds at an interviewer. The less a person
gazed, the more state anxiety and trait anxiety were attributed to that person by
viewers.

In actual interaction, of course, gaze patterns reflect the message sender’s
mood, intentions, and situational factors. Nevertheless, some patterns have
emerged in the relations between gazing patterns and personality traits. Dependent
individuals seem to use eye behavior not only to communicate more positive atti-
tudes but also to elicit such attitudes when they are not forthcoming from others
(Exline & Messick, 1967). Dependent males directed more gaze toward a listener
who provided them with few, as opposed to many, social reinforcers, whereas
dominant males decreased their eye gaze with listeners who reinforced less.

Kalma (1993) distinguished between two personality styles relating to domi-
nance: sociable dominance and aggressive dominance. The sociably dominant per-
son agrees strongly with statements such as “I have no problem talking in front of
a group” and “No doubt I’ll make a good leader.” The aggressively dominant

310 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

person agrees strongly with statements such as “I quickly feel aggressive with peo-
ple” and “I find it important to get my way.” In an experimental setting, Kalma
observed people who varied on these dominance styles and found that the sociably
dominant person engaged in more mutual gaze, whereas the aggressively dominant
person engaged in more looking around; that is, they showed lack of interest in
others.

A particular kind of social dominance is sexual harassment. Male college stu-
dents’ proclivity to sexually harass women was measured using a questionnaire
that asked how likely they would be to exploit a woman under varying hypotheti-
cal circumstances, such as rewarding her for sexual favors. Videotapes that were
surreptitiously made of the same men interacting at a later time with a subordinate
female revealed that, among other behaviors, the men more likely to harass
engaged in more direct eye contact with the woman (Murphy, Driscoll, & Kelly,
1999).

Self-esteem and self-confidence are associated with gazing patterns. A study of
attributions found that interviewees were rated by observers as having increasingly
lower self-esteem as their gazing decreased (Droney & Brooks, 1993). Variations in
gazing at another person during positive and negative feedback may indeed be
related to self-esteem. When receiving favorable feedback on their performance,
people with high self-esteem tended to gaze more, and negative feedback reduced
their gazing behavior. But the pattern was reversed for those with low self-esteem.
These people gazed more during feedback that criticized their performance than
during feedback that complimented it (Greene & Frandsen, 1979).

Intelligence is also a trait people display during social interactions. Evidence
shows that people who score higher on standard tests of cognitive ability, such as
an IQ test, engage in more interpersonal gaze and responsiveness, and that percei-
vers who watch these people on videotape can use these cues to accurately judge
intelligence levels (Murphy, Hall, & Colvin, 2003).

Other personality traits—as measured by the self-report of the gazers—have
been associated with more gazing. Such traits include extraversion, agreeableness,
and openness (Berry & Hansen, 2000; Mobbs, 1968), although some studies do
not find correlations between gaze and personality. For example, Dabbs, Evans,
Hopper, and Purvis (1980) did not find differences in the gazing behavior of high
self-monitors and low self-monitors,1 and Gifford (1994) failed to find associations
between interpersonal gazing and trait measures of ambitiousness, gregariousness,
warmth, unassumingness, laziness, aloofness, coldness, and arrogance.

1This is a personality variable that indicates the extent to which a person’s outer self—what he or she
shows to others—matches his or her inner self from situation to situation (Snyder, 1974). A high self-
monitor tends to look for clues in the situation as to how to behave and then presents himself or her-
self (the outer self) in a manner that is consistent with those expectations. Thus, in some situations, we
might see an outer self that is different from the person’s true inner self. For example, even though a
high self-monitor might not be particularly moved by an issue, he or she may act as if it is important
to him or her if others in the situation are treating it as such. The outer self that you see from a low
self-monitor, on the other hand, is more likely to be consistent from situation to situation because it
tends to reflect his or her inner self.

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 311

Shyness is related to gazing behavior, but this correlation can depend on
whether the shy person is of a sociable or unsociable type. In a laboratory experi-
ment, Cheek and Buss (1981) classified college students on both a shyness scale
and a sociability scale and then observed them in a get-acquainted session.
Although shy individuals engaged in less gazing overall, and in more self-touching
and less talking, this effect was mainly present if the person was both shy (e.g., “I
am socially somewhat awkward”; “I feel inhibited in social situations”) and socia-
ble (e.g., “I like to be with people”; “I prefer working with others rather than
alone”). Thus, the behavioral deficits associated with shyness appear mainly in shy
people who crave social interaction; shy people who would just as soon be left
alone behaved much like people who were not shy in terms of their gazing.

Social anxiety, another related concept, is also associated with less gazing. In
one study, women who were high in social anxiety avoided eye contact with male
avatars that appeared farther away and were staring at them in a virtual reality
experimental setup (Wieser, Pauli, Grosseibl, Molzow, & Mühlberger, 2010). In
another study, in which socially anxious people were asked to present a viewpoint
to two confederates, the socially anxious ones were especially likely to reduce gaze
toward a confederate with opposing views compared to one with agreeing views
(Farabee, Holcom, Ramsey, & Cole, 1993). In an experiment in which participants
had choices of which face to look at on a computer screen, Mansell, Clark, Ehlers,
and Chen (1999) found that socially anxious people whose anxiety was heightened
by being told they would be giving a public talk avoided faces that showed emo-
tional expressions, preferring to give their visual attention to neutral-expression
faces. Under such circumstances, the socially anxious person may have an espe-
cially strong need to avoid the arousal engendered by emotional faces, which in
turn may be related to a history of finding emotionally charged social interactions
to be aversive. Highly anxious individuals also avert their eyes sooner from an
extended facial display of anger compared to less anxious individuals (Rohner,
2002). Of importance, not all studies have found greater gaze avoidance among
socially anxious individuals (Wieser & Pauli, 2009). When negative facial expres-
sions are very intense, more trait-anxious individuals actually look at them more
(Mogg, Garner, & Bradley, 2007).

As we mentioned earlier, gaze cuing refers to the automatic tendency to look in
the direction of someone else’s gaze. This effect is especially pronounced when the
target person’s face looks fearful. When viewers saw a fearful face with eyes
averted, as though the target person was looking at something frightening in the
environment, their own gaze shifted in that direction more than was the case when
the averted eyes were shown on a happy face (Putnam, Hermans, & van Honk,
2006). Furthermore, this effect is especially notable for viewers who are high on
trait anxiety: Highly anxious individuals are especially quick to use gaze direction
as a cue when the gazer has a fearful facial expression, suggesting that anxiety
makes a person especially visually attuned and responsive to evidence of threat in
their environment (Fox, Mathews, Calder, & Yiend, 2007; Mathews, Fox, Yield, &
Calder, 2003; Putnam, Hermans, & van Honk, 2006).

Finally, there are gender differences related to gaze avoidance and the use of
gaze. Larsen and Shackelford (1996) found that gaze-avoidant females (but not
males) were viewed negatively in terms of their social characteristics (e.g.,

312 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

disagreeable, unattractive). As shown in many studies, females look at others dur-
ing interaction more than males do, and such differences have been observed in
infancy and early childhood as well as in adulthood (Hall, 1984; Leeb & Rejskind,
2004). In addition, women are gazed at more than men are by others in an interac-
tion. (Sex differences are discussed further in Chapter 12.)

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

A number of research studies find special gazing patterns, usually less gaze, in some
psychopathological conditions. For example, individuals with bipolar manic disor-
der showed more gaze avoidance than controls in a virtual-reality-based social
interaction (Kim et al., 2009). Depressed patients are characterized by nonspecific
gaze patterns and looking-down behaviors that revert to more normal patterns
with clinical improvement (Schelde & Hertz, 1994). Mothers with depressive
symptoms spend less time gazing at their infants, and their infants respond by
averting gaze more than control infants (Field, 1995). Paranoid schizophrenic
patients show a deficit in judging the gaze direction of others, which is consistent
with everyday conceptions of paranoia: Paranoid individuals are more likely than
comparison subjects to perceive another as looking at them, when the person is
actually looking away (Rosse, Kendrick, Wyatt, Isaac, & Deutsch, 1994).

A new term, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), has been used to represent the
nature of autistic symptoms ranging from severe (childhood disintegrative disorder)
to mild (Asperger’s syndrome), with classic autism being somewhere in between the
two extremes. Of importance, deficits in either attention to or the processing of
social information, such as eye and facial cues, may be present in each case but
not necessarily to the same extent.

Clinicians and researchers cite gaze aversion, among other social interaction
deficits, as a characteristic of their autistic patients (Adrien et al., 1993; Hutt &
Ounsted, 1966; Walters, Barrett, & Feinstein, 1990). Autistic individuals also suf-
fer deficits in the ability to detect the direction of another’s gaze (Senju, Yaguchi,
Tojo, & Hasegawa, 2003), to monitor a speaker’s gaze direction, and to direct
someone else’s gaze via the pointing gesture (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, &
Jolliffe, 1997). Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, and Plumb (2001) reported
that individuals with autism or Asperger’s syndrome were less accurate overall than
normally functioning participants in judging emotions from the eye region of the
face. And Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, and Jolliffe (1997) also found that the
patients were especially impaired for nonbasic—that is, more complex—expres-
sions, and when the eye region alone was being judged as opposed to the full face.
(See Figure 10-4 for the eye expressions used in this study.) Gaze measurement con-
firmed that individuals with autism fail to use information from the eye region
when making emotion judgments (Spezio, Adolphs, Hurley, & Piven, 2007), a def-
icit that directly impacts their ability to distinguish genuine from posed smiles, for
which attention to the eye region is necessary (Boraston, Corden, Miles, Skuse, &
Blakemore, 2008).

One theory to account for these deficits holds that individuals with autism find
direct gaze to be overwhelmingly arousing, and they avoid it for that reason.
Indeed, Kliemann, Dziobek, Hatri, Steimke, and Heekeren (2010) found that

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 313

children diagnosed with ASD were more likely than control children to move their
eyes away from the eyes of facial stimuli. Using an experimental method that var-
ied the direction of a poser’s gaze (looking at or away from the camera), while
zooming the image in larger to suggest an approaching person, Kylliäinen and
Hietanen (2006) found that autistic children’s skin conductance (a measure of
physiological arousal) was greater in the direct gaze compared to averted gaze con-
dition, but for control children, there was no difference. Thus, the hypothesis that
gaze is aversively arousing for autistic children was supported.

Another possibility is that there is a breakdown in the autistic person’s ability
to synchronize an interaction by reciprocating another person’s direct gaze. Chen
and Yoon (2011) observed that individuals who reported more autism-associated
traits did not show a greater tendency to look at eyes staring at them versus away
from them, whereas those with fewer traits did.

Efforts are underway to improve the socioemotional skills of children who suf-
fer from ASD. FaceSay is a computer program that allows these children to practice
attending to eye gaze and recognizing faces and emotions with avatar assistants,
with some positive results being reported (Hopkins et al., 2011).

Another promising, and likely related, new avenue of insight involves the role
of the neuropeptide oxytocin in the ability of humans, both those with and without
psychopathology, to develop social attachments and to be sensitive and responsive
socially. Especially relevant to the present chapter is the study of Guastella,
Mitchell, and Dadds (2007), who found that experimental administration of
oxytocin to male college students via nasal inhalation caused them to give added
attention to the eye region of faces shown to them in photographs. The authors
suggested that oxytocin administration might have therapeutic benefits for groups
such as those with schizophrenia and autism, who have chronic difficulties in social
communication (see Chapter 3). This possibility found empirical support in a study
by Andari and colleagues (2010), who noted that individuals with autism spent
more time gazing at the eyes of pictured faces after they had inhaled oxytocin.
Future therapies will likely involve a combination of interventions and will need to
be tailored to meet the specific deficits associated with the various ASDs.

TOPICS AND TASKS

Common sense suggests that the topic being discussed and the task at hand affect
the amount of gazing. We would expect, for instance, more gazing when the topic
is happy rather than sad or interesting as opposed to not. For example, one study
found that typically developing children as well as children diagnosed with high-
functioning autism exhibited more looking at an adult face when talking about a
topic of interest to them (Nadig, Lee, Singh, Bosshart, & Ozonoff, 2010). We
would expect interactants who have not developed an intimate relationship to
gaze less when discussing intimate topics, assuming other factors, such as the need
for affiliation or inclusion, are controlled. People also may gaze differently during
competitive tasks and cooperative tasks. In one study, cooperators used longer
gazes and mutual gazes to signal trust, liking, and honesty. Gazes also were used
to aid coordination. Competitors, however, seemed to use frequent, short gazes to
assess their partner’s intentions while not giving away their own (Foddy, 1978).

314 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FACESAY™

Children who suffer from ASD have interpersonal difficulties related to understanding other people’s emo-
tion states. Understanding others’ emotion states depends, in part, on attending to their facial cues. Children
with ASD show deficits in following the eye gaze of others and appear not to use information in the eye
region of people’s faces adequately when making emotion judgments.

Symbionica, LLC, created FaceSay, which is an interactive computer game designed to help children with
ASD develop skill in recognizing facial expressions of emotion. Children with ASD play games that have
them follow the eye gaze of an avatar, focus on the eye region of an avatar, and decide whether faces are
showing the same expression.

To illustrate, in one game, a child with ASD views the head and face of a female avatar that is encircled
by various objects, including a sun, leaf, and eye mask. She says, “These do look fun” as she scans the
objects around her head. She then says, “Can you please click on the one I’m looking at” while she is look-
ing at the eye mask, which is to her right. During a pause in speaking, she looks forward at the child and
then right back to the eye mask.

The child needs to click on the object that the avatar was looking at. If he or she selects the right one—
in this case, the eye mask—the avatar says, “Thank you, that’s just what I wanted.” During this time, the
eye mask appears on the avatar’s face, which is looking at the child again, and the child earns a point for
the correct answer.

This game helps children with ASD focus on the eyes and gaze pattern of the avatar. Getting comfort-
able doing so, as well as gaining experience using social information from the eyes, are social skills that
can help these children interact more successfully with their peers at school.

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CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 315

Discussing topics that cause embarrassment, humiliation, shame, or guilt might
be expected to engender less gazing at the other person. Looking away during such
situations may be an effort to insulate oneself against threats, arguments, informa-
tion, or even affection from the other party. When subjects were caused to fail at
an anagram task and were publicly criticized for their work, they not only reported
feeling embarrassed, but the amount of gaze slipped from 30 percent to 18 percent
(Modigliani, 1971). When people want to hide some aspect of their inner feelings,
they may try to avoid visual contact—for example, in situations where they are try-
ing to deceive a partner. The extent to which this occurs may vary with age and
personality characteristics. Young children, for example, may be more likely than
adults to break eye contact when lying than when telling the truth (McCarthy &
Lee, 2009). Exline, Thibaut, Hickey, and Gumpert (1970) designed a fascinating,
although possibly ethically unsound, experiment. A paid confederate induced
research participants to cheat on an experimental task. Later, the experimenter
interviewed the participants with the supposed purpose of understanding and eval-
uating their problem-solving methods. With some participants, the experimenter
grew increasingly suspicious during the interview and finally accused the partici-
pant of cheating and demanded an explanation. Participants included both those
who scored high and low on tests of Machiavellianism, a characteristic of a person
who uses cunning and shrewdness to achieve a goal without much regard for how
unscrupulous the means might be. Figure 10-4 shows that high Machiavellian par-
ticipants used gazing to present the appearance of innocence after being accused of
cheating; low Machiavellian participants, in contrast, continued to look away.

In the study by Bensing and colleagues mentioned earlier, physicians’ average
levels of gaze at patients were much greater when the patients were talking about

FIGURE 10-4
Gazing, Machiavellianism, and deception.

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ag

e
Le

ar
n
in
g
A
ll
R
ig
h
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R
es

er
ve

316 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

social and emotional topics than when talking about more physiological problems,
and levels were also high when the physicians were verbally conveying empathy or
psychosocial interest. Patients were also more satisfied with their visits when the
physicians gazed more.

Persuasion is another communicative task we often undertake. We know that
gazing can add emphasis to a particular point, but Mehrabian and Williams
(1969) found that a person trying to be persuasive gazes more overall. And
research shows that listeners judge speakers who gaze more as more persuasive,
informed, truthful, sincere, and credible, and even pictured faces appear more trust-
worthy when the eyes are showing a direct versus an averted gaze (Wyland &
Forgas, 2010). Also, compliance with a request can be enhanced if the requester
engages in more gazing within an appropriate range (Guéguen & Jacob, 2002).

The application of such findings in a simulated courtroom situation found that
witnesses who testified while looking slightly downward, rather than directly at
their questioner, were judged less credible—and the defendant for whom they were
testifying was more likely to be judged guilty (Hemsley & Doob, 1978). In another
important study, actors reenacted the actual verbal performances of surgery stu-
dents during medical school oral examinations, using a nonverbal style marked
either by direct gaze and a moderate speech rate or by indirect gaze and a slower
speech rate. Surgery faculty from 46 medical institutions who judged the compe-
tency of these reenacted oral examinations gave significantly higher scores to the
actor who used direct gaze and a moderate rate of speech, even though the answers
were the same as in the other condition (Rowland-Morin, Burchard, Garb, & Coe,
1991). It is clear from these studies that in real-life situations, the presence or
absence of gaze can have a profound impact, yet the impact can be highly unfair
or damaging. We would not want to be the honest witness, the sincere speaker, or
the competent medical student who had the misfortune to gaze less than expected.

CULTURAL AND RACIAL BACKGROUND AND RACIAL ATTITUDES

Eye behavior also varies according to the environment in which we learn social
norms. Sometimes gazing patterns show differences between “contact” cultures,
such as Arab cultures, and “noncontact” cultures, such as northern European cul-
tures (see Chapters 5, 8, and 13). Sometimes cultural rules dictate whom you
should or should not look at. One report says that in Kenya, conversations
between some men and their mothers-in-law are conducted by each party turning
his or her back to the other.

We may find different racial patterns within our own culture. Whites are found
to gaze significantly more at their partners than blacks do, and this difference may
be especially pronounced with authority figures—a tendency that could create
cross-racial misunderstanding. Some research shows blacks’ and whites’ changing
gazing patterns in cross-racial encounters, but the research is not consistent (Fehr &
Exline, 1987; Halberstadt, 1985). Interestingly, when a face is gazing at you as
opposed to away from you, you are likely to have better memory for it when it is of
the same race rather than a different race than you (Adams, Pauker, & Weisbuch,
2010). Also, how we process a fearful face may vary as a function of the gaze and
racial match of the person we are viewing. For instance, Adams and colleagues had

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 317

Japanese and U.S. white participants view fearful faces from Japanese versus U.S.
white faces; greater responsiveness (namely, neural activity) was observed when the
faces were of the same race and looking away, whereas direct gaze from opposite-
race faces elicited greater neural reactions. Such findings underscore the variety of
factors that may influence and be affected by gaze in each encounter.

Of course, our cultural inclinations may be suppressed, neutralized, or empha-
sized by other forces attendant to the situation. And, although cultural experiences
may alter gazing patterns and the total amount of gaze, we may find that perceived
extremes in gaze elicit similar meanings in different cultures. For instance, too
much gazing may signal anger, threat, or disrespect; too little may signal dishon-
esty, inattention, or shyness.

Because people often enact nonverbal behavior without conscious awareness,
psychologists have suggested that nonverbal cues may sometimes be subtle indica-
tors of social attitudes, especially those that may be denied or not consciously
acknowledged, such as negative feelings toward members of minority groups
(Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980; Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974). Dovidio,
Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, and Howard (1997) predicted that the amount of
gaze directed by interviewees toward black versus white interviewers would be
related to the interviewees’ implicit racial attitudes. As predicted, interviewees who
had displayed more implicit racial bias gazed less at the black than the white inter-
viewer and also blinked more, suggesting greater negative arousal and tension.
However, these nonverbal cues were not related to explicit, and more reactive,
paper-and-pencil reports of prejudice by the interviewees.

PUPIL DILATION AND CONSTRICTION

Researchers currently utilize video-based eye-tracking tools that measure where
people are looking, how long they are looking at something, and how their pupils
respond to what they are looking at and doing, cognitively speaking (Wang, 2011).
Of interest here is how people’s pupils, which, as you know, can dilate and constrict,
might signal their interest level, attitudes, memory, decision-making processes, as
well as various disorders. We will first review the groundbreaking but somewhat
controversial early work in this area before turning to current research trends.

Most of us are aware that the pupils of the eyes constrict in the presence of bright
light and dilate in the absence of light. In the early 1960s, however, Eckhard Hess and
colleagues ushered in a new way of thinking about pupil dilation and constriction by
suggesting that they were possible indicators of interest. In an early experiment, Hess
and Polt (1960) presented five pictures to male and female subjects. Males’ pupils
dilated more than females’ pupils in response to pictures of female nudes; females’
pupils dilated more than males’ to pictures of a partially clothed “muscle man,” a
woman with a baby, and a baby alone. Thus, it seemed pupil dilation and interest in
the stimulus were related. In a follow-up study, Hess, Seltzer, and Shlien (1965)
found that the pupils of homosexual males dilated more when viewing pictures of
males than did the pupils of heterosexual males, whose pupils dilated in response to
female pictures. Studies since then have had similar results.

With respect to attitudes, Barlow (1969) preselected subjects who actively sup-
ported either liberal or conservative candidates. He photographed the pupil of the

318 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

right eye of the subjects while they watched slides of political figures and found
what seemed to be a perfect correlation between pupillary response and political
attitudes, with dilation occurring for photographs of liked candidates and constric-
tion occurring for photographs of disliked candidates.

Several of Hess’s studies suggested that pupil response might be a bidirectional
index of attitudes: Pupils dilate for positive attitudes and constrict for negative
ones. His oft-cited finding in support of this theory was the constriction of the
pupils of subjects who viewed pictures of concentration camp victims, dead sol-
diers, and a murdered gangster. In Hess’s (1975a) words, “The changes in emo-
tions and mental activity revealed by changes in pupil size are clearly associated
with changes in attitude.” Hess continued to advocate this position, although he
acknowledged the need for more research on the pupil’s reaction to negative sti-
muli (Hess, 1975b; Hess & Petrovich, 1987).

Woodmansee (1970) tried to improve on Hess’s methodology and measuring
instruments and found no support for pupil dilation and constriction as an index of
attitudes toward African Americans. Hays and Plax (1971) found that their subjects’
pupils dilated when they received supportive statements, such as “I am very much
interested in your speech,” but constriction did not follow nonsupportive statements,
such as “I disagree completely with the development of your speech.” Some research
has found pupil dilation in response to both positive and negative feedback (Janisse
& Peavler, 1974; Partala & Surakka, 2003). Other research has found dilation of
the pupil to be associated with arousal, attentiveness, interest, and perceptual orien-
tation but not to be an attitudinal index. Thus, the intriguing hypothesis that pupils
can be used as bidirectional indicators of attitudes appears not to be viable.

Pupil-size research is difficult to do, in part because many stimuli can cause
variations in pupil size. Tightening muscles anywhere on the body, anticipation of
a loud noise, drugs, eyelid closure, and mental effort all alter pupil size. People
also have varying absolute pupil sizes. Children, for instance, have larger absolute
pupil sizes than adults. With so many sources of variation, it is difficult to state
positively that the dilation is exclusively due to an attitudinal orientation.

Recent research in recognition memory has shown that people’s pupils dilate
more when they are viewing items that they have seen before (i.e., old items as
opposed to new items), and that pupil dilation might reflect the strength of a per-
son’s memory for an item (Otero, Weekes, & Hutton, 2011). It appears that this
old-versus-new effect is not something we can consciously control. Heaver and
Hutton (2011) found that participants’ pupils dilated more to old items than new
items even when they were instructed to “feign amnesia” or report “all items as
new.” This suggests that measures of pupil dilation might be a means of determin-
ing whether a person is pretending to have forgotten things that they really have
not or whether he or she is possibly not consciously aware of something recogniz-
able to him or her at a nonconscious level.

Eye pupils also might signal when we have reached a decision or how we are
processing information about others (Einhäuser, Koch, & Carter, 2010; Goldinger,
He, & Papesh, 2009). Goldinger and colleagues had white and Asian participants
study faces from each other’s race as well as their own. They noted that partici-
pants made longer but fewer visual fixations, attended to a different set of facial
features, and had more dilated pupils when looking at faces from the other race.

CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 319

These findings point to possible differences in effort needed to initially process
faces from another race.

Researchers have begun to examine biomarkers of various clinical disorders,
one of which is pupil dilation. The question is whether the pupils of those who suf-
fer from disorders, such as ASD and depression, react differently to various stimuli
relative to controls (those without the disorder). Martineau and colleagues (2011)
noted that the average pupil size of children with ASD was smaller than that of
control children while viewing slides of neutral faces, avatar faces, and objects,
and Steidtmann, Ingram, and Siegle (2010) found that people with a history of
depression showed greater overall pupil dilation to negatively toned words than
did their nondepressed counterparts. Such findings point to the possible diagnostic
value of eye-tracking methodologies as well as to how pupillary responses might
offer clues to neurologically linked information-processing differences among those
with and without various clinical syndromes.

Another approach to studying pupil size is to investigate its impact on a viewer.
Hess (1975a) cited a study that showed photographs, like those in Figure 10-5, where
a woman’s pupils were retouched to appear large in one photo and smaller in the
other. Although male subjects did not tend to pick either picture as consistently
more friendly or attractive, they tended to associate positive attributes with the
woman who had larger pupils and negative attributes with the one with smaller
pupils. Hensley (1990) attempted to replicate Hess’s work and obtained the
responses of over 500 students to the photographs of models with constricted and
dilated pupils used by Hess. The students evaluated the photos on 22 characteris-
tics, including attractiveness, social skills, persuasiveness, friendliness, and out-
goingness. No statistically significant differences were found between responses to
photos of models with constricted pupils and those with dilated pupils on any of
the 22 characteristics, raising doubts about the strength of Hess’s claim.

Recently, several studies have shown that observers are sensitive to pupils of
different sizes, and the impact is especially pronounced in the context of a sad
facial expression. In a study that varied three levels of pupil size, observers saw
more intensity and more negativity when a sad face had smaller pupils (Harrison,
Wilson, & Critchley, 2007).

One study suggested that pupil dilation may be influential in selecting interac-
tion partners or even dates. Stass and Willis (1967) dealt with live subjects rather
than pictures. Subjects were told they would be in an experiment and that they
had to choose a partner who was trustworthy, pleasant, and easy to talk to on an
intimate basis. They were taken to a room where two other individuals waited. The
two people waiting had previously been independently rated as about the same in
general attractiveness. Eye gazing and pupil dilation, through use of a drug, were
varied. Once the naive subject left the waiting room, the experimenter asked
him or her to choose one of the two people and to give reasons for the choice.
Gazing was an overwhelming factor in choice making, but pupil dilation also was a
factor. A few people mentioned visual contact as a reason for their choice, but none
mentioned pupil dilation. Thus, for both women and men, pupil dilation seemed to
be an influential attraction device. Perhaps this would be no revelation to those
women who, in the Middle Ages, put drops of belladonna into their eyes to enlarge
their pupils, or to those expert romancers who suggest a dimly lighted meeting place.

320 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

SUMMARY

Although researchers have examined the size,
color, and position of the eyes, eye rings, eye-
brows, and eyespots in humans and other animals,
our major concern in this chapter was with peo-
ple’s gaze and mutual gaze. We said that gazing
serves many interpersonal functions:
1. Regulating the flow of communication, both

to open the channels of communication and
to assist in the turn-taking process.

2. Monitoring feedback.
3. Expressing emotion.
4. Communicating the nature of the interper-

sonal relationship, for example, to show
variations due to status, liking, and disliking.

We also outlined a number of factors that influ-
ence the amount and duration of gaze in human
relationships; for example, distance, physical

FIGURE 10-5
Stimulus photographs with pupils small and large.

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tt
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ck

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o
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CHAPTER 10 THE EFFECTS OF EYE BEHAVIOR ON HUMAN COMMUNICATION 321

characteristics, personal and personality charac-
teristics, topics and tasks, and cultural back-
ground. From this review, we would predict
more gazing in the following situations:

• You are discussing easy, impersonal topics.
• You are interested in your partner’s reac-

tions and are interpersonally involved.
• You like or love your partner.
• You are from a culture that emphasizes

visual contact in interaction.
• You are an extravert and not shy.
• You have high affiliative or inclusion needs.
• You are dependent on your partner, and the

partner has been unresponsive.
• You are listening rather than talking.
• You are female.
• You do not have a mental disorder such as

depression, autism, or schizophrenia.
• You are not embarrassed, ashamed, sor-

rowful, sad, or trying to hide something.

The preceding list is not exhaustive. Indeed, some
of the findings depend on certain important quali-

fications. For example, you may have less gaze and
less mutual gaze when you are physically close—
unless you happen to love your partner and want
to get as close physically and psychologically as
you can. This list is not intended to replace the
qualified principles that appear in the chapter.

The last part of this chapter dealt with pupil
dilation and constriction. We reviewed the find-
ings of Eckhard Hess and others who have pur-
sued his ideas. At this time, pupil dilation has
been associated with arousal, attentiveness, men-
tal effort, interest, and perceptual orientation.
Aside from Hess’s own work, however, mixed
support has been found for the idea that pupils
reflect attitudinal states. Dilation occurs under
conditions that seem to represent positive atti-
tudes, but not much support exists for the belief
that constriction of pupils is associated with neg-
ative attitudes.

Answers to Figure 10-2: (a) happy, (b) afraid,
(c) disgusted, (d) distressed, (e) guilty, (f) thought-
ful, (g) flirting, (h) arrogant.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. How do you use gaze in your everyday life?
When are you more likely to gaze at someone
for a long period of time? When are you more
likely to gaze for a very short period of time?

2. Watch yourself in a mirror, and try to convey
the following emotions using only your eyes
and eyebrows: fear, anger, disgust, surprise,
happiness, and sadness. How do your eye
positions and movements change? How sim-
ilar are your expressions to those you see on
other people’s faces every day?

3. Try to recall a time when you had a conver-
sation with someone with a physical disabil-
ity, someone on crutches or in a wheelchair,
for example. Did your gazing patterns
change when interacting with this person as
opposed to interacting with an able-bodied

person? How did your gazing patterns
change?

4. As an experiment, try looking continuously
at the eye region of a person you are
conversing with. Is this difficult? Did the per-
son react to this in any way—for example, by
reducing gaze, moving back, or commenting?

5. People of higher status are sometimes said to
gaze more and for longer periods than people
of lower status. What do you think of this?
Think of examples that would and would
not be supportive of this theory.

6. Go to a bus or elevator that is crowded and
observe how you, as well as the other people,
use gaze in such a circumstance. How much,
when, where, and at whom do people gaze?

322 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT

ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS

[ C H A P T E R 11 ]

Ideally, this chapter would not be in written form. Instead, it would be a recording
you could listen to. A recording would give you a greater appreciation of the vocal
nuances that are the subject of this chapter—or, as the cliché goes, how something
is said rather than what is said. But the dichotomy set up by this cliché is mislead-
ing because how something is said is frequently what is said.

Some responses to vocal cues are elicited because we deliberately try to manip-
ulate our voice to communicate various meanings. Robert J. McCloskey, spokes-
person for the State Department during the Nixon administration, reportedly
exemplified such behavior:

McCloskey has three distinct ways of saying, “I would not speculate”: spoken without
accent, it means the department doesn’t know for sure; emphasis on the “I” means “I
wouldn’t, but you may—and with some assurance”; accent on “speculate” indicates
that the questioner’s premise is probably wrong. (Newsweek, 1970, p. 106)

Most of us do the same kind of thing when we emphasize a particular part of a
message. Prosody is the word used to describe all the variations in the voice that
accompany speech and help to convey its meaning. Notice how different vocal
emphases influence the interpretation of the following message:

1. He’s giving this money to Herbie. (He is the one giving the money, nobody else.)
2. He’s giving this money to Herbie. (He is giving, not lending, the money.)
3. He’s giving this money to Herbie. (The money being exchanged is not from

another fund or source; it is this money.)

I understand a fury in your words
But not the words.

—Shakespeare, Othello, Act IV

323

4. He’s giving this money to Herbie. (Money is the unit of exchange, not flowers
or beads.)

5. He’s giving this money to Herbie. (The recipient is Herbie, not Eric or Bill
or Rod.)

We manipulate vocal pitch to indicate the end of a declarative sentence (by lower-
ing it) or a question (by raising it). Sometimes we consciously manipulate our tone
to contradict the verbal message, as in sarcasm. For instance, you can say the
words “I’m having a wonderful time” so they mean “I’m having a terrible time.”
If you are perceived as being sarcastic, the vocal cues you have given probably
superseded the verbal message.

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF CHANNELS

The assumption that vocal cues will predominate in forming attitudes based on
contradictory vocal and verbal content prompted Mehrabian and his colleagues to
conduct research on the topic. In one study, listeners heard single words that had
previously been rated as positive, neutral, or negative spoken to them in positive
or negative vocal tones (Mehrabian & Wiener, 1967). This experiment led to the
following conclusion:

The variability of inferences about communicator attitude on the basis of information
available in content and tone combined is mainly contributed by variations in tone
alone. For example, when the attitude communicated in content contradicted the atti-
tude communicated by negative tone, the total message was judged as communicating
negative attitude. (p. 109)

A similar study, pitting vocal cues against facial and verbal cues, found facial cues
to be more influential (Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967). From these studies, Mehrabian
devised the following formula, which illustrates the differential impact or weighting
of verbal, vocal, and facial cues:

Perceived attitude of communicator ¼ :07 ðverbalÞ þ :38 ðvocalÞ þ :55 ðfacialÞ
Obviously the formula is limited by the design of Mehrabian’s experiments. For
instance, we do not know how the formula might change if some of the variables
were manipulated more vigorously, or if more or different people did the judging.
We do not know whether the formula would apply to verbal materials longer than
one word. And we do not know whether these respondents were reacting to the
inconsistency itself as a source of attitudinal information (see Lapakko, 1997, for
a critique). The fact that respondents resolved inconsistencies by relying on nonver-
bal cues does not mean evaluative information is conveyed by nonverbal cues
alone, or even mainly, in more realistic communication. In realistic settings, more-
over, we would expect that the message(s) conveyed by vocal cues would align
with that being communicated by facial cues and words more often than not. The
relative importance of vocal cues is likely to vary according to a number of factors,
such as the nature of the message, age of the decoder, the nature of the decoding
task, as well as various combinations of these three. Friedman (1979) found that
for some kinds of messages, words mattered more than the facial expressions.
Others have suggested that bodily action cues, such as facial expressions, posture,

324 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

and hand gestures, send a stronger message of frustration during arguments than
does the combination of verbal and nonverbal cues of frustration (e.g., pitch) (Yu,
2011). Still others have shown that, although words alone, prosody alone, and the
two combined can help people make decisions about whether a face is happy, sad,
or grimacing, one method is not necessarily better than the others (Pell, Jaywat,
Monetta, & Kotz, 2011).

The preference to base interpretations on words versus vocal cues changes with
age: Young children rely much more on verbal content, older children show a
mixed pattern, and adults rely much more on nonverbal tonal qualities (Bugental,
Kaswan, & Love, 1970; Morton & Trehub, 2001). However, even within a partic-
ular age, some emotional messages might be recognized better than others in the
vocal channel. For instance, preschoolers appear to recognize sadness in the voice
alone better than the emotions of happiness, fear, and anger. The nature of the
decoding task also needs to be taken into consideration. Paulmann and Pell (2011)
had participants make emotion judgments when only one cue was available (face
shown on a computer, voice heard over headphones, or text on a computer screen),
two cues (face and prosodic cues or prosodic cues with words) were available, or
all three were available. They noted that, in terms of identifying emotion states,
having access to more emotionally congruent cues was more helpful than just hav-
ing one. However, this research also showed that, if only one cue was available, the
visual cues from the face or text tended to be more informative than the prosodic
cues. In another study, Paulmann, Titone, and Pell (2012) had participants select
facial expressions that matched their task instructions (“click on the happy face”).
They found that participants looked longer at facial expressions that matched their
task instructions irrespective of whether the available prosodic cues matched or did
not match the emotion on the face that they were told to identify. This suggests
that semantic information may exert a more powerful influence than prosodic cues
on such tasks.

When viewers are asked to guess the thoughts and feelings of people shown on
videotape engaged in natural conversation, their accuracy is based far more on the
words that are spoken than on the nonverbal cues they see or hear (i.e., vocal cues)
(Gesn & Ickes, 1999; Hall & Schmid Mast, 2007). However, nonverbal cues did
contribute to accuracy, especially when the viewers were asked to focus on the tar-
get persons’ feelings. Nowadays, with text messaging and email, people rely a great
deal on communication via words alone, and it is reasonable to ask what might be
missed in such a medium. Kruger, Epley, Parker, and Ng (2005) found that when
affective messages were conveyed through email, they were much less accurately
decoded than when the same messages were conveyed in voice-to-voice and face-
to-face conditions. Furthermore, adding facial cues did not improve accuracy
beyond the voice-only condition. In this instance, vocal cues were crucial to fully
conveying attitudinal intent. Above and beyond issues of accuracy, prosodic cues in
face-to-face interactions offer a means of emotional support that emails and text
messages cannot provide. Seltzer, Prososki, Ziegler, and Pollak (2012) found that
girls who sent text messages to their mothers after undergoing a stressful experi-
ence had cortisol levels—which is one marker of a person’s current stress level—
similar to children who did not interact with a parent at all, whereas those who
had either interacted with their mothers on the phone or in person (thus having

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 325

access to prosodic cues from their mothers’ voice) showed increases in oxytocin,
which is thought to be linked to the experience of positive relationships with
others. In short, vocal cues were important in helping these girls cope with the
stress, whereas text messages were not.

Studies comparing impressions made by the voice to those made by the face
have found the voice especially suited to conveying degrees of dominance or potency.
The face has a greater impact on judgments of pleasantness or positivity (Zuckerman,
Amidon, Biship, & Pomerantz, 1982; Zuckerman & Driver, 1989) and is a more
effective channel than the voice by which to judge people’s rapport (Grahe &
Bernieri, 1999). Vocal clues to dominance include speed, tendency to interrupt, and
loudness; the most obvious clue to pleasantness in the face is a smile. However,
each modality can convey a wealth of other messages through more subtle varia-
tions. For example, the presence of a smile can be evident in the voice alone; in smil-
ing, the vocal tract is shortened, with the effect of raising the resonances (Scherer,
1986). Some actors who do voice-overs on television advertisements are skilled in
conveying a cheerful attitude through their voice quality alone.

Thus, even though the impact of the voice relative to other channels of com-
munication may vary according to many factors, there is no doubt that vocal cues
exert a great deal of influence on listener perceptions. Often these responses are
based on stereotypes associated with various vocal qualities. Not surprisingly, the
existence of such stereotypes means that some vocal qualities are preferred over
others. Zuckerman and Driver (1989) documented that listeners generally agree on
whether a voice is attractive or not, and also that people whose voices are consid-
ered more attractive are believed to have personality traits such as dominance,
competence, industriousness, sensitivity, and warmth. Other stereotypes relating to
the voice will be described later in this chapter.

THE INGREDIENTS AND METHODS OF STUDYING PARALANGUAGE

The physical mechanisms for producing nonverbal vocal qualities and sounds, also
called paralanguage, are extremely complex (Juslin & Scherer, 2005). Figure 11-1
illustrates the many muscles and other structures involved in producing vocal
sounds; these include the throat, nasal cavities, tongue, lips, mouth, and jaw. In
this chapter, however, we focus on the impact of paralanguage rather than the
mechanisms by which it is produced. Many techniques and methods have been
developed for studying the role of vocal nonverbal cues in the communication pro-
cess (Scherer, 2003). We provide just a short introduction here.

In one approach to studying nonverbal vocal communication, listeners are asked
for their impressions or inferences about a voice sample, for example, how anxious
or competent the voice sounds. Using this method, a researcher may gain insight
into the social meanings of vocal cues because listeners’ impressions are based on
their store of experience, knowledge, and beliefs. However, a researcher learns little
about what specific vocal cues created a given impression because listeners are inter-
preting the vocal cues in an implicit way to reach a final impression. A listener may
know an angry voice when he or she hears one, but may not be able to pinpoint the
acoustic properties that made it sound angry. (Whether their impressions are correct
is a separate issue from the question of how the impressions are formed.)

326 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

FIGURE 11-1
Muscles and structures involved in speech and paralanguage.
Source: From Fernando Poyatos, Paralanguage: A Linguistic Approach to Interactive Speech and Sound, 1993, p. 49.
With kind permission by John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. www.benjamins.com.

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 327

In contrast, sometimes researchers want, and need, to measure specific vocal
characteristics, also called acoustic properties, and for this they use automated
devices or trained coders. Voice researchers use automated measurement by com-
puters much more than do researchers who study nonvocal modalities of communi-
cation, in part because the technology exists for doing so. Commonly measured
acoustic properties include the following: speech rate, or words per unit of time;
fundamental frequency (F0), which is the vibration rate of the vocal folds in the
throat and the main contributor, along with the harmonics and resonances thus
produced, to the perception of pitch; and intensity, which is the energy value for a
speech sound, perceived as loudness. Each of these can be measured as an average
value over an utterance or over some other unit of time, or they can be described
more dynamically in terms of range, variation, and contour (Scherer, 1986).

It is also possible to assess vocal nonverbal behavior at a level between these
impressionistic and purely descriptive extremes. A listener might be asked to char-
acterize a voice as whiny, breathy, or abrupt but not to go to the next level of sub-
jectivity by inferring a trait or mood. For instance, from the three adjectives just
named, a listener might infer that the speaker is weak, sexy, or rude, respectively.
You can see that the last three descriptions are further removed from the actual
vocal cues and more inferential than the first three. Studying perceptions at this
midway point is a crucial link in understanding the relationship between acoustic
features of voices and their social impact (Scherer, 1982).

The fact that the voice has acoustic features perceived and interpreted by a lis-
tener according to his or her knowledge, stereotypes, and other cognitions is part
of what is called the lens model of nonverbal judgment (Scherer, 2003). According
to this model, a full understanding of vocal and other nonverbal phenomena must
acknowledge a series of interlocking steps: A person’s state or trait (A) is reflected
in acoustic behavior (B), which is perceived by a listener (C), who forms an impres-
sion or attribution (D), which may then be the basis for behavioral reaction or
change in the listener (E). Studies hardly ever include all of these elements. One
study might document how a speaker’s emotional state is reflected in acoustic
changes (A–B), whereas another might relate acoustic properties of the voice to lis-
teners’ impressions of personality (B–D), and so forth.

Researchers are also interested in the development of skill in using acoustic
cues as well as in disturbances to this ability. To this end, experiments are conducted
with infants and children to understand if or when they can use prosodic cues in
the processing of language (Berman, Chambers, & Graham, 2010; Sakkalou &
Gattis, 2012). Also, children and adults who suffer from specific disorders, such as
Williams syndrome (where there are deficits in the production and comprehension
of prosody), are compared to typically developing children in an effort to isolate
the neurologic mechanisms that might contribute to their underlying problem in
processing emotional cues from language (Pinheiro et al., 2011).

All approaches for measuring vocal behavior have strengths and weaknesses.
The choice depends on the questions being asked in the particular study. Hall,
Roter, and Rand (1981), for example, were interested in the impact of physicians’
and patients’ communication of emotion during medical visits. Accordingly, they
asked listeners to rate the emotions conveyed in content-masked audiotapes of doc-
tors and patients talking during medical office visits. (Content masking obscures

328 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

THE SOUNDS OF ILLNESS

You undoubtedly have heard
the hoarse or whisper-like
speaking voice of a friend
and realized that he or she
had laryngitis, a physical
condition in which swollen
vocal cords affect the sound
we hear from people. Clini-
cians, such as psychologists
and psychiatrists, also listen
to the speech of others, but
generally for the purpose of
identifying possible clues to
disturbances of the mind.
They rely on the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)
to diagnose various psycholo-
gical disorders. The DSM-IV
lists the features associated
with each mental disorder,
and speech is sometimes one
of many different features
mentioned. The following are
examples of speech cues that
are linked to various disorders
in the DSM-IV and research:

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity: Talking
excessively, loud voice.

Schizophrenia: Disorganized speech,
flat voice, poor vocal emotion
expression.

Manic episode: Pressured speech.

Depression: Slow speech, long pauses.

Major depression with catatonic
features: Echolalia (the person repeats
words or phrases that others have just
spoken).

Histrionic personality disorder: Speech
is excessively impressionistic and lacking
in detail.

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ar
d
o
Jo

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B
er
n
ar
d
in
o
/P
h
o
to
s.
co

C
at
al
in

P
et
o
le
a/
P
h
o
to
s.
co

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 329

the verbal information while retaining nonverbal vocal properties, as explained in
Chapter 3 and later in this chapter.) They found that if the physician sounded
angry, anxious, or contented, the patient did also, and vice versa; in other
words, there was a reciprocation of expressed feelings. In that study, gathering
judges’ impressions made more sense than measuring acoustic properties, such as
fundamental frequency or loudness, because the interest was in social impact, not
the specific cues. But another researcher might focus on uncovering the relation-
ship between the descriptive and impressionistic levels, that is, finding out what
increased fundamental frequency, intensity, and so forth, mean in terms of listen-
ers’ perceptions. For example, a voice tone we would label as “breathy” is produced
by narrowing the glottis a little while letting through more air than is the case for a
normal voice and making the vocal folds vibrate without fully closing (Poyatos,
1993). Researchers studying vocal communication of emotion have been particularly
active in trying to uncover what cues are used to convey different emotions.

The voice is capable of a great variety of sounds (Poyatos, 1993; Trager,
1958). The components most closely tied to speech include the three already men-
tioned—frequency, intensity, and speed—as well as vocal lip control, ranging from
sharp to smooth transitions; articulation control, either forceful or relaxed; rhythm
control, varying from smooth to jerky; and resonance, describing voice ranges from
resonant to “thin.” Other nonverbal vocal behaviors are less tied to speech and
may even substitute for speech. These include laughing, crying, whispering, snor-
ing, yelling, moaning, yawning, whining, sighing, and belching, along with the
common “uh,” “um,” “mmm,” “uh-huh,” and other such sounds, some of which
merge with our definitions of linguistic behavior. Also included as paralanguage
are nonsounds, such as pauses between words or phrases within one person’s
speech and pauses when a new speaker begins, also called a switching pause or
speech latency. Some related phenomena, which Mahl and Schulze (1964) placed
under the broad heading of extralinguistic phenomena, are also relevant to any dis-
cussion of communication and vocal behavior. These include dialect or accent,
nonfluencies, duration of utterance, and interaction rates.

Now that we have a sense of the ingredients of paralanguage, we can ask the
next logical question: What reactions do vocal cues elicit, and how are they impor-
tant in communicating?

VOCAL CUES AND SPEAKER RECOGNITION

You may have had this experience: You pick up the phone and say, “Hello.” The
voice on the other end says, “Hi, how ya doin’?” At this point you realize two
things: (1) The greeting suggests an informality found among people who are sup-
posed to know each other, and (2) you don’t know who it is! So you try to extend
the conversation without admitting your ignorance, hoping some verbal cue will be
given, or that you eventually will recognize the caller’s voice. As a result, you say
something like, “Fine. What have you been up to?” Speaker recognition is impor-
tant not only to all of us in everyday life but also to law enforcement officials and
governments. Joseph Stalin assigned teams of imprisoned scientists and engineers
to develop speaker-recognition technology so Stalin’s police could easily identify
“enemies of the state” (Hollien, 1990).

330 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

Each time you speak, you produce a complex acoustic signal. It is not exactly
the same each time you speak, even if it is the same word, nor is the acoustic signal
you produce exactly the same as the one produced by other speakers. The proba-
bility that greater differences will exist between the voices of two different speakers
than the voice of a single speaker at two different times has led to considerable
interest in the process of identifying speakers by their voices alone. There are three
primary methods for identifying speakers from the voice:

1. Listening
2. Visual comparison of spectrograms (voiceprints)
3. Recognition by computers that compare the acoustic patterns of a standard

spoken message to stored versions of the same message previously spoken by
the same speaker

Although machines are credited with many accomplishments in today’s society,
ordinary human listening compares favorably with the other two techniques for
accuracy in most speaker-recognition tasks. Under certain circumstances, human
beings can recognize speakers with a high degree of accuracy. In one study, a single
sentence was enough to identify 8 to 10 work colleagues at more than 97 percent
accuracy (van Lancker, Kreiman, & Emmorey, 1985). In another study, 83 percent
accuracy for 29 familiar speakers was achieved (Ladefoged & Ladefoged, 1980). It
appears that listeners can use numerous acoustic cues to identify a speaker, but it is
not clear which ones reliably distinguish one speaker from another, as some cues,
such as speaking rate, are important to the recognition of some voices but not
others (Creel & Bregman, 2011; Van Lancker, Kreiman, & Wickens, 1985). More-
over, even when listeners accurately identify a speaker from his or her voice, they
are probably not able to explain the perceptual bases for their decision. Law
enforcement and judicial agencies have a special concern for identifying speakers
objectively from their vocal characteristics. At the famous trial of Bruno
Hauptmann, the kidnapper of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby,
Charles Lindbergh claimed he recognized Hauptmann’s voice as the voice of the
kidnapper, even though it had been about 3 years since he had heard it. Skeptical
about the accuracy of this identification, McGehee (1937) conducted research that
found accuracy tends to drop sharply after 3 weeks, and after 5 months, it dips to
about 13 percent. Subsequent research has also found reductions in accuracy over
time, but often not as dramatic as those McGehee found. Accuracy of identification
by listeners also falls notably as the speech samples are made shorter; when various
distortions or distractions occur—such as more speakers, disguised voices, whisper-
ing, and dialects; and when the target voice is paired with another that sounds sim-
ilar to it (Hollien, 1990; Kerstholt, Jansen, van Amelsvoort, & Broeders, 2006).
And, of course, accuracy varies with how many times one has heard the voice in
question.

Many factors affect listening accuracy, but similar problems plague efforts to
devise more “objective” methods of speaker recognition—not the least of which is
the knowledge that no single set of acoustic cues reliably distinguishes speakers.

One effort to find a more objective method of speaker identification involves
the spectrogram, also called a voiceprint, which is a visual picture of a person’s
speech. A spectrogram is a plot of vocal energy in different frequency bands as a

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 331

function of time. Although some have made strong claims for the accuracy and reli-
ability of spectrographic analysis, it seems to be quite fallible (Bolt et al., 1973).
Errors in human judgment occur as interpretations of the visual data are made.
The interpreter’s skill becomes particularly relevant when we look at Figure 11-2.
These two similar spectrograms of two different people uttering a single word
make it sufficiently clear that we must weigh our reliance on spectrograms as evi-
dence at trials very carefully (Hollien, 1990). Spectrograms are not like finger-
prints. True, no two voices are exactly alike, but depending on the voice sample
obtained and the equipment used, two different voices may appear very similar. In
contrast, fingerprints, unlike voices, show little variability from one measurement
to the next, unless, of course, smudges or smears have occurred. One study asked
speakers to produce the same sentence using their normal voice and a number of
“disguises”—speaking like an old person, using a hypernasal voice, a hoarse voice,
a slow rate of speech, and a disguise of the speaker’s own choosing. These voice
samples were then submitted to spectrographic analysis by experts who were paid
$50 if they achieved the highest accuracy of identification. Normal voices were
matched with about 57 percent accuracy, but all the disguises significantly inter-
fered with identification. The least accuracy was achieved when speakers chose
their own type of disguise (Reich, Moll, & Curtis, 1976). Hollien (1990) concluded
that spectrographic recognition is a still unvalidated methodology.

FIGURE 11-2
Similar spectrograms of the word “you” uttered by two arbitrarily selected speakers.
Source: Hollien, H. (1990). The acoustics of crime: The new science of forensic phonetics. New York: Plenum.
Reprinted with kind permission from Springer Science and Business Media.

332 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

VOCAL CUES AND PERSONALITY

One cultural syndrome that aptly illustrates our association of vocal cues with cer-
tain personality characteristics concerns the low, deep voice associated with men
and masculinity. Salespeople, radio and television announcers, lawyers, and many
others try to emulate low vocal tones, which they perceive as being more sophisti-
cated, appealing, sexy, or masculine than higher-pitched voices.

Numerous research efforts have tried to determine whether certain personality
traits are actually expressed in the voice and whether listeners are sensitive to
these cues. It is common to find the following:

1. High agreement among judges of the voices regarding the presence of certain
personality characteristics

2. Inconsistent agreement between the judges’ personality perceptions and the
speaker’s actual score on personality tests

3. A very high correspondence between the judges’ perceptions and actual crite-
rion measures for some voices and some personality traits

We can make several points about these findings. First, the criterion measures—
personality tests—are also frequently imperfect measures, meaning there might be
a higher correspondence than the data seem to indicate. Furthermore, research has
often ignored differences among listeners with respect to personality, culture, and
developmental traits, which may profoundly impact the listener’s accuracy in per-
ceiving personality traits based on vocal cues. Research also suggests that a given
personality trait may not be expressed similarly in the voices of people from differ-
ent cultures.

The finding that listeners cannot always detect personality from vocal cues
does not mean the voice does not contain any cues to personality. There are several
lines of positive evidence on this issue. Extraversion/introversion is the trait dimen-
sion best documented in vocal cues of American speakers. Cues associated with a
speaker’s actual, not just perceived, extraversion, when compared to introversion,
are more fluency—that is, shorter pauses when the speaking turn switches from
one speaker to another, shorter silent pauses within a person’s speech, and fewer
hesitations—faster rate, louder speech, more dynamic contrast, higher pitch (up to
a point), and more variable pitch. In addition, extraverted people have been
shown to talk more, in both number of words and total speaking time (Lippa,
1998; Siegman, 1987). However, other research has shown that self-reported mea-
sures that tap into extraversion are not related to a person’s talkativeness (Wardle,
Cedarbaum, & de Wit, 2010). Nevertheless, in light of some of the robust vocal
manifestations of extraversion, it is not surprising that people use vocal cues
such as loudness, fullness, and enunciation as a basis for judging extraversion
(Lippa, 1998).

Lippa (1998) also inquired about several dimensions of masculinity and femi-
ninity relative to vocal qualities, defining the masculinity–femininity dimensions in
terms of the participants’ gender-typical preferences for occupations, hobbies, and
other activities. Among men, those who were more masculine by this definition
had poorer enunciation and less expressive, lower-pitched, slower, and louder
voices; among women, there was a correlation only for voice pitch—more

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 333

masculine women had lower-pitched voices. Listeners’ perceptions partially
matched these associations, with higher ratings of masculinity being given to tar-
gets whose voices were less expressive and lower pitched.

The trait of dominance also has been documented to have an associated speech
style, and some of its elements overlap with those found for extraversion. Indivi-
duals who speak louder are perceived as more dominant (Harrigan, Gramata,
Luck, & Margolis, 1989; Tusing & Dillard, 2000), and indeed more dominant
individuals do tend to have voices that are louder than those of less dominant indi-
viduals (Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005; Siegman, 1987; Weaver & Anderson,
1973). Also, compared to women with higher voices, women with lower voices are
perceived as more dominant by men and women alike (Borkowska & Pawlowski,
2011). Because the stereotype and the actual behavior associated with dominance
coincide, it is not surprising that Berry (1991a) found that listeners were accurate
in judging the personality trait of assertiveness in voices recorded while expressors
recited the alphabet.

How personality is actually expressed in speech may be complex, but there is
no dearth of evidence that people believe speech contains clues to personality.
Addington (1968) conducted one of the most complete studies in this area. Male
and female speakers simulated nine vocal characteristics, and judges responded to
the voices by rating them on 40 personality characteristics. Judges were most reli-
able, meaning they agreed most with each other, in ratings of masculine–feminine,
young–old, enthusiastic–apathetic, energetic–lazy, and attractive–ugly. Addington
concluded that the male personality generally was perceived in terms of physical
and emotional power, whereas the female personality was apparently perceived in
terms of social faculties. Table 11-1 summarizes his results.

Addington posed some interesting questions for researchers studying vocal cues
and personality. To what extent are these stereotyped impressions of personality
maintained in the face of conflicting personality information? And what is the rela-
tionship between a given personality impression and vocal cues? For example,
Addington’s research indicated that increased pitch variety led to more positive per-
sonality impressions, but is it not possible that at some point, increasing pitch vari-
ety could become so exaggerated as to evoke negative perceptions? Zuckerman’s
research on vocal attractiveness suggests this may be so, because extremes of
pitch, pitch range, shrillness, and squeakiness produced more negative impressions.

Another question is the accuracy of some stereotypes. Consider the following.
Do gay males show vocal characteristics that are more similar to heterosexual
females than heterosexual males? In stereotype, gay men possess effeminate quali-
ties, including the pitch of their voice. Indeed, there is evidence that male actors
use a higher voice pitch when portraying a gay character (Cartei & Reby, 2012).
However, a study of actual pitch characteristics of gay men as well as heterosexual
men and women revealed that, although gay men do use a higher pitch than het-
erosexual men, it is significantly lower than that of the typical heterosexual female
(Baeck, Corthals, & Van Borsel, 2011). Thus, there is no evidence that gay men’s
voice pitch usually matches that of heterosexual females.

People with more attractive voices are, in general, rated as having better
personalities than people with less attractive voices, and are perceived as less neu-
rotic, more extraverted, and more open, warm, agreeable, powerful, honest, and

334 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

conscientious (Berry, 1992; Zuckerman, Hodgins, & Miyake, 1990; Zuckerman &
Miyake, 1993). People with more attractive voices, as judged by independent listen-
ers, are sexually active earlier, and have more partners, than those with less attrac-
tive voices. And, within each sex, those with more stereotypically desirable
physiques—that is, those with higher shoulder-to-waist ratios for men and lower
waist-to-hip ratios for women—also tend to have more attractive voices (Hughes,
Dispenza, & Gallup, 2004).

Zuckerman’s research, as well as that of others (Bloom, Moore-Schoenmakers,
& Masataka, 1999; Bloom, Zajac, & Titus, 1999; Riding, Lonsdale, & Brown,
2006), also uncovered the particular speech qualities that produced higher ratings
of vocal attractiveness. More attractive-rated voices were more resonant, less
monotonous, less nasal, even in infants; and for adult male voices, lower in pitch.

TABLE 11-1 SIMULATED VOCAL CUES AND PERSONALITY STEREOTYPES

Simulated
Vocal Cue Speakers Stereotyped Perceptions

Breathiness Males Younger, more artistic

Females More feminine, prettier, more petite, effervescent,
high-strung, shallower

Thinness Males Did not alter the listener’s image of the speaker, no
significant correlations

Females Increased social, physical, emotional, and mental
immaturity; increased sense of humor and
sensitivity

Flatness Males More masculine, more sluggish, colder, more
withdrawn

Females More masculine, more sluggish, colder, more
withdrawn

Nasality Males A wide array of socially undesirable characteristics

Females A wide array of socially undesirable characteristics

Tenseness Males Older, more unyielding, cantankerous

Females Younger; more emotional, feminine, high-strung;
less intelligent

Throatiness Males Older, more realistic, mature, sophisticated, well
adjusted

Females Less intelligent; more masculine; lazier; more
boorish, unemotional, ugly, sickly, careless,
inartistic, naive, humble, neurotic, quiet,
uninteresting, apathetic

Increased rate Males More animated and extraverted

Females More animated and extraverted

Increased pitch Males More dynamic, feminine, esthetically inclined

Variety Females More dynamic and extraverted

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 335

Personality stereotypes also exist about people with babyish voices. Both
adults and young children with more babyish voices are perceived as more warm
and honest but less powerful and competent than people with more mature-
sounding voices. It seems the general qualities attributed to children are attributed
to people with younger-sounding voices no matter what their actual age (Berry,
1992; Berry, Hansen, Landry-Pester, & Meier, 1994). This might explain why,
although a higher pitch in the female voice is perceived as attractive, too high of
a pitch is not, as this could be a vocal cue of sexual immaturity (Borkowska &
Pawlowski, 2011).

VOCAL CUES AND GROUP PERCEPTIONS

A related line of study involves associating various characteristics with voices rep-
resentative of groups of people. The study of dialects and accents is illustrative. In
George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, and its musical adaptation My Fair
Lady, Eliza Doolittle spent considerable time and effort trying to correct her dia-
lect so she could rise in social standing. Professor Higgins says, “Look at her—a
pris’ner of the gutters; Condemned by ev’ry syllable she utters” (My Fair Lady,
Act I, Scene 1). Eliza’s training, according to one study, was most appropriate. It
suggests that if we expect a speaker to reflect a nonstandard or “lower-class” dia-
lect, and the speaker actually presents himself or herself in accordance with stan-
dard or “upper-class” models, the evaluation will be very positive. The reverse
also was true: Speakers who were expected to speak “up” but who spoke
“down” instead were evaluated negatively (Aboud, Clement, & Taylor, 1974).
Sometimes, though, there may be a fine line between adapting to our audience
and violating expectations based on our own background. If an audience thinks
we are faking something or concealing who we “really are,” they could judge us
harshly.

Although there are some exceptions, ordinarily dialects other than the one spo-
ken by the listener/evaluator receive less favorable evaluations than those consid-
ered standard. Generally, these negative responses occur because the listener
associates the speaker’s dialect with an ethnic or regional stereotype and then eval-
uates the voice in accordance with the stereotype.

Do regional varieties of speech in the United States differ in prestige value?
Listeners in Maine, Louisiana, New York City, Arkansas, and Michigan rated
12 voice samples of American dialects and one foreign accent (Wilke & Snyder,
1941). The most unfavorably regarded was the foreign accent and so-called
New Yorkese. Although this study is quite old, the New York Times recently
(November, 2010) had a story about how some New Yorkers seek professional
help (speech therapists) in order to reduce their New York accent. They seek help
because they are concerned that their accent is viewed negatively by outsiders and
might limit their ability to land jobs (e.g., acting) that have audiences expecting to
hear Standard American English. Several investigators have pursued the question of
exactly how we judge the speech and dialects of others. By far the most extensive
work in this direction was done by Mulac (1976). Mulac’s experiments have used
regional and foreign dialects, broadcasters, various speech pathologies, prose and
spontaneous speech, and different modes of presentation such as written format,

336 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

audiotape, videotape, and sound film. This work shows we tend to respond to
samples of speech along three primary dimensions:

1. Sociointellectual status, that is, high or low social status, blue or white collar,
rich or poor, and literate or illiterate

2. Aesthetic quality, that is, pleasing or displeasing, nice or awful, sweet or sour,
beautiful or ugly

3. Dynamism, that is, aggressive or unaggressive, active or passive, strong or
weak, loud or soft

These results confirm studies in many other areas of perception that show we tend
to see our world and the things in it according to power, evaluation, and activity
dimensions.

VOCAL CUES AND JUDGMENTS OF SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC
CHARACTERISTICS

The study of vocal cues about the sociodemographic characteristics of a speaker
might focus on the judgment process itself or the accuracy of the judgments. In
terms of the judgment process, researchers have examined how we recognize cues
to a person’s dialect from spoken words as well as the phonological markers of
regional difference in accent (Aubanel & Nguyen, 2010; Scharinger, Monahan, &
Idsardi, 2011). In terms of judgment accuracy, Pear (1931) did pioneering work
on vocal cues and judgments of personal characteristics. Using nine speakers and
over 4,000 radio listeners, he found a speaker’s age could be estimated fairly accu-
rately, the speaker’s sex with remarkable accuracy, birthplace with little accuracy,
and occasionally vocation with surprising accuracy. The actor and clergy were con-
sistently identified from among the nine professionals represented. Since that
time, others have been interested in judgments of such characteristics as body type,
height, weight, age, occupation, status or social class, race, sex, education, accents,
and dialect region. For instance, Krauss, Freyberg, and Morsella (2002) found that
a person’s photograph could be matched with his or her voice with significant
accuracy by naive participants.

There are three characteristics that are judged accurately and with some consis-
tency from vocal cues, namely, a person’s sex, age, and social class or status. These
will be discussed in detail next.

SEX

Listeners who heard six recorded vowels of 20 speakers were able to identify the
sex of the speaker 96 percent of the time when the tape was not altered in any
way. Accuracy decreased to 91 percent for a filtered tape and to 75 percent for a
whispered voice sample (Lass, Hughes, Bowyer, Waters, & Broune, 1976). These
authors argued that the fundamental frequency is a more important acoustic cue
in speaker gender identification than the resonance characteristics of the voices. It
is certainly the case that women typically speak with a higher fundamental fre-
quency, perceived as higher pitch, than men (Ko, Judd, & Blair, 2006; Viscovich
et al., 2003). Women’s voices are also more variable or expressive but less resonant

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 337

than men’s. Not surprisingly, these same features are used within gender when lis-
teners make ratings of how feminine or masculine a voice sounds (Ko et al., 2006).

Social factors can, of course, qualify sex differences. For instance, males and
females interacting with each other may manifest different vocal cues than when
they present monologues or interact with a member of the same sex (Markel,
Prebor, & Brandt, 1972). The topic of discussion also may affect voice production
and perceptions. And if differences gradually narrow as adaptations to the social
community are made, we might speculate that the vocal tones of working women
in predominantly male organizations may be harder to distinguish—particularly if
the sample is taken in the work milieu.

At the borderline between verbal and nonverbal behavior falls an area of
study concerned with speech styles, or speech registers. A speech register refers
to a total way of communicating through speech, which can include both nonver-
bal and verbal forms, and it is believed to vary systematically with social charac-
teristics of the speakers, for example, how socially powerful a person is (Erickson,
Lind, Johnson, & O’Barr, 1978). This research is pertinent to our discussion of
speaker gender because it has been suggested that certain verbal forms associated
with power differentiate the speech styles of men versus women (Lakoff, 1975).
Examples of less powerful speech stereotypically associated with females include
tag questions (“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”), hedges and qualifiers (“sort of,”
“maybe”), disclaimers (“I don’t know, but”), and intensifiers (“The puppy was
so cute”). Leaper and Robnett (2011), in a review of the research, concluded
that women did speak somewhat more tentatively than men, but this was not
due to women’s taking a submissive role in conversation. Rather, they concluded
that using more tentative speech is an aspect of women’s greater interpersonal
sensitivity (see Chapter 3).

Interruptions, another interactional strategy that can reflect dominance, also
have been hypothesized to differentiate between men and women in the direction
we might expect based on stereotype. People certainly do have well-developed
stereotypes about how men and women speak, but the evidence supporting the
hypothesis of gender differences in language use and interruptions is extremely
mixed (Aries, 1987; Dindia, 1987; Hirschman, 1994; Irish & Hall, 1995; Kramer,
1978; Marche & Peterson, 1993; Mulac, Lundell, & Bradac, 1986; Nohara, 1992;
Turner, Dindia, & Pearson, 1995). The fact that interruptions can signify enthusi-
astic, active participation in a conversation, rather than efforts to attain or express
dominance, is probably one reason why studies are mixed as to which gender inter-
rupts more; whereas early studies tended to find that men interrupted more, more
recent studies often find no difference, and some find that women interrupt more
than men.

Because interruptions can mean very different things, discussing them without
drawing functional distinctions can be very misleading. For example, in a study of
married and cohabiting couples by Daigen and Holmes (2000), the total number of
interruptions in the couples’ conversations, as measured in a laboratory interaction,
was not related to marital satisfaction. But interruptions that conveyed disagreement
and disparagement of the other’s message did predict lower satisfaction, both at the
time and 2 years later—especially when the latter kind of interruption was directed
from the man to the woman. Further evidence that the impact of interruptions

338 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

might differ between men and women comes from Farley’s (2008) study showing
that, in general, speakers who interrupted often were less liked by listeners than
speakers who did not interrupt, but that this effect was especially pronounced when
the interrupter was a woman.

AGE

As we mentioned, studies show age to be fairly accurately assessed from vocal cues.
In a recent study, age was judged quite accurately from the voice, and not much
less so than when judgments were made from a full-length photograph (Krauss
et al., 2002). Research sheds light on what kinds of cues are likely relevant to judg-
ing age from the voice. With advancing age, speech slows down, and dysfluencies
and perturbations in fundamental frequency increase (Hummert, Mazloff, &
Henry, 1999). Several studies have investigated voice pitch of males during infancy,
childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and middle and advanced age. There is a
general lowering of pitch level from infancy through middle age, with some studies
finding a reversal, such that pitch level rises slightly with advancing age. Changes
in pitch flexibility, tremor, speech rate, loudness, vocal quality, articulatory control,
and the like, may give clues to age. It is likely that we rely on a host of these cues as
opposed to only one when judging a voice to be that of an old person (Harnsberger,
Brown, Shrivastav, & Rothman, 2010).

SOCIAL CLASS OR STATUS

Several studies show listeners to be amazingly accurate in judging social class or
status on the basis of voice alone. Harms (1961) used a standard system to deter-
mine social class for nine speakers. Each speaker recorded a 40- to 60-second con-
versation in which he responded to questions and statements such as “How are
you?” and “Ask for the time.” Results show that listeners were not only able to
identify the speakers’ status; many of them said they made their decision after only
10 to 15 seconds of listening to the recording.

CHARACTERISTICS OF RECIPIENTS

So far we have been discussing ways in which a speaker’s personal characteristics
are reflected in his or her nonverbal speech style. But it would be very surprising if
a person’s speech style did not also reflect characteristics of the other person in an
interaction. After all, we react to different kinds of people with many emotions and
thoughts that may be reflected in our vocal expression, and we also have notions
about how we ought to talk to different kinds of people.

A well-studied example of such a “target effect” is baby talk, also called
motherese, which is the high-pitched, singsong, slow, rhythmic, repetitive, simpli-
fied way that parents around the world—fathers as well as mothers—talk to
young children (Grieser & Kuhl, 1988; Snow & Ferguson, 1977; Trainor, Austin,
& Desjardins, 2000). Even young children know how to talk this way to babies
and pets. Zebrowitz, Brownlow, and Olson (1992) found that the facial character-
istics of children influenced how much baby talk they received from adults; those

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 339

with more babyish faces received more baby talk than same-age children who had
more mature-looking faces.

Infants prefer baby talk to normal adult speech, which suggests that it serves a
variety of functions. Various functions have been proposed for baby talk, including
getting the infant’s attention, promoting language development, clarifying the
speaker’s message, and creating an emotional bond. The last of these propositions
has been supported by research showing that motherese is part of an attachment
vocalization repertoire that humans are especially sensitive to (Chan & Thompson,
2011). As further evidence of this, Gordon, Zagoory-Sharon, Leckman, and
Feldman (2010) found that the amount of motherese displayed was linked to
oxytocin, a hormone thought to promote mother–infant bonding. Finally, Trainor
and colleagues (2000) noted that baby talk contains more free emotional expression
than typical adult-directed speech but is very similar in terms of acoustic characteris-
tics to adult-directed speech that emphasized the communication of emotion. What
makes baby talk distinctive, the authors argued, is that it contains more freely
expressed emotion than typical adult-directed speech does.

Particular sounds also might vary depending upon the age of the listener; for
example, Green, Nip, Wilson, Mefferd, and Yunusova (2010) showed that, relative
to how they spoke to other adults, mothers used an elevated pitch and a slower
speaking rate when making vowel sounds to their infants.

Certain groups of adults who have childlike qualities attributed to them—or
who are perceived (often erroneously) as cognitively impaired, such as the institu-
tionalized elderly or the deaf—are also spoken to in a way that resembles baby
talk. Psychologists are especially interested in this kind of “secondary” baby talk
because of the possibility that it contributes to the stigmatizing of groups perceived
as dependent or incompetent (Caporael, 1981).

With this in mind, DePaulo and Coleman (1986, 1987) compared the warmth of
speech directed toward children, adults with mental retardation, nonnative adult
speakers of English, and native adult English speakers, hypothesizing that warmth—
one component of baby talk—would decrease across these four groups. The predic-
tion was supported. In addition, when considering those with mental retardation
alone, speakers displayed more vocal warmth when speaking to those with more
extreme retardation. Particular ways of using the language also differed among the
groups: Speech to children was clearer, simpler, more attention maintaining, and had
longer pauses; speech to those with retardation was very similar to this; speech to for-
eigners, however, was more similar to that addressed to “normal people” except for
being more repetitive. The sex of the person being spoken to also influences how we
speak. Men are spoken to more loudly than women are by both men and women
(Markel et al., 1972). Similarly, in a study of people’s voices on television dramas
and talk shows, men were spoken to more dominantly, condescendingly, and
unpleasantly than women were by both men and women (Hall & Braunwald,
1981). However, listeners who heard the speaker without knowing the gender of the
person to whom they were speaking erroneously thought that women spoke meekly
to men, when in fact women and men both spoke more powerfully to men.

Men and women use vocal qualities, such as pitch, to assess the attractiveness
of members of the same and other sex as well as to communicate their attractive-
ness to members of the other sex. Regarding the latter, women were observed to

340 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

use a higher-pitched voice, which males find attractive, when leaving a voicemail
for a man they found to be attractive (Fraccaro et al., 2011). Women, on the
other hand, tend to find lower-pitched voices in men more attractive (Simmons,
Peters, & Rhodes, 2011). Lastly, both men’s and women’s feelings of jealousy
were shown to be greater when they had imagined a member of the other sex with
a more attractive voice pitch flirting with their romantic partner (O’Connor &
Feinberg, 2012).

VOCAL CUES AND EMOTION

Vocal cues are widespread among many animal species for communication about
territory, relationship, identity, alarm, physical states, and emotion (Kitchen,
Cheney, & Seyfarth, 2003; Marier, Evans, & Hauser, 1992). Darwin viewed the
voice as a primary channel for emotional signals in both humans and animals.
In this section we examine what is known about emotional expression in the
human voice.

One persistent question is whether people can identify emotions in the voice.
The answer is definitely “yes.” There is substantial accuracy even when speakers
and listeners are not from the same culture, and listeners in different cultures tend
to make the same errors and confusions when judging emotions in the voice,
though there appears also to be some advantage in judging voices from one’s own
culture (Juslin & Laukka, 2003; Scherer, 2003; Scherer, Banse, & Wallbott, 2001).
Pittam and Scherer (1993) concluded that the recognition of emotion from the
voice is four to five times what would be expected if listeners were simply guessing,
and Juslin and Laukka (2003) concluded that across five different emotions, accu-
racy of judgment averaged 90 percent when calculated against a guessing rate of
50 percent.

Another question concerns whether people use vocal cues in visual or thematic
emotion-judgment tasks, and whether they do so in a similar fashion across cul-
tures. Jaywant and Pell (2012) observed that participants made fewer errors in
judging facial expressions when they had first heard vocal cues expressing the
same emotion state as the face. Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, and Scott (2010) had parti-
cipants from two distinct cultural groups (English, European, and the Himba from
Nambia) listen to a story in their native language that was designed to arouse a
specific emotion state, such as sadness. Next, participants listened to two vocaliza-
tions of emotions. These emotional vocalizations were produced by members from
their own cultural group as well as from members of the other cultural group.
Importantly, one of two emotional vocalizations matched and the other did not
match the emotional content of the story. Results showed that members of both
cultures were able to match basic emotion states in vocal cues (anger, fear, disgust,
amusement, sadness, surprise) to the emotional content of the story, and that they
were able to do this using vocal cues from members of their own cultural group as
well as those from members of the other cultural group.

Concerned that most emotion-judgment tasks present several negative
emotions—such as anger, sadness, and fear—but typically only one positive emo-
tion, namely happiness, Sauter and Scott (2007) presented five different positive
emotions for judgment through the vocal channel. Listeners in both Great Britain

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 341

and Sweden showed significant accuracy in distinguishing between amusement,
contentment, sensual pleasure, achievement/triumph, and relief. With respect to
cross-cultural comparisons, though, Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, and Scott (2010)
found that English participants recognized the nonbasic positive emotions of
achievement/triumph, relief, and sensual pleasure in the vocalizations of Himba
speakers, but that Himba participants did not recognize these emotions in the voca-
lizations of English speakers.

Neumann and Strack (2000) have further demonstrated that hearing voices
expressing different emotions also elicits the corresponding emotional feelings, as
reflected both in the listener’s own voice tone and in self-ratings of mood. These,
like other findings on “emotional contagion” (see Chapter 9), show that emotions
can be conveyed and shared outside of our conscious awareness (Chartrand &
Bargh, 1999).

The notion that a listener might respond with the same kind of emotion as
expressed in the speaker’s voice suggests a parallel situation that we experience
very often when we listen to music. Music can create potent emotional effects, and
indeed experimenters often use music to induce emotions in laboratory studies.
Some researchers have studied the accuracy of identifying emotions in music using
methods very similar to those used to study the communication of emotion in the
voice. For example, a performer might be asked to play a passage on the piano so
as to convey anger or happiness. Accuracy on the part of listeners can then be mea-
sured. Juslin and Laukka (2003) found, in reviewing these studies, that accuracy
for judging emotions in music is very similar to accuracy in judging emotions in
the voice, and furthermore that many of the same acoustic qualities account for
the effects. For example, tempo and intensity increase in anger and happiness in
both modalities, and variability in intensity is increased for anger and fear but is
decreased for sadness and tenderness in both modalities. As more specific evidence
of this, it appears that the “minor third” is important both in music and in the pitch
of the human voice for communicating the emotion state of sadness (Curtis &
Bharucha, 2010).

You may have wondered how it is possible to separate the nonverbal voice
qualities from the words being spoken in studies of vocal communication. Several
methods have been used to accomplish this essential goal, and accuracy may vary
somewhat depending on the method used (Juslin & Scherer, 2005). Some studies
use “meaningless content,” usually having the speaker say numbers or letters
while trying to convey various emotional states. As early as 1964, studies of this
type were conducted (Davitz, 1964). Speakers were instructed to express 10 differ-
ent feelings while reciting parts of the alphabet. These expressions were recorded
and played to judges, who were asked to identify the emotion being expressed
from the list of 10 emotions. Generally, emotions or feelings were communicated
far beyond chance expectation. It is difficult to tell, of course, whether the commu-
nicators were using the same tonal or vocal cues they would use in real-life emo-
tional reactions.

Other studies have controlled verbal cues by using “constant content,” in
which a speaker reads a standard passage while attempting to simulate different
emotional states. The underlying assumption is that the passage selected is neutral
in emotional tone. Another approach is to try to ignore content and focus attention

342 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

on the pauses, breathing rate, and other characteristics that suggest the person’s
emotional state. This method is frequently used in psychotherapy to identify signs
of anxiety.

Some studies have used electronic filtering to eliminate verbal content (Rogers,
Scherer, & Rosenthal, 1971). A low-pass filter will hold back the higher frequen-
cies of speech on which word recognition depends. The finished product sounds
much like someone talking on the other side of a wall. One common problem with
the electronically filtered technique is that some of the nonverbal vocal cues are elim-
inated in the filtering process, creating an artificial stimulus. Although some aspects
of vocal quality may be lost in the filtering process, a listener can still adequately per-
ceive pitch, rate, and loudness in order to judge emotional content. An advantage of
the filtering method is that naturally occurring speech can be used, in contrast to the
previous methods, which require the speaker to recite a standard text.

Filtered speech is the most popular method of making words unintelligible and
has produced some very intriguing results, some of which we summarize here. In a
study of doctors, Milmoe, Rosenthal, Blane, Chafetz, and Wolf (1967) found that
the more anger was perceived in the filtered voices of doctors talking about their
alcoholic patients, the less successful they were in getting those patients into ther-
apy. Later research verified that the tone of voice used when talking about patients
carries over into the way doctors talk to patients (Rosenthal, Vanicelli, & Blanck,
1984). Another study of physicians found that those who provided more medical
information to their patients—and were more competent, according to technical
standards for conducting a proper interview, diagnosing correctly, and so forth—
were those with the lowest ratings of boredom in short, filtered clips of their voices
(Hall, Roter, & Katz, 1987). It has also been found that a patient’s satisfaction
with a medical visit is greatest when the physician’s words are rated as more pleas-
ant and when the physician’s filtered voice tone is rated as more angry and anx-
ious. The combination of pleasant words and not-so-pleasant voice may convey a
desirable message of concern and involvement in the patient’s problems (Hall,
Roter, & Rand, 1981). Consistent with this finding is a study (Ambady et al.,
2002) that did not use filtered speech but rather ratings of surgeons’ unfiltered
voices while talking to their patients, plus statistical controls for the verbal content.
That study found that surgeons whose voices were more dominant and less anx-
ious were more likely to have been sued by patients. In the most recent study of
this type, primary care physicians’ voices were recorded during medical visits. Inde-
pendent listeners’ ratings of their filtered speech revealed that physicians whose
patients were more satisfied had voices that were warm and supportive (Haskard,
Williams, DiMatteo, Heritage, & Rosenthal, 2008).

Another study analyzed the filtered speech of airline passengers talking to air-
port agents about their lost baggage (Scherer & Ceschi, 2000). In that study, the
number of “felt” and “unfelt” smiles (see Chapter 9) was counted, and judges
made ratings of the passengers’ filtered speech. A higher frequency of “felt” smiles
indicative of genuine enjoyment (see Chapter 9) was related to less vocal anger, less
worry, and less resignation and to more good humor. Inauthentic or “unfelt”
smiles, on the other hand, were unrelated to the voice ratings. This and the preced-
ing studies support the validity of filtered speech ratings as an indicator of people’s
feelings and as a predictor of important outcomes in real-life situations.

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 343

Although, on average, accuracy for judging emotions from the voice is very high,
studies do vary in how accurately emotions are judged from voice cues. One reason
for this involves the differing methods by which such observations may be made, for
example, how long the voice samples are, which content-masking technique is used,
or how dissimilar the response alternatives are. Another reason is that speakers and
listeners vary widely in how accurately they can express and recognize different emo-
tions (see Chapter 3). For example, in the Davitz and Davitz (1959) study, one speak-
er’s expressions were identified correctly only 23 percent of the time, whereas another
speaker communicated accurately over 50 percent of the time. In that study, like
many others, accuracy was defined in terms of how well listeners could identify the
emotion the speaker was asked to express. Listeners’ accuracy in recognizing the
intended emotion varied widely, just as the speakers’ sending accuracy did.

Thus, depending on the skills that individuals bring to a communication situa-
tion, they may or may not succeed in sending and receiving vocal emotion cues
well. Accuracy in judging emotions from the voice develops with age and appears
to be correlated with similar psychological characteristics as is skill in judging
other nonverbal cues (Baum & Nowicki, 1998; see Chapter 3). For example, chil-
dren may learn vocal expressions of emotion later than visual expressions of them
on the face or body of others (Nelson & Russell, 2011). Efforts are under way to
link various abilities, such as decoding vocal cues and emotional understanding, to
the broader notion of Emotional Intelligence (Thingujam, Laukka, & Elfenbein,
2012). On the flip side, deficits in more than one domain have been noted for vari-
ous disorders. For example, persons with autism and Asperger syndrome score
lower than comparison groups on judging both vocal and facial emotion cues
(Rutherford, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2002), and the same is true for people
with anorexia nervosa (Kucharska-Pietura, Nilolaou, Masiak, & Treasure, 2004).

Another qualification to any statement about the voice’s overall ability to com-
municate emotions is that some emotions are easier to communicate than others.
For example, one study found that vocal anger was identified 63 percent of the
time, whereas vocal pride was identified correctly only 20 percent of the time.
Another study found that joy and hate were easily recognized in the voice, but
shame and love were the most difficult to recognize. In general, anger, joy, and
sadness are easier to recognize in the voice than fear and disgust (Banse & Scherer,
1996; Pittam & Scherer, 1993).

In a review of studies on accuracy of judging anxiety, Harrigan, Wilson, and
Rosenthal (2004) found that accuracy for judging state anxiety—that is, anxiety
being experienced at a given moment—was higher when judgments were based on
the voice alone than when they were based on video cues alone. However, for trait
anxiety, which is a personality tendency to be anxious, this was reversed—in fact,
listeners could not judge trait anxiety from the voice at all. Possibly, the immediate
physiological arousal associated with state anxiety produces easily noticed vocal
changes, such as tremor or speech errors.

In addition to demonstrating that emotions can be conveyed through the voice,
researchers have learned a great deal about how the voice conveys emotion.
Although efforts are under way to specify the acoustic features associated with
nonverbal vocalizations of specific emotion state (Sauter, Eisner, Calder, & Scott,
2010), there currently is no “dictionary” of emotion cues for the voice, any more

344 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

than there is for any nonverbal channel. You cannot identify key acoustic features
and then look them up in a book somewhere to see which emotion is being
expressed. Many factors enter into the total picture of emotional expression: con-
textual cues, the words being spoken, other nonverbal behaviors, individual differ-
ences in the people, and the fact that there is undoubtedly more than one way to
express a given emotion. With these qualifications in mind, we now summarize
key vocal cues associated with emotion.

Anxiety induced in a particular circumstance, or state anxiety, is often associ-
ated with nonfluencies or speech disruptions (Cook, 1965; Mahl, 1956; Siegman,
1987). “Non-Ah” speech disruptions are sentence changes (starting a sentence one
way and changing its form part way through), sentence incompletions (starting a
sentence and abandoning it to make a different point), stutters, repetitions, omis-
sions (of words or parts of words), tongue slips, and intruding incoherent sounds.
In contrast, a final kind of speech disruption, called “Ah” errors or filled pauses,
is not associated with anxiety or stress but seem rather to have other meanings
(see the section “Hesitations, Pauses, Silence, and Speech” later in this chapter).

Personality dimensions related to anxiety have also been studied in relation to
the production of speech disturbances. Harrigan, Suarez, and Hartman (1994)
obtained anxiety ratings of verbatim transcripts of the speech of individuals who
varied in state and trait anxiety as well as in repression, which is the need to deny
negative thoughts, impulses, or behaviors. Repressors’ speech was judged to be the
most anxious, more so even than the speech of people who were highly trait-
anxious but not repressive. The authors attributed these effects to differences in
the frequency of speech disturbances among groups. Although repressors do not
view themselves as high on trait anxiety, their vocal behavior says otherwise. Per-
haps anxious people are more aware of their anxiety and can take steps to conceal
or control it, whereas repressive people are not aware of it, increasing the chances
that anxiety cues will “leak out” through the voice.

In an experiment on therapeutic treatment for social anxiety, those patients
who responded favorably to the intervention showed changes in key vocal variables
when asked to give a speech in front of a group—specifically in showing a lower
vocal pitch and greater continuity of speech, measured as having a smaller percent-
age of their speaking time spent in silence (Laukka et al., 2008). In general, stress
from any source makes the voice rise in pitch. In one of the earliest demonstrations,
Williams and Stevens (1972) analyzed recordings of the radio announcer who
described, live on the air, the horrifying explosion and burning of the hydrogen-
filled zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Comparison of his
voice before and immediately after the disaster showed the fundamental frequency
rose, with much less fluctuation in frequency.

Scherer’s work has encompassed a broad range of emotions. In a 1974 study, he
used artificial sounds, rather than spontaneous speech, to approach the question of
which vocal features are associated with which emotions. Listeners rated synthesized
tones on 10-point scales of pleasantness, potency, activity, and evaluation and indi-
cated whether the stimuli could or could not be an expression of interest, sadness,
fear, happiness, disgust, anger, surprise, elation, or boredom. Generally speaking,
tempo and pitch variation influence a wide range of judgments about emotional
expressions. Table 11-2 summarizes the results of several of Scherer’s studies.

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 345

Scherer (1986) expanded his predictions to include 12 different emotions—
such as irritation/cold anger, grief/desperation, elation/joy—and 18 different acous-
tic variables such as average fundamental frequency, variability in loudness, and
speech rate. In comparing these theoretical predictions to actual research, Scherer
found some impressive consistencies but also considerable variation, partly due to
great differences in how the studies were conducted and the number of studies con-
ducted. Joy/elation is well studied and is associated with higher average frequency,
or pitch; greater frequency range; greater frequency variability; higher average
intensity, or loudness; and faster rate. Consistent with the results for joy/elation,
the perception of how much affection is perceived in a speaker is positively pre-
dicted by how high-pitched and expressively variable the voice is (Floyd & Ray,
2003). Anger is conveyed by higher frequency and intensity, with a greater fre-
quency range and faster speech rate for “hot” anger. Fear is shown by higher
frequency, especially high-frequency energy, and faster speech rate. Sadness—at
least the quiet, resigned sort—involves lower average frequency and intensity, has
downward-directed contours, and is slower (Pittam & Scherer, 1993; Scherer,
Banse, Wallbott, & Goldbeck, 1991). Research is progressing on identifying emo-
tions from acoustic variables, so that computers may some day be able to recognize
vocal emotions almost as well as human listeners do (Banse & Scherer, 1996).

VOCAL CUES, COMPREHENSION, AND PERSUASION

In addition to its role in personality and emotional judgments, the voice also plays
a part in retention and attitude change, which has been primarily studied in public
speaking. For many years, introductory public speaking textbooks have stressed the
importance of delivery in the rhetorical situation. Delivery of the speech, rather
than speech content, was perhaps the first area of rhetoric to receive quantitative

TABLE 11-2 ACOUSTIC CONCOMITANTS OF EMOTIONAL DIMENSIONS

Amplitude Variation Moderate Pleasantness, Activity, Happiness
Pitch variation Moderate Anger, boredom, disgust, fear

Pitch contour Down Pleasantness, boredom, sadness

Up Potency, anger, fear, surprise

Pitch level Low Pleasantness, boredom, sadness

Tempo Slow Boredom, disgust, sadness

Fast Pleasantness, activity, potency, anger, fear

Duration (shape) Round Potency, boredom, disgust, fear, sadness

Filtration (lack of
overtones)

Low Sadness, pleasantness, boredom, happiness

Moderate Potency, activity

Tonality Atonal Disgust

Tonal-minor Anger

Rhythm Not rhythmic Boredom

Rhythmic Activity, fear, surprise

346 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

examination by speech researchers. Almost every study that isolated delivery as a
variable showed that delivery did matter. It had positive effects on the amount of
information remembered, the amount of attitude change elicited from the audience,
and the amount of credibility audience members attributed to the speaker.

Typical prescriptions for use of the voice in delivering a public speech include
the following:

1. Use variety in volume, rate, pitch, and articulation. The probability of desir-
able outcomes is less when we use a constant rate, volume, pitch, and articu-
lation. Being consistently overprecise may be as ineffective as being overly
sloppy in articulation.

2. Base decisions concerning loud–soft, fast–slow, precise–sloppy, or high–low on
what is appropriate for a given audience in a given situation.

3. Avoid excessive nonfluencies.

Regarding the third prescription, Engstrom (1994) found that participants’ ratings
of an announcer’s competence dropped as the numbers of speech errors or nonflu-
ent speech made by the announcer increased.

VOCAL CUES, COMPREHENSION, AND RETENTION

Several studies tend to support the prescriptions for vocal variety in increasing
audience comprehension and retention. Woolbert (1920), in perhaps the earliest
study of this type, found that large variations of rate, force, pitch, and quality pro-
duced high audience retention when compared with a no-variation condition.
Glasgow (1952), using prose and poetry, established two conditions for study:
“good intonation” and “mono-pitch.” Multiple-choice tests, following exposure to
these differing vocal samples, showed that mono-pitch decreased comprehension by
more than 10 percent for both prose and poetry. Other research suggests that mod-
erately poor vocal quality and pitch patterns, nonfluencies, mispronunciation, and
even stuttering do not interfere significantly with comprehension, although listeners
generally find these conditions unpleasant (Kibler & Barker, 1972; Klinger, 1959;
Utzinger, 1952). All of these studies indicate that listeners are rather adaptable. It
probably takes constant and extreme vocal unpleasantries to affect comprehension,
and even then the listener may adapt. Poor vocal qualities probably contribute
more to a listener’s perception of the speaker’s personality or mood than to a
decrease in comprehension.

Children are required to understand what adults are referring to when they
speak about an object, such as a bunny. Do children use vocal cues to do this?
Berman, Chambers, and Graham (2010) research suggests that 4-year-olds do.
They conducted an experiment in which children heard an adult say a sentence,
such as “Look at the bunny,” in either a neutral, happy, or sad voice. Importantly,
there were three objects the children could look at: a distractor item, such as a
horse; a clean, intact bunny; or dirty, ragged, broken bunny. Results showed that
4-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) visually fixated most often to the “broken”
bunny when they heard the sad voice, and most often to the “intact” bunny when
they heard the happy voice. These findings suggest that 4-year-old children were
using vocal cues to determine which object the speaker might be referring to in the

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 347

sentence “Look at the bunny.” It also appears that children as young as 15 months
are aware of when a person’s action does not match her preceding vocal cue
(Hoicka & Wang, 2011).

The study of speaking rate by itself yields additional evidence of listener flexi-
bility and the lack of impact on comprehension of seemingly poor voice-related
phenomena. The normal speaking rate is between 125 and 190 words per minute.
Some researchers believe comprehension begins to decrease once the rate exceeds
200 words per minute, but other experts in speeded speech place the level of signif-
icant decline in comprehension at between 250 and 275 words per minute. King
and Behnke (1989) point out that time-compressed speech adversely affects com-
prehensive listening—that is, understanding a message and remembering it for the
future—but does not adversely affect short-term listening (40 seconds or less) or
interpretive listening (reading between the lines) until very high levels of compres-
sion are reached, around 60 percent. Obviously, individual ability to process infor-
mation at rapid rates differs widely. The inescapable conclusion from studies of
speech rate, however, is that we can comprehend information at much more rapid
rates than we ordinarily are exposed to. In an experiment in which individual lis-
teners were allowed to vary the rates of presentation at will, the average choice was
1.5 times normal speed (Orr, 1968).

VOCAL CUES AND PERSUASION

What is the role of the voice in persuasive situations? It is clear we can communi-
cate various attitudes with our voice alone, for example, friendliness, hostility,
superiority, and submissiveness. Then what contribution, if any, do vocal cues
make toward changing people’s attitudes?

Mehrabian and Williams (1969) conducted an early series of studies on the
nonverbal correlates of intended and perceived persuasiveness. The following vocal
cues were associated with both “increasing intent to persuade and decoded as
enhancing the persuasiveness of a communication”: more speech volume, higher
speech rate, and less halting speech. This early study has been followed by many
studies on the relation of vocal cues to attitude change. The following vocal cues
are associated with greater perceived persuasiveness, credibility, competence, or
actual attitude change (Burgoon, Birk, & Pfau, 1990; Leigh & Summers, 2002).
However, an upper limit to the effective range on each of these variables is likely,
so that extremes would produce less, not more, credibility or persuasion.

• Fluent, nonhesitant speech
• Shorter response latencies, the pauses when speakers switch turns
• More pitch variation
• Louder voice
• Faster speech, as measured by words per minute or length of pauses

Of all these cues, faster speech has received the most attention in its relation to the
persuasion process (Miller, Maruyama, Beaber, & Valone, 1976; Street, Brady, &
Lee, 1984). Why is fast speech persuasive? Possibly, faster speakers seem more
credible because we assume they really know what they are talking about and
truly believe it themselves. But when listening to a faster-speaking persuader, we

348 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

may also be kept so busy processing the message that we have little chance to
develop counterarguments in our heads. Or we may be simply distracted by notic-
ing the faster speech, and this interferes with our ability to focus on the message
and develop counterarguments (Woodall & Burgoon, 1983). It is also important
to note that faster speech does not always produce more persuasion. Smith and
Shaffer (1991) found that faster speech increased persuasion when the message
was counterattitudinal—that is, when it favored a position that opposed the listen-
er’s preexisting attitude—but it decreased persuasion when the message was consis-
tent with the listener’s preexisting attitude.

At this point you may legitimately ask, “So what?” What if we know the
voice’s potential for eliciting various responses related to comprehension, attitude
change, and speaker credibility? Obviously in real-life situations, visual and verbal
cues, prior publicity and experiences with the speaker, and a multitude of other
interacting factors can reduce the importance of vocal cues. In short, specific non-
verbal cues do not operate in isolation in human interaction, as they do in the
experiments reported here. For the most part, we do not know what their role is
in context—that is, in combination with other cues and in settings outside the lab-
oratory. DeGroot and Motowidlo’s (1999) study takes us a step in that direction.
These investigators asked managers in companies to let themselves be interviewed
as though they were applying for their job. The managers’ vocal cues were then
related to their actual supervisors’ performance ratings of them and also to naive
observers’ impressions of the taped interviews. A vocal composite that consisted of
faster speech rate, more pitch variability, fewer pauses, lower pitch, and less ampli-
tude variability was a significant predictor of both the performance ratings and the
favorability of listeners’ reactions, which led the authors of the study to believe that
people who speak with this desirable set of vocal characteristics will be better able
to perform well on the job, owing to the favorability of people’s responses to them.
Burgoon and colleagues (1990) also examined a wide range of different cues, vocal
cues and those relating to face and body, in a study of credibility and persuasive-
ness. Controlling for other nonverbal behaviors, vocal fluency remained the stron-
gest predictor of judged competence, a dimension of credibility, and it was one of
the two strongest predictors of judged persuasiveness. Complementing these studies
of specific vocal cues, Ambady, Krabbenhoft, and Hogan (2006) used more global
ratings of electronically filtered speech to predict ratings of sales effectiveness, as
made by upper management, in a sample of sales managers. Even though the sales
managers’ voice clips totaled only 1 minute each, ratings of qualities such as emo-
tion, empathy, cooperation, and enthusiasm as perceived in the voice were strongly
correlated with their superiors’ positive evaluations of them.

VOCAL CUES AND TURN TAKING IN CONVERSATIONS

Thus far we have discussed the role of vocal cues in communicating interpersonal atti-
tudes, emotions, and information about the speaker. Vocal cues also play an impor-
tant role in managing the interaction and are part of a system of cues that helps us
structure our interactions—that is, who speaks when, to whom, and for how long.

Rules for turn taking, or “floor apportionment,” may have as much to do with
how a conversation is perceived as does the actual verbal content of the interaction

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 349

(Duncan, 1973; Wiemann & Knapp, 1975). You can probably recall instances
where turn-taking rules played a significant role in your responses: for example,
when a long-winded speaker would not let you get a word in edgewise; when a
passive interactant refused to “take the conversational ball” you offered; when
you were confronted with an “interrupter”; or those awkward moments when you
and the other person started talking simultaneously. Obviously, vocal cues are only
some of the signals we use to manage our turn taking (see Chapter 12). Altogether,
we do a remarkable job of negotiating turn taking through nonverbal, including
vocal, cues. Only rarely do we need to explicitly verbalize this information—for
example, “Okay, Lillian, I’m finished talking. Now it’s your turn to talk.” Our
use of these signals is mostly unconscious but conforms to definite rules of usage
nonetheless. These have been described extensively by Duncan and Fiske (1977) in
their analyses of two-person conversations held in a laboratory setting. Certain
cues were almost invariably present when smooth turn taking took place, five of
which were vocal, either verbal or nonverbal. None of these cues seems to be
more important than the others; rather it seems that a smooth switch is best pre-
dicted by the sheer number of these cues. In other words, redundancy—sending
several equivalent-meaning cues simultaneously—promotes smooth regulation of
conversation. These cues included the speaker’s pitch or a drawl at the end of a
unit of speech, the grammatical completion of a unit of speech, and the use of cer-
tain routine verbal phrases. The next sections elaborate on these and other turn-
regulating behaviors identified in research (Cappella, 1985; Rosenfeld, 1987).

TURN YIELDING

To yield a turn means to signal you are finished and that the other person can start
talking. Sometimes we do this by asking a question, causing the pitch to rise at the
end of our comment. Another unwritten rule most of us follow is that questions
require, or often demand, answers. We also can drop our pitch, sometimes with a
drawl on the last syllable, when finishing a declarative statement that concludes
our intended turn. If the cues are not sufficient for the other person to start talking,
we may have to add a trailer on the end. The trailer may be silence or may take the
form of a filled pause, for example, “ya know,” “so, ah,” or “or something.” The
filled pauses reiterate the fact that you are yielding, and they fill a silence that
might otherwise indicate the other’s insensitivity to your signals or your own
inability to make them clear.

TURN REQUESTING

We can also use vocal cues to show others that we want to say something.
Although an audible inspiration of breath alone may not be a sufficient cue, it
does help signal turn requesting. The mere act of interrupting or simultaneous talk-
ing may signal an impatience to get the speaking turn. Sometimes you can inject
vocalizations during normal pausing of the other speaker. These “stutter starts”
may be the beginning of a sentence (“I … I … I …”) or merely vocal buffers (“Ah
… Er … Ah …”). Another method for requesting a turn is to assist the other per-
son in finishing quickly. This can be done by increasing the rapidity of our

350 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

responses, much like the increased rapidity of the head nods when we are anxious
to leave a situation in which another person has the floor. Normally, back-channel
cues, such as “Uh-huh,” “Yeah,” and “Mmm-hmm,” are used to encourage the
other to continue speaking and to signal attentiveness. However, when these cues
are used rapidly, the message can be “Get finished so I can talk.”

TURN MAINTAINING

Sometimes we want to keep the floor. It may be to show our status or to avoid
unpleasant feedback, or perhaps it reflects some exaggerated sense of the impor-
tance of our own words and ideas. Common vocal cues in these instances may
include the following:

1. Increasing volume and rate when turn-requesting cues are sensed
2. Increasing the frequency of filled pauses
3. Decreasing the frequency and duration of silent pauses

Although Lalljee and Cook’s (1969) research does not support the use of pauses
for control, Rochester (1973) cites several studies that support the following
conclusions:

1. More filled pauses and fewer silent pauses are found in dialogue than
monologue.

2. More filled pauses and fewer silent pauses are not found when people want to
break off speaking.

3. More filled pauses and fewer silent pauses are more likely when the speaker
lacks visual means of controlling the conversation, as on the telephone.

TURN DENYING

In some instances, we may want the other person to keep talking—to deny the turn
when offered. The back-channel cues we noted earlier may keep the other person
talking by giving reinforcement for what is being said. The rate with which these
cues are delivered, however, is probably slower than when we are requesting a
turn. And, of course, simply remaining silent may dramatically communicate a
turn denial. Silence and pauses are the subjects of our next section.

We wish to reiterate that conversational regulation is a delicate matter involv-
ing a complex coordination of verbal behavior, vocal behavior, gaze, and body
movement. Research finds that even if we would predict a turn switch based on
words and voice, a switch is very unlikely if the speaker looks away from the lis-
tener during the likely switching point or engages in a hand gesture that is main-
tained or not returned to a resting state.

HESITATIONS, PAUSES, SILENCE, AND SPEECH

Spontaneous speech is actually highly fragmented and discontinuous. Goldman-
Eisler (1968) said that even when speech is at its most fluent, two-thirds of spoken
language comes in chunks of less than six words, which strongly suggests that the

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 351

concept of fluency in spontaneous speech is an illusion. Pauses range in length from
milliseconds to minutes. Pauses are subject to considerable variation based on indi-
vidual differences, the kind of verbal task, the amount of spontaneity, and the pres-
sures of the particular social situation.

LOCATION OR PLACEMENT OF PAUSES

Pauses and hesitations are not randomly distributed throughout the speech stream (
Goldman-Eisler, 1968; Merlo & Barbosa, 2010). Goldman-Eisler (1968, p. 13)
outlined places where pauses do occur—at both grammatical and nongrammatical
junctures.
Grammatical
1. “Natural” punctuation points, for example, the end of a sentence.
2. Immediately preceding a conjunction whether (a) coordinating, such as and,

but, neither, therefore; or (b) subordinating, such as if, when, while, as,
because.

3. Before relative and interrogative pronouns, for example, who, which, what,
why, whose.

4. When a question is direct or implied: “I don’t know whether I will.”
5. Before all adverbial clauses of time (when), manner (how), and place (where).
6. When complete parenthetical references are made: “You can tell that the house—

the one on the corner—is falling into disrepair.”

Nongrammatical
1. Where a gap occurs in the middle or at the end of a phrase: “In each of … the

cells of the body ….”
2. Where a gap occurs between words and phrases repeated: (a) “The question of

the … of the economy” and (b) “This attitude is narrower than that … that of
many South Africans.”

3. Where a gap occurs in the middle of a verbal compound: “We have … taken
issue with them and they are … resolved to oppose us.”

4. Where the structure of a sentence is disrupted by a reconsideration or a false
start: “I think the problem of France is the … what we have to remember
about France is ….”

Analysis of spontaneous speech shows that only 55 percent of the pauses fall into
the grammatical category, whereas oral readers of prepared texts are extremely
consistent in pausing at clause and sentence junctures.

TYPES OF PAUSES

The two major types of pauses are the unfilled, silent pause and the filled pause.
A filled pause is filled with some type of phonation such as “um” or “uh.” A variety
of sources associate filled pauses with a range of generally undesirable character-
istics. Some people associate filled pauses and repetitions with emotional arousal;
some feel that filled pauses may reduce anxiety but jam cognitive processes.
Goldman-Eisler (1961) found, in four different studies, that unfilled pausing time

352 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

was associated with “superior (more concise) stylistic and less probable linguistic
formulations,” whereas higher rates of filled pauses were linked to “inferior stylis-
tic achievement (long-winded statement) of greater predictability.” Livant (1963)
found the time required to solve addition problems was significantly greater when
the subject filled his pauses than when he was silent. Several experimenters reached
similar conclusions: When speakers fill pauses, they also impair their performance.
Thus in a heated discussion, you may maintain control of the conversation by fill-
ing the pauses, but you may also decrease the quality of your contribution. How-
ever, too many filled or unfilled pauses may receive negative evaluations from
listeners (Christenfeld, 1995). Lalljee (1971) found that too many unfilled pauses
by the speaker caused listeners to perceive the speaker as anxious, angry, or con-
temptuous; too many filled pauses evoked perceptions of the speaker as anxious or
bored. Although these studies suggest that filled pauses are generally to be avoided,
research also finds that in university lecturers, their use is correlated with more com-
plex thought processes and use of a larger vocabulary (Schachter, Christenfeld,
Ravina, & Bilous, 1991; Schachter, Rauscher, Christenfeld, & Crone, 1994).

Filled pauses show up, interestingly, much more in the speech of men than that
of women (Hall, 1984). We might think of men as more assertive in general, but
Siegman (1987) observed that more filled pauses are usually associated with “cau-
tious and hesitant speech” (p. 398). Perhaps men are more socially uncomfortable
than women are. It may be, however, that filled pauses are serving another func-
tion altogether—keeping the speaker’s turn from being taken over by the other per-
son, which may be of more concern for men.

REASONS WHY PAUSES OCCUR

During the course of spontaneous speech, we are confronted with situations that
require decisions as to what to say and what lexical or structural form to put it in.
One school of thought relates hesitancy in speech to the uncertainty of predicting
the cognitive and lexical activity while speaking. The speaker may be reflecting on
decisions about the immediate message or may even be projecting into the past or
future—that is, “I don’t think she understood what I said earlier” or “If she says
no, what do I say then?” Thus the assumption is that these hesitation pauses are
actually delays due to competing processes taking place in the brain. Goldman-
Eisler indeed found that pause time while interpreting cartoons was twice as long
as while describing them. It also was observed that with each succeeding trial (i.e.,
with increasing reductions in spontaneity) there was a decline in pausing. Recent
research continues to support the theory that longer speech latencies and a rela-
tively large number of pauses are sometimes due to the complexity of the message
being formulated (Greene & Ravizza, 1995).

It has been argued that speakers use fillers, such as “uh” and “um,” to signal
that the listener should expect either a minor or major delay in speaking (Clark &
Fox Tree, 2002). However, recent work by O’Connell and Kowal (2005) has called
this into question, finding that such fillers were not usually followed by silent
pauses.

Another possible explanation for some pausing behavior involves what is
described as “disruption behavior.” Instead of representing time for planning, the

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 353

pause may indicate a disruption due to an emotional state that may have developed
from negative feedback or time pressures. These disruptions may take many forms:
fears about the subject matter under discussion, desire to impress the listener with
verbal or intellectual skills, pressure to perform other tasks simultaneously, or pres-
sure to produce verbal output immediately.

Pauses may also be used to help children learn about turn taking in conversa-
tions. Bergeson, Miller, and McCune (2006) observed that mothers used longer
pauses when talking with older as opposed to younger infants, thus giving them
extra time to respond.

INFLUENCE AND COORDINATION WITHIN THE DYAD

Thus far we have considered hesitations and pauses primarily from the speaker’s
standpoint. Now we consider the interaction process and the effect of one person’s
interpersonal timing on another. For many years, Chapple (1949, 1953; Chapple
& Sayles, 1961) explored the rhythms of dialogue, that is, the degree of synchrony
found in the give-and-take of conversations. This involved noting who talks, when,
and for how long. He developed a standardized interview in which the interviewer
alternates “normal” attentive responding with silences and, later, interruptions. As
you might suspect, there are many reactions. Some people respond to a nonre-
sponse, or silence, by speeding up; others match the nonresponse; and most try
some combination of the two.

Matarazzo’s studies of interviewing behavior found most latencies of response
were between 1 and 2 seconds, with the mean about 1.7 seconds (Matarazzo,
Wiens, & Saslow, 1965). Matarazzo also demonstrated response matching,
showing how the interviewer can also control the length of utterance by increasing
the length of his own utterances. As the interviewer extended the length of his
responses, a corresponding increase in the length of responses from the interviewee
resulted. In the same manner, there must be times when pauses beget pauses.
The interviewer also can control response duration by head nodding or saying
“Mmm-hmm” during the interviewee’s response. This demonstrates that these
back-channel responses do indeed encourage a speaker to continue speaking.

SILENCE

Most of the hesitations and pauses we have discussed are relatively short. Some-
times silences may be extended. They may be imposed by the nature of the environ-
ment, for example, in churches, libraries, museums, courtrooms, or hospitals; they
may be imposed for the duration of a given event, as at a funeral or when singing
the national anthem; or they may be self-imposed, such as remaining quiet in the
woods to hear other sounds, or enjoying with a lover the mutual closeness that
silence may bring. Silence can mean virtually anything, and it is charged with
those words that have just been exchanged; words that have been exchanged in
the past; words that have not or will not be said but are fantasized; and words
that may actually be said in the future. For these reasons, it would be absurd to
provide a list of meanings for silence. The meaning of silence, like the meaning of
words, can be deduced only after careful analysis of the communicators, subject

354 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

matter, time, place, culture, and so forth. For example, silence in response to a rhe-
torical question from a professor to a student means something different from one
person’s silence in response to another’s question during a brief encounter on the
street (“Hey, pardon me, do you know what time it is?”).

Some of the many interpersonal functions served by silence include the
following:

• Punctuation or accenting, drawing attention to certain words or ideas
• Evaluating, providing judgments of another’s behavior, showing favor or dis-

favor, agreement or disagreement, or attacking (e.g., not responding to a com-
ment, greeting, or letter)

• Revelation, making something known, or hiding something
• Expression of emotions: the silence of disgust, sadness, fear, anger, or love
• Mental activity, showing thoughtfulness and reflection or ignorance (Bruneau,

1973; Jaworski, 1993; Jensen, 1973)

There are social and emotional consequences associated with silence. Silence in
response to another person’s question, such as “I’m lost. Do you live around
here?”, is likely to be viewed as inappropriate (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987).
Koudenburg, Postmes, and Gordijin (2011) conducted an experiment in which par-
ticipants imagined being a person whose statement was followed by silence (or not)
from others in a videotaped group interaction. They found that silence triggered
greater feelings of being distressed, afraid, and hurt as well as feelings of rejection
in participants. It seems that we are sensitive to cues of possible social exclusion,
one of which appears to be silence from others.

SUMMARY

This chapter should leave you with the overall
impression that vocal cues frequently play a
major role in determining responses in human
communication situations. You should be quick,
however, to challenge the cliché that vocal cues
only concern how something is said—frequently
they are what is said. What is said might be an
attitude (“I like you” or “I’m superior to you”); it
might be an emotion; it might be the coordina-
tion and management of the conversation; or it
might be the presentation of some aspect of your
personality, background, or physical features.

You should also recognize the important role
vocal stereotypes play in determining responses.
Whether judges are trying to estimate your occu-
pation, sociability, race, degree of introversion,
body type, or any of various other qualities
about you, they will be very apt to respond to
well-learned stereotypes. These stereotypes may
not accurately describe you, but they will be

influential in the interaction between you and
others. Though research has demonstrated con-
siderable interjudge agreement, so far it is diffi-
cult to identify many personality traits that seem
to be judged with consistent accuracy. Although
it is not uncommon for a person speaking a dia-
lect other than one’s own to be perceived nega-
tively, speakers who try to correct for speech
differences, and severely violate expectations for
their speech, may also be perceived negatively.

Accurate judgments—that is, beyond chance
levels—of age, sex, and status from vocal cues
alone tend to be fairly consistently reported in
the literature. Furthermore, often we are able to
identify specific speakers from voice alone.

Although studies of judgments of emotions
from vocal cues have used different methods, dif-
ferent emotions, listeners with differing sensitiv-
ity, and speakers with differing abilities for
portraying emotions, the results reveal that

CHAPTER 11 THE EFFECTS OF VOCAL CUES THAT ACCOMPANY SPOKEN WORDS 355

people can make quite accurate judgments of
emotions and feelings from wordless vocal mes-
sages. Some indications are that moderately poor
vocal behaviors do not interfere with a listener’s
comprehension of a message, and that if we use
variety in our volume, pitch, and rate, we may
increase our chances of achieving audience com-
prehension in public speeches. Unchanging, con-
stant vocal behavior, particularly at the extremes,
may be less advantageous in achieving audience
comprehension.

Research also suggests that the voice may be
important in some aspects of persuasion. More
fluency, higher rate, more volume, and less halt-
ing speech seem related to intent to persuade and
perceived persuasiveness. We know that the cred-
ibility of the speaker plays an important role in
persuasion in some situations. Some decisions
concerning credibility—such as dimensions of
trustworthiness, dynamism, likableness, and
competency—are made from word-free samples
of the voice alone.

Vocal cues also help us manage the give-
and-take of speaking turns. In turn yielding,
turn requesting, turn maintaining, and turn deny-
ing, we use vocal cues to make our intentions
clear.

We also discussed the important role of hesi-
tations or pauses in spontaneous speech. Such
pauses, ordinarily between 1 and 2 seconds
long, may be greatly influenced by the other
interactant, the topic being discussed, and the
nature of the social situation. Pauses may be the
overt manifestation of time used to make deci-
sions about what to say and how to say it, or
they may represent disruptions in the speech
process.

Taken together, these findings show that vocal
cues alone can give much information about a
speaker, and our total reaction to another indi-
vidual is at least somewhat colored by our reac-
tions to these vocal cues. Our perceptions of
verbal cues combine with other verbal and non-
verbal stimuli to mold conceptions used as a
basis for communicating.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Consider stereotypes you have about the
voice—for example, about high or low voices,
fast or slow voices, voices with different
accents, and so forth. Discuss what truth you
think there is to the stereotypes, based on as
many real examples as you can think of.

2. Analyze the phenomenon of sarcasm in terms
of the voice as well as the other cues that
might be associated with it. Act out a variety
of different comments in a sarcastic manner,
and specify the cues you use.

3. Review the different methods for making
voices free of verbal content by applying
content-masking techniques. Why does the
chapter argue that doing this does not free
the voice of content?

4. Theorists argue that some nonverbal chan-
nels are easier than others to self-monitor
and control. Compare the vocal channel to
the face and body channels. How would

you rank these three channels in terms of
how easy they are to monitor and control?
Why?

5. Spend some time paying special attention to
how you use vocal cues to identify a person’s
characteristics, such as social class, educa-
tion, sexual orientation, or personality.
A good way to do this would be to sit in a
public place and listen to people speaking
whom you are not looking at. Or you could
listen to the television without looking at it.
Analyze the cues you use. Do you have any
sense of whether your judgments are correct?

6. Use the following link to discover how
speech accents vary by region in the United
States. You will be able to test your ability to
identify the region of the United States a
speaker is from on the basis of his or her
accent: www.sporcle.com/games/druhutch/
americanaccents

356 PART IV THE COMMUNICATORS’ BEHAVIOR

COMMUNICATING
IMPORTANT MESSAGES

[ P A R T V ]

Our book concludes with a discussion of how the various nonverbal signals we
have discussed thus far combine as communicators pursue critical and familiar out-
comes. Chapter 12 focuses on how nonverbal signals help us effectively communi-
cate and interpret intimacy, power, involvement, identity, and deception in daily
interaction. Chapter 13 examines nonverbal messages in advertising, politics, edu-
cation, culture, health care, and technology. Together, these two chapters show
the importance of understanding nonverbal behavior in effectively managing life’s
most important tasks.

357

USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN

DAILY INTERACTION

[ C H A P T E R 12 ]

Try to imagine yourself telling a high school student how to be a successful college stu-
dent. Your approach probably would break the process into its component parts:
social life, or dating and partying; intellectual life, which might include studying, tak-
ing notes, and relating to professors; organizational life, that is, what campus and
social groups to join; financial life, or how to get by with little money; and so on. As
informative as your explanations and advice in these separate areas may be, you
know they are not enough. You also need to point out how these parts go together to
create complex situations; for example, a person you desire has agreed to go out with
you, but the date will cost a lot of money, and it will occur the night before a big test.

In the same way, this book is designed to make you more knowledgeable about
human interaction and about nonverbal behavior in particular. The preceding chapters
focused on individual parts of the total system: eyes, face, gestures, physical appearance,
voice, and so forth. In this chapter, we show how these component parts combine to
achieve the various communicative outcomes that we strive for in our day-to-day lives.

To fully understand any process, we continually must look at the isolated parts
that make up the system and at how they combine to achieve the system’s purpose.
Throughout this book, we have made occasional references to multisignal effects—
for example, the role of verbal behavior in judgments of physical attractiveness and
the close interrelationship of gestures with verbal behavior. Edward T. Hall, who
coined the term proxemics, currently used to identify the study of distance and
space, believed we have to consider 19 different behavioral signals to fully under-
stand proximity in human transactions. In this chapter, we look at how various

Nothing in nature is isolated; nothing is without connection to the whole.
—Goethe

359

nonverbal signals help us accomplish the goals of communicating intimacy, communi-
cating status and power, managing the interaction, communicating our identity, and
deceiving others. These outcomes, along with expressing emotion and achieving
understanding, seem to adequately cover the most critical interaction goals.1

COMMUNICATING INTIMACY

Scholars have studied nonverbal signals associated with intimacy from four different
perspectives, and we will discuss each of them: the display behaviors associated with
romantic courtship, courtship behaviors displayed in nonromantic situations, nonver-
bal behaviors that signal closeness with strangers and acquaintances, and nonverbal
behaviors that signal closeness in more well-established intimate relationships.

COURTSHIP BEHAVIOR

We know that some men and women can exude messages such as “I’m available,”
“I’m knowledgeable,” or “I want you” without saying a word. And it appears that
we have the ability to detect these cues in them, especially those given off by men.
Place, Todd, Penke, and Asendorpf (2009) found that observers of speed-dating
videos were able to detect men’s romantic interest in women better than women’s
romantic interest in men.

There are popular books available for those who seek to improve their ability to
attract the romantic attention of others via nonverbal signals (Strauss, 2005). These
signals include a thrust of the hips, touch gestures, extra-long eye contact, carefully
looking at the other’s body, showing excitement and desire in fleeting facial expres-
sions, and gaining close proximity. When subtle enough, these moves will allow
both parties to deny that either had committed themselves to a courtship ritual.

Academic research focusing on flirtation behavior between men and women in
singles bars, hotel cocktail lounges, and bars in restaurants provides some observa-
tional data on the role of nonverbal signals in the courtship process (Grammer,
Kruck, Juette, & Fink, 2000; McCormick & Jones, 1989; Moore, 2010; Perper &
Weis, 1987). Most of the early signaling seems to be performed by women, and
females are the “selectors” who attract attention by displaying subtle nonverbal
signals that indicate a readiness for contact. The most frequently observed

1 These goals have been identified in several sources. See the following: Patterson, M. L. (1983). Non-
verbal behavior: A functional perspective. New York: Springer-Verlag; Siegman, A. W., & Feldstein, S.
(Eds.). (1985). Multichannel integrations of nonverbal behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; and Burgoon,
J. K., & Hoobler, G. D. (2002). Nonverbal signals. In M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of
interpersonal communication (pp. 240–299). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. The goals of communicating
emotion, understanding, and persuasion are not covered in this chapter, because it would duplicate too
much material in other chapters. See especially Chapter 9 and Chapter 11 for the expression of emo-
tion; Chapter 3 and Chapter 7 for achieving understanding; and Chapter 11 for persuasion cues. For
multisignal treatments of persuasion, see Burgoon, J. K., Birk, T., & Pfau, M. (1990). Nonverbal beha-
viors, persuasion, and credibility. Human Communication Research, 17, 140–169; and Burgoon, J. K.
(2002). Nonverbal influence. In J. P. Dillard & M. Pfau (Eds.), The persuasion handbook: Develop-
ments in theory and practice (pp. 445–473). Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage. Also see Brinol, P., & Petty,
R. E. (2003). Overt head movements and persuasion: A self-validation analysis. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 84, 1123–1139.

360 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

behaviors are three types of eye gaze: a room-encompassing glance; a short, darting
glance at a specific person (see Figure 12-1); and a fixed gaze of at least 3 seconds
at a specific other. Other signals include smiling at a specific other person; laughing
and giggling in response to another’s comments; tossing one’s head, a movement
sometimes accompanied by stroking of the hair; grooming, primping, and adjusting
clothes; caressing objects, such as keys or a glass; a “solitary dance,” that is, keep-
ing time to the music with visible movements; and a wide variety of accidental
touching of some specific other. Researchers did not specifically examine the type
of clothing worn in these studies, nor did they examine the tone of voice used;
both are likely to be influential flirtation behaviors. In an effort to determine
whether these behaviors were more likely to occur in a context where signaling
interest in and attraction to others was expected, the researchers observed the
behavior of women and men in snack bars, meetings, and libraries. None of these
contexts revealed anything close to the number of flirting behaviors found in bars.

Are there male behaviors that increase a man’s chances of being selected by a
female in a context like this? A study by Renninger, Wade, and Grammer (2004)
found that females gave preferential attention to males whose nonverbal behavior
signaled positive intentions—interest shown by glances, openness shown by few
closed-body movements—and also displayed their status, shown by maximizing
the surrounding space and unreciprocated touching of other males.

Does courtship proceed according to a defined sequence of steps? Several stud-
ies suggest it does. Nielsen (1962), citing Birdwhistell, described a “courtship

FIGURE 12-1
A woman using her eyes to flirt with a man.

C
o
m
st
o
ck

/P
h
o
to
s.
co

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 361

dance” of the American adolescent. Later, Givens (1978b) and Perper (1985)
described the courtship process in terms of phases. First comes the approach
phase, in which the two people come into the same general area. The second
phase involves acknowledging the other’s attention and turning toward the other
as an invitation to begin talking. Nonverbal behavior during the interaction phase
involves an increasing amount of fleeting, nonintimate touching and a gradually
increasing intensity in gaze. The sexual arousal phase consists of more intimate
touching, kissing, and other affectionate behaviors, and the resolution phase is
characterized by intercourse. Obviously, either person can short-circuit the process
or skip a step in the sequence at any point.

When courtship is successful, sexual activity is likely to occur at some point.
Whereas women use nonverbal cues to start the courtship process, men apparently
are more involved in those steps leading to intercourse (Moore, 2010). However,
the nonverbal cues that men use successfully to start a sexual relationship with
women are not fully understood. Once in a committed relationship, young men are
more likely to initiate sexual activity than young women, and men do so more with
their nonverbal behavior than their verbal behavior (Vannier & O’Sullivan, 2011).

There are several limitations to the research on the courtship process that need
to be addressed:

1. Little is understood about the nonverbal courtship signals or behaviors of
homosexuals. As would be expected, touching, smiling, and eye contact are
used to signal sexual attraction among lesbians (Rose & Zand, 2002). How-
ever, it is not clear how nonverbal cues are used to successfully negotiate the
various stages of courtship, from relationship initiation to later sexual activity
among gays and lesbians.

2. In the 21st century, people are turning more and more to alternative forms of
courtship, such as online dating services (e.g., eHarmony) (Whitty, 2009). Men
and women seeking romance must signal their interest in another person and
respond to the romantic overtures of others over cyberspace where the use of
nonverbal cues is often limited to profile images and emoticons (e.g., smileys).
Two people may be actively courting each other before they have had a chance
to gaze, smile, or touch each other in the real world. It is not known if some
of the traditional steps in the real-world courtship process are altered because
of prior online involvement. For example, would the nonverbal signals of
interest be stronger or weaker for online daters actually meeting each other for
the first time relative to individuals meeting for the first time without having
had any prior online contact?

3. Another limitation concerns the lack of attention to the fluctuating nature of
some nonverbal courtship cues. Research has shown that women’s scent may
change during ovulation, leading to potential changes in men’s courtship-
related behavior. In such studies, men are exposed to samples of women’s
body odor on low- versus high-fertility days (i.e., the women are currently
ovulating). Results show that men rate the high-fertility odors as more attrac-
tive and also experience an uptick in their testosterone levels, both of which
could motivate greater courtship intentions on their part (Gildersleeve,
Haselton, Larson, & Pillsworth, 2011; Miller & Maner, 2010). One intriguing
possibility is that, when women are most fertile, their odor cues might increase

362 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

men’s willingness to pursue them when they are also showing other signs that
they desire interpersonal contact from men. This fluctuating courtship cue
might be beneficial to the extent that it increases women’s chances of reprodu-
cing. In line with this, Haselton, Mortezaie, Pillsworth, Bleske-Rechek, and
Frederick (2007) found that women in relationships appear to dress more
attractively when they are ovulating. Finally, men also may shift their court-
ship behavior, such as their use of language, to appear more attractive when
they are around an ovulating woman (Coyle & Kaschak, 2012).

QUASI-COURTSHIP BEHAVIOR

Scheflen (1965) identified some behaviors he called quasi-courtship behaviors,
meaning they could be used during courtship, but they could also be used to com-
municate affiliative interest of a nonromantic type. Such behaviors may also be
designed to invite affirmations of one’s sexual appeal or attractiveness. Depending
on the context, then, a particular cluster of behaviors could be considered friendly,
flirting, or seductive. Misunderstandings associated with such behaviors are at the
heart of many cases of sexual harassment and date rape. It is not uncommon, for
example, for men to perceive more sexual intent in the friendly behavior of
women than women see in the friendly behavior of men (Abbey & Melby, 1986;
Egland, Spitzberg, & Zormeier, 1996; Koeppel, Montagne-Miller, O’Hair, &
Cody, 1993; Simpson, Gangestad, & Nations, 1996).

Quasi-courtship behavior has some elements of courting, or relating to another
for romantic purposes, but these behaviors are qualified by some other co-occurring
behavior that says, “This is not courtship even though you see some similarities to
that behavior.” In some cases, quasi-courtship behaviors are used to build rapport;
at other times, they are a form of play. The overall message is one of affiliation.
Scheflen (1965) made sound films of numerous therapeutic encounters, business
meetings, and conferences. His content analysis of these films led him to conclude
that consistent and patterned quasi-courtship behaviors were exhibited in these set-
tings. He then developed a set of classifications for such behaviors:

• Courtship readiness defines a category of behaviors characterized by constant
manifestations of high muscle tone, reduced eye bagginess and jowl sag, a
lessening of slouch and shoulder hunching, and decreasing belly sag.

• Preening behavior is exemplified by things such as stroking the hair; putting
on makeup; glancing in the mirror; rearranging clothes in a sketchy fashion,
such as leaving buttons open, and adjusting suit coats; tugging at socks; and
readjusting tie knots.

• Positional cues are reflected in seating arrangements that suggest, “We’re not
open to interaction with anyone else.” Arms, legs, and torsos are arranged to
inhibit others from entering conversations.

• Actions of appeal or invitation include flirtatious glances, gaze holding, rolling
of the pelvis, crossing the legs to expose a thigh, exhibiting the wrists or
palms, protruding the breasts, and others.

Others have discussed Scheflen’s positional cues in terms of who is excluded and
who is included. The positioning of arms and legs in Figure 12-2 clearly suggests
“We’re not open to others” (in a) and “I’m with you—not him” (in b).

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 363

LIKING BEHAVIOR OR IMMEDIACY

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mehrabian (1972b) conducted a number of
experimental studies of what he called immediacy, that is, behaviors that indicate
greater closeness or liking. His research identified the following cluster of signals
that distinguish a positive evaluation of an interaction partner from a negative one:

• More forward lean
• Closer proximity
• More eye gaze
• More openness of arms and body
• More direct body orientation
• More touching
• More postural relaxation
• More positive facial and vocal expressions

A lower frequency of these behaviors, particularly when they are expected, or the
manifestation of opposite behaviors tended to be associated with less intimacy or
even disliking. While confirming the behaviors Mehrabian linked to immediacy,
Ray and Floyd (2006) also found one form of positive vocal expression, vocal vari-
ety, but it is primarily limited to female behavior. Mimicking another’s behavior
may be another way of infusing a greater sense of affiliation in an interaction,
although this would not necessarily be a conscious strategy on the part of the
mimicker (Guéguen & Martin, 2009).

Some combinations of Mehrabian’s immediacy behaviors also have been found
when people are trying to communicate support (Trees, 2000) and politeness (Trees &
Manusov, 1998). And as we note in Chapter 13, a teacher’s immediacy beha-
viors with his or her students have been linked to positive student attitudes, both
toward the instructor and the course, as well as some measures of student learning
(Rodriguez, Plax, & Kearney, 1996).

BEING CLOSE IN CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS

The work by Mehrabian and others provides a useful perspective for understanding
how positive and negative evaluations of interaction partners are associated with
clusters of nonverbal signals. In theory, the greater the number of signals activated,
the more powerful the message. Immediacy cues can instruct us on what signals to

FIGURE 12-2
Positional cues.

g
ag

e
Le

ar
n
in
g

A
ll
R
ig
h
ts

R
es

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ve

364 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

exhibit or look for in our culture during initial interactions with people we do not
know very well. They do not, however, tell us much about how friends or lovers
communicate intimacy. Close relationships to spouses, for example, cannot be
accurately judged by the amount of time spent leaning forward with more direct
body orientation, in close proximity with more eye gaze, and so on (Andersen,
Guerrero, & Jones, 2006; Guerrero & Floyd, 2006; Manusov, Floyd, & Kerssen-
Griep, 1997). Because much of this stereotypical immediacy behavior has presumably
happened early on in these relationships, it needs to be displayed only on certain
occasions once the relationship has become an intimate one. There are times in
established relationships when it is imperative to communicate closeness with
utmost clarity, especially when the relationship has been threatened. At such times,
we are likely to see again the cluster of immediacy signals by the partner or part-
ners who wish to offset any threat to their current level of intimacy. Partners in an
established close relationship also use these stereotyped signals of intimacy when
they want to communicate the closeness of their intimate relationship to outsiders,
who may not understand the subtle and sometimes idiosyncratic ways intimates
communicate their intimacy to each other. But most everyone understands close
proximity, gazing into each other’s eyes, touching, and all the other signals associ-
ated with the stereotyped immediacy cluster.

Time is an important limitation of much of the work on nonverbal behavior
associated with intimacy, affiliation, or liking. Mehrabian’s cluster of immediacy
signals is primarily limited to one-time encounters. Ongoing relationships express
different levels of intimacy over time, often indicating liking and disliking in quick
succession. Clore, Wiggins, and Itkin (1975a, 1975b) realized that the sequencing
of immediacy behaviors may have an important influence. They first collected a
large number of verbal statements describing nonverbal liking and disliking; these
behaviors were limited to a female’s actions toward a male. The large number of
behavioral descriptions was narrowed by asking people to rate the extent to which
the behavior accurately conveyed liking or disliking. Table 12-1 lists the behaviors
in order, rated highest and lowest. An actress then portrayed the narrowed list of
these behaviors in an interaction with a male, and the interaction was videotaped.
To no one’s surprise, viewers of the tape felt that warm behaviors would elicit
greater liking from the male addressee. The interesting aspect of the studies is
what happened when viewers were exposed to a combined tape in which the
actress’s behavior was initially warm but then turned cold, or when her behavior
was initially cold but then turned warm. The reactions to these videotapes were
compared with responses to videotapes showing totally warm or totally cold por-
trayals by the actress. Viewers thought the man on the videotape would be more
attracted to the woman who was cold at first and warm later than he would be to
the woman who was warm for the entire interaction. Further, people felt the
woman whose behavior turned from warm to cold was less attractive to the man
than the woman who was cold during the entire interaction. Why? It probably has
to do with the extent to which the judges felt the male had responsibility for the
female’s change in behavior.

Ironically, intimates in established romantic relationships may exhibit quantita-
tively less nonverbal behavior typically associated with affection and intimacy than
they did in forming the relationship. To establish these relationships usually means

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 365

a high frequency of hugs, kisses, handholding, and so forth; to maintain the rela-
tionship, though, it is often the quality of the act, not the frequency, that is impor-
tant. Perceived sincerity, magnitude of the expression, and perfect timing are
examples of qualitative factors. A hand held out to our significant other at just the
right moment after a fight may be the equivalent of 10 handholdings at an earlier
point in the relationship. The frequency of nonverbal acts of intimacy becomes
important in established relationships when it is necessary to offset a threat to the
relationship.

As close or intimate relationships develop, the nonverbal behavior we see is
likely to change. To communicate a wider range of emotional states, more facial
and vocal blends may occur. Sharply defined territories become more permeable.
Conventionally performed nonverbal acts gradually give way to performances
unique to friends or a couple. The increasing familiarity with auditory, visual, and
olfactory signals creates a condition for greater accuracy and efficiency in commu-
nicating; close female friends, for example, are better able to interpret each other’s
as opposed to a stranger’s low-intensity facial expressions of negative emotions
(Zhang & Parmley, 2011). More than acquaintances, intimates rely on a variety
of nonverbal signals to communicate the same message. Long-term intimates are
also subject to acquiring one another’s facial, postural, and gestural styles, making
them look more alike over time (Zajonc, Adelmann, Murphy, & Niedenthal,
1987). Intimacy brings with it exposure to more personal nonverbal acts and more

TABLE 12-1 BEHAVIORS RATED AS WARM AND COLD

Warm Behaviors Cold Behaviors

Looks into his eyes Gives a cold stare

Touches his hand Sneers

Moves toward him Gives a fake yawn

Smiles frequently Frowns

Works her eyes from his head to his toes Moves away from him

Has a happy face Looks at the ceiling

Smiles with mouth open Picks her teeth

Grins Shakes her head negatively

Sits directly facing him Cleans her fingernails

Nods head affirmatively Looks away

Puckers her lips Pouts

Licks her lips Chain smokes

Raises her eyebrows Cracks her fingers

Has eyes wide open Looks around the room

Uses expressive hand gestures while speaking Picks her hands

Gives fast glances Plays with her hair’s split ends

Stretches Smells her hair

Source: Adapted from Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, p. 493, 1975. Copyright © 1975 by the
American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.

366 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

talk about them. We would also expect more overt evaluations—that is, approval
or disapproval of nonverbal behavior—among intimates than among acquaintances
(Knapp, 1983).

In the next section, we discuss how closeness or intimacy is created by the con-
tributions of both parties. Matching, or reciprocity, in established close relation-
ships has the potential to differ from reciprocity among strangers or
acquaintances. For example, people in established close relationships may not
reciprocate the same kind of behavior, only its equivalent. The extent to which the
behavior is equivalent to another is negotiated by the relationship partners. Thus,
almost any behavior can communicate intimacy in established relationships if the
partners to the relationship agree that it does. Intimates also may respond with
either compensation or reciprocity, but not in the same immediate time frame,
which is more likely with nonintimates.

MUTUAL INFLUENCE

Whatever nonverbal behavior is used to communicate liking or disliking is inevita-
bly the result of what both interactants do. This perspective prompted Argyle and
Dean to propose equilibrium theory in 1965, which maintains that interactants
seek an intimacy level comfortable for both of them. Eye gaze, proximity, smiling,
and topic intimacy, according to this theory, signal the degree of intimacy. If the
nonverbal behavior in one or more of these areas signals an increase or decrease
in intimacy, the other interactant compensates by engaging in behaviors necessary
to achieve equilibrium. For example, if a mere acquaintance looked at you too
much, stood too close, and talked to you about intimate topics, equilibrium theory
would predict that you would increase distance, look away, and try to change the
topic to something less intimate. Although some attempts to test this theory found
support for the predicted compensatory reactions, others found the opposite pat-
tern—reciprocating changes in intimacy rather than offsetting them. This finding
led to Patterson’s (1976) arousal-labeling model of interpersonal intimacy, which
maintained that gaze, touch, and proximity with another person creates arousal.
This arousal state is then labeled either positive or negative. If it is negative—for
example, dislike, embarrassment, or anxiety—the reaction will be to compensate
or offset the behavior. If the arousal state is considered positive, as in liking, relief,
or love, the reaction will be matching behavior or reciprocity. Although this theory
explained why we sometimes compensate for, and sometimes reciprocate, the behav-
ior of our partner, it requires time-consuming cognitive labeling of behavior. In many
encounters, these changes are too quick to involve this kind of mental processing.
This consideration prompted Cappella and Greene (1982) to posit a discrepancy-
arousal theory. This model suggests we all have expectations about other people’s
expressive behavior. Increases and decreases in involvement by one person that vio-
late the other person’s expectations will lead to arousal or cognitive activation. Mod-
erate arousal results from moderate discrepancies from what had been expected;
these are pleasurable, and reciprocity ensues. Large discrepancies from what had
been expected are highly arousing, leading to negative affective response and com-
pensation. Little or no discrepancy from expectations is not arousing, so we would
not expect to see any compensatory or reciprocal adjustments made.

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 367

Burgoon (1978) and her colleagues proposed and tested a model specifically
focused on one element of immediacy: proximity. Since then, this proximity model
of expectancy violation has also been used to study and predict involvement in gen-
eral (Burgoon & Hale, 1988; LePoire & Burgoon, 1994). This model is an impor-
tant contribution toward our understanding of reciprocal and compensatory
reactions, because it relies on both arousal and cognitive responses, and it expli-
cates the important role of how rewarding the communicator is perceived to be.

Burgoon’s expectancy-violations model posits that we all develop expectations
for appropriate proximity in conversations: from our culture, from our personal
experiences, and from our knowledge of specific interactants. When our expecta-
tions for proxemic immediacy are met, arousal is not likely to play an important
role. When violations occur, too far or too close, arousal is heightened, which
directs our attention to the nature of the interpersonal relationship. Interpretations
then are made that guide our response. Interpretations vary, according to
Burgoon’s work, based on the perceptions of whether the violator is rewarding. If
the person is rewarding—that is, if he or she has high credibility, high status, or offers
positive feedback—the violation of expectations will be perceived more positively
than for nonrewarding interactants.

In an elaboration of the expectancy-violations model, Burgoon, Stern, and
Dillman (1995) proposed interaction adaptation theory. This theory assumes that
each interactant enters into a conversation with requirements, expectations, and
desires. Requirements are what we deem absolutely necessary, like being close
enough to hear someone. Expectations are what we anticipate happening based on
the norms, the people involved, and the situation. Desires are our personal goals
and preferences for the interaction. This combination of what is believed to be
needed, anticipated, and preferred is called an interaction position, and it is used
as the standard against which our interaction partner’s behavior is judged. When
our interaction partner’s behavior is closely aligned with our interaction position,
this theory predicts reciprocity of behavior. Reciprocity is also expected when our
partner engages in major deviations that are more positive than our interaction
position. However, major deviations by our interaction partner that are more nega-
tive than our interaction position are likely to make us respond with compensatory
behavior. In one study, romantic partners tended to reciprocate both increases
and decreases in immediacy behaviors from their partners (Guerrero, Jones, &
Burgoon, 2000). Compensating behavior with romantic partners who manifest
decreases in immediacy is most likely when there is a strong desire to change or
neutralize the partner’s decreased intimacy. Otherwise, there seems to be a natural
pull to match it. Keep in mind that interaction is an ongoing, sometimes rapidly
changing, process. For example, we may be surprised by a close friend who
engages in more immediacy behavior than we anticipated or desired, and we may
initially respond with compensatory behavior. But in a split second, our friend
observes our reaction, and he or she begins acting more in line with our expecta-
tions, preferences, and desires. Then our behavior becomes more reciprocal.

What are we to make of these theories that try to predict when we reciprocate
our partner’s behavior and when we engage in compensatory behavior? Obviously,
a simple bottom-line statement cannot take into account the many subtleties and
variations associated with every human transaction, but as a general rule of

368 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

thumb, we would do well to remember the following: With strangers and acquain-
tances, we tend to reciprocate or match their nonverbal behavior when it is per-
ceived as generally congruent with our expectations and involvement preferences
for that person in that situation. We tend to compensate or offset the nonverbal
behavior of strangers and acquaintances when it is perceived as a major violation
of our expectations and preferences for that person in that situation.

COMMUNICATING DOMINANCE AND STATUS

Tired of feeling weak and unimportant? Want to unlock the secrets of those who
have gained authority and power? Want to know how to dominate friends, ene-
mies, and business associates, with a few simple tips?

Sorry, but we cannot tell you how to do that, even though we can understand
the motivation behind the questions. For one, you are likely to feel more unsatis-
fied with an interaction when you have less as opposed to more power than the
other person (Dunbar & Abra, 2010). You can always turn to popular books on
nonverbal behavior for help. Some tips from these books include the following:
Put the desk between you and the person you wish to dominate. Position yourself
physically higher than the other. Sit in a relaxed posture, preferably with your
hands behind your head. Take up as much space as possible. Be sparing with your
smiles. Press your palms firmly downward on the table in front of you. Do not use
speedy or jerky gestures, and keep your thumbs sticking out when you put your
hands in your jacket pockets. Shake hands so your hand is on top of the other per-
son’s hand. The list goes on. Although there could be a germ of truth to all of this,
as a general principle, you should be very skeptical of such glib advice. We can
summarize the research on dominance and nonverbal behavior for you, but there
are no pat answers. The desire for a simple how-to manual is great in this area,
yet the research is much too complex to allow it.

Even the basic concepts are complicated. The terms status, dominance, and
power are often used interchangeably, but many authors have noted their ambigui-
ties and have offered many, and sometimes contradictory, definitions (Burgoon &
Dunbar, 2006; Edinger & Patterson, 1983; Ellyson & Dovidio, 1985; Harper,
1985). Others have developed models in which some of these concepts, such as sta-
tus and dominance, are facets of another overarching interpersonal dimension, such
as power (Schmid Mast, 2010). Anyway, the concepts are certainly related, but not
perfectly: A figurehead leader has status without power, whereas a low-status
member of an organization may wield considerable influence by virtue of personal
contacts, shrewd insight, and social interaction skill.

A person’s status, which may be detected in his or her nonverbal behavior
(Kraus & Keltner, 2009; Shariff & Tracy, 2009), often connotes a socially valued
quality that people carry with them into different situations and interactions,
whereas power and dominance are more likely to be situationally defined. But
dominance can also be seen as a personality trait expressed in nonverbal cues
(Bente, Leuschner, Al Issa, & Blascovich, 2010), in addition to a situational state
in people. The tendency to be subordinate also has been viewed as a stable trait
linked to nonverbal behaviors associated with a lack of confidence and submissive-
ness in men (Sturman, 2011), although situational factors—such as being around

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 369

physically imposing males—might prompt the very same behaviors in men who are
customarily dominant around others in day-to-day life. Some researchers would say
that any kind of aggressive act is dominant, but for others a behavior is dominant
only if it is followed by clear evidence of submission from another individual.

In research, many operational definitions have been used to represent these
various concepts. The following are some illustrations of different contexts in
which dominance may be considered:

• Status: attire, occupation, education, military rank, socioeconomic status, role
• Primacy: initiation of contacts, children’s attempts to gain precedence in play,

giving orders, boasts, not submitting to others, controlling others’ behaviors,
attacks

• Power: control of resources, expertise, experience, autonomy

Other issues complicate this discussion, and these must be considered before
going further. One issue is whether nonverbal behaviors used to try to attain domi-
nance or status may be different from those used by someone who has already
achieved this goal (Argyle, 1988; Heslin & Patterson, 1982). Thus, acquiring and
expressing dominance may not involve the same cues. Recognition of this possibil-
ity may help us sort out contradictory results. For example, research finds that
more gazing is perceived as dominant, and people with more dominant personal-
ities, people who initiate speech more in groups, and people who attain higher
status in groups are also less likely to be the first to break a mutual gaze in
face-to-face interaction (Dovidio & Ellyson, 1985; Kleinke, 1986; Lamb, 1981;
Rosa & Mazur, 1979; Snyder & Sutker, 1977; Thayer, 1969). Many authors have
noted that gaze can carry connotations of threat and coercion, and it is often
assumed that higher levels of gazing are a hallmark of a dominant, powerful, or
high-status individual.

We might think everything adds up—higher status people gaze more—until we
also read that people with dependent personalities tend to gaze more, and that
people made to feel dependent gaze longer at an experimenter (Kleinke, 1986;
Mehrabian, 1972b; Nevill, 1974; Thayer, 1969). Henley (1977) even proposed that
the reason why women gaze at others more than men do is because low-power people
feel the need to monitor others by gazing at them. These apparent contradictions
may be reconciled if we consider that a person of high status or dominance may
feel either secure or defensive, and a person of lower status or dominance may be
struggling to gain status or may be signaling to more powerful others that he or
she is no threat to that powerful other. Nonverbal behaviors such as gaze that peo-
ple use in these different psychologically states could differ radically. For example,
the person who feels out of control but is striving to gain control might engage in
high levels of gaze, whereas the person who accepts a low-status role might avert
his or her eyes so as not to appear threatening. Gaze, touch, and most other non-
verbal behaviors take their meanings in a complex way from the situation and
other co-occurring nonverbal behaviors.

Another important issue to consider is the difference between the impression
made by a particular nonverbal behavior and the actual behavior of people having
different degrees of dominance, power, or status. Here are two examples of why
this perceived-versus-actual distinction matters: A nonsmiling face is sometimes

370 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

perceived as dominant (Keating, 1985), and seeing someone touch another raises
the viewer’s perception of the toucher’s dominance (Major & Heslin, 1982). But
these findings do not necessarily mean that dominant or high-status people actually
smile less and touch more. The evidence is mixed for both, with no overall trends
either way (Hall, 1996; Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005; Hall & Friedman,
1999; Johnson, 1994).

In general, people have well-developed beliefs about how nonverbal behavior is
related to dominance, status, or power—all of which we shall refer to as domi-
nance. Carney, Hall, and Smith LeBeau (2005) asked college students to imagine
interactions among people with differing degrees of dominance, including those
with either more or less dominant personalities and those with either more or less
status in the workplace. The more dominant person was believed to engage in more
“invasive” behaviors, glare and gaze more, interrupt more, stand at a close distance,
touch the other more, touch themselves less, show emotions successfully, stand more
erect, and pay less attention to the other person, among many other perceived domi-
nance behaviors. Another way to examine people’s beliefs is to show them nonverbal
behavior—on videotape, for example—and ask them to rate how dominant the indi-
viduals seem to them. Many studies have done this, as reviewed by Hall, Coats, and
Smith LeBeau (2005). In general, the behaviors that are rated as more dominant con-
cur with those identified more explicitly in the Carney study.

However, for studies that related the expressors’ actual degree of dominance to
their nonverbal behavior, many fewer relations were found on average (Hall,
Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). High actual dominance was associated with more
facial expressiveness, more bodily openness, smaller interpersonal distances, better
posed expression skill, less vocal variability, louder voices, more interruptions,
fewer back-channel responses, fewer filled pauses, and a more relaxed-sounding
voice. At the same time, many other behaviors that are generally believed to be
related to dominance were not observed. Furthermore, studies vary greatly in how
nonverbal behavior is related to dominance and power, sometimes showing diamet-
rically opposite effects. This complex picture may have something to do with the
fact that high and low dominance can have many different emotions and motives
associated with it. Considering this, it may not make much sense to seek nonverbal
cues that are consistently correlated with a person’s dominance. For example, a
person low in dominance who is feeling hostile would smile a very different
amount from a low-dominant person who is feeling the need to please another per-
son. Also the nonverbal behaviors themselves can have ambiguous meanings, and
therefore, it is risky to label a particular behavior as being intrinsically, or always,
dominant or nondominant. For instance, although interrupting others in conversa-
tion can be a dominant behavior (Henley, 1977; Kollock, Blumstein, & Schwartz,
1985; Leffler, Gillespie, & Conaty, 1982; Robinson & Reis, 1989), one should
not take this interpretation for granted. Interruption is sometimes indicative of a
highly involved and participatory conversation and is not necessarily a sign of a
power struggle in progress (Dindia, 1987; Kennedy & Camden, 1983).

Another factor is that people’s expectations will influence how they interpret
dominance cues. In any encounter, a host of expectations is usually going to be
present, including role and gender expectations. Sometimes these expectations will
mesh well with each other; at other times, they will not. Schmid Mast, Hall,

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 371

Cronauer, and Cousin (2011) observed that similar nonverbal and verbal behaviors
were seen as indicators of more dominance in female physicians than in male phy-
sicians. Dominance-related behaviors that are in line with our role expectations of
physicians, such as talking more and speaking with a louder voice, might also be
more in line with our gender role expectations of men than women. Therefore,
observers might conclude that their presence is more diagnostic of high levels of
dominance in female physicians than in male physicians because such cues may be
not expected as much from females than males.

One behavior that has consistently been associated with dominance is the
visual dominance ratio (Ellyson, Dovidio, & Fehr, 1981; Exline, Ellyson, & Long,
1975). Experiments that defined status, power, and dominance in different ways
found that among white college students, the higher status person gazes roughly
the same percentage of the time while listening and speaking, whereas the lower
status person gazes relatively more while listening. When a male and a female inter-
act, and one is made to be the expert or is accorded higher status, that individual,
regardless of sex, will engage in the visual dominance pattern. Although subtle, the
visual dominance ratio does not go unnoticed. When subjects were asked to judge
the relative power or potency of individuals engaging in different amounts of eye
gaze, they gave higher ratings to individuals engaging in relatively more looking
while speaking than to those engaging in relatively more looking while listening.

How much a person talks when in a group is also a very consistent and rather
strong indicator of status or dominance, both in terms of observers’ perceptions
and in terms of actual status or dominance (Schmid Mast, 2002). However, even
here there are exceptions. In an interview situation, the interviewee (lower power)
is likely to talk more than the interviewer (higher power). And in long-standing
groups, sometimes a person with well-established status or power can afford to sit
back and say very little, knowing that others will attend fully whenever he or she
chooses to speak.

Murphy, Driscoll, and Kelly (1999) connected nonverbal dominance to the
likelihood that college males would engage in sexual harassment. These authors
found that males who scored higher on a scale that had previously been shown to
predict sexual harassment engaged in several behaviors that people believe to be
related to dominance: more open body postures, more direct eye contact, and less
direct body orientation. However, nonverbal behaviors that might be construed as
sexual—smiling, head tilting, and flirtatious glances—were not predicted by the
scale, leading the authors to conclude that sexual harassment is more dominance
related than sexuality related.

The relations of nonverbal behavior to dominance have been helpfully summa-
rized by Burgoon and Dunbar (2006) in three major categories: effects of physical
potency and energy (size and strength, expressivity), resource control (command of
space, spatial precedence—who goes first), and interaction control (centrality, phys-
ical elevation, initiation, and nonreciprocation). Many findings from the literature,
including many more not mentioned here, fit within this framework. However, one
must remember that the relation of nonverbal communication to dominance is
complex and does not lend itself to simple, formulaic approaches. Perhaps this is
fortunate, in that it would be troubling if it were truly easy to dominate others
through nonverbal behavior.

372 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

MANAGING THE INTERACTION

Most of the time, we do not engage in much conscious thinking about how to greet
people, request a speaking turn, show our conversational partner we believe what
he or she was saying, or say good-bye. We do these things to structure the interac-
tion—to regulate the processes of coming together, the back-and-forth nature of
speaking and listening, and departure. As we note later, however, these acts are
also rich in content. When such acts are the subject of conscious reflection, we
appreciate the importance of the messages involved.

GREETING BEHAVIOR

Greetings perform a regulatory function by signaling the beginning of an interac-
tion. Greetings also do much more: They convey information about the relation-
ship, reduce uncertainties, signal ways to better know the other, and structure the
ensuing dialogue. Some greeting behavior follows certain conventions, like the
handshake, but greetings take many forms. This was not true, however, in
Germany in the 1930s, when the “Hitler salute” was imposed on the German people.
This form of greeting was designed to signal one thing above all else—the greeter’s
willingness to follow the Nazi party’s rules. It was the expected greeting in every-
day administrative, commercial, political, and social situations, and it was taught
to children at an early age (see Figure 12-3). The salute was a salute to Hitler,
so it played no role in establishing a connection between the interacting parties.

FIGURE 12-3
Children performing the Nazi salute.

H
u
lto

n
A
rc
h
iv
e/
G
et
ty

Im
ag

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 373

Allert (2008) argues convincingly that it wounded the sociability and connectedness
among Germans of that era.

Without the imposition of any particular convention like the Hitler salute, ver-
bal and nonverbal behavior during greetings may signal status differences, such as
those between a subordinate and supervisor; degree of intimacy, as between
acquaintance and lover; or a current feeling or attitude, such as aversion or inter-
est. An emotionally charged greeting may reflect our desired involvement with the
other person, or it may reflect a long absence of contact. Goffman (1971) proposed
an “attenuation rule,” which states that the expansiveness of a greeting with a par-
ticular person will gradually subside with continual contact with that person, for
example, a coworker at an office. Kendon and Ferber (1973) found the following
six stages that characterized greetings initiated from a distance.

1. Sighting, orientation, and initiation of the approach. A greeting, like any other
transaction, requires participation by both interactants. Sometimes both will
agree that acknowledgment is enough. After mutual recognition, an immediate
and sustained withdrawal of attention occurs. Goffman (1963) called this
common action civil inattention. When the greeting continues, we move to
stage 2.

2. The distant salutation. This is the “official ratification” that a greeting
sequence has been initiated and who the participants are. A wave, smile, or
call may be used for recognition. Two types of head movements were noted at
this point: One, the head toss, is a fairly rapid back-and-forward tilting
motion. In the other, the person tended to lower the head, hold it for a while,
and then slowly raise it.

3. The head dip. Researchers have noted this movement in other contexts as a
marker for transitions between activities or shifts in psychological orientation.
Interestingly, this movement was not observed by Kendon and Ferber if the
greeter did not continue to approach his or her partner.

4. Approach. As the greeting parties continued to move toward each other, sev-
eral behaviors were observed. Gazing behavior probably helped signal that the
participants were cleared for talking. An aversion of this gaze was seen just
prior to the close salutation stage, however. Grooming behavior and one or
both arms moved in front of the body were also observed at this point.

5. Final approach. Participants at this stage are less than 10 feet from each other.
Mutual gazing, smiling, and a positioning of the head not seen in the sequence
thus far are now seen. The palms of the hands may also be turned toward the
other person.

6. Close salutation. As the participants negotiate a standing position, we hear the
more stereotyped, ritualistic verbalizations so characteristic of the greeting cer-
emony: “Hey, Steve! How ya doin’?” and so on. If the situation calls for body
contact—handshakes, embraces, and the like—these will occur at this time.
Even though the handshake is very common in the United States, this kind of
greeting behavior is not shared in some other cultures.

The specific nature of greetings varies according to the relationship of the com-
municators, the setting, and the attendant verbal behavior. Our major concern here
is with the nonverbal behavior. The greetings observed by Krivonos and Knapp

374 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

(1975) were frequently initiated by a vertical or sideways motion of the head
accompanied by eye gaze. Smiles, regardless of the degree of acquaintanceship,
were also common. Perhaps the smile serves the function of setting a positive,
friendly initial mood. Eye gaze signals that the communication channels are open
and that an obligation to communicate exists. Other eye-related greeting behaviors
included winks and the eyebrow flash (discussed in Chapter 2). The hands are
often active in the greeting process with salutes, waves, handshakes (Schiffrin,
1974), handslaps, and various emblematic gestures such as the peace sign, the
raised fist, or the thumbs-up gesture. Hands used in greetings have traditionally
been open, but in recent years, the “fist bump” has been used by some in the
United States. When fists lightly touch each other in greeting, the greeters are sig-
naling friendliness by showing that a potentially threatening gesture is being used
in a nonthreatening way. Hands also may be engaged in grooming, such as running
fingers through the hair. Touching may take the form of embraces, kisses, or hit-
ting on the hands or arm. The mouth may smile or assume an oval shape, suggest-
ing a possible readiness for talk.

TURN-TAKING BEHAVIOR

Conversations begin and are eventually terminated. Between these two points,
however, it is necessary to exchange speaking and listening roles, that is, to take
turns. Without much awareness of what we are doing, we use body movements,
vocalizations, and some verbal behavior that often seem to accomplish this turn-
taking with surprising efficiency. The act of smoothly exchanging speaking and lis-
tening turns is an extension of our discussion of interaction synchrony in Chapter 7.
And, because a number of the turn-taking cues are visual, it is understandable that
we might have a harder time synchronizing our exchanges during telephone and
intercom conversations.

Turn-taking behavior is not just an interesting curiosity of human behavior.
We seem to base important judgments about others on how the turns are allocated
and how smoothly exchanges are accomplished. Effective turn-taking may elicit the
perception that you and your partner really hit it off, or that your partner is a very
competent communicator; ineffective turn-taking may prompt evaluations of
“rude” (too many interruptions), “dominating” (not enough turn yielding), or
“frustrating” (the inability to discern turn-taking cues).

The turn-taking behaviors we are about to outline have generally been derived
from analyses of adult, white, and middle- and upper-class interactants. Some of
these behaviors and behavior sequences may not apply to other groups. Blacks,
for example, seem to gaze less than whites during interaction (Halberstadt, 1985).
Other groups may develop speaking patterns with more unfilled pauses, which
may communicate turn yielding to those unfamiliar with the group norm. Children
who are learning turn-taking rules engage in behaviors we rarely see in adults, such
as tugging at their parent’s clothing and hand raising to request a speaking turn.

Speakers and listeners negotiate behaviors associated with turn-taking, but
speakers typically take the most responsibility for signaling two turn-taking beha-
viors: turn yielding and turn maintaining. Listeners typically take the most respon-
sibility for two other types of turn-taking behaviors: turn requesting and turn

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 375

denying. The behaviors associated with these acts are derived from careful analyses
of both audio and visual elements enacted at junctures where interactants exchange
or maintain the speaking turn (Duncan, 1975; Duncan & Fiske, 1977; Wiemann &
Knapp, 1975; Wilson, Wiemann, & Zimmerman, 1984). Any individual behavior
associated with speaker or listener intentions will contribute toward a smooth turn
exchange, but the greater the number of signals, the greater the chances for a
smooth exchange. Note, however, that a familiarity with the rules of interaction is
also an important part of effective turn-taking. For example, before any specific
turn-taking behaviors are observed, most people enter conversations knowing that
speaking roles will generally alternate in an A-B-A-B sequence, and that when one
person finishes speaking, the other is generally obligated to take the conversational
“ball.” Cultures with different conversational rules and specialized systems of com-
munication, such as sign language, require somewhat different turn-exchange pro-
cesses, although congenitally blind and adventitiously blind communicators also
display a range of vocal and bodily behaviors associated with conversational turn-
taking (Magnusson, 2006).

TURN YIELDING To yield in conversation literally means you are giving up your turn
and you expect the other person to start talking. As noted in Chapter 7, the termi-
nation of one’s utterance can be communicated with kinesic markers (see Figure 7-14)
that rise or fall with the speaker’s pitch level. Questions are clearly an indication
that a speaker is yielding his or her turn and expects the partner to respond. If it
is a rhetorical question the speaker plans to answer, we probably will see some
turn-maintaining cues, but if the listener is eager to get into the conversation, he or
she may attempt to answer even a rhetorical question. Vocally, we also can indicate
the end of our utterance by a decreased loudness, a slowed tempo, a drawl on the
last syllable, or an utterance trailer such as “you know,” “or something,” or “but,
uh.” Naturally, an extended, unfilled pause also is used to signal turn yielding.
More often than not, however, the silence becomes awkward, and the speaker adds
a trailer onto the utterance. Body movements that have been accompanying the
speech may also be terminated; for example, illustrative gestures come to rest, and
body tenseness becomes relaxed. Gazing at the other person will also help signal
the end of an utterance. If the listener does not perceive these yielding cues, and
gives no turn-denying cues, the speaker may try to convey more explicit cues, such
as touching the other, raising and holding the eyebrows in expectation, or saying
something like “Well?”

TURN MAINTAINING If, for some reason, the speaker does not want to yield a speak-
ing turn, we are likely to see several behaviors. Voice loudness probably will
increase as turn-requesting signals are perceived in the listener. Gestures probably
will not come to rest at the end of the verbal utterances, creating a gestural equiv-
alent to the filled pause. Filled pauses probably will increase while the frequency
and duration of silent pauses decrease. This minimizes the opportunities for the
other person to start speaking without interrupting or to start speaking simulta-
neously. Sometimes we see a light touching of the other person by the speaker,
which seems to say, “Hold on a little bit longer. I want to make a few more points
and then you can talk.” This touching is sometimes accompanied by a patting

376 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

motion, as if to soothe the impatient listener. In some respects, this touch has the
effect of the speaker putting his or her hand over the mouth of the would-be
speaker—an act not allowed in interpersonal etiquette in our society.

TURN REQUESTING When we do not have the floor and we want to talk, we may
exhibit one or more of several behaviors. An upraised index finger seems to sym-
bolize an instrument for creating a conversational hole in the speaker’s stream of
words, but it also approximates a familiar, formal turn-requesting signal learned
in school—a raised hand. Sometimes this upraised index finger is accompanied by
an audible inspiration of breath and a straightening and tightening of posture, sig-
naling the imminence of speech. In some cases, certain self-adaptors classified as
preening behavior also may signal preparation for a new role. The very act of
simultaneous talking—that is, an extended interruption—will convey your request
for a speaking turn, but to make sure that request is granted, you have to speak
louder than your partner, begin gesturing, and look away as if the turn were now
yours. When the speaker and listener are well synchronized, the listener will antici-
pate the speaker’s juncture for yielding and will prepare accordingly by getting the
rhythm before the other person has stopped talking, much like a musician tapping
his or her foot preceding a solo performance. If the requestor’s rhythm does not fit
the speaker’s rhythm, we might observe some stutter starts—for example, “I …

I … I was….” Sometimes the turn-requesting mechanism consists of efforts to
speed up the speaker, realizing that the sooner one speaker has his or her say, the
sooner the requestor will get his or hers. This same behavior was noted when peo-
ple were anxious to terminate a conversation (Knapp, Hart, Friedrich, & Shulman,
1973). The most common method for encouraging a speaker to finish quickly is
the use of rapid head nods, often accompanied by verbalizations of pseudo agree-
ment such as “yeah” and “mmm-hmm.” The requestor hopes the speaker will
perceive that these comments are being given much too often, and do not follow
ideas expressed logically enough, to be genuine signs of reinforcement.

TURN DENYING Sometimes we receive turn-yielding cues from the speaker, but we
do not want to talk. At such times, we probably maintain a relaxed listening
pose, maintain silence, or gaze intently at something in the surrounding environ-
ment. More often, we exhibit behavior that shows our continuing involvement in
the content of the speaker’s words but denies we are seeking a turn. This might
take the form of smiling, nodding, or shaking the head; completing a sentence
started by the speaker; briefly restating what the speaker just said; briefly request-
ing clarification of the speaker’s remarks; or showing approval by appropriately
placed “mmm-hmm’s,” “yeah’s,” or other noises such as the “clicking” sound
that suggests “You shouldn’t have said that.”

The preceding repertoire of turn-taking behaviors is accurate as far as it goes,
but it can be more complicated. As we noted earlier, the exchange of turns in con-
versation is a jointly negotiated process and not merely the display of one or more
signals associated with yielding, maintaining, requesting, or denying. Sometimes, it
is hard to tell who is playing the speaker role and who is playing the listener. For
example, before a listener displays any requesting behavior, a speaker may provide
signals that essentially project the completion of his or her turn, thereby

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 377

acknowledging a request before it has occurred. Sometimes a listener uses gestures
that simultaneously signal the desire for a turn, project the type of talk to ensue,
and avoid disrupting the speaker’s turn.

Many of the actions listeners perform during a speaker’s turn are called back-
channel responses or feedback (Duncan, 1974; Rosenfeld, 1987; Rosenfeld &
Hancks, 1980). These listener responses help regulate the flow of information and
signal the energy expended in the decoding process. Listener responses can affect
the type and amount of information given by the speaker, the length of his or her
turn, the clarity of the speaker’s content, and the extent to which the speaker com-
municates in a qualified or specific manner. At key points in the telling of a story, a
speaker will look into the face of his or her listener—an act that is likely to pro-
duce a back-channel response such as a nod or an “mmm-hmm” from the listener
(Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002). Back-channel responses by the listener nor-
mally occur at the juncture of phonemic clauses by the speaker. The primary non-
verbal signals are head nods, but postural changes, smiles, frowns, eyebrow flashes,
and laughter (Vettin & Todt, 2004) also occur. Common verbal and vocal back-
channel signals include saying “yeah,” “mmm-hmm,” repeating the speaker’s
words, asking a clarifying question, or completing a sentence for the speaker.
Sometimes the listener provides these signals prior to the phonemic clause juncture,
which may indicate he or she is “ahead” of the speaker. When such signals are
“late,” it is acknowledgment of what is being said but may also indicate a lack of
full understanding. Once again, though, back-channel cues only affect the speaker
if he or she is both motivated to attend to them and motivated to act on the feed-
back given.

LEAVE-TAKING BEHAVIOR

Having managed our way through the conversation thus far, it is now time to ter-
minate it. Leave taking seems to serve three valuable functions in daily interaction
(Knapp, Hart, Friedrich, & Shulman, 1973). The primary regulatory function is
signaling the end of the interaction; that is, immediate physical and/or vocal con-
tact soon will be terminated. Again, specific nonverbal manifestations of these func-
tions vary with the relationship between the communicators, preceding dialogue,
anticipated time of separation, body position—that is, whether the communicators
are standing or sitting—and other factors. Decreasing eye gaze and positioning
one’s body toward the nearest exit were the two most frequent nonverbal beha-
viors observed in this study, and these seem to adequately signal impending
absence. Leave-taking rituals may also summarize the substance of the discourse.
This is usually accomplished verbally, but a good-night kiss may sufficiently cap-
ture the evening’s pleasantries to qualify as a summarizer. Finally, departures tend
to signal supportiveness, which can offset any negativity that might arise from
encounter-termination signals, while simultaneously setting a positive mood for the
next encounter—that is, it sends the message: “Our conversation has ended, but
our relationship has not.” Nonverbal supportiveness may be found in a smile, a
handshake, touch, head nodding, and leaning forward. Because signaling support-
iveness seems so important, we often use the more direct verbal signals, for exam-
ple, “Thanks for your time. I’m glad we got a chance to talk.”

378 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

Head nodding and leaning forward, of course, serve several simultaneous func-
tions. Rapid head nodding toward the end of a conversation reinforces what the
speaker is saying, but it is a rather empty reinforcement, because it also signals a
desire to terminate the conversation. After all, if there is no apparent disagreement
or lack of understanding, the speaker will feel no need to expand on his or her
remarks. And although it is true that people accompany their feelings of liking by
sometimes leaning toward another person, it is also necessary to lean forward to
stand up in order to exit. So, like words, movements have multiple meanings and
serve several functions.

Other nonverbal leave-taking behaviors include looking at a watch; placing the
hands on the thighs for leverage in getting up, which also signals the other person
that such a “catapult” is imminent; gathering possessions together in an orderly
fashion; and accenting the departure ritual with nonvocal sounds, such as slapping
the thighs when rising, stomping the floor with the feet when rising, or tapping a
desk or wall with the knuckles or palm. Finally, researchers noticed that nearly all
the nonverbal variables studied tended to increase in frequency during the last min-
ute of interaction, with a peak during the 15 seconds just prior to standing. This
increasing activity in at least 10 body areas just prior to the termination of an
interaction may suggest why we are so frustrated when our partings “fail,” that is,
when our partner calls us back with “Oh, just one more thing .” It means
we have to go through the entire process of leave taking all over again.

COMMUNICATING OUR IDENTITY

The evening news shows a group of men entering a building. The narrator tells us
that a fugitive sought in several states has been apprehended by the FBI. But did we
need to be told? Even without the narrative, we can tell a great deal about the peo-
ple and what is going on. The bearing and demeanor of some of the men have
“federal agent” written all over them. They are likely to be large and burly and to
wear their hair conservatively short and keep their faces closely shaved; sunglasses
might be worn, and the attire is undistinguished but is likely to be a plain, dark
business suit. They do not smile—indeed, they look completely humorless, erect,
and controlling. How about behavior of the suspected criminal? That person’s pos-
ture is likely to be slumped, head bowed, the face wearing a dismal expression,
with eyes averted from the camera.

The point of this mental exercise is that appearance and behavior reveal signif-
icant information about people’s identities—who they are, or in many cases, who
they would like to be. Identity includes social attributes, personalities, and those
attitudes and roles people regard as self-defining. Thus, being a police officer is a
role likely to be deeply connected to a person’s self-definition, and portraying that
identity appropriately is likely to be important to the person who identifies with
that role. Being an arrested suspect is a more fleeting role but could be integral to
the self-concept in the case of a career criminal. Sometimes it is hard to tell when
behavior reflects transient emotions and roles or is reflecting a more enduring and
deeply felt identity.

People have a great need to convey their identities. In previous chapters, evi-
dence was presented showing how aspects of our identity (e.g., age, sexual

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 379

orientation, occupation, socioeconomic status, culture, personality, psychopathol-
ogy, and criminality) are evident in our dress, physical appearance, and nonverbal
behavior. The communication of identity is, in part, self-validating: We confirm
for ourselves who we are. We also show our identities for the benefit of others—
both those in our group, to build solidarity and to signal belonging, and those not
in our group, to emphasize that they are not one of us. Michael Argyle has sug-
gested that people want to know about others’ social attributes partly to help
maintain the belief that the world is a predictable place. Clues to another’s identity
also help us decide how to act toward that person. But direct, concrete evidence of
others’ identities is sometimes hard to come by, so people rely on cues and gestures
(Argyle, 1988). And these cues are beneficial, for we are surprisingly accurate at
judging important components of other people’s identities. In the case of social
class, for example, a person’s way of dressing tells a great deal, as do other accou-
trements such as pens, briefcases, hairstyles, makeup, and jewelry. Sometimes peo-
ple orchestrate these aspects of their material selves to present an improved version
of the self in the hope of winning acceptance or approval.

PERSONAL IDENTITY

The concept of identity can be construed at both the personal and social levels. Per-
sonal identity consists of a unique configuration of characteristics—personality,
attitudes, tastes, values, and features—that the individual perceives as personally
defining. Nonverbal styles of expression can also be so distinctive that they become
an aspect of identity. Davis and Dulicai (1992) provided an analysis of Adolf
Hitler’s movements and gestural mannerisms during public appearances. Some of
Hitler’s movements included finger wagging (the “scolding Dutch uncle”), forward
stabs, pounding, slicing, crushing fists, and snapping punches, all of which are per-
formed with extreme control and inward stress. Davis and Dulicai summarize the
uniqueness of Hitler’s movement style as follows:

Hitler’s movement is very difficult to imitate. In seminars with people who are sophis-
ticated about movement analysis and performance such as dancers and dance thera-
pists, most cannot even approximate the ways in which he controls the action … and
sustains such a violent intensity throughout a series of batons (pointing gestures).
Those who come close want to stop. It is tortured, painful, relentless, and unyielding
motion. To move this way is to be at war with one’s body and it is notable that, for all
of the aggression that Hitler’s oratory displays, it is this war with himself that stands
out. (p. 161)

Personality is one of the ways we define personal identity, and personality is fairly
consistent across situations and time. Aspects of personality may be associated
with various appearance-related cues or behavioral cues that are apparent to
others. We understand that some people are more susceptible to criminal behavior
than others. It has been theorized that the male sex hormone, androgens, may play
a role in criminality due to its effects on brain development (Ellis, 2003). Impor-
tantly, androgens affect physical development, too, leading to the possibility that
there may be appearance-related cues that suggest a high level of exposure to
androgens, and thus, a greater susceptibility to criminal, especially violent, conduct.
Indeed, Ellis, Das, and Buker (2008) found that self-reports of violent criminality

380 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

were related to more masculine mannerisms and bodily features, a deeper voice,
and more body hair among college-aged males and females. Nonverbal behaviors
also provide clues to aspects of a person’s personality. Stillman and Maner (2009),
for example, found that the eyebrow flashes and glances toward a male confederate
were valid cues of a woman’s sociosexual orientation (i.e., how much emotional
commitment she needs before engaging in sexual activity, from a little to a lot).

An important question is how beliefs about behavior-trait associations differ
from the actual associations. People may have beliefs that are not substantiated
when observational research is done. A useful way of conceptualizing this question
is the “lens model,” which we have mentioned in other chapters. As shown in
Figure 12-4, the lens model encompasses the relation of both perceived and actual
behavior to a criterion, such as a personality trait, as well as the relation between
the perceived and actual trait—that is, the degree to which observers can judge
which targets have the trait in question.

Table 12-2 summarizes the lens-model results of Gifford’s (1994) study of 60
undergraduates videotaped in conversation. Over 20 nonverbal behaviors were
coded from these tapes and then related to both the participants’ self-descriptions
of personality and the impressions of personality made by observers who watched
the tapes with the sound turned off. Table 12-2 shows that for the trait
“ambitious-dominant,” there were associations between nonverbal behaviors and
the personality ratings made by observers. However, actual ambition-
dominance—that is, the self-ratings by those who appeared on the tapes—related
to fewer behaviors, only two of which appeared on the list of behaviors correlated
with observers’ ratings. This suggests that observers, who were also college stu-
dents, had a correct naive theory as far as these two cues were concerned but held
misconceptions for all the others shown on the other side of the table; in other
words, they thought that the more ambitious-dominant people would display these
cues, but they were wrong. The observers did, however, extract enough information to
form a significantly accurate overall impression of the targets’ ambition-dominance;

B C

Stimulus Quality 5

Stimulus Quality 4

Stimulus Quality 3

Stimulus Quality 2

Stimulus Quality 1

Personality
Judgment

Personality

FIGURE 12-4
A diagram of a judgment lens model of social perception.

g
ag

e
Le

ar
n
in
g
A
ll
R
ig
h
ts

R
es

er
ve

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 381

possibly, they based their impression on additional cues that were not measured, as
well as the two they used correctly. Other lens-model studies relating a wide array of
nonverbal cues to perceived and actual personality traits have been done by Berry
and Hansen (2000), Borkenau and Liebler (1995), Lippa (1998), and Murphy, Hall,
and Colvin (2003).

Another characteristic central to our identity is our sense of how intelligent we
are. There can be no doubt that intelligence, and the perception thereof, is a thing
of abiding importance to people in modern society. All of us have at some point,
and perhaps often, worried about how we compare to others in intelligence and in
other characteristics that are related, or perceived to be related—SAT scores, col-
leges attended, and so on—and whether others will think we are as smart as we
would like them to. In daily life, we do a great deal of assessing others’ intelligence
as well as projecting our own as we would like others to see it.

Murphy, Hall, and Colvin (2003) asked what cues people look for when judg-
ing others’ intelligence and whether those cues are correct. When making intelli-
gence ratings based on 1-minute clips of conversational behavior, perceivers
associated many cues with higher intelligence, including having a pleasant speech
style, talking with the hands, sitting up straight, talking fast, looking at the other
person while speaking, and behaving in a responsive manner. However, only a
few of these were valid cues to higher intelligence, most notably looking more at
the other person while speaking.

SOCIAL IDENTITY

Race and gender are among the most salient aspects of social identity—that is, our
identification with social and cultural groups—so it is not surprising that research
has turned up nonverbal communication differences associated with these catego-
ries. It is, of course, an oversimplification to think of these categories as though
everyone in them behaves the same. Stereotypic thinking promotes many judgment
errors and undesirable behaviors. Obviously, a woman/man may express her/his
womanhood/manhood differently at home than at the office—let us hope they do.
Similarly, a minority student may have a different behavior style when with friends

TABLE 12-2 PERCEIVED AND ACTUAL CORRELATES OF AMBITION-DOMINANCE

Correlated with Perceived
Trait Only

Correlated with Both
Perceived Trait and
Actual Trait

Correlated with
Actual Trait Only

Head, trunk, and legs more
directly facing another

More gestures More leg lean

Head more tilted back Legs more extended Less object manipulation

Arms less wrapped

More self-touching

More headshaking

Source: Adapted from R. Gifford (1994), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, p. 401.

382 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

of the same social group than in a classroom filled with students from the majority
group. Also remember that distinctions such as male or female and black or white
are often confounded with other distinctions, such as social class and status. Fur-
thermore, each individual has numerous social identities: a person might be a
woman and a Hispanic and a member of the middle class. Furthermore, each cate-
gory of social identity is often multidimensional and ambiguous. Many people can-
not easily describe the complexity of their racial, ethnic, and gender identities.
Thus, it can be unclear what identity factors explain a given nonverbal behavior.

At various places in this book, we have documented differences between the non-
verbal behavior of blacks and whites in the United States. Although such differences in
nonverbal behavior have not been studied extensively, there appear to be differences—
at least in the limited populations observed—in style of walking, interpersonal dis-
tance, orientation, gaze, and conversational regulators (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall,
1989; Halberstadt, 1985; Johnson, 1972). It is important to note that some of the
findings may pertain only to subgroups and not to the larger group, and some findings
may change over time. For example, a distinctive walk that may be evident in urban
black teenagers is probably not the same walk that would characterize black school-
teachers or executives. Keeping this in mind, research suggests that among adults, the
distance maintained between interactants is typically greater, and the body orientation
less direct, among African Americans than among European Americans. As an inter-
esting contradiction to this pattern of reduced sensory involvement, studies have
found African Americans to touch more than European Americans do.

Some research suggests that African Americans gaze less than European
Americans during conversation and gaze especially little with authorities, whereas
among European Americans, gaze often increases with authorities. Erickson’s
(1979) analysis of films of conversations pointed to distinct African-American and
European-American norms for conversational turn-taking and signaling attention.
African-American speakers used less subtle and less frequent cues indicating that a
listener should give a “listener response,” a signal that the listener is paying atten-
tion. But, as listeners, African Americans employed listener responses that were
more subtle and likely to be missed by a speaker from outside that group. Erickson
suggested that these differences could lead to a situation in which a European-
American speaker concludes an African-American interactant is either not listening
or not understanding. The European American then repeats himself, which is
perceived as “talking down” by the African American. Although Erickson found
evidence that African-American subjects displayed bicultural competence, a kind of
nonverbal bilingualism, there remained differences in conversational behavior.

In mixed-racial interactions, each person may deliberatively or unwittingly
communicate his or her racial identity to the other. A person’s choice of clothes or
hairstyle may signal his or her identification with a particular racial group, whereas
his or her interpersonal distance to another may be done out of force of habit. Peo-
ple may use such cues to categorize others into a specific racial group. Their non-
verbal reactions to such categorizations may betray their attitude or unease
toward members of that racial group (Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974). Toosi,
Babbitt, Ambady, and Sommers (2012) examined over 40 years’ worth of research
on same- and mixed-racial (generally black and white) interactions and found that
individuals tended to show more friendly nonverbal behavior toward each other

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 383

when they were interacting with a member of their own (versus a different) racial
group. The more negative-looking behaviors in cross-race interactions often have
ambiguous meaning, alternatively as reflections of bad feeling or as reflections of
uncertainty and anxiety. Fortunately, attitudes toward other racial groups can
improve via greater interracial contact, and thus signs of nonverbal unease or neg-
ativity have and hopefully will continue to decrease over time.

Gender differences in nonverbal behavior also reflect the different identities of
males and females, and nonverbal differences appear early in life. Gender roles are
collections of attitudes, behaviors, and traits deemed desirable for each sex. In our
society, the male gender role, in stereotype, is exemplified by autonomy, assertive-
ness, dominance, and task orientation; for women, gentleness, empathy, and inter-
personal orientation are stereotypical (Cross & Madson, 1997). To a great extent,
nonverbal differences correspond to these role prescriptions. It is clear even from
everyday observation that social displays of sexual identity and gender role have
special importance. Thus, we may want to show the world not only that we are
men or women but that we behave as men or women are expected to behave. We
discuss some of the findings from research next, and other differences have been
discussed earlier in the book. Compared to women, men:

• Have less skill in sending and receiving nonverbal, especially emotional, cues
• Are less likely to notice or to be influenced by people’s appearance and non-

verbal behavior
• Have less expressive faces and use fewer expressive gestures
• Smile and laugh less
• Look at others less
• Keep greater distances from others

The nature of gender differences in interpersonal touching has sparked much
debate. When it comes to same-gender touch, the evidence is rather clear that het-
erosexual men are particularly averse to touching other men, except in certain pre-
scribed settings such as team sports, both as part of the game and as expressions of
team spirit. Both self-reported and observational data indicate that same-gender
touching is avoided by men, at least in the United States, but is quite welcome by
women. One hypothesis for men’s avoidance is homophobic attitudes and the fear
that touching will be seen as homosexual. This might explain why they are less
likely to comply with the request of a man who has touched them (Dolinski,
2010). Moreover, research by Roese, Olson, Borenstein, Martin, and Shores
(1992) found that among men, those with the least stated liking for same-gender
touching had the highest scores on a homophobia scale with items such as “Homo-
sexuality is a sin and just plain wrong” and “Homosexual behavior disgusts me.”
In a second study, college students who were observed to engage in less same-
gender touching in a cafeteria had stronger homophobic attitudes when surveyed
by researchers, and this was found to be true for both men and women.

Studies on opposite-gender touching have been more widely debated (Henley,
1977; Stier & Hall, 1984), but there is some concurrence that when the individuals
are young adults, or the touch is with the hand, or the arm is put around the other
person, males do take the touching initiative. However, the woman is more likely
to touch the man than vice versa when the couple is in their 40s or older, when

384 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

the touch is either brief or involves linking arms or handholding (Hall & Veccia,
1990), and when the couple is married rather than dating (Guerrero & Andersen,
1994; Willis & Briggs, 1992).

Although exhaustive research over the life span has not been conducted, there
is reason to believe that nonverbal gender differences are especially pronounced in
adolescence and the college years, when gender roles are especially salient. For
example, the gender difference in smiling is not evident in young children (Dodd,
Russell, & Jenkins, 1999; Hall, 1984); it peaks in adolescence and decreases after
that, though never completely (LaFrance, Hecht, & Levy Paluck, 2003). Most non-
verbal gender differences have been investigated among college students observed
in a laboratory situation, but evidence abounds from more naturalistic settings as
well. For example, male physicians interacting with patients engage in less smiling,
nodding, and back-channeling (saying “mmm-hmm”) than female physicians do
(Hall, Irish, Roter, Ehrlich, & Miller, 1994).

The nonverbal behaviors that women engage in more than men suggest more
openness, sensitivity, and involvement. In some circumstances, these traits may work
to women’s disadvantage (Henley, 1977). Their smiling may make them appear
weak, “too nice,” or even insincere; their higher levels of gazing may connote depen-
dency; and their nonverbal style may not be distant or threatening enough to win
automatic respect in the professional world. However, if this is the case, we would
argue that the problem is with the stereotypic beliefs rather than with the behavior
per se. Furthermore, it could also be argued that it is only because of cultural blinders
that we tend to see men’s behavior as “normal” and women’s behavior as different or
in need of correction. Because most evidence suggests that the kinds of nonverbal skills
and behavior shown more by women are an asset in daily life, one could make the
case that men’s nonverbal behavior style and skills are a handicap in social relations.

Women’s greater emotional expressivity is consistent with the stereotype that
women are more emotional than men. However, several studies have found that
self-reports of the intensity of emotional experience do not differ when assessed
concurrently with the experience (Kring & Gordon, 1998), while studies that ask
about emotional intensity in general or retrospective terms find a consistent gender
difference in self-reported emotional intensity (Diener, Sandvik, & Larsen, 1985).
The latter difference may be biased by the influence of gender stereotypes on self-
ratings; alternatively, women may do more subsequent thinking and processing of
emotional experiences, which amplifies their intensity with the passage of time. At
any rate, although it is clear that women are more emotionally expressive than men,
it is not clear that they are also more emotional in terms of their inner experience.

Sometimes the claim is made that women are false in their nonverbal expres-
sions, for example, that their smiles are constant and insincere. An early study,
cited often, found that women tended to smile even when their words did not con-
tain congruently happy messages, but men’s smiles were more in accord with their
words (Bugental, Love, & Gianetto, 1971). Bugental called women’s behavior
perfidious. The label is derogatory, but if this pattern exists, it could certainly
have social impact. However, a subsequent study that tested this same hypothesis
found exactly the opposite pattern, with women being more consistent across
channels than men were (Halberstadt, Hayes, & Pike, 1988). Clearly, it is premature
to conclude that inconsistent displays are found mainly in women.

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 385

As with race and other group differences, male and female nonverbal differ-
ences are not large in absolute terms, and we should not overestimate the size of
these differences. Though some of them are large relative to other psychological
differences between the sexes, they are still of modest magnitude, and even the larg-
est nonverbal gender difference shows more similarity than difference between
males and females. Stated differently, a great deal of overlap exists in the male and
female repertoires. Nevertheless, there is a striking correspondence between peo-
ple’s beliefs about these differences and the actual magnitude of such differences
(Briton & Hall, 1995; Hall & Carter, 1999), which strongly suggests that people
can see these differences in daily life. Of course, societal beliefs can also translate
into self-fulfilling prophecies, such that men and women come to have the beha-
viors that others expect them to have (Zanna & Pack, 1975).

The gender differences are also not invariant. In fact, they vary considerably as a
function of setting and context, including the nature of the situation, the affective
tone of an interaction, other nonverbal behaviors, and the characteristics of the
other person involved (Aiello & Aiello, 1977; Hall & Halberstadt, 1986; LaFrance,
Hecht, & Levy Paluck, 2003; Putnam & McCallister, 1980). As examples of this
variation, the gender difference in gazing is much more evident when people are
within conversational distance of one another than when they are standing farther
apart. The tendency for women to smile more than men is greatest when they know
they are being observed, when they are interacting with others, when they are not
very familiar with the other people in the interaction, when the circumstances make
them feel more anxious, and when they are Caucasian. Finally, people act in the
most sex-stereotypic ways when with others of their own sex; in opposite-sex
encounters, males and females often accommodate to the other’s norms. So, for
example, gazing is highest between females, lowest between males, and intermediate
in male–female interaction (Hall, 1984; Vrugt & Kerkstra, 1984). The fact that non-
verbal gender differences vary with these contextual factors demonstrates that we
still have a great deal to learn about the origins of male and female behavior.

Interpretations of sex differences in gaze have concentrated on the competing
themes of affiliation and warmth versus dominance and power. Because nonverbal
cues do not typically have fixed meanings, this ambiguity is difficult to resolve.
Smiling and gazing, for example, can have multiple meanings. However, the
visual-dominance ratio described earlier in this chapter is less ambiguous than
some other nonverbal behaviors, and it has been linked to differences in status,
power, dominance, or expertise in a variety of studies, but to our knowledge no
one has suggested that it varies with the warmth or friendliness of the interaction.
Dovidio, Brown, Heltman, Ellyson, and Keating (1988) performed two experi-
ments involving mixed-gender pairs of interactants in which the relative status of
the interactants was experimentally manipulated. When a status difference was cre-
ated between the interactants, the party having the higher status—whether that
party was male or female—had a higher visual-dominance ratio, consistent with
research already described. However, when status was not manipulated, men
behaved in the visually dominant way that high-status communicators display, and
women showed the less visually dominant behavior typical of people in low-status
roles. This finding suggests a connection between dominance and gender differ-
ences in gazing patterns.

386 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

The well-established finding that women score higher on tests of judging the
meanings of nonverbal cues has also been theorized to stem from dominance and
status differences (Henley, 1977). In fact, little is known about why females are so
often better at decoding nonverbal cues, despite much debate and discussion (Hall,
1984; Henley, 1977; Noller, 1986). So far, little evidence exists for the dominance-
status interpretation (i.e., that women are more accurate because they are lower in
dominance-status; Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005; Hall, Halberstadt, &
O’Brien, 1997). Noller (1986), like most other social psychologists, believes that
females are socialized to be expert in various aspects of social interaction, including
knowing the general social rules governing interpersonal relations, the general dis-
play and decoding rules appropriate to various situations, and the more specific
rules governing the use of nonverbal cues in particular. It is society’s expectation
not only that females will be attuned to social interactions, but also that they will
be responsible for how social interactions proceed. These pressures and expecta-
tions could easily produce the skill differences documented in research.

Similarly, only very limited support exists for dominance-status interpretations
for gender differences in other nonverbal behaviors (J. A. Hall, 2006). Smiling, in
particular, has been hypothesized to vary with dominance and status, such that the
lower-power person smiles more, and it has been suggested that differences in dom-
inance and status can explain why women smile more than men. However,
research on smiling relative to dominance and status finds no overall connection
between the two (Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). It is likely that the amount
of smiling shown by people with different degrees of dominance or status depends
on other factors, such as how pleasant, ingratiating, hostile, nervous, or preoccu-
pied they are, not on dominance and status per se.

DECEIVING OTHERS

One of the most common communicative outcomes we seek is to persuade or influ-
ence others. In previous chapters, we cited research aimed at identifying the contri-
butions of physical attraction, distance, eye gaze, touch, and vocal cues to
perceptions of authoritativeness (expertise) and character (trustworthiness)—the
two central factors in the persuasive process. But the area of influence that has cap-
tured the attention of the American public and university researchers the most in
recent years is the act of lying. Four major questions drive the research in this area:

1. What behaviors distinguish liars from truth tellers?
2. What cognitive and emotional processes are at work during acts of lying?
3. How accurate are we at detecting lies?
4. What conditions enhance our ability to detect lies?

Identifying behaviors exhibited by liars has, until recently, focused predominantly
on nonverbal signals. It was incorrectly assumed that liars could manipulate their
verbal behavior easily but could not or would not control their nonverbal behavior
to the same extent, thereby revealing they were lying. Ekman and Friesen (1969a)
believed it was more likely that clues to deception would be found in the area of
the feet and legs first, the hands next, and the face last. Because the face is more
likely to be controlled by the liar, Ekman and Friesen argued that facial clues

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 387

would be more difficult to detect. Ekman and Friesen (1975), however, indicated
several ways the face reveals deception, such as micromomentary expressions and
the timing and location of the expression. For example, smiles made when people
were trying to cover up negative feelings included traces of muscular actions associ-
ated with disgust, fear, contempt, or sadness (Ekman, Friesen, & O’Sullivan,
1988). Moreover, attempts to suppress particular facial movements, such as eye-
brow movements and smiles, are not entirely successful by those who are lying
(Hurley & Frank, 2011).

Attempts to develop a list of behaviors that distinguish liars from truth tellers
have always faced the problem that there are many types of lies—prepared or not,
short answer or extended narrative, interrogated or not—and many motivations
for lying, such as to protect oneself or someone else, to get out of an obligation or
promise, or to avoid conflict. For the lies that occur most in our daily interaction,
people report they are not serious, are largely unplanned, and do not make them
fearful of being caught (DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996). In
addition, no behavior that occurs while lying is completely unique to lying (Buck,
1984; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). Ekman (1992) put it this way:
“There is no sign of deceit itself—no gesture, facial expression, or muscle twitch
that in and of itself means that a person is lying” (p. 80). Still, attempts have been
made to examine the behavioral indicators of lying regardless of how lying was oper-
ationalized. A meta-analysis of 120 studies performed by DePaulo and colleagues
(2003) identified the following profile for liars when compared with truth tellers:

• Liars are less forthcoming. As a result, they are likely to manifest shorter
responses and less elaboration; they appear to be holding back, speak at a
slower rate, and have longer response latencies.

• Liars tell stories that seem less plausible and with fewer details. Thus, stories
by liars are likely to have more discrepancies and to be less engaging—that is,
they contain more word or phrase repetitions. They tend to be less direct; use
fewer self-references; are more uncertain and less fluent with more hesitations,
errors, and pauses; and tend to be presented in a less active manner with fewer
gestures.

• Liars make fewer spontaneous corrections while telling their stories and are
less likely to admit they cannot remember something.

• Liars make a more negative impression. Overall, they seem less cooperative,
make more negative statements, and use more words denoting anger and fear.
They are also more likely to use offensive language, to complain more and
smile less, and they seem more defensive.

• Liars are more tense. Their voices are likely to have a higher pitch, their pupils
are more likely to be dilated for a longer period of time, and they are more
likely to exhibit fidgeting.

In another meta-analysis, Hartwig and Bond (2011) applied the lens model to the
detection of deceit and found that people seem to be lying when “they sound uncertain
and appear indifferent and ambivalent” or “they provide implausible, illogical
accounts with few details, particularly few sensory details” (p. 654). Importantly,
they suggest that deceit is not betrayed in a single behavioral cue, but rather seems to
be tied to the global impressions people form when they are around liars.

388 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

One behavior many people expect of liars is a sharp decrease in eye gaze.
Although this behavior may occur with some liars in some situations, it has become
so stereotypically associated with lying in this culture that liars often consciously
seek to control it. Sometimes, of course, the ability to display a normal pattern of
gaze is deficient, and the liar ends up staring. And too much gazing signals that
something is wrong, just as too little gazing does.

Although it is difficult to find behaviors that always characterize liars, it is eas-
ier to identify behaviors associated with key underlying cognitive and emotional
processes that occur during lies (Knapp, Cody, & Reardon, 1987). The two most
commonly studied processes are arousal and cognitive difficulty. Nonpathological
liars who know they are telling a high-stakes lie, and who know there will be
important consequences if they are caught, are likely to experience one or both of
these states. Nonverbally, arousal is indicated by pupil dilation, blinking, speech
errors, and higher pitch. Verbally, we might see excessive responses—for example,
“Why do you always have to question me?!”—in response to a seemingly natural,
nonthreatening question. Curt replies, or extremes in language usage, are also seen.
Obviously, people experience arousal for reasons other than lying, but aroused
truth tellers and aroused liars do not seem to behave the same. Liars commonly
experience cognitive difficulty as well. This may be manifested in speech hesita-
tions, shorter responses, pupil dilation, speech errors, incongruous verbal and non-
verbal behavior, and a lack of specific references.

Two other processes typical of the high-stakes lie involve attempted control
and the display of an affective state. Less spontaneous, or what seems to be
rehearsed behavior, would indicate attempted control. In 1991, military prisoners
of war who were forced to make anti-U.S. statements on Iraqi television were
reportedly trained prior to their capture to speak and behave in a wooden and
mechanical manner to indicate they were lying. Indirect responses to direct ques-
tions also may signal an attempt to control one’s behavior. The expected affective
state is one of anxiety commonly reflected in fidgeting, stammering, and the like.
But other emotional states are also relevant to deception. Anger is very common
and is reflected in liars’ tendencies to be negative and disaffiliative in their
responses. Some liars feel enough guilt that looking away for long periods or cover-
ing their eyes with their hands is not uncommon. “Duping delight,” the pleasure
one may experience in deceiving another, occurs sometimes as well and may be
reflected in a smile at the wrong time or a sneer of contempt.

Given what we have said about the nature of liar behavior, it should be no sur-
prise that without the aid of any mechanical equipment such as a polygraph, peo-
ple are only about 50 to 60 percent accurate in identifying whether strangers are
lying to them or not. Since accuracy judgments usually combine the accuracy of
people judging truthful and deceptive speakers, and since truthful speakers are usu-
ally judged with a much higher degree of accuracy, our ability to detect liars may
be well below 50 percent (Levine, Park, & McCornack, 1999). Most studies asses-
sing accuracy are based on observer judgments, not on the observations of those
who are actually participating in the conversation. Some evidence suggests that
participants are less accurate than observers.

Enhancing our ability to detect deceit is not a simple matter of developing a
guidebook of nonverbal cues to lying. We have to think about the person who is

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 389

doing the lying, the nature of the lie, the characteristic of the person who is being lied
to, and the information available to or used by the person trying to detect deceit.

1. You should recognize that some people are better liars than others (Vrij,
Granhag, & Porter, 2010). If an individual has a long history of lying, he or
she might be well practiced in executing a lie even under the most trying of
circumstances, such as an interrogation.

2. You no doubt understand that lies run the gamut from innocent white lies
(e.g., “No, those pants don’t make your butt look big”) to life-threatening
ones (e.g., a businessperson who, in the interest of profit, deliberately conceals
his or her company’s practice of dumping a dangerous chemical into the water
supply from a fact-finding panel). DePaulo, Kirkendol, Tang, and O’Brien
(1988) believe liars are more likely to reveal themselves nonverbally when the
lie is very important to them. They called this the motivational impairment
hypothesis. Burgoon and Floyd (2000), however, found that liars who were
highly motivated to lie often performed it more skillfully and were less apt to
be uncovered through their nonverbal behavior. Lastly, Warren, Schertler, and
Bull (2009) suggest that people may not be able to conceal emotionally arous-
ing information from others as well as nonemotionally arousing information.

3. Although there is evidence that some people, such as police interrogators, may
overestimate their lie-detection skills (Elaad, 2009), some people are indeed better
lie detectors, including professionals who are highly motivated to detect deception
and reputed to be good detectors (Ekman, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 1999), people
with aphasia who have poor language skills (specifically, when the detection
process involves judging emotion) (Etcoff, Ekman, Magee, & Frank, 2000),
people with a high need for cognition (i.e., they enjoy tasks requiring more
thinking) (Reinhard, 2010), and people who focus on vocal cues as a good source
of information about deception (Anderson, DePaulo, Ansfield, Tickle, & Green,
1999; Zuckerman, Spiegel, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1982). Lastly, people who
have received feedback during training and practice may get somewhat better
at detecting deception (deTurck, 1991; deTurck, Feeley, & Roman, 1997).

4. Analyzing both verbal and nonverbal signals may be more likely to reveal a
liar than observing either type of signal alone (Vrij, Edward, Roberts, & Bull,
2000). And it may be that decoders need a sufficient amount of time seeing
these cues in order to make more accurate judgments of truthfulness (Masip,
Garrido, & Herrero, 2009).

Recently, attention has shifted to thinking about ways of making nonverbal
cues to deception more apparent to observers. This direction makes sense for two
reasons: Cues to deception are not that strong in the first place and, as we men-
tioned earlier, lying appears to be more cognitively demanding (for most people)
than telling the truth (Hartwig & Bond, 2011; Vrij, Granhag, Mann, & Leal,
2011). Thus, additional cognitive demands could deplete the already more taxed
cognitive resources of liars, leading them to have less control over possible diagnos-
tic cues to their deception. As evidence of this, Vrij, Mann, Leal, and Fischer
(2010) found that more cues to deception were available in liars when they were
instructed to maintain eye contact with the person they were lying to (an additional
cognitive demand), and that this enabled observers to better identify them as liars.

390 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

With all this attention given to our ability to observe liar behavior, it should be
noted that this is not the way most people find out they have been lied to. Instead,
they receive information about the lie from others, they find physical evidence
related to the deception, or the liar confesses (Park, Levine, McCornack, Morrison, &
Ferrara, 2002).

Although some may bemoan the fact that our detection rate is not higher,
others believe it would be undesirable to get too accurate at detecting lies. The abil-
ity to withhold information and mislead, it is argued, is just as crucial to the well-
being of our society as disclosure, openness, and honesty (Knapp, 2008). This point
was taken to comic extreme in the movie, The Invention of Lying. The main char-
acter, played by Ricky Gervais, lives in a world in which people do not withhold
their thoughts and feelings, no matter how rude or crude they may be. Once he dis-
covers how to lie, he is able to dupe others because they assume everything he says
must be true. Although never realizing that others can lie to you would be detri-
mental, always being suspicious of others would not be much better. The TV pro-
gram, Lie to Me, plays upon the notion that nonverbal behavior is the key to
catching liars. However, in a study by Levine, Serota, and Shulman (2010), those
who watched the program were subsequently worse at detecting deceit or more
likely to think that someone who was telling the truth was being deceitful, suggest-
ing that their suspicion of others had been unnecessarily aroused by the program.

Are machines any better than human beings at detecting lies? Polygraphs,
which measure various physiological indicators, such as heart rate and blood pres-
sure, are sometimes reported to detect liars with more accuracy than most human
observers. But because they too often identify truth tellers and liars incorrectly,
they are barred as courtroom evidence in most states (Robinson, 1996; Vrij,
2000). Furthermore, polygraphs can be beaten. In one study, people whose lies
were detected at about 80 percent were given either biofeedback or relaxation
training. After they were better able to control their bodily responses, the accuracy
of the polygraphs was reduced to about 20 percent (Corcoran, Lewis, & Garver,
1978). In addition to polygraphs, many products on the market claim to measure
vocal microtremors. Like the polygraph, these devices are based on the assumption
that liars experience anxiety, and behaviors associated with anxiety will identify
them. According to Hollien (1990), these voice-stress analyzers accurately identify
liars at slightly above chance—that is, not any better than most human beings could
do on their own. A device that measures brain wave responses to crime-relevant
words or pictures presented on a computer screen, called brain fingerprinting, claims
to have been 100 percent accurate in identifying liars in 120 tests (Farwell &
Dochin, 1991; Farwell & Smith, 2001), but other researchers find the procedure to
be about half as accurate and that training can help liars reduce accuracy even
further (Feder, 2001; Rosenfeld, Soskins, Bosh, & Ryan, 2004). Currently, scientists
are using functional magnetic resonance imaging in an effort to identify brain activity
that would distinguish liars from truth tellers (Kozel et al., 2009; Monteleone et al.,
2009), but this process also faces serious theoretical, procedural, ethical, and
accuracy problems.

What about people in close relationships? Should they not be more accurate at
detecting lies? Because trust is the fundamental reason couples have close relation-
ships, either party is likely to get away with lying quite easily at first. But once

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 391

suspicion is aroused, those who know a person’s behavior well are likely to be the best
detectors (Comadena, 1982; McCornack & Parks, 1986). However, it is not uncom-
mon for people in close relationships not to engage in the sort of monitoring necessary
to detect deception. They may not want to confront the lie, or they may be afraid of
destroying intimacy if they show distrust by their close monitoring (Knapp, 2006).

A PERSPECTIVE FOR COMMUNICATORS

Throughout this chapter, we have emphasized the idea that communicators mutu-
ally construct their reality. One person’s behavior can only be understood as
we see how it interacts with the behavior of another person. In the abstract, this

POLICING YOUR FEELINGS AROUND COPS

Sooner or later, we all get pulled over by a police officer. A
sudden surge of anxiety generally accompanies the experience
of flashing lights and sirens that direct you to pull over and
bring your vehicle to a stop. You might know that your lead
foot is responsible for your predicament. However, you might
be genuinely puzzled as to what you did or did not do that
drew the attention of the man or woman in blue.

Next, after you get your license and registration out, you
roll down your window and sit there and wait.

You wonder what is going on. Your anxiety level does not
ease up.

Soon the police officer gets out, approaches your vehicle
with an expressionless face, and then says firmly, “license and
registration.” You hand over each with a shaky hand. The offi-
cer then says, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” “No,”
you reply in a shaky voice.

The thought, “The cop must think I’m lying or up to no
good because I’m so nervous,” might run through your mind.
You try controlling your anxiety, but it does not work. You
still feel anxious.

For their own protection, police officers are trained to use
their nonverbal behavior to communicate that they are in control and in charge of a situation. These nonverbal
cues of dominance as well as the police uniform—a symbol of authority—can be anxiety provoking to you.

Police officers are also trained to read your nonverbal behavior. Ironically, seeing some anxiety from you
might be comforting to them because it suggests that getting pulled over is not a common experience for
you. Thus, you do not need to keep your anxiety in check.

Police officers will, of course, use your anxiety level as a possible clue to trouble if it seems dispropor-
tionate to the situation. For example, your anxiety level does not drop when he or she tells you that you
are just getting a warning because one of your taillights is out. However, even that nonverbal cue would
not be used in isolation. Other cues—nonverbal and verbal—would be assessed to see if further questioning
of you is warranted.

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392 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

proposition seems reasonable—one that would not be hard to memorize and recall
for a test. But what does the concept of mutual influence mean in practical applica-
tion to our everyday lives? Two things seem to be particularly important: First, if
the outcome of any transaction is the product of behavior by both interactants, it
means we must be very careful in judging and ascribing meaning to the nonver-
bal behavior of a single person or in generalizing a person’s behavior with one
person to all others. This does not suggest that people do not have a style of
communicating they may carry from one encounter to another. The parts of
that style that are emphasized and deemphasized, however, can change dramati-
cally depending on whom one is interacting with. Second, if the outcome of any
transaction is the product of behavior by both interactants, each must share the
responsibility for the outcome. This does not mean that in some encounters one
person may not take or deserve more of the responsibility than the other. It
does mean that we should, perhaps more than we would like to, examine our
own verbal and nonverbal behavior to determine how it contributed to the inter-
personal outcome. In social life, it is rare indeed for one person to be doing
everything right and the other to be doing everything wrong. Unpleasant out-
comes are usually constructed mutually.

These notions return us to the expectancy effects described in Chapters 1 and 8.
The most important lessons about social life probably are these: We see what we
expect to see, and what we expect of others will likely come true. Through our
verbal and nonverbal behavior, we unconsciously shape other people into confor-
mance with our expectations, in all areas of life, including educational settings
(Harris & Rosenthal, 1985), psychological experiments (Rosenthal, 1976), and
ordinary interpersonal relationships (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977; Spitz,
1997). Thus, your nonverbal behavior does make a difference.

SUMMARY

Every day we have to accomplish goals that
require the effective management and reading of
nonverbal signals. This chapter identified what
we know about five of those goals.

We began by discussing the various ways we
manifest our liking and disliking for others. Even
though certain nonverbal signals have been asso-
ciated with courtship and romantic flirtation, we
also know that similar behaviors occur when
people are trying to communicate friendliness,
interest, and playfulness. These quasi-courtship
behaviors can lead to misunderstandings, and
they remind us how important context is for inter-
preting nonverbal signals. The cluster of nonverbal
behavior comprising immediacy or liking behavior
can be usefully applied to a variety of situations
in which we want to signal positive responses to
strangers and acquaintances. Immediacy occurs in

established close relationships, too, but mainly
when it is important to be clear about one’s feelings,
when the relationship is threatened, or when a cou-
ple wants to communicate their closeness to outsi-
ders. Otherwise, people in close relationships
employ a more unique and varied nonverbal reper-
toire. We concluded this section by noting the ways
people adjust the intimacy level through reciprocal
or compensatory behavior.

Nonverbal behavior is also highlighted in acts
of dominance and efforts to show status. Like
intimacy, sometimes people will manifest differ-
ent nonverbal behavior when seeking dominance/
status than after they have achieved it. But, again,
context and individual differences are important.
An aspiring executive may engage in more eye
gaze while seeking the top position in the com-
pany, but another executive, equally motivated,

CHAPTER 12 USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN DAILY INTERACTION 393

may engage in far less eye gaze with his or her
superiors as a sign of respect. There are a number
of behaviors that have been associated with dom-
inance and status. Some research indicates that
higher status men and women tend to manifest
a higher visual-dominance ratio, the tendency to
look more while speaking than listening.

Nonverbal signals are also crucial in initiating,
managing, and terminating everyday conversa-
tions. Smooth turn exchanges are negotiated
when speakers signal turn-yielding cues and lis-
teners signal turn-requesting cues. There are
times, however, when listeners do not want to
assume the speaking turn, and speakers do not
want to give it up. These, too, are highly depen-
dent on the manifestation of certain nonverbal
signals.

We tell others and ourselves who we are when
we communicate our identity through nonverbal

signals. Identity may be personal, such as with
individual personality, or it may be social, as in
race or gender. Research has found important
differences in the nonverbal behavior of men
and women, for example, but often these differ-
ences are not large.

Even though we would not like to think of
ourselves as deceivers, research indicates we
often use deception to manage our social sphere.
There is no behavior that is always associated
with lying, but research shows that liars tend to
be less forthcoming, provide fewer details, give
off a negative impression, exhibit more tenseness,
and make fewer spontaneous corrections in their
speech. Arousal and cognitive difficulty often
trigger the observed behaviors seen in high-
stakes lying, but most of us are not very accurate,
with only about a 50 to 60 percent success rate,
in identifying liars whom we do not know.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Research tells us that men typically smile,
laugh, and gaze at their conversational part-
ners far less than women do. Speculate on
why this is and the extent to which it is func-
tional or dysfunctional behavior.

2. What does it mean to collaborate in a lie?
Are collaborators and liars subject to similar
ethical standards?

3. Identify situations in which controlling behav-
ior is likely to be reciprocated, and when it is
likely to elicit compensatory behavior. Why?

4. Try to imagine a social world in which lies
could be detected accurately 99 percent of
the time. Describe it.

5. Describe how you nonverbally communicate
your romantic involvement with someone
when you are in public together. How has
the presence of a potential rival influenced
this, especially when the rival began flirting
with your significant other?

394 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

NONVERBAL MESSAGES

IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS

[ C H A P T E R 13 ]

If asked what the word “fast” means, you are likely to pause, because you
know the word has different meanings in different contexts. If the subject is run-
ning, fast is associated with speed; if the subject is food, fast may be associated
with not eating or take-out food. Nonverbal behavior has the same multimeaning
potential because it can be interpreted differently in different contexts. People who
are sad look down at the floor, but so do people who are submissive or shy.
Knowing which meaning to attribute to a behavior requires knowledge of the
context. A smile displayed by a powerful and energetic person to a submissive
and passive person may be seen as sinister, but the very same smile from the
same person directed at another powerful and energetic person may be viewed
as a happy smile. If any given facial expression can be interpreted in multiple
ways—as delight, contentment, pleasure, approval, interest, or sexually inviting—
then we need to understand how contextual features help us pinpoint the most
likely meaning.

What is context? Those features of a social encounter that provide key markers
for the meaning of any given behavior are usually identified as the context.
Philippot, Feldman, and Coats (1999, p. 13) say that “nonverbal behavior can be
fully understood only when considered within its social context.” You may feel like
you understand the meaning of a particular nonverbal behavior because you are
aware of certain aspects of context: (1) some personal or background characteris-
tics of the people involved—their relationship, their age, their group membership,
their gender; (2) some environmental features—the number of people involved, the

The context is the frame of reference for interpreting an action.
—S. W. Littlejohn

395

accompanying lighting or noise, the time of day, the furniture configuration; (3) the
expectations and norms for the situation—learning, therapy, fun; or (4) various
message features—the topic, the emphasis given the behavior, what other verbal and
nonverbal behavior preceded and followed the behavior in question, and so on.
These features of context give meaning to nonverbal messages. Whenever we produce
nonverbal messages, they have the potential to change contextual features, too.

In this chapter, we discuss nonverbal messages in the context of advertising,
politics, education, culture, therapy, and technology.

ADVERTISING MESSAGES

No one in modern society needs to be told that we are surrounded by advertising.
Nevertheless, people routinely underestimate the broad scope of its influence. Tele-
vision, magazines, and other forms of media do far more than bombard us with
direct appeals to buy products. To buy a product, you have to lay down your
money; but the media exert a powerful influence on us even when nothing is
bought. By immersing us in images, concepts, and associations, the media and the
advertisers shape the values, attitudes, stereotypes, associations, assumptions, and
expectations by which we live. Thus, advertising does far more than tell us to buy
certain products. It speaks to issues that concern, and sometimes preoccupy, all
people. Advertising penetrates into areas of intense personal concern for nearly
everyone, such as the following:

• What does success mean?
• How does one define beauty?
• How should I behave in order to be socially acceptable?
• How do people belonging to different groups behave, and what do they value?
• On what should I base my self-esteem?
• What kind of a person do I want to be?

Advertising provides, in both blatant and subtle ways, answers to these questions.
Furthermore, advertising does far more than just supply answers to these
questions: It legitimizes the underlying premises that success, beauty, and social
acceptance are the keys to happiness, and that stereotypes have validity. And it
does this without our putting a penny on the counter—indeed, often without our
even noticing.

Many commentators have railed at the subtle influence and the homogenizing
power of the concepts and assumptions that are planted in our minds by advertis-
ing. But individuals who are exposed to advertising, which is everyone, are likely
to deny advertising’s influence when it comes to themselves. We are like the
“fish who don’t know they are wet”: If these images are all we know, then that is
the only reality we know—so how can we imagine an alternative? People also rou-
tinely deny social influences on themselves that they can readily see influencing
others. This “I’m immune to what influences other people” fallacy is common; we
see it when people deny that smoking will harm their health, that they are victims
of discrimination when they obviously are, or that they engage in faulty ways of
thinking about the social world, while at the same time recognizing that “other
people” make these errors all the time.

396 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

People appear to have a built-in bias against recognizing what influences them.
Social psychologists have documented this in countless studies (Nisbett & Wilson,
1977; Wegner, 2002). The sheer fact that researchers can routinely conduct
psychological experiments in which situational factors are manipulated to influence
behavior without the participants’ awareness proves that people’s insight into the
sources of their behavior is frighteningly weak (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).

On those occasions when one is on guard for attempted influence, one is
most likely to attend to what is being said. Is this person telling me the truth? Are
advertisers misrepresenting the product or the issues? But the kinds of influence
that are most likely to go unnoticed and remain out of awareness are—you guessed
it—nonverbal in nature. In advertising, nonverbal information accounts for an
overwhelming amount of the total message, especially if we include information
provided by settings, backgrounds, props, possessions, clothes, hair, makeup,
music, and physical and group characteristics of the people shown in addition to
nonverbal behavior such as facial expression, tone of voice, and body movements.
The nonconscious impact rests more on the nature and juxtaposition of these
images and sounds than on what is actually said. As we all know, the verbal mes-
sages contained in advertisements are often silly, irrelevant, meaningless, or not
likely to promote distinctive associations to the product. Yet the message can be
powerful indeed.

That the influences are mainly nonverbal means that we are less guarded
against their influence and less critical of their content. But to make matters
worse, we are most vulnerable to such influences when we are distracted or when
we are not closely attending to, or even resisting, the advertiser’s persuasion
attempts (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983). When people feel a personal
involvement in an issue, they attend closely to the quality of the arguments and
are able to ignore irrelevant information. However, when they are not very
involved—which is the state people are in when exposed to most advertising—they
are prey to nonconscious influence by irrelevant information, such as how sexy the
model is, how charming the puppy in the ad is, how happy the people in the
ad appear to be, or how wise and honest looking the spokesperson is. Cues such
as these have their influence through various psychological mechanisms—some of
which have been mentioned previously in this book—for example, by associative
learning, by modeling, by emotional contagion, and by inducement of mimicking.
Thus, we are most vulnerable when we are in precisely those circumstances under
which we experience most advertising. Furthermore, laboratory research shows
that nonverbal cues that are impossible to notice consciously—that is, those pre-
sented subliminally—can serve as “primes” that influence subsequent behavior,
such as behavior toward certain racial groups (Chen & Bargh, 1997). The images,
associations, and stereotypes represented in advertising penetrate our minds
through constant repetition and their fleeting and seemingly peripheral nature. But
peripheral they are not—they are the message.

Empirical research is not required to show us the validity of this analysis, yet
research does exist. One area of intense study has been the representation of gender
in advertisements. Goffman (1979) listed several ways in which the nonverbal
portrayal of women suggests demeaned status relative to men: the relative size of
men versus women; how objects or people are touched or grasped; which gender

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 397

appears to be in charge of the activity; the presence of ritualized subordination
gestures, such as averting the eyes; “unserious” clowning or childlike poses; and
the occurrence of “licensed withdrawal,” when women separate themselves from
the ongoing activity. Of course, one can add other specific ways in which the gen-
ders are shown stereotypically: the roles assigned to men and women—the male
worker versus female homemaker, or male narrator versus female onscreen charac-
ter; the distribution of products to male and female onscreen characters, such as
showing men advertising life insurance, electronic products, and financial services
and showing women advertising health and beauty products and retail stores; and
gender disparities in body display and sexualization (Bartsch, Burnett, Diller, &
Rankin-Williams, 2000; Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley, 2003; Goffman, 1979; Kang,
1997). One area of concern is how the male and female body is depicted in the
media, both in terms of its form and function. With respect to form, magazines
and television tend to show relatively more of men’s faces and relatively more of
women’s bodies (Archer, Iritani, Kimes, & Barrios, 1983; Copeland, 1989; Dodd,
Harcar, Foerch, & Anderson, 1989; see Chapter 9). And the disturbing, unspoken
message of these depictions is that photos showing more of the face are seen
as more intelligent and dominant (Schwarz & Kurz, 1989; Zuckerman, 1986). In
addition, the bodies of actors and actresses in television programs have changed
over the years, with more muscular men and thinner women being seen by viewing
audiences. Such depictions may communicate erroneous expectations about the typ-
ical male and female body type. More disturbing still, the nonverbal behavior of TV
characters toward people with particular body types may even help shape people’s
cultural views concerning body ideals. Weisbuch and Ambady (2009) showed that
thin women were the recipients of more positive nonverbal behavior than heavier
women by TV characters, and that this “nonverbal bias” can result in women hold-
ing and thinking that others hold slim body type ideals for females. The human
body can perform many functions, such as playing a sport or an instrument, solving
a problem, painting, writing, and building or fixing things; these are all things that
highlight the body’s role in the expression of human competencies. The human
body also can arouse and satisfy sexual needs. One concern is that women, and
increasingly men, are being depicted in the media in ways that stress how they are
merely body parts that can be used for the sexual gratification of others.

Specific nonverbal cues are enacted differently by males and females, too. In
advertising aimed at children, boys are dominant, aggressive, effective, victorious,
and likely to manipulate objects, whereas girls act shy, giggle, cover their faces,
avert their eyes, lower or tilt their heads, and touch objects gently (Browne, 1998).
In advertising showing adult characters, women smile more and stand in a more
canted position, with weight unevenly distributed (Halberstadt & Saitta, 1987).
Because such gender-stereotypical portrayals feel very normal and expected, it is
difficult for us to grasp how profound the assumptions are on which they are
based. Only if boys acted “like girls” and vice versa would the viewer suddenly
see the stereotyping in action. One might counter that the portrayals of men and
women are simply reflecting the way men and women behave in real life. Though
to some extent this is true, many of the nonverbal expressions and mannerisms
shown in advertising are strong exaggerations of real-life gender differences, or
they show behaviors that ordinary men and women do not actually engage in.

398 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

Advertising manipulates not only how we think about products, but also how
we feel emotionally, how we think about social groups, and how we think about
ourselves. More negative nonverbal behaviors directed at black versus white char-
acters on TV may be one way in which racial biases are transmitted to viewers
(Weisbuch, Pauker, & Ambady, 2009). Images of beautiful people who seem very
successful and happy simultaneously invite us to identify with them—“If I drink

PRETTY SEXY! PRETTY UNREALISTIC! PRETTY HARMFUL?!

No doubt this image will strike a number of
people as sexy. An admiring male is being
treated visually—and, as implied by the easy-
to-drop heart over the genital region, soon
physically—to the delights of an incredible
female body.

The words incredible and female body
were chosen carefully as they speak to the
unrealistic and potentially harmful aspects
of this image. First, women do not possess a
flawless body—one that is perfectly shaped
and devoid of bodily hair, blemishes, stretch
marks, and excess weight. Yet these ideal-
ized images of the female figure are every-
where in advertising, suggesting that they
might represent the standard of female
attractiveness as opposed to something that
is altogether unrealistic. Rarely do you read
disclaimers about how these body images
have been subjected to digital retouching.

You might have noticed that something
is missing in this image—the woman’s head!
She has been reduced to a sexual object because the focus is on what is red—her breast and genital regions.What
might ultimately be most sexy about this woman to the man has been chopped off; specifically, those things that
give the woman her individuality, such as her personality, intelligence, skills, goals, desires, not to mention her
face! The woman is thus nothing more than a body to be looked at and used by another for visual and sexual
pleasure.

For women, what are the potential harmful consequences of being exposed often to idealized and sexual-
ized images of other women in advertising? One consequence is that women may learn to view themselves
from the perspective of an observer (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). In other words, they start seeing them-
selves as an object to be evaluated according to the standards of others (standards that have been informed
by such images in advertising). The objectified female body in advertising leads women to self-objectify.
This theorized state of mind is thought to lead to a number of detrimental psychological and behavioral
consequences in women, including excessive appearance monitoring, feelings of dehumanization and
shame, and eating disorders.

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CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 399

this beer, I can become just like them”—and to think we are sadly inadequate by
contrast: “My boyfriend isn’t as cute as the guy in the ad, my sex life doesn’t seem
as exciting, I don’t have such a nice car, and my thighs will never look that good.”
The subtle message that the viewer is inadequate is a large part of advertising’s
lethal power. Even the current fad for television ads to be rapid-video montages,
with many images that change so quickly you hardly know what you saw, is
more than just a way to get the viewer’s attention. It is a way to make viewers
feel slow, dull, and excluded from the exciting, fast-paced life of the people on
the screen.

Advertisers use both research and common sense in planning their strategies.
No doubt a great deal of advertising research is done in-house and is never pub-
lished in journals. But there is no shortage of published advertising research, some
of it very early indeed. An article from 1923 asked the reasonable question, “How
much smiling should an actor show for different kinds of products?” (Burtt &
Clark, 1923). Research participants were shown faces with different degrees of
smiling and were asked to name products that would sell best with each kind of
smile. They thought that clothing would be sold best by a relatively unsmiling
face, whereas toilet articles, amusements, and food would sell better if the actors
smiled more.

Of course, asking people what kind of advertising messages they think would
work best is not the best way to evaluate effectiveness. An advertiser would want
to know about actual consumers’ responses and about their purchasing choices.
Current advertising researchers are especially interested in indirect methods of
understanding viewers’ emotional responses, and they learn about these responses
by measuring brain activity, recording tiny electric impulses in the facial muscles
associated with different emotions, and cataloguing which facial muscles move visi-
bly (Hazlett & Hazlett, 1999; Raskin, 2003; Young, 2002; see Chapter 9 for a
description of such methodologies). For example, such methods may reveal the dif-
ference between a viewer’s true enjoyment smile and the polite smile of a viewer
who is just saying what the researcher wants to hear. In Chapter 10 we also
described early interest in using changes in pupil size as an indicator of viewers’
product preferences.

The fields of selling and marketing do not concern themselves only with adver-
tising; consumers also have face-to-face interactions with salespeople. It should
come as no surprise to know that salespeople are coached in their nonverbal
behavior, for example, to remember to smile at the customer. Researchers evaluate
not only the impact of such coaching (Peterson, 2005) but also the relation
between nonverbal decoding skill and effectiveness at being a salesperson (Byron,
Terranova, & Nowicki, 2007). Indeed, salespeople who scored higher on a stan-
dard test of decoding emotional expressions in the face were more successful in
both real estate and auto sales.

Should you be worried about advertising’s power to exploit and manipulate
you with nonverbal cues and images? Yes! But considering that you can hardly
take up residence on a desert island (assuming there would be no advertising
there), the best you can hope for is to arm yourself against these effects by develop-
ing your knowledge of nonverbal communication and the use of psychological
tactics (Cialdini, 2007).

400 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

POLITICAL MESSAGES

Politicians have long recognized the important role of nonverbal behavior. Presi-
dent Lyndon Johnson is said to have been very sensitive to what nonverbal cues
can communicate. He reportedly cautioned his staff not to stand in front of the
windows and look across the street at the White House the day after President
John F. Kennedy’s assassination for fear it would appear as if they were looking
for power. In journalist Bob Woodward’s (2004) book about how and why Presi-
dent George W. Bush and his staff initiated a preemptive attack on Iraq, he notes
how members of Bush’s cabinet paid close attention to Bush’s body language. In
the following excerpt involving General Tommy Franks, we can see that Bush, too,
felt nonverbal signals played a critical role in understanding a person’s reaction:

“I’m trying to figure out what intelligent questions to ask a commander who has
just impressed me in Afghanistan. I’m looking for the logic. I’m watching his body
language very carefully,” Bush recalled. He emphasized the body language, the eyes,
the demeanor. It was more important than some of the substance. It was also why he
wanted Franks there in Crawford and not as another face on a wall of screens. (p. 66)

The average American watches approximately 30 hours of television per week,
which adds up to nearly 10 years by age 65. Television can highlight nonverbal sig-
nals that can influence voters, and political candidates know that the image they
project on TV will affect voter choices. But biases toward candidates reflected in
the facial expressions of newscasters who report on these political candidates also
may play a role in voter decisions (Friedman, DiMatteo, & Mertz, 1980; Mullen
et al., 1986).

Some argue that political candidates in the United States have become so pre-
occupied with the image they project that their concern for arguments supporting
their policies has diminished. If this is true, it is because politicians are well aware
that image has the potential to trump their positions on issues (Ailes, 1988;
Budesheim & DePaola, 1994). Physically unappealing candidates and candidates
whose behavior does not signal energy, confidence, likeability, and a connection to
voters are not likely to play well on television. Candidates whose nonverbal
demeanor signals a positive relationship message on TV—facial expressions that
communicate sincerity, body positions that suggest immediacy, and vocal tones
that are perceived as caring—are more likely to garner voter support. Television
requires what Jamieson (1988) calls “a new eloquence—a softer, warmer style of
communication.” This in no way minimizes the necessity of a candidate also dis-
playing nonverbal signals that would help to communicate assertiveness and
energy. How have U.S. presidential candidates fared in the image competition?

During the first of the 1960 television debates between presidential candidates
Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, analysts often discussed Nixon’s loss in terms
of how he presented himself on television, that is, his five o’clock shadow show-
ing through the stage makeup, lighting conditions that accentuated a tired face, a
suit that blended into the background, and so forth. Nixon has been quoted as
saying he spent too much time studying and not enough time on his physical
appearance (Bryski & Frye, 1979–1980; Tiemens, 1978). A movement analysis
by Davis (1995, p. 213) indicates Nixon’s appearance was only one of his non-
verbal drawbacks.

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 401

Nixon sits with a tense, narrow posture, whereas Kennedy sits with legs crossed, hands
resting easily, his weight centered. In the medium camera shots, Nixon can be seen
gripping the lectern tightly and not gesticulating for long periods of time, although his
head movements are clear and emphatic. And Nixon displays a disastrous pattern of
hyperblinking—not just abnormally frequent (more than one per second), but at times
with such rapid flutters that his eyes momentarily close. By comparison Kennedy
clearly wins despite his rather ordinary and constricted showing.

It was widely reported and believed that radio listeners judged the debate a
draw, whereas television viewers felt Kennedy was the winner. Even though the
accuracy of this conclusion has been questioned, the belief that it was true may
have been largely responsible for subsequent concern about the influence of non-
verbal signals in political campaigns and debates (Kraus, 1996; Vancil & Pendell,
1987; see Figure 13-1).

Since 1968, the strategies used to create favorable images of political candidates
have become more widespread and more sophisticated. The visuals on candi-
date Web sites are specifically designed to develop the candidate’s image in areas
that are believed to help the candidate win votes—family photos or videos that
imply the candidate is a person with “family values,” or images of the candidate
dressed casually and speaking to people who work in restaurants and factories
to show the candidate’s connection to voters (Verser & Wicks, 2006). The commu-
nication environment at the candidate’s speeches and television appearances is
carefully constructed. At a 2004 campaign speech in Indianapolis, White House
aides asked people in the crowd behind President George W. Bush to take off their
ties so they would look more like the people who would benefit from his tax cut.

FIGURE 13-1
One of the 2008 Presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama.

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402 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

Backdrops with pictures and slogans accompanied most of Bush’s speeches and
became a part of any photo of Bush, the speaker. For some who saw the photo in
the newspaper the next day, the composite message of Bush and the backdrop
summed up the speech completely (see Figure 13-2). When President Bush selected
the site of a small shipping company to deliver a speech on how his economic plan
would favor small business, his aides put up American flags and a backdrop saying
“Strengthening the Economy.” Boxes near the podium stamped “Made in China”
were covered, and a backdrop of boxes labeled “Made in USA” was added.

Analysts of the 1976 Carter–Ford presidential debates argue that Gerald Ford’s
loss was attributable to less eye gaze with the camera, grimmer facial expressions,
and less favorable camera angles (Tiemens, 1978). Subsequently, Jimmy Carter’s
loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 debate was attributed to Carter’s visible tension
and his inability to “coordinate his nonverbal behavior with his verbal message”
(Ritter & Henry, 1990). Effective leaders are often seen as people who confidently
take stock of a situation, perform smoothly, and put those around them at ease.
Many saw Presidents Reagan’s and Clinton’s nonverbal behavior this way. In
1984 Reagan’s expressiveness and physical attractiveness were evident, whereas
his opponent, Walter Mondale, was perceived as low in expressiveness and attrac-
tiveness (Patterson, Churchill, Burger, & Powell, 1992). President Clinton’s com-
munication style was a double-edged sword for him. One the one hand, he seemed
able to empathize with an audience; on the other hand, his facile verbal and non-
verbal style led some to question his trustworthiness, which was evident in the
label, “Slick Willie.” Expressions of fear and uncertainty may be the biggest turnoff

FIGURE 13-2
Bush using a backdrop to create an image.

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CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 403

for voters. These include looking down; hesitating; making rapid, jerky movements;
or seeming to freeze, as Dan Quayle did when Lloyd Bentsen told him in the 1988
vice presidential debate, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” There have been other notable
turnoffs during presidential debates. During a debate with Bill Clinton and Ross
Perot, President George H. W. Bush glanced at his watch, which, for many, sig-
naled rightly or wrongly his noninvolvement and impatience with the audience or
issues at hand (see Figure 13-3). Finally, in 2000, Al Gore was criticized for exces-
sive sighing as well as for invading the personal space of presidential candidate
George W. Bush.

The fact that the faces of presidential candidates are so prominent in their cam-
paign literature and television ads makes this feature especially important in deter-
mining voter perceptions. In one study, individuals whose faces seemed more
threatening were less likely to win an election (Mattes et al., 2010). In another
study, people looked at facial photos of the candidates vying for congressional
offices from 2000 to 2004 and made a decision about which one appeared more
competent. The candidates judged more competent in the U.S. Senate races won
71.6 percent of the time; the candidates judged more competent in the races for the
U.S. House of Representatives won 68.8 percent of the time. A follow-up study
found similar results when the judges were allowed only one second or less to
view the faces (Olivola & Todorov, 2010; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall,
2005). Thus, people with competent-appearing faces seem to be more electable.

Are there facial cues that could lead to higher ratings of competence for indivi-
duals vying for political office? Riggio and Riggio (2010) argue that facial cues of
dominance coupled with approachability are key. Verhulst, Lodge, and Lavine
(2010), on the other hand, argue that more familiarity with the face and greater facial

FIGURE 13-3
President Bush checks his watch during a debate.

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404 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

attractiveness can lead individuals to think a person is more competent. Greater facial
maturity and attractiveness are other possibilities (Olivola & Todorov, 2010). For
example, when one of the candidates has a more “mature” face, and his rival is
more baby faced, judgments of competence will tend to favor the more mature face
(Poutvaara, Jordahl, & Berggren, 2009; Zebrowitz, 1997). Keating, Randall, and
Kendrick (1999) digitized the faces of Presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Kennedy and
made them look more or less mature by altering the size of the eyes and lips. A less
mature-faced Clinton, with bigger eyes and lips, was perceived as more honest and
attractive, even by those who did not support him in the 1996 election. Clinton’s
power ratings were not affected by his youthful look, but Reagan and Kennedy were
seen as less powerful when their faces were made to look less mature.

If you plan to get involved in politics one day, you might begin to worry about
your electability, especially if you have questions about the appearance of your
face. However, rest assured, people who are highly involved in selecting a candi-
date are probably not influenced as much by the facial cues of candidates (Riggio
& Riggio, 2010). Moreover, even though a facial quality such as babyfaceness is
linked to lower ratings of perceived political competence, this does not mean that a
baby-faced candidate is doomed to failure (Poutvaara et al., 2009; see Figure 13-4).

Fortunately, the image advisors are not yet in control of all the variables, the
least of which is the public’s increasing knowledge of how political images can be
molded. A carefully controlled appearance and scripted verbal behavior can readily
be offset, or put in perspective, when candidates engage in spontaneous speech and
interactive dialogue about substantive issues.

TEACHER–STUDENT MESSAGES

Whether it takes place in the classroom itself or not, the process of teaching and
learning is a gold mine for discovering the richness and importance of nonverbal
behavior (Andersen & Andersen, 1982; Babad, 1992; Philippot, Feldman, &
McGee, 1992; Woolfolk & Brooks, 1983). The following are only a few reminders
of the ways in which nonverbal cues play a crucial role in this context:

1. Nonverbal cues between teachers and students signal a close or distant
relationship.

2. Students avoid eye gaze with teachers to avoid participation.

FIGURE 13-4
Which candidate is more competent?

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CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 405

3. Students’ body postures and facial expressions display their interest and
attention in what the teacher is saying.

4. Students’ and teachers’ dress, hair length, and adornment affect classroom
interaction and learning.

5. Disciplinary enactments by teachers may manifest in negative facial expressions,
threatening gestures, or critical vocal tones.

6. Teachers announce they have plenty of time for student conferences, but fidget
and glance at their watch when students come to see them.

7. Teachers may try to assess student comprehension and learning by visually
scanning students’ facial expressions.

8. Classroom design—wall colors, space between seats, size and placement of
windows—affects student participation and learning.

Subtle nonverbal influences in the classroom can sometimes have dramatic
results, as Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) found. Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests
were given to elementary school pupils prior to their entering for the fall term.
Randomly—that is, not according to scores—some students were labeled as high
scorers on an “intellectual blooming test,” indicating they would show unusual
intellectual development in the following year. Teachers were given this informa-
tion. These students showed a sharp rise on IQ tests given at the end of the year,
which experimenters attributed to teacher expectations and to the way these stu-
dents were treated. Rosenthal and Jacobson had this to say:

To summarize our speculations, we may say that by what she said, by how and when
she said it, by her facial expressions, postures, and perhaps by her touch, the teacher
may have communicated to the children of the experimental group that she expected
improved intellectual performance. Such communications together with possible
changes in teaching techniques may have helped the child learn by changing his self-
concept, his expectations of his own behavior, and his motivation, as well as his
cognitive style and skills. (p. 180)

In an effort to identify the cues associated with teacher expectancies, Chaikin,
Sigler, and Derlega (1974) asked people to tutor a 12-year-old boy. The boy was
described as either bright to one group and dull to another group, and a third
group was given no information about the boy’s intelligence. A 5-minute videotape
of the tutoring was analyzed for behaviors indicating liking and approval. Tutors
of the so-called bright boy smiled more, had more direct eye contact, leaned for-
ward more, and nodded more than either of the other two groups. In general,
then, people who expect others to do well, as compared to those who expect poor
performance, seem to:

1. Create a warm socioemotional climate
2. Provide more differentiated performance feedback
3. Give more difficult material and more material
4. Give more opportunities for the performer to respond (Blanck, 1993; Harris &

Rosenthal, 1985; Rosenthal, 1985)

A related line of research has examined teachers who are perceived as
more and less “immediate” in their style of teaching (McCroskey & Richmond,
1992). We saw in Chapter 12 that immediacy behavior signals liking, warmth,

406 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

and positive affect, and sometimes immediacy is shown when teachers move
around the classroom and gain proximity to their students. Sometimes it involves
more teacher smiling, facial expressions of interest when students are talking,
maintaining eye gaze with students, using a friendly vocal tone, or other beha-
viors that students associate with liking and warmth. Research by Smythe and
Hess (2005) found that student perceptions of their teacher’s immediacy behavior
is not always an accurate reflection of how their teacher actually behaves, but
numerous studies show that when college students do associate nonverbal imme-
diacy with a teacher, they are more likely to like the teacher and the course.
There is also more teacher–student interaction in these classes, and students
report that they would like to take another course from that instructor. Students
feel they learn more from teachers who exhibit immediacy behavior, which obvi-
ously is an important outcome. One motivational benefit of teacher immediacy
includes students’ desire to persist in college (Wheeless, Witt, Maresh, Bryand,
& Schrodt, 2011).

In terms of actual or perceived learning outcomes, the data available at present
do not provide consistent and conclusive evidence that students actually feel more
competent or learn more from teachers who exhibit more immediacy behavior
(Allen, Witt, & Wheeless, 2006; Goodboy, Weber, & Bolkan, 2009; Harris &
Rosenthal, 2005; Houser & Frymier, 2009; Witt, Wheeless, & Allen, 2004). At
this point it seems reasonable to assume that perceived teacher immediacy will
improve some types of student learning but not others. Nor does it seem unreason-
able to assume that certain types of students will profit more or less from perceived
teacher immediacy.

Even though plenty of evidence supports the conclusion that perceived teacher
immediacy behavior has a positive impact on some important student perceptions,
the exact nature of that behavior, and the way it is displayed throughout the length
of the class, is not well known. For example, does a teacher have to exhibit imme-
diacy behavior throughout every class period to be perceived as “immediate,” or is
the optimum style a mix of immediate and less immediate behavior? When does
immediacy behavior signal that the course is “easy” or that the teacher is a “push-
over”? Can a teacher be stern, strict, and businesslike and also communicate posi-
tive affect to his or her students? Woolfolk (1978) and others have found that even
negative nonverbal behavior can elicit quality student performance sometimes, but
it is unlikely to be an effective teaching style if used for the duration of the class.
And even though we know the types of behavior associated with immediacy, it is
still not clear how such behaviors should be enacted for them to be perceived as
having an immediate teaching style.

Sometimes teachers treat some students better or worse than others, for example,
because of race, gender, and unpleasant interactions with them. Do students perceive
these teacher biases even when the teachers believe they are suppressing them? Not
always, but certainly much more than teachers believe. Students are often keenly
aware of subtle nonverbal signals that convey messages teachers believe they are
effectively masking. Babad (1992) argues that teachers need to admit their biases to
themselves and recognize that such biases are likely to be perceived by others.
Once that is done, more realistic goals for student–teacher communication can be
developed.

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 407

Thus far we have been focusing on teacher behavior, but the classroom is a
two-way street in which teachers and students mutually influence one another. As
we have observed, teacher immediacy behavior elicits a number of positive out-
comes from students. But students who exhibit immediacy can also elicit positive
outcomes from teachers (Baringer & McCroskey, 2000). We have much to learn
about the nonverbal communication of warmth and closeness in learning environ-
ments, and this knowledge will be increasingly important as student exchange pro-
grams and distance education continue to increase (Guerrero & Miller, 1998;
Mottet, 2000; Park, Lee, Yun, & Kim, 2009).

CULTURAL MESSAGES

When we learn the rules and norms people expect our behavior to match, we
are learning about culture. All of us exist within several cultures—our family, our
religious group, our social class, our age group, our school, our workplace, our
gender, and our society. So some cultural teaching is a part of all our communica-
tion behavior. Culture in this section focuses on large groups of people, possibly
millions, who vary in age, sex, gender, and social class but share a set of nonverbal
behaviors that help to define them as a culture.

Any behavior identified as characteristic of a large group of people, however,
does not mean that every person or every conversation in that culture will always
exhibit that behavior. For example, a culture described as one in which people
touch each other often may also have some members whose conversations do not
involve much touching; and some conversations may be devoid of touching even
though the interactants normally do a lot of touching. When touching is identified
as a characteristic of a culture, it simply means that this group of people generally
tends to touch each other more when compared with other groups of people.

Scholars believe cultures differ on a variety of dimensions (Gudykunst &
Ting-Toomey, 1988), but three dimensions in particular are useful for examining
variations in nonverbal behavior: (1) high-contact versus low-contact cultures,
(2) cultures that value individualism versus cultures that value collectivism, and
(3) high-context versus low-context cultures.

HIGH-CONTACT VERSUS LOW-CONTACT CULTURES

Cultural differences in touch have been well documented (Andersen, 2011). For
example, people in so-called high-contact cultures establish close interaction dis-
tances and touch each other frequently (Hall, 1966). They enjoy the olfactory and
tactile stimulation that comes with this kind of interpersonal involvement. Central
and South America, southern Europe, and the Middle East are often classified as
high-contact regions; Asia and northern Europe are viewed as low contact.

The United States has traditionally been labeled a low-contact culture. Informal
observations by Jourard (1966) would seem to support this designation. He mea-
sured the frequency of contact between couples in cafés in various cities and
reported the following contacts per hour: San Juan, Puerto Rico, 180; Paris, 110;
Gainesville, Florida, 2; London, 0. Cultural habits do change, and people in the
United States may be touching more now than at any time in their history (see

408 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

“Touchy Topic,” 2000; Willis & Rawdon, 1994). In the early 1970s, Barnlund
(1975) conducted a comparative study of Japanese and U.S. touching patterns
using self-reports from 120 college students in each culture. In almost every cate-
gory, the amount of physical contact reported in the United States was twice that
reported by the Japanese. A much more recent observational study on a U.S.
campus of romantically involved cross-sex couples found that Asian couples were
far less likely to walk with arms around one another than were Latino couples
(Regan, Jerry, Narvaez, & Johnson, 1999). Similarly, McDaniel and Andersen
(1998), in a study of cross-sex touch among travelers in a U.S. airport, found that
travelers from the United States touched notably more body regions than did
northeast Asians, who touched less than any group observed, including southeast
Asians, Caribbean and Latin Americans, and northern Europeans. Although this
study measures extent of touch, not frequency of touch, it does suggest—as do the
other studies reviewed here—that whereas Asia, especially northeast Asia, may
indeed have low contact as its norm, the United States seems to have norms that
are further in the “contact” direction. As the U.S. population grows ever more eth-
nically diverse, any broad label would probably be an oversimplification.

Classifying cultures as either high or low contact inevitably covers up differ-
ences. For example, Central and South America are both classified as “high con-
tact,” but Shuter’s (1976) systematic observation of people interacting in natural
settings suggests that public touching and holding decrease as one moves south
from Costa Rica to Panama to Colombia. And as we noted earlier, when we label
a culture as high or low contact, we should not forget that there are likely to be
important variations within a culture. Halberstadt (1985), for example, reviewed
race differences and nonverbal behavior and found that black Americans tend to
establish larger interpersonal distances for conversation than white Americans do, but
they also engage in more touch. As we reflect on high- and low-contact cultures, we
should also recognize the importance of distinguishing between frequency and
meaning. Two cultures may display different frequencies of touch, especially in public,
but it is a separate question as to whether the meanings attached to those touches are
different as well. Communicating intimacy through touch could be done similarly in
both cultures even though one culture allows more public touching than the other.

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM

Cultures have also been distinguished from one another by the extent to which they
manifest individualism or collectivism (Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 1994). Individual-
istic cultures emphasize things like personal rights, responsibilities, achievements,
privacy, self-expression, individual initiative, and identity based on personal attri-
butes. Regions said to typically manifest behavior aligned with this orientation
include the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Germany, Belgium, and Denmark. Nonverbal signals that support indi-
vidualism may include such things as environments designed for privacy; eye gaze
and vocal signals that exude confidence, strength, and dynamism; and distinctive
clothing. Dion (2002) argues that stereotyping based on facial attractiveness will
also be more prevalent among members of individualistic cultures, because facial
attractiveness is another way to highlight distinctiveness.

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 409

Cultures with a collective orientation tend to emphasize things that show the
value they put on their group membership. Of special concern would be things
like interests shared with group members, collaborating for the good of the group,
maintaining harmony within the group to ensure it functions well, and maintaining
traditions that emphasize group values and successes. Global regions typically
associated with collectivism include Venezuela, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, Taiwan,
Thailand, Brazil, Kenya, and Hong Kong. Among other things, we would expect
nonverbal signals in collective cultures to exhibit familiar routines, rituals, and
ways of behaving that are widely known and practiced in the culture; a high
frequency of deference behavior, such as bowing, gaze avoidance, and politeness
routines that include the suppression of emotional displays that might offend the
group; and behavior designed to avoid calling attention to the actions of an indi-
vidual when it could be detrimental to the group.

HIGH-CONTEXT VERSUS LOW-CONTEXT CULTURES

According to Hall (1976), low-context cultures tend to rely on verbal messages.
Words are valued because they are believed to provide information in a direct,
explicit manner. Saying what you want to say as unambiguously as possible is
valued, and ambiguity is not well tolerated. In contrast, high-context cultures are
more likely to rely on implicit and indirect messages. Nonverbal behavior is valued,
and messages gain their meaning by knowing the context. “What everyone knows”
is the key to understanding, and ambiguity is better tolerated. Such culture distinc-
tions can even impact online interactions. Pflug (2011) noted that people from
India, a high-context culture, used more emoticons than people from Germany, a
low-context culture.

Of course, people come from cultures that vary on a combination of dimensions,
such as low-context versus high-context and individualistic versus collectivistic.
In consideration of this, how do people from the United States (low-context/
individualistic) and China (high-context/collectivistic) express their appreciation for
a close friend or a romantic partner? Bello, Brandau-Brown, Zhang, and Ragsdale
(2010) found that the Chinese used more indirect methods, and that Americans
relied equally on verbal and nonverbal methods, whereas the Chinese used more
nonverbal than verbal methods.

Effective communication in some cultures may rely more on contextual
knowledge than in some other cultures, but the need to understand context is an
issue that permeates any cross-cultural encounter. Ignorance of context leads to
misunderstandings. “Outsiders,” or people who are less knowledgeable about a cul-
ture, are less knowledgeable about contextual cues that give meaning to certain
behaviors.

SIMILARITIES ACROSS CULTURES

The fact that cultures exhibit different nonverbal behaviors gets a lot of attention.
It should. These differences often lead to problematic encounters. But it is also
important to understand that similarities exist across cultures as well. Some of these

410 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

similarities occur because people in one or more cultures adopt a behavior exhibited
in another culture. Today, information flows freely across cultures, so it is not
difficult to imagine how a gesture or style of adorning the body could become a
multicultural phenomenon. Information about behavior in other cultures is regularly
exchanged via travelers, magazines, movies, the Internet, and other ways.

Similarities in nonverbal behavior also occur across cultures for another
reason: They may be part of an inherited neurological program that members of
the human species acquire. In Chapter 2, we noted that the eyebrow raise or eye-
brow flash has been observed in greeting behavior in cultures around the world.
Chapter 2 also reported the work of Ekman and his colleagues (Ekman, 2003;
Ekman et al., 1969), who found people in literate and nonliterate cultures around
the world who could decode six facial expressions of emotion with a high degree
of accuracy; in turn, these people could make these same expressions, and these
could be decoded by people from other cultures, also with a high degree of accu-
racy. Researchers have also found considerable cross-cultural agreement on which
faces are attractive and unattractive, and some scholars speculate that this agree-
ment occurs because it is linked to the survival of the species (Cunningham, Barbee,
& Philhower, 2002; Dion, 2002; Etcoff, 1999; Rhodes, Harwood, Yoshikawa,
Nishitani, & McLean, 2002). Mothers from individualistic and collectivistic cul-
tures show similarities in terms of the touching, rocking, and vocalizing they do in
response to their infant’s expressions of pain, which could represent another adap-
tation that was vital to the survival of our species (Vinall, Riddell, & Greenberg,
2011). The list of cross-cultural similarities in nonverbal behavior is not long, but
areas that may prove fruitful to explore include meanings associated with extremes of
eye gaze and the need for territory. Some research on refusal and greeting sequences,
reported in Chapters 2 and 12, suggests humans may even have hard-wired patterns
of behavior.

These underlying similarities among humans are not always readily visible,
because cultural teachings may direct members to mask or minimize them. For
example, the asiallinen “matter of fact” nonverbal style in Finland demands expres-
sive restraint in facial displays. People from more expressive cultures may view this
as a nonexpression, but Finns see it as a valued expression showing emotional con-
trol. In fact, some Finnish leaders have lost credibility with their constituents by
publicly showing a lack of emotional control through facial expressions that were
too reflective of their feelings (Wilkins, 2005).

THERAPEUTIC SETTINGS

Anyone who has ever visited a medical doctor or a psychotherapist knows that
the nonverbal cues exchanged in such a visit are important to the outcome of the
visit. In this section, we suggest four areas in which nonverbal communication is
important in dealing with distress and illness, whether physical or mental:

1. Understanding the disorder. How do clinical professionals define different
conditions, such as depression?

2. Diagnosis. Does the clinician reach correct conclusions about the client’s
problems, states, and progress?

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 411

3. Therapy. Is the clinician able to help the client solve his or her problems and
maintain good physical and psychological functioning?

4. Relationship. Do the clinician and client develop a positive and trusting
interpersonal relationship?

For each of these goals, nonverbal cues play an important part (Gorawara-Bhat,
Cook, & Sachs, 2007; Hall, Harrigan, & Rosenthal, 1995; Robinson, 2006;
Schmid Mast, 2007). In terms of understanding a disorder, studying nonverbal
behavior and skill can help researchers develop theories about the nature of the dis-
order. In fact, nonverbal behavior might be part of the definition. For example, the
definition of depression includes the expression of sadness, and the definition of
schizophrenia includes the display of inappropriate nonverbal behavior. Similarly,
autism is defined in part by the idea that such patients lack the ability to infer
what’s going on in someone else’s head; therefore, a deficit in the ability to judge
emotional expressions would be a definitional element of the disorder. As summa-
rized in previous chapters, and by Perez and Riggio (2003), many groups with psy-
chological disorders—including depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism (Philippot,
Kornreich, & Blairy, 2003), and autism (McGee & Morrier, 2003)—score lower
on accuracy in judging the meanings of nonverbal cues than do control groups.
At present, it is not clear to what extent the nonverbal decoding deficit so evident
in impaired groups is tied uniquely to the nature of their disorders or instead
reflects other factors, such as a general deficit in cognitive ability, lowered motiva-
tion to focus on experimental tasks, or the effect of medications. Studies need to
include appropriate control tasks, along with the nonverbal sensitivity tests, to
resolve this question.

Nonverbal cues are also important in the process of diagnosis by practicing
clinicians. The process of clinical care, either by medical doctors or psychothera-
pists, involves expert knowledge and cognitive skills acquired through training;
nevertheless, most of what clinical care consists of is interpersonal interaction.
Basically, clinicians and clients talk to each other, and it is through the medium of
speech that therapeutic action occurs. Naturally, nonverbal behavior is a crucial
component of this interaction.

The clinician routinely studies the patient for nonverbal signs that will shed
light on problems and progress. In a psychotherapy visit, the therapist’s ability to
read signs of emotion—especially those that signal issues not brought up verbally,
those that are upsetting to clients or are denied by them—is central. In medical vis-
its, the physician is attuned to emotional and psychosocial issues that might be
causing, or be caused by, a medical condition. For instance, a patient might start
experiencing depression in the aftermath of a heart attack.

Many studies have investigated the display of different nonverbal cues in rela-
tion to different psychological disorders. For example, researchers have shown
that the stereotype of the depressed person as downcast and slow in response has
validity. Evidence of decreased general movement; decreased expressiveness;
decreased speech, gestures, eye contact, and smiling; halting speech; and a deficit
in the ability to express emotions have all been documented in depressed persons
(Bouhuys, 2003; Ekman & Friesen, 1974; Ellgring, 1986; Perez & Riggio, 2003;
Waxer, 1976).

412 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

Some forms of schizophrenia are marked by a voice that is flat and monotone,
and an increase in very subtle muscle activation in the corrugator muscle of the
face—the muscle associated with distressed-looking eyebrows—is observed com-
pared to control participants, even when viewing positive stimuli (Kring & Earnst,
2003). Other nonverbal characteristics of schizophrenia include lack of facial
expression, inappropriate affect displays, increased self-touching, and less interper-
sonal gazing. As discussed in Chapter 10, some nonverbal behaviors are distinc-
tively associated with autism and related conditions such as Asperger syndrome,
most notably gaze avoidance but also less smiling and gesturing (McGee &
Morrier, 2003).

Another illustration of the diagnostic use of nonverbal cues is in the detection
of pain. Obviously, efforts to alleviate pain may not be started if the cues to
pain are missed, which would be a real problem for the person who cannot ver-
bally report being in pain. One study showed that family members did not seem
to be aware of the nonverbal pain cues of loved ones with dementia (Eritz &
Hadjistavropoulos, 2011). Research finds that medical professionals often under-
treat pain, perhaps because they have not correctly decoded the relevant pain
expressions.

Researchers have documented the configuration of facial cues indicative of dif-
ferent kinds of pain in both infants and adults (Patrick, Craig, & Prkachin, 1986;
Prkachin, 1992). Some common indicators include lowering the brows, narrowing
the eye openings, raising the cheeks, raising the upper lip, and wrinkling the
nose. Analysis of cues may reveal information not forthcoming from self-reports
provided by patients. For example, chronic and acute sufferers of temporoman-
dibular joint disorder, which causes painful jaw movement, reported the
same amounts of pain, but the chronic group showed more facial indications of
pain both when alone and when experiencing painful procedures (LeResche,
Dworkin, Wilson, & Ehrlich, 1992). Nonverbal cues can also reveal differences
in the behavior of people actually experiencing pain versus those just pretending
(Prkachin, 1992).

There are also nonverbal behaviors associated with the Type A personality
syndrome (a risk factor for heart attack), including loud and explosive speech
and other behaviors suggestive of hostility. Indeed, many studies implicate hostil-
ity as a precursor to heart disease. In a recent study, facial expressions coded by
the FACS (see Chapter 9) were associated with transient occurrences of ischemia,
a condition in which there is insufficient blood supply to the muscles of the heart,
a predictor of serious and even fatal coronary events. Men with known heart
conditions were videotaped in interviews, and physiological measurements were
made. Those experiencing episodes of ischemia showed more expressions sug-
gestive of anger and more nonenjoyment smiles than those without ischemia
(Rosenberg et al., 2001). Results such as these could influence physicians’ care
of these patients.

During medical education, there is a widespread trend to increase training and
awareness of communication factors in medical care. Nevertheless, physicians typi-
cally receive only a limited amount of training in communicating with patients,
including recognizing patients’ states and conditions through an enhanced aware-
ness of nonverbal cues. Clearly, physicians can use this kind of knowledge. It is

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 413

very important that physicians not only notice cues but that they also draw appro-
priate interpretations from them. Nonverbal cues can also be tied to diagnostic
judgments by considering them as an unobtrusive source of information on the
patient’s progress. Ellgring and Scherer (1996), Ostwald (1961), and others have
found that vocal qualities, smiling, movement, and other nonverbal behaviors can
change following psychotherapy.

Thus far, we have discussed ways clinicians make use of the client’s cues. The
client also studies the clinician for signs of understanding, interest, approval, rejec-
tion, and reassurance. The clinician’s nonverbal behavior may facilitate a good
relationship, a high level of trust, and a good exchange of information—what are
together called the “therapeutic alliance”—or it may make the client feel disre-
garded and misunderstood. Hall, Horgan, Stein, and Roter (2002) found that both
patients and physicians were able to judge with significant, though not great, accu-
racy how much they are liked by the other, certainly an impression that could have
far-reaching consequences. In that study, patients whose doctors liked them less
were less satisfied and more likely to consider changing doctors over the following
year. Greater satisfaction and attributions of empathy are associated with doctors
who gaze, lean forward, nod, gesture, establish closer interpersonal distances, and
have warm and enthusiastic voice quality. Sometimes certain combinations of phy-
sician cues have the best effect. Hall, Roter, and Rand (1981) found that patients
were most satisfied when their physicians’ voice tone was negative, for example
anxious, but combined with words that were positive, a mix that seemed to convey
concern plus positive regard. Physicians who are better able to decode the mean-
ings of nonverbal cues have patients who are more satisfied and more likely to
keep their appointments (DiMatteo, Hays, & Prince, 1986; DiMatteo, Taranta,
Friedman, & Prince, 1980). Those researchers also found that physicians who
were more accurate at expressing nonverbal emotion cues in a posed task had
more satisfied and compliant patients. So far, it is not known how these nonver-
bally skilled physicians put their skills into action in the medical encounter, but we
can imagine that they might be good at showing empathy, creating a warm atmo-
sphere, or picking up on the patient’s unmentioned issues.

Medical educators now stress the importance of developing a good relationship
with patients. It is a fallacy to think that physicians and patients are just enacting
well-learned roles, or that physicians are cognitive machines that crank out profes-
sional behavior without having feelings or showing emotions. Clinicians and clients
of all sorts develop relationships; they may be of a unique and highly structured
kind, but they are relationships nonetheless. Therefore, all that we know about the
role of nonverbal behavior in attraction, attitudes, impressions, rapport, emotions,
and persuasion is relevant to this special context.

TECHNOLOGY AND NONVERBAL MESSAGES

Virtually all the research reported in this book has been designed to enhance your
understanding of nonverbal behavior in face-to-face interaction. But an increasing
amount of our communication is mediated by various forms of technology. Two
issues emanating from this trend are especially pertinent to the study of nonverbal

414 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

A MORE SENSITIVE MCAT?

When you visit your physician, you are
comforted by the knowledge that he or
she understands biology, chemistry, bio-
chemistry, and physics well, especially as
they pertain to the development and
health of your body. As you might already
know, the Medical College Admission
Test (MCAT) assesses this sort of scientific
intelligence. What you may not be sure
about is his or her social, psychological,
and cultural knowledge of people. There
is no test for that, right?

That used to be the case, but not
anymore.

If you are interested in becoming a
physician, you will need to prepare for a
new section of the MCAT (starting
in 2015), one dealing with the social, psy-
chological, and cultural aspects of human
behavior. In this changing and increas-
ingly diverse world, physicians need to
be sensitive to how factors, such as
patients’ cultural and social background,
might influence their patients’ health.

Nonverbal cues not only provide clues
to a patient’s state of health, they are
also helpful in determining his or her
likely social and cultural background.
However, a physician’s ability to decode
patient nonverbal messages and encode
important nonverbal information to
patients (e.g., disapproval for medication noncompliance) in a manner that is both effective and sensitive
to the patient’s background (e.g., age, socioeconomic status, education, race, ethnicity, culture) is likely a
product of years and years of hands-on training. Years and years of practice do not not guarantee the
development of this skill, though. Regrettably, no test is currently available that assesses a physician’s social
intelligence (or ability to eventually possess a high degree of it) around patients, save one—you! You can
always choose to leave a physician who does not respond appropriately to you.

At present, researchers are attempting to understand the characteristics of physicians who are better at
decoding nonverbal cues as well as the consequences of this enhanced nonverbal sensitivity for the medical
visit (Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, 2009). Moreover, efforts are under way to develop tests that can
help physicians recognize the emotion cues of patients, such as the Patient Emotion Cue Test (PECT)
(Blanch-Hartigan, 2011).

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CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 415

communication: First, does technology eliminate the role of nonverbal signals in
face-to-face interaction? Second, do changes in the manifestation of nonverbal
behavior mediated by technology result in less effective communication?

The answer to the first question depends on what kind of communication
technology we are talking about and how it is used. Computer-mediated communi-
cation may be verbally dominant, as in texting and email; it may have verbal text
with an anthropomorphic icon or photograph (“pic”); it may provide ongoing
visual images of interactants through videoconferencing or webcams on personal
computers; and, in the case of immersive collaborative virtual environments
(CVEs), it might involve the interaction of two- or three-dimensional animated
representations of the interactants in the form of “avatars” who embody each
interactant’s desired behavior—including frowns, winks, and smiles. Text messag-
ing via cell phones may reduce the role of nonverbal behavior, but cell phones
also have the ability to instantly complement a written message with vocal cues or
a photograph. Even those forms of communication that are verbally dominant,
such as text messaging and email, are not completely devoid of extraverbal signals.
For example, people associate meanings with the length of time it takes a person to
reply, when during the day the message is sent (Walther & Tidwell, 1995), the
depth or detail of the reply, and the number of spelling errors—perhaps a sign of
how much care went into composing the message, or perhaps the sender’s compe-
tence. The meanings associated with these and other features of the communication
will no doubt vary with the nature of the interactants’ relationship, their online inter-
action history, how important or pressing the issue is, and the like (see Döring &
Pöschl, 2009).

Will communication effectiveness suffer when people communicate in ways
that eliminate or severely reduce their opportunity to see, touch, and exercise
control over the interaction context? During the early stages of the technology
boom, many theorists and practitioners believed that the effectiveness of human
communication mediated by technology would suffer. They argued that technol-
ogy could not effectively restore what would be lost by the lack of human copre-
sence (Walther, 2006). However, one could argue that the success of Facebook,
where people can let their “friends” know what they are doing, post “pics” and
videos of themselves and others, respond with a “like” to another’s wall post,
view others’ photo albums, and play games with like-minded friends, suggests
that such computer-mediated technologies may be filling a void in the lives of
many who lack sufficient interpersonal contact with meaningful others in the
real world.

Human beings and the ever-increasing number of new communication technol-
ogies relate to each other in complex and diverse ways. People can, of course, use
face-to-face communication when they need to use more nonverbal messages in an
interaction (Riordan & Kreuz, 2010). However, some messages can be effectively
communicated through various technological instruments without all the nonverbal
signals that might accompany the same message in face-to-face interaction. When
messages are short, uncomplicated, and can be easily understood without comple-
mentary and redundant information from other channels, almost any type of
mediated communication, including text and email messages, can be successful.

416 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

However, email messages have been found to be less effective in accurately commu-
nicating sarcasm, humor, and certain emotions when compared to vocal and face-
to-face communication. Adding to the problem is the discovery that the people
who sent the email messages greatly overestimated the accuracy of their messages.
Kruger, Epley, Parker, and Ng (2005), who base their conclusions on five studies,
point out that it is apparently hard for the senders of email to appreciate the inter-
pretive perspective of the receiver.

What is lost, however, is ongoing feedback and relationship information that
could be used to adapt message content. Herbert and Vorauer (2003) found that
evaluative feedback was more positive and more accurate in face-to-face interaction
than over email. Some believe that the absence of ongoing feedback and relation-
ship information in less personal forms of communication, like email, facilitates
less sensitive, self-focused, critical, and deceptive messages (Kiesler, Siegel, &
McGuire, 1984). It is not clear, however, whether less personal communication
channels are also less civil. Bullying occurs in the classroom and on the playground
as well as in cyberspace via email, instant messaging, blogs, and so on (i.e., cyberbul-
lying). But is less civil behavior more widespread in email messages or face-to-face
interactions in general? Is less civil behavior more likely in email messages but only
under certain circumstances? Is less civil communication behavior more likely related
to individual style than it is to the nature of the media used to communicate? We are
still seeking the answers to these questions.

Interactive video often allows interactants to accomplish their communicative
goals, but remote interaction via video does not seem to generate the same interper-
sonal impressions as face-to-face interaction. Storck and Sproull (1995) found less
positive feelings among interactants who used interactive video when compared to
those who interacted face to face. And in an Australian study dealing with genetic
counseling via videoconferencing, practitioners reported difficulties in detecting cli-
ent nonverbal cues and with rapport building, even though they were satisfied with
the delivery format overall (Zilliacus et al., 2010).

Sometimes the introduction of nonverbal cues to computer-mediated communi-
cation can be problematic. Apparently college students already know this. In a
study of 1,000 college students, Rumbough (2001) found that 37 percent used the
Internet to meet new people, but only 11 percent posted a picture of themselves.
Without a picture, students did not have to deal with visual cues that might act as
a distraction or source of a stereotype—for example, weight, race, or physical
attractiveness—that might hinder message credibility and relationship development.
These media users want the introduction of any potentially problematic visual cues
to be considered in conjunction with a history of positive interactions. When
photos were introduced to partners who had been working and interacting online
on several tasks, it resulted in lower ratings of affection and social attraction for
their partners, but it had the opposite effect for unacquainted partners who did
not have a history of interaction (Walther, Slovacek, & Tidwell, 2001). Even the
introduction of dynamic nonverbal signals in videoconferencing does not guarantee
more effective communication, unless the images produced fit the viewers’ needs.
When videoconferencing focuses on the interactants’ faces, it may facilitate com-
munication for more personal messages, but not when an object, such as a new

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 417

product, is the focus of the discussion, or when the goal of the videoconference is
to teach a skill, such as bike repair (Brittan, 1992; Gergle, Kraut, & Fussell, 2004;
Kraut, Fussell, & Siegel, 2003). The effectiveness of technology-mediated messages
is also dependent on individual needs and preferences. Some people are more com-
fortable in contexts with more nonverbal cues, and some are comfortable with
less. Certain groups of individuals may share a preference—for example, online
dating services typically report that males are far more likely to use a photo of
the potential date as the basis of a dating decision than are females. Given the
adaptable nature of human beings, it is safe to assume they will not simply be
slaves to technology. Before the computer was invented, typists used capital letters,
underlining, quotation marks, and parenthetical phrases like “just kidding” to off-
set the lack of vocal and visual cues. Computers are equipped with even more
options to make a sender’s message clearer and reduce uncertainties on the part
of the receiver, for example, bold lettering. Emoticons such as 🙂 for happy or for
something intended as humorous, and 🙁 for sad are commonly used to add infor-
mation to an email that might otherwise be communicated by facial or vocal
expressions. But despite widespread recognition of the meaning of these two sym-
bols, they apparently have relatively little impact on the interpretation of email
messages, with one exception: frown emoticons tended to reduce the favorable or
constructive ratings of positive messages (Walther & D’Addario, 2001). In addi-
tion to textual adaptations, the email message itself can be flagged as a priority,
or it may be accompanied by a request for an acknowledgement of receipt. Coping
also occurs when a communicator uses more than one type of technology to com-
municate a message, especially important and urgent ones: a text message or email,
for example, that is followed by a cell phone call. In short, people who are striving
to communicate effectively will learn how to use one or more mediated forms of
communication to suit their needs and offset any deficits created by missing non-
verbal cues. The ability to effectively decode nonverbal cues sent in the form of
computer-generated visuals will also characterize effective communicators in the
digital age. Virtually anyone with a computer and some program like Photoshop
has the ability to alter visual images. Given the high credibility accorded visual
images in this culture, these altered images can be very persuasive, and they
are easily circulated to a broad audience. Just as skilled observers of nonverbal
behavior in face-to-face encounters learn what cues to attend to for effective
decoding, skilled observers of online photos and videos will need to learn what
features raise suspicion about an image’s authenticity as well as how they can ver-
ify or put those suspicions to rest (Knapp, 2008; Lester, 2006; Messaris, 1994;
Mitchell, 1992).

Technology users are not the only ones who are interested in the role of
nonverbal signals and effective communication; the makers of new technologies
are also looking for ways to make their instruments better reflect face-to-face inter-
action. The future is likely to offer a greater sophistication in the area of touching
(Bailenson & Yee, 2007), smell, and three-dimensional images. The production of
avatars with realistic human hair, skin, and smooth movement coordination that
reflect cultural, regional, and ethnic differences are yet to be developed. But it
seems likely that they will—challenging the study of nonverbal communication in
ways we never envisioned.

418 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

SUMMARY

Understanding the meaning of nonverbal behav-
ior requires an understanding of context. This
chapter examined various forms of nonverbal
behavior in several familiar contexts: advertising,
politics, education, culture, therapy, and computer
mediated.

Nonverbal messages embedded in advertising
can be extremely influential. A wide variety of non-
verbal signals including music, hairstyle, clothing,
possessions, and responsiveness are used to influ-
ence the viewer or hearer. When the target of the
ads is distracted during the processing of the ad’s
information, and multiple exposures to the ad
occur, the impact can be even more powerful.
These nonverbal signals not only help sell products,
they can also influence the expectations, percep-
tions, and attitudes of the people exposed to them
as they relate to actual daily social interaction.

It often seems as if political candidates are
obsessed with creating the “right” image, and
more often than not, displaying the “right” non-
verbal signals is a compelling part of that image.
Images of a candidate can be honed by carefully
structuring the environment—the music, back-
drop, others present—within which he or she is
viewed. Managing how the candidate looks with
the help of makeup and the appropriate clothes
and hairstyles is also important, as is structuring
behavior, such as having a candidate “act more
assertive.” On several occasions, the outcome
of televised presidential debates has been attrib-
uted to nonverbal signals: calm demeanor versus
tension, confidence versus uncertainty, warmth
versus coldness, shortness versus height, listening
with interest versus smirking, and so on.

The learning process in elementary, secondary,
and college classrooms is also influenced by
nonverbal messages. Students whose nonverbal
signals communicate liking and warmth get posi-
tive outcomes from their teachers, and students
also believe they learn more from teachers who
exhibit such behaviors. Some research, however,
indicates that negative nonverbal behavior by a
teacher can have positive outcomes for learning
in the short run.

Some nonverbal behavior is common to
human beings throughout the world, but many
of the behaviors we exhibit are taught to us by
our culture. We explored three dimensions along
which cultures vary in order to highlight cultural
differences in nonverbal behavior. These dimen-
sions focused on close versus distant behavior,
behavior focused on highlighting the individual
versus highlighting the group, and behavior that
assumes a great deal of contextual knowledge for
interpretation versus behavior that assumes little
contextual knowledge. Although these broad cul-
tural characterizations are a useful place to start,
it is important to remember that variations also
exist within cultures.

The clinical situation is another context in
which nonverbal messages are crucial. Therapists
and physicians rely on nonverbal signals to
help them understand and diagnose depression,
schizophrenia, autism, pain, and other mental
and physical disorders. Equally important are
nonverbal signals that occur as part of the
communication between therapist and patient
during therapy. Both patient and therapist are
especially attuned to cues that may signal emo-
tions being felt.

In a similar manner, physicians can learn to
read nonverbal signals emanating from their
patients, which can be valuable signs of an illness,
fear, or how the patient feels about his or her
physician. In the same way, patients can use non-
verbal signals to assess how their physician feels
about their illness and their relationship.

To varying degrees, nonverbal signals also
play an important role in messages mediated by
technology. Just as in face-to-face interaction,
nonverbal signals accompanying technology may
complement, repeat, substitute, accent, regulate,
and conflict with verbal behavior. In some cases,
however, the number and type of nonverbal
signals are quite limited. Despite this, messages
can be effectively communicated even though
the lack of copresence often takes its toll on
how the participants feel about each other.
Sometimes the introduction of nonverbal cues

CHAPTER 13 NONVERBAL MESSAGES IN SPECIAL CONTEXTS 419

in computer-mediated communication facili-
tates effectiveness; sometimes it hinders it. As
technology-mediated communication increases,
human beings will make adaptations with
the signals available to them while seeking to

approximate face-to-face interaction as much
as possible. At the same time, the makers of new
technology will increasingly incorporate alter-
natives for conveying nonverbal information that
more closely approximates face-to-face interaction.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Discuss how the nonverbal behavior of a
patient and physician can mutually influence
each other. Next time you visit a counselor
or physician, try to carefully observe that
person’s nonverbal behavior. Is it as effective
and positive as it could be?

2. You are a consultant to a vibrant, physically
appealing presidential candidate who is not
a deep thinker and so is unable to make good
arguments for his or her platform.What would
you do to get this person elected? Now reverse
the situation: You are advising a person who is
a deep thinker able to make good arguments
for his or her platform, but this person is not
dynamic and is physically unappealing. What
do you do to get this person elected?

3. Suppose you were hired to advise incoming
college freshmen on what nonverbal behavior
they should enact to impress their teachers.
What advice would you give?

4. In what ways do you think advertising
influences your nonverbal behavior? How
does advertising influence your perceptions
of other people’s nonverbal behavior? As an
exercise, take careful notes on the use of

nonverbal communication in television adver-
tisements for a few hours. Did you notice
things you had not noticed before?

5. Different cultures exhibit different nonverbal
behavior, and sometimes these differences
cause communication problems when people
from those different cultures interact. But it is
also true that sometimes these differences
occur and there are no problems. Under what
conditions do you think problems would or
would not occur?

6. Select a short scene from your own life
in which you were interacting with another
person. Then assume you and your partner
were communicating that same scene via a
technology of your choice (e.g., computers,
cell phones). Identify the difficulties and
advantages the technology has for communi-
cating the information in that scene.

7. Log onto to the following Web site: www.pbs.
org/30secondcandidate. Discuss how some of
the tricks of the trade for making a candidate
look good or bad are currently being used by
those who are seeking the presidency this
election cycle.

420 PART V COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT MESSAGES

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NAME INDEX

Aamodt, M. G., 73
Abbey, A., 363
Aboud, F. E., 338
Abra, G., 369
Abrahams, D., 156
Ackerman, B., 75, 76
Ackerman, J. M., 250
Acredolo, L. P., 201
Adam, G., 301
Adam, J., 92
Adams, K., 74
Adams, R. B., 303, 306, 317
Adams, R. S., 92
Addington, D. W., 336, 357, 358
Adelmann, P. K., 366
Adolph, D., 181
Adolphs, R., 313
Adrien, J. L., 313
Afifi, W. A., 235, 244
Agobiani, E., 113
Agthe, M., 159
Aguilera, D. C., 241
Aiello, J. R., 138, 139, 309, 386
Aiello, T. C., 138, 139, 386
Aik, V. C., 75
Ailes, R., 405
Akehurst, L., 291
Akert, R., 24, 69
Al Issa, A., 369
Albada, K. F., 163
Albright, L., 71
Alhoniemi, A., 306
Alibali, M. W., 217
Allen, K., 246
Allen, M., 411
Allert, T., 374
Allesen-Holm, B. H., 270
Allison, P. D., 156, 174, 177, 178
Almerigogna, J., 291
Alper, T., 238
Alpers, G. W., 303
Altman, I., 107, 108, 124, 132
Altmann, S. A., 44
Alwall, N., 300
Ambady, N., 10, 21, 25, 26, 57, 62, 66, 67,

71, 72, 78, 79, 167, 276, 282, 290,
345, 351, 383, 402, 403

Amidon, M. D., 328
Amole, D., 133
Andari, E., 314
Andersen, J. F., 9, 409
Andersen, P. A., 9, 234, 236, 365, 385, 409,

412, 413

Anderson, A. H., 299
Anderson, A. K., 285
Anderson, C. A., 102, 103, 112, 402
Anderson, D. E., 390
Anderson, J. L., 173
Anderson, R. J., 336
Andrzejewski, S. A., 25, 72, 75, 419
Anokhin, A. P., 43
Ansel, J., 312
Ansfield, M. E., 390
Antonoff, S. R., 270
Aoyama, S., 37
App, B., 242
April, C., 17
Archer, D., 24, 59, 69, 292, 402
Argo, J. J., 241
Argyle, M., 23, 24, 55, 63, 237
Ariely, D., 155
Aries, E., 340
Armstrong, N., 205
Aron, A., 163
Aronson, E., 160
Aronson, V., 156
Arriaga, X. B., 107
Arteche, A., 290
Arvey, R. D., 159
Asendorpf, J. B., 21, 360
Ashmore, R. D., 164
Asla, N., 62
Athanasiou, R., 120
Atsuko, A., 137
Aubanel, V., 339
Austin, C. M., 341
Austin, S. B., 100
Aviezer, H., 277
Avni-Babad, D., 142
Axtell, R., 205

Babad, E., 142, 409, 411
Babbitt, L. G., 383
Bachmann, T., 168
Bachorowski, J., 266
Back, M. D., 192
Badzinski, D. M., 27
Baeck, H., 336
Baehne, C. G., 301, 306, 307
Bailenson, J. N., 422
Baker, E. E., 80, 108, 164, 175
Bales, R., 144
Balogh, R. D., 180
Banse, R., 343, 346, 348
Barakat, R., 205
Barash, D. P., 128

Barbee, A., 167, 415
Barber, N., 184
Barbosa, P. A., 354
Barchard, K., 267
Bard, K. A., 308
Barefoot, J., 140
Bargh, J. A., 10, 39, 222, 226, 250, 334, 401
Baringer, D. K., 412
Barker, L. L., 349
Barkow, J. H., 31
Barlow, J. D., 318
Barlow, J., 233
Barnard, M., 188
Barnard, W. A., 137
Barnhart, K. T., 181
Barnlund, D. C., 413
Baron, R. A., 98
Baron, R. M., 168
Baron-Cohen, S., 303, 304, 313, 346
Barrett, K. C., 33
Barrett, R. P., 313
Barrett, S., 246
Barrios, M., 292, 402
Barsky, S., 105
Bar-Tal, D., 157
Barth, J. M., 77, 303
Barton, R. A., 51, 109
Bartsch, R. A., 402
Bastiani, A., 77
Bates, E., 222
Bauer, V. K., 79
Baum, A., 117
Baum, K. M., 75, 346
Bavelas, J., 218
Bavelas, J. B., 14, 16, 24, 214, 216, 217, 226,

261, 267, 298, 378
Baxter, L. A., 98
Bayliss, A. P., 300
Beaber, R. J., 346
Beach, S. R., 163
Beakel, N. G., 17
Beattie, G. W., 299
Beattie, G., 217, 218
Beatty, M. J., 43
Beck, L., 62
Beck, S. B., 174
Becker, F. D., 142
Becker, S. W., 143
Beets, J. L., 104
Behnke, R. R., 350
Belch, C., 76
Bélisle, J. F., 72
Bell, P. A., 109, 137

493

Bellack, A. S., 76
Bello, R. S., 414
Belopolsky, A. V., 298
Bensing, J. M., 300, 316
Bente, G., 369
Bentin, S., 277
Berenbaum, H., 81
Berger, K. W., 218
Bergeson, T. R., 356
Berggren, N., 409
Berglund, H., 181
Berhenke, A., 291
Berke, J., 102
Berkowitz, L., 103
Berman, J. M. J., 330, 349
Berman, P. W., 164
Bernieri, F. J., 28, 60, 61, 65, 76, 222, 228,

298, 307, 328
Bernieri, F., 62, 67, 71, 74, 79, 276
Bernstein, M. J., 273
Berry, D. S., 80, 167, 168, 311, 336, 337,

338, 382
Berscheid, E., 154, 157, 164, 393
Bettens, F., 181
Bevan, W., 258
Bharucha, J. J., 344
Bickman, L., 189
Biddle, B., 92
Biddle, J. E., 159
Biehl, M., 72, 278
Bilo, H. J. G., 300
Bilous, F., 355
Biocca, F. A., 178
Bird, H., 221
Birdwhistell, R. L., 14, 22, 24, 28, 53, 220, 361
Birk, T., 350, 360
Biship, S. E., 328
Bishop, P. J., 173, 184
Bissell, K. L., 178
Bissonnette, V., 71
Black, A., 26, 226, 267
Blair, I. V., 339
Blair, R. J. R., 77
Blairy, S., 274, 416
Blake, R., 189
Blakemore, S., 313
Blanch, D. C., 419
Blanchard, J. J., 76
Blanch-Hartigan, D., 71
Blanck, P. D., 27, 345, 410
Blane, H. T., 345
Blascovich, J. J., 369
Blass, T., 253
Bleske-Rechek, A., 363
Bloch, P. H., 189
Bloom, K., 337
Blumstein, P., 371
Bluni, T. D., 189
Bochner, S., 193
Böckler, A., 300
Bodur, H. O., 71
Bogaert, A. F., 175

Bogart, K. R., 286
Bolkan, S., 411
Bollon, T., 274
Bolt, R., 334
Bonanno, G. A., 266
Bond, C. F., Jr., 390
Boniecki, K. A., 105
Booth-Kewley, S., 285
Boothroyd, L. G., 158, 167, 285
Boraston, Z. L., 313
Borelli, M., 245
Borenstein, M. N., 384
Borkenau, P., 66, 192, 382
Borkowska, B., 336
Bornstein, M. H., 289
Borod, J. C., 80, 289
Borrill, J., 78
Bosh, G., 391
Boss, D., 235
Bosshart, K., 314
Bouchard, T. J., Jr., 42
Boucher, J. D., 55
Bouhuys, A. L., 416
Bowers, A. L., 310
Bowyer, M. D., 339
Boyce, W. T., 71
Boyd, J., 99
Boyes, A. D., 173
Boyle, E. A., 299
Bradac, J. J., 340
Bradley, B. P., 312
Bradshaw, C. P., 101
Brady, R. M., 350
Brandau-Brown, F. E., 414
Brandt, F., 286
Brandt, J. F., 340
Brannigan, C. R., 261
Brauer, J., 300
Braun, C., 165
Braun, M. F., 158
Braunwald, K. G., 342
Bredie, W. L. P., 270
Breen, L., 162
Bregman, M. R., 333
Brewer, G., 193
Breyer, B. N., 176
Brickman, J., 162
Briggs, L. F., 385
Brinkman, H., 138, 235
Brislin, R. W., 156
Briton, N. J., 73, 386
Brittan, D., 422
Brizzolara, M. M., 138
Broadbent, M., 223
Broeders, A. P. A., 333
Bromley, S., 318
Brooks, C. I., 310, 311
Brooks, D. C., 93
Brooks, D. M., 409
Broughton, A., 307
Broune, V. T., 339
Brown, B., 337

Brown, B. B., 107, 108
Brown, C. E., 386
Brown, C. M., 273
Brown, E., 101, 291
Brown, J. W., 221
Brown, R., 26, 220
Brown, W. S., Jr., 341
Browne, B. A., 402
Brownlow, S., 341
Brunalt, M. A., 140
Bruneau, T. J., 357
Brunner, L. J., 260
Brunsma, D. L., 191
Bryan, A., 158
Bryand, M. C., 411
Bryant, B., 63
Bryant, R. A., 99
Bryski, B. G., 405
Buchanan, R. W., 26
Buck, R., 80, 81, 268, 276, 285, 388
Budesheim, T. L., 405
Bugental, D. E., 17, 18, 327, 385
Buker, H., 380
Bukowski, W. M., 175
Bull, P., 77
Bull, R., 162, 390
Bulleit, B. A., 242
Buller, D. B., 383
Burchard, K. W., 317
Burger, G. K., 407
Burger, J. M., 111
Burgess, C. A., 251
Burgoon, J. K., 17, 136, 218, 350, 351, 360,

368, 369, 372, 383, 390
Burk, N. M., 189
Burnett, A., 27
Burnett, T., 402
Burns, S., 159
Burt, D. M., 158
Burtt, H. E., 404
Buslig, A. L. S., 96
Buss, A. H., 255, 312
Buss, D. M., 156, 157
Bustos, A. A., 307
Butler, D., 292
Butler, E. A., 80
Butler-O’Hara, 39
Buttelmann, D., 51
Buunk, A. P., 176
Byrne, D., 128
Byron, K., 75, 404

Cable, D. M., 177, 245
Cacioppo, J. T., 226, 288, 401
Calabrese, S. K., 177
Caldara, R., 282
Calder, A., 312
Calder, A. J., 312, 346
Caldwell, D. F., 111
Calhoun, J. B., 129, 130
Call, J., 44, 51, 300
Calvo, M. G., 278

494 NAME INDEX

Camden, C. T., 371
Cameron, G., 175
Cameron, H., 218
Camgoz, N., 109
Campain, R. F., 74
Campanella, P., 74, 273
Campbell, D. E., 104, 106, 114
Campbell, J. B., 98
Campbell, L. A., 99
Campos, J. J., 38
Camras, L. A., 38
Cancino, J. M., 104
Cannon, P. R., 285
Caplan, M. E., 140
Caporael, L. R., 342
Cappella, J. N., 52, 222, 227, 290, 308,

352, 371
Carchon, I., 154
Carey, M. P., 250
Carifio, M. S., 140
Carlsmith, J. M., 102, 309
Carlson, G. E., 55
Carnagey, N. L., 112
Carnevale, P. J., 160
Carney, D. R., 61, 67, 71, 72, 75, 79, 199,

307, 371
Carr, S. J., 113
Carrera, P., 266, 270
Carrington, P. I., 160
Carroll, J. M., 266, 277, 278
Cartei, V., 336
Carter, J. D., 60, 66, 68, 73, 319, 371
Carton, E., 75
Cary, M. S., 298
Cash, T. F., 159, 178
Casmir, F. L., 63
Cassell, J., 17
Castelli, L., 66
Castles, D. L., 255
Caudill, W., 138
Caul, W. F., 61, 67, 80, 81, 285
Cavior, N., 154
Ceci, S. J., 167
Cernoch, J. M., 180
Cervenka, E. J., 205
Ceschi, G., 273, 345
Chafetz, M. E., 345
Chaiken, S., 160, 161
Chaikin, A. L., 410
Chambers, C. G., 330, 349
Chan, R. S., 342
Channing, H., 173
Chapman, H. A., 285
Chapple, E. D., 356
Charles-Sire, V., 243
Charney, E. J., 223
Chartrand, T. L., 10, 39, 222, 223, 226,

344, 401
Chase, J., 261
Chawla, P., 218
Cheek, J. M., 255, 312
Chen, F. S., 314

Chen, M., 401
Chen, Y., 217, 218, 221
Cheney, D. L., 343
Cheng, J. T., 306
Cheryan, S., 93
Cheshire, C., 157
Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S., 47, 48, 50
Chiarella, S. S., 233
Choi, Y. S., 10
Chovil, N., 14, 16, 24, 214, 226, 261, 267
Christenfeld, N., 242, 355
Christy, A. M., 282
Christy, L., 291
Chung, J., 262
Church, R. B., 218
Churchill, M. E., 407
Cialdini, R. B., 101, 404
Cicone, M., 221
Cillessen, A. H. N., 142
Clance, P. R., 246
Clark, D. M., 312
Clark, H. H., 355
Clark, J. C., 404
Clausen, A., 199
Claypool, H. M., 273
Clement, R., 338
Cline, M., 277
Clode, D., 289
Clore, G. L., 365
Coates, L., 214, 217, 298, 378
Coats, E. J., 236, 307, 336, 363, 371,

387, 404
Cochard, E., 241
Cochet, H., 212
Cody, M. J., 363, 389
Coe, N. P., 317
Cohen, A. A., 216
Cohen, D., 39, 41, 61
Cohen, S. H., 191
Cohn, E. G., 102
Cohn, J. F., 273, 290
Colapinto, J., 29
Cole, P. M., 81
Cole, S. G., 312
Coleman, L. M., 342
Coles, C., 101
Collett, P., 63, 205
Collins, M. A., 169
Colvin, C. R., 67, 71, 72, 75, 79, 311, 382
Comadena, M. E., 392
Conaty, J. C., 371
Condon, W. S., 219, 221, 228, 229
Connelly, G., 214
Conner, B., 66
Connor, J. M., 233
Cook, M., 24, 144, 145, 146, 296, 347, 353
Cook, M. A., 416
Cook, S. W., 218
Coombes, C., 167
Cooper, J., 318, 383
Corballis, P., 274
Corcoran, J. F. T., 391

Corden, B., 313
Cortes, J. B., 170
Corthals, P., 336
Cosmides, L., 31
Costa, M., 135
Costanzo, M., 62, 69
Coulson, M., 200
Cousin, G., 372
Cowgill, S., 246
Cox, C. R., 179
Coyle, J. M., 363
Craig, K. D., 38, 39, 270, 417
Crane, D. R., 141
Crane, F. G., 63
Crane, J., 63
Crawcour, S. C., 310
Crawford, C. B., 156, 173
Creel, S. C., 333
Creider, C., 205
Critchley, H. D., 320
Crivelli, C., 270
Cronauer, C. K., 372
Crone, K. T., 355
Cronin, M., 119
Crosby, F., 318
Crosby, J. R., 300
Cross, C. P., 178
Crusco, A. H., 243
Cuddy, A. J. C., 199
Cunningham, M. R., 167, 415
Curran, H. V., 78
Curtis, J., 175
Curtis, J. F., 334
Curtis, M. E., 344
Custer, H., 73
Cutler, W. B., 181
Cyr, D., 111
Czogalik, D., 77

D’Addario, K. P., 422
D’Ercole, A., 175
Dabbs, J. M., 113, 226, 311
Dadds, M. R., 314
Daigen, V., 340
Dalla Volta, R., 221
Daly, J. A., 253, 360
Damasio, A. R., 59
Danziger, K., 60
Darwin, C., 21, 44, 83, 261
Das, S., 380
Davidson, R. J., 272, 286
Davis, F., 179, 228, 277
Davis, J. M., 65, 307
Davis, M., 21, 81, 380, 401
Davitz, J. R., 23, 62, 344
Davitz, L. J., 344
De Cremer, D., 291
De Dea, C., 66
de Gail, M., 292
de Gelder, B., 200
de Leeuw, R. N. H., 161
de Ruiter, J. P., 218

NAME INDEX 495

de Waal, F. B. M., 44, 130
de Wit, H., 335
Deabler, H. L., 109
Dean, J., 308, 367
Dean, L. M., 233
DeBruine, L. M., 158, 300
Deeds, O., 232
Deethardt, J. F., 234
DeFrank, R. S., 78, 80, 82, 276
DeGroot, T., 351
Dejong, W., 173
Demertzis, A., 75
Dennis, M., 36
Dennis, P. A., 83
DePaola, S. J., 405
Derlega, V. J., 241, 410
Dermer, M., 155
Desjardins, R. N., 341
deTurck, M. A., 390
Deutsch, S. I., 313
Devlin, A. S., 95
Devue, C., 298
DiBiase, R., 236
Dick, F., 222
Dickey, E. C., 73
Dickstein, S., 291
Diego, M., 232, 246
Diener, E., 161, 385
Dietz, J. K., 67
Dietz, W. H., 173
Dijkmans, M., 222
Dijkstra, P., 176
Dillard, J. P., 336, 360
Diller, T. R., 402
Dillman, L., 368
DiMatteo, M. R., 59, 81, 345, 418
DiMatteo, M., 405
Dimberg, K., 113
Dimberg, U., 274, 293
Dimitrovsky, L., 293
Dindia, K., 234, 340, 371
Dion, K. K., 112, 154, 160, 155–156, 413, 415
Dipboye, R. L., 159
Disha, M., 174
Dispenza, F., 337
Dittmann, A. T., 23, 228, 229
Dixson, A. F., 173, 174, 184
Dixson, B. J., 173, 174, 184
Dobrogaev, S. M., 218
Dobson, S. D., 51
Dochin, E., 391
Dodd, D. K., 385, 402
Dodge, K. A., 77
Doherty-Sneddon, G., 301
Dolinski, D., 243, 384
Dollahite, D. C., 141
Don, L. S., 216
Doob, A. N., 317
Doody, J. P., 77
Döring, N., 420
Dornbusch, S., 173
Dorros, S. M., 235

Dorros, S., 250
Dosey, M., 141
Dovidio, J. F., 318, 369, 370, 372, 386
Downs, A. C., 161
Drescher, V. M., 244
Drew, C. J., 119
Driscoll, D. M., 211, 372
Driver, R., 72
Driver, R. E., 328
Droit-Volet, S., 99
Droney, J. M., 310, 311
Dubois, M., 274
Duck, S., 27
Dudarev, V., 277
Duke, M. P., 68, 74, 76, 80
Dukes, W. F., 258
Dulicai, D., 380
Dunbar, N. E., 369, 372
Dunbar, R. I. M., 176
Duncan, S., 352, 376
Duncan, S. D., Jr., 352, 376, 378
Dunlap, K., 276
Dunn, D., 160
Duong, D., 79
Durante, K. M., 159, 190
Durso, F. T., 274
Dushay, R. A., 217
Dworkin, S. F., 417
Dziobek, I., 313

Eagly, A. H., 137, 164
Earnst, K. S., 417
Eckland, B. K., 165
Edinger, J. A., 369
Edvardsson, D., 191
Edward, K., 390
Edwards, J., 76
Effron, D. A., 99
Efran, J. S., 307
Efran, M. G., 16
Efron, D., 22, 28, 211
Egland, K. L., 363
Egloff, B., 192, 255
Ehlers, A., 312
Ehrlich, C. M., 385
Ehrlich, K. J., 417
Ehrlichman, H., 301
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., 29, 32, 33, 35, 36, 45, 51,

52, 53, 54, 55
Eidenmuller, M. E., 111
Einhäuser, W., 319
Einon, D., 174
Eisenbarth, H., 303
Eisenberg, M. L., 176
Eisenkraft, N., 82
Eisenstat, R., 17
Eisner, F., 53, 343, 344, 346–347
Ekman, P., 15, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 38,

53, 55, 56, 57, 62, 201, 202, 203, 205,
206, 210, 211, 253, 255, 256, 260,
261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268, 269,
270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 278, 279,

280, 281, 282, 284, 288, 289, 302,
303, 341, 342, 387, 388, 390, 411, 412

Elaad, E., 390
Eldridge, C., 307
Elfenbein, H. A., 57, 62, 63, 75, 78, 82, 346
Ellgring, H., 416, 418
Ellgring, J. H., 297
Elliot, A. J., 51, 108, 110
Ellis, C., 264
Ellis, L., 380
Ellsworth, P., 266
Ellsworth, P. C., 24, 287, 309
Ellyson, S. L., 369, 370, 372, 386
Elmehed, K., 293
Emde, R. N., 38
Emerick, S. W., 288
Emmers, T. M., 234
Emmons, R. A., 285
Emmorey, K., 333
Engels, R. C. M. E., 307
Engstrom, E., 349
Epley, N., 327, 421
Epstein, J., 140
Epstein, J. A., 388
Erickson, B., 340
Erickson, F., 139, 220, 383
Eritz, H., 417
Erlich, P. R., 129
Esposito, G., 289
Etcoff, N., 155, 390, 415
Eubanks, J., 112
Evans, C. S., 343
Evans, G. W., 133, 142
Evans, J. W., 276
Evans, M. S., 311
Exline, R. V., 23, 307, 310, 316, 372

Fallon, A., 178
Faloultah, E., 160
Farabee, D. J., 312
Farb, B., 177
Farber, S. L., 42
Farley, S., 154, 341
Farrenkopf, T., 116
Farroni, T., 37
Farwell, L. A., 391
Fast, L. A., 75
Fazio, R. H., 255
Feder, B. J., 391
Feeley, T. H., 390
Fehr, B. J., 317, 372
Feinberg, D. R., 343
Feingold, A., 161, 164
Feinstein, C., 313
Feldman, R., 62, 76, 77, 233, 234, 342,

399, 409
Fells, C. A., 74
Ferber, A., 374
Ferguson, C. A., 341
Fernandes, M., 113
Fernández-Dols, J., 266, 267, 268, 277
Ferrara, M., 391

496 NAME INDEX

Ferris, S. R., 326
Festinger, L., 120
Feyereisen, P., 217
Field, T., 39, 41, 61, 313, 232, 246, 285,

290, 313
Fielder, R. L., 160, 250
Figueiredo, B., 232
Figueredo, A. J., 176
Finando, S. J., 128
Fincham, F. D., 250
Fine, S., 75, 76
Fink, B., 193, 360
Finkel, L., 241
Finkelstein, S., 17
Finkenauer, C., 307
Finlay, K., 106
Fiore, A. T., 157
Fischer, A., 286, 390
Fischer-Lokou, J., 243
Fisher, J. D., 128, 231, 243, 249
Fisk, G. M., 292
Fiske, D. W., 352, 376
Fiske, S. T., 143
Fitzpatrick, M. A., 67
Flaisch, T., 200
Flamme, G. A., 113
Flegr, J., 296
Fletcher, B., 216
Floyd, K., 31, 249, 348, 364, 365, 390
Floyd, W., 164
Fluck, M., 291
Foddy, M., 314
Foerch, B. J., 402
Foldi, N. S., 221
Folger, J. P., 218
Foo, M. D., 75
Forestell, C. A., 174
Forgas, J. P., 317
Fortenberry, J. H., 189
Foss, C., 108
Foulsham, T., 306
Fowler, K. A., 71
Fox Tree, J. E., 355
Fox, E., 312, 355
Fox, M. N., 18
Fox, N. A., 272
Fraccaro, P. J., 343
Frandsen, K. D., 311
Frank, L. K., 23
Frank, M. G., 110, 191, 273, 274, 388, 390
Frankel, R. M., 71
Frederick, D. A., 174, 363
Fredrickson, B. L., 403
Freedman, J. L., 130, 253
Freedman, N., 253
Freyberg, R., 339
Freytag, P., 160
Friberg, L., 43
Fridlund, A. J., 55, 267, 268
Friedman, G. B., 21
Friedman, H. S., 81, 82, 259, 285, 326, 371,

405, 418

Friedrich, G. W., 21, 377, 378
Friesen, W. V., 23, 24, 28, 30, 32, 56, 62,

205, 210, 253, 255, 260, 261, 268,
269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 278, 288,
289, 302, 303, 387, 388, 416

Frischen, A., 300
Frye, J. K., 405
Frymier, A. B., 411
Fujita, F., 161
Fuller, B., 177, 237
Fuller, V. A., 251
Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., 177
Funder, D. C., 75
Fung, C. M., 175
Füri, S., 181
Furnham, A., 174
Fusco, M. E., 109
Fussell, S. R., 422

Gaddis, S., 107
Galati, D., 32, 35
Galinsky, A. D., 98
Gallup, G. G., Jr., 335
Ganahl, D. J., 398
Gangestad, S. W., 181, 363
Gantt, W. H., 244
Garb, J. L., 317
Garber, L. L., Jr., 109
Garber, P., 218
Garcia, G. R., 86
Garcia, S., 245
Gardner, H., 271
Gardner, W. L., 75
Garlick, R., 17
Garner, M., 312
Garrett, W. A., 104
Garrido, E., 390
Garrison, J. P., 9
Garver, R. B., 391
Garver-Apgar, C. E., 181
Gates, G. S., 69
Gatewood, J. B., 229
Gatti, F. M., 170
Gattis, M., 328
Gawley, T., 175
Gee, J., 163
Geen, R. G., 97
Geis, F., 143, 292
Geiselman, R. E., 155
Geldbach, K. M., 274
Gellert, E., 173
Gentilucci, M., 221
Gergle, D., 418
Gerstman, L. J., 221
Gerwing, J., 218
Gesn, P. R., 73, 235
Gianetto, R. M., 18, 385
Gibbins, K., 191
Gier, J. A., 235
Gifford, R., 259, 311, 381, 382
Gil, S., 99
Gilbert, T., 200

Gildersleeve, K. A., 362
Gillen, B., 159
Gillentine, J., 233
Gillespie, D. L., 371
Gillis, J. S., 65, 307
Gilovich, T., 110, 191
Giner-Sorolla, R., 293
Givens, D. B., 26, 362
Givhan, R., 186
Glanville, D. N., 75, 76
Glasgow, G. M., 347
Glenberg, A. M., 301
Gochman, I. R., 132
Goffman, E., 124, 298, 374, 397, 398
Göksun, T., 221
Goldbeck, T., 346
Goldinger, S. D., 319
Goldin-Meadow, S., 217, 218, 222
Goldman, M., 140
Goldman-Eisler, F., 23, 351, 352, 353
Goldsmith, L. H., 9
Goldstein, A. G., 199, 247
Golinkoff, R. M., 221
Golosheykin, S., 43
Gonzalez, A., 99
Good, E., 178
Goodboy, A. K., 407
Goodfellow, S., 75
Goodfriend, W., 107
Goodman, N., 173
Goodwin, C., 216
Goodwyn, S., 201
Gopnik, A., 39
Goranson, R. E., 102
Gorawara-Bhat, R., 412
Gordijn, E. H., 355
Gordon, A. H., 385
Gordon, I., 340
Gordon, K. A., 36
Goren, A., 404
Gorham, J., 191
Gortmaker, S. L., 173
Gosling, S. D., 66, 107, 192
Gosselin, P., 74, 273
Graham, J. A., 161, 165, 218
Graham, L. T., 107
Graham, S. A., 221
Grahe, J. E., 65, 307, 326
Gramata, J. F., 334
Grammer, K., 167, 360, 361
Grandey, A. A., 292
Granhag, P. A., 390
Gray, A. W., 167
Gray, H. M., 10, 79
Grayson, B., 26
Green, A. M., 113
Green, E., 390
Green, J. R., 340
Greenbaum, P. E., 235
Greenberg, R., 39, 41, 61
Greenberg, S., 411
Greene, J. O., 308, 311, 353

NAME INDEX 497

Gregson-Curtis, K., 167
Greitemeyer, T., 112
Grewal, D., 262
Grieser, D. L., 339
Griffin, A. M., 2004
Griffin, J. H., 160
Griffin, W., 106, 141
Griffiths, V., 189
Grimshaw, G. M., 174
Grinspan, D., 62
Griskevicius, V., 190
Gross, J. J., 80
Grosseibl, M., 312
Grossman, R. B., 33
Gruber, J., 71
Gruendl, M., 165
Grunau, R. V. E., 39
Guadagno, R. E., 189
Guastella, A. J., 314
Gudykunst, W. B., 408
Guéguen, N., 112, 163, 243, 364
Guellai, B., 37
Guerrero, L. K., 234, 235, 365, 368, 385, 408
Gumpert, P., 316
Gunnoe, J., 236
Gunns, R. E., 26
Gurney, D. J., 216
Gutowski, K. A., 286
Gutsell, J. N., 222
Guvenc, D., 109
Guzman-Garcia, A., 245

Ha, T., 158
Haber, G. M., 93
Hacker, F., 200
Hadar, U., 8, 216, 221
Hadjikhani, N., 200
Hadji-Michael, M., 174
Hadjistavropoulos, T., 413
Hager, J. C., 289
Haggard, E. A., 265
Haight, N., 155
Hakky, U. M., 138
Halberstadt, A. G., 76, 83, 139, 277, 317,

375, 383, 385, 386, 387, 398, 409
Halberstadt, J., 79, 167
Hale, J. L., 17, 368
Halin, N., 113
Hall, A. E., 43
Hall, E. T., 3, 98, 123, 182, 359, 408
Hall, J. A., 17, 25, 28, 59, 60, 61, 66, 67, 68,

71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82,
236, 256, 264, 276, 285, 296, 307,
311, 313, 328, 334, 338, 343, 353,
371, 382, 384, 385, 386, 404, 412,
414, 415

Hall, J. K., 302
Hallahan, M., 66
Hamermesh, D. S., 159
Hamilton, J., 191
Hamilton, T. E., 157
Hampton, J. A., 242

Hancks, M., 378
Hancock, J. T., 156
Hancock, P. A., 112
Hanlon, R. E., 221
Hannum, J. W., 246
Hansen, C. H., 200
Hansen, R. D., 200
Hanson, K. N., 159
Hanyu, K., 113
Hanzal, A., 235, 250
Harcar, V., 398
Hare, A., 144
Hargie, O., 63
Hargreaves, D. J., 111, 112
Harker, L., 259
Harkins, S., 105
Harkness, K. L., 79
Harlow, H. F., 61, 234
Harms, L. S., 339
Harnsberger, J. D., 339
Harper, R. G., 369
Harrar, V., 108
Harrigan, J. A., 74, 75, 80, 255, 284, 334,

344, 345, 412
Harris, C. R., 242
Harris, M. B., 193
Harris, M. J., 75, 393, 406, 407
Harris, P. B., 108
Harris, R. J., 193
Harrison, A. A., 177
Harrison, N. A., 320
Harrison, R. P., 216
Harrison-Speake, K., 232
Hart, A. J., 291
Hart, R. P., 21, 377, 378
Hartman, J. S., 345
Hartwig, M., 390
Harwood, K., 411
Hasegawa, T., 313
Haselton, M. G., 362, 363
Haskard, K. B., 343
Hassin, R. R., 167, 277
Hastorf, A., 173
Hatfield, E., 154, 161, 226, 288
Hatri, A., 313
Hauser, M. D., 341
Havard, I., 217
Havas, D. A., 286
Haviland, J. M., 73
Havlicek, J., 51
Hawighorst, M., 181
Hawk, S., 205
Hawley, C. W., 98
Hayes, C. W., 385
Hays, E. R., 319
Hays, R. D., 414
Haythorn, W. W., 124
Hazlett, R. L., 400
Hazlett, S. Y., 400
He, Y., 319
Head, M., 111
Heatherton, T. F., 173

Heaven, L., 255
Heaver, B., 319
Hebl, M. R., 173
Hecht, M. A., 21, 26, 68, 385, 386
Hecker, S., 25
Heekeren, H. R., 313
Hegley, D., 38
Heider, K., 55, 56
Heidt, P., 245
Heilman, M. E., 160
Heimann, L., 82
Heine, K., 154
Heintz, M., 51
Heisel, A. D., 43
Heltman, K., 386
Hemphill, A., 62
Hemsley, G. D., 317
Henderson, Z., 228
Henrich, J., 306
Henry, C., 399
Henry, D., 403
Henry, J. D., 74
Hensley, W. E., 187, 320
Henson, A., 290, 309
Herbert, B. G., 165, 417
Heritage, J., 343
Herman, C. P., 175, 186
Hermans, E., 312
Hernandez-Reif, M., 232, 246
Herren, K. A., 114
Herrera, P., 274
Herrero, C., 390
Hertenstein, M. J., 231, 232, 242
Hertz, M., 313
Herzog, H., 246
Heslin, R., 231, 235, 238, 243, 245, 250,

370, 371
Hess, E. H., 24, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322
Hess, U., 273, 274, 286
Hetherington, A., 246
Hewett, K., 282
Hewitt, J., 138
Heywood, S., 218
Hickey, C. B., 316
Hietanen, J. K., 288, 306, 314
Higgins, E. T., 154, 336
Hill, J., 313
Hill, R. A., 51, 109
Hilton, I., 248
Hines, T., 109
Hinsz, V. B., 157, 292
Hirschman, L., 338
Hirsh-Pasek, K., 221
Hochman, S. H., 189
Hodgins, H., 76, 335
Hoffman, G. E., 233
Hoffman, S. P., 253
Hofstede, G., 409
Hogan, D., 349
Hogg, E., 253
Hoicka, E., 348
Holcom, M. L., 312

498 NAME INDEX

Holland, R. W., 206, 307
Hollenstein, T., 307
Holler, J., 217, 222
Hollien, H., 330, 331, 332, 391
Holmes, J. G., 338
Holmes, R. M., 232
Homel, R., 131
Honeycutt, J. M., 111
Hong, J., 155
Hopkins, I. M., 162, 314
Hopper, C. H., 311
Hopyan-Misakyan, T. M., 36
Horai, J., 160
Horgan, T. G., 60, 126, 135, 222, 414
Hornik, J., 241, 243
Hoss, R. A., 154
Hostetter, A. B., 200, 217, 218, 222
Houser, M. L., 407
Howard, A., 318
Howells, L. T., 143
Huang, R.-H., 112
Hubbard, A. S. E., 173, 249
Hudson, S. M., 26
Hugenberg, K., 282, 300
Hughes, K. R., 337
Hughes, S. M., 154, 335
Hummert, M. L., 339
Humphrey, T. M., 174
Humphries, D. A., 261
Hurley, C. M., 388
Hurley, R. S. E., 313
Husain, G., 63
Hutt, C., 313
Hutton, S. B., 302
Hwang, H. S., 277
Hyatt, E. M., 109
Hygge, S., 113
Hyman, R., 251

Iaccino, J. F., 9
Ickes, W., 71, 73, 325
Idsardi, W. J., 337
Imes, S., 246
Ingersoll, B., 72
Ingham, R., 297
Ingram, R. E., 320
Innes-Ker, A. H., 79
Inzlicht, M., 222
Irish, J. T., 338, 385
Iritani, B., 292, 398
Isaac, A., 313
Isaacowitz, D. M., 74
Isaacs, F. S., 265
Itkin, S., 365
Iverson, J. M., 222
Izard, C. E., 38, 55, 61, 73, 76, 83, 266, 268,

278, 285, 287, 291

Jack, R. E., 282
Jackson, H. J., 76
Jacob, S., 180
Jacobson, J. A., 79

Jacobson, J. W., 250
Jacobson, L., 23, 406
Jacobson, M. B., 162
Jacobson, R., 206
Jaffe, J., 299
Jahncke, H., 113
James, J. W., 128
Jamieson, J. P., 105
Jamieson, K. H., 401
Janda, L. H., 178
Janisse, M. P., 319
Jansen, K. J., 292
Jansen, N. J. M., 331
Janssen, D., 199
Jarvis, J. P., 104
Jaskolka, A. R., 242
Jasper, J. D., 99
Javaras, K. N., 100
Jaworski, A., 355
Jaywant, A., 341
Jean, A. D. L., 233
Jeffords, J., 247
Jenkins, C., 385
Jensen, J. V., 355
Jerry, D., 409
Johannsen, L., 245
Johansson, D., 300
Johnson, B. C., 318, 338
Johnson, C., 371
Johnson, D., 409
Johnson, G. A., 104
Johnson, H. G., 205, 210
Johnson, K. R., 383
Johnson, M. H., 37, 286
Johnson, M. L., 235, 244
Johnson, P. A., 173
Johnson, T., 216, 217, 298, 378
Johnston, L., 26, 224
Johnston, R. E., 104, 266
Jokela, M., 158
Jolliffe, T., 303, 304, 313
Jonas, R., 285
Jones, A. I., 360
Jones, B. C., 158, 164, 167, 300
Jones, B. T., 164
Jones, J., 82
Jones, M. E., 77
Jones, S., 236
Jones, S. B., 136
Jones, S. E., 241, 243
Jones, S. M., 365, 368
Jones, T. S., 138, 235
Jones-Gotman, M., 181
Jordahl, H., 405
Jordan, B. D., 181
Jorgenson, D. O., 104, 292
Jouhar, A. J., 161, 165
Joule, R., 245
Jourard, S. M., 236, 408
Judd, C. M., 337
Judge, P. G., 130
Judge, T. A., 177

Juette, A., 360
Juslin, P. N., 326, 341, 342

Kagan, J., 296
Kagas, D. K., 253
Kaiser, S., 273
Kalick, S. M., 157
Kalinowski, J., 310
Kallgren, C. A., 101
Kalma, A., 299, 319, 311
Kamboj, S., 78
Kanetkar, V., 106
Kang, M., 398
Kappeler, P. M., 193
Kaprio, J., 43
Karabenick, S. A., 173
Kartus, S., 236
Kaschak, M. P., 363
Kashy, D. A., 388
Kasmar, J. V., 106
Kasprzak, M., 180
Kaswan, J. W., 17, 18, 325
Katz, N. R., 343
Kaufman, D., 243
Kawakami, K., 318
Kaya, N., 124, 125
Kearney, P., 364
Keating, C. F., 371, 386, 405
Keating, J. P., 132
Kees, W., 22, 28, 91
Kegl, J., 13
Keizer, K., 101
Kelling, G. L., 101
Kelly, D. J., 37
Kelly, I. W., 104
Kelly, J. R., 250, 311, 372
Kelly, S. D., 9
Keltner, D., 66, 71, 242, 259, 266, 273,

284, 369
Kemper, D., 164
Kemper, K. J., 246
Kendler, K. S., 42
Kendon, A., 14, 23, 24, 199, 201, 202, 205,

211, 220, 221, 229, 297, 374
Kendrick, K., 313
Kendrick, T., 405
Kennedy, C. W., 371
Kenner, A. N., 255, 256
Kenny, D. A., 71
Kenrick, D. T., 102, 104, 158
Kenwood, C., 216
Kerestes, A. M., 232
Kerkstra, A., 386
Kernan, J. B., 160
Kerr, C. E., 245
Kerssen-Griep, J., 365
Kerssens, J. J., 300
Kerstholt, J. H., 331
Kessler, J. B., 161
Kezuka, E., 251
Khan, S. A., 51, 200
Kibler, R. J., 347

NAME INDEX 499

Kieffer, S. C., 292
Kiesler, S., 417
Kilbreath, C. S., 221
Kim, D. A., 285
Kim, E., 209
Kim, H., 200
Kim, J., 209
Kim, S., 93
Kim, S. I., 209
Kimata, L., 155
Kimbara, I., 226
Kimes, D. D., 292, 393
Kimes, S. E., 142
Kimura, D., 221
King, L. A., 285
King, M. J., 140
King, P. E., 348
Kingstone, A., 306
Kirk, E., 221
Kirkendol, S. E., 388, 390
Kita, S., 200, 212
Kitchen, D. M., 341
Klavina, L., 176
Kleck, R. E., 82, 140, 155, 173, 273, 285,

303, 306, 310
Kleinke, C. L., 177, 296, 307, 370
Kleisner, K., 296
Kliemann, D., 313
Kline, L. M., 137
Klinger, H. N., 347
Knapp, J. R., 140, 173
Knapp, M. L., 21, 24, 25, 28, 84, 147, 148,

163, 211, 221, 350, 360, 367, 374,
376, 377, 378, 389, 391, 392, 418

Kneidinger, L. M., 235, 249
Knoblich, G., 300
Knoth, R., 229
Knower, F. H., 73
Knowles, E. S., 128, 129
Knowles, M., 75
Knutson, B., 259
Ko, S. J., 66, 107, 337
Koch, C., 319
Koch, S. C., 301, 306, 307
Koc�nar, T., 296
Koeppel, L. B., 363
Koerner, A. F., 67
Koestner, R., 72
Koff, E., 47, 48, 50, 221, 286, 289, 338
Kohli, N., 126
Koivumaki, J. H., 23, 78, 83
Kollock, P., 371
Konasewich, P. A., 226
Koneya, M., 92, 93
Koo, J., 290
Koppelaar, L., 102
Korn, S. J., 173
Kornreich, C., 77, 412
Koskenvuo, M., 43
Kotsch, W. E., 291
Kotz, S. A., 325
Koudenburg, N., 355

Koulack, D., 162
Koutlak, R., 9
Kowal, S., 353
Kozak, M. N., 75
Kozel, F. A., 391
Krabbenhoft, M. A., 349
Kralik, J. D., 51
Kramer, C., 338
Kraus, M. W., 66, 369
Kraus, S., 402
Krauss, D., 8
Krauss, R. M., 217, 218, 221, 337, 339
Kraut, R. E., 104, 266, 418
Kreiman, J., 331
Kretschmer, E., 22
Kreuz, R. J., 416
Krieger, D., 245
Kring, A. M., 274, 385, 413
Krivonos, P. D., 21, 374
Kruck, K., 360
Kruger, D. J., 158
Kruger, J., 325, 417
Krumhuber, E. G., 273, 286, 291
Krupat, E., 100
Kruse, L., 301, 306, 307
Kucharska-Pietura, K., 344
Kues, J. R., 255
Kuhl, P. K., 39, 339
Kuhn, G., 300
Kulka, R. A., 161
Kumin, L., 201
Kunz, M., 263
Kurtz, D. L., 176, 398
Kurz, E., 398
Kutzner, F., 160
Kuwabara, M., 277
Kylliâinen, A., 314

Lacey, C., 188
Ladefoged, J., 331
Ladefoged, P., 331
LaFrance, B. H., 43
LaFrance, M., 25, 223, 385, 386
Laird, J. D., 1974
Lakin, J. L., 10, 223
Lakoff, G., 286
Lakoff, R., 338
Lalljee, M. G., 351, 353
Lamb, T. A., 1981
Lamy, L., 112
Lancelot, C., 175
Lancuba, V., 186
Landry-Pester, J. C., 336
Langlois, J. H., 154, 155, 161, 165
Lanzetta, J. T., 82, 285
Lapakko, D., 324
Larios, H., 111
Larrance, D. T., 80, 81
Larrimore, D., 246
Larsen, R. J., 167, 312, 385
Larson, C. E., 147, 148
Larson, C. M., 362

Larson, S., 71
Laser, P. S., 167
Lass, N. J., 337
Latner, J. D., 173
Laukka, P., 341, 342, 344, 345
Lavine, H., 404
Lavrakas, P. J., 174
Lawrence, S. G., 190, 290
Lawrie, D. A., 214
Lazar, M., 201
Leal, S., 390
Leaper, C., 338
Leathers, D. G., 16
Leckman, J. F., 340
Lederman, S. J., 242
Lee, I., 314
Lee, K., 316
Lee, L., 155
Lee, S. A., 408
Lee, V., 82, 267, 268
Leeb, R. T., 313
Leeland, K. B., 60
Leffler, A., 371
Lefkowitz, M., 189
Legault, L., 222
Legault, M., 74, 273
Lehman, S. J., 71
Lehmiller, J. J., 250
Leigh, T. W., 348
Leipold, W. E., 139
Lelwica, M., 73
Lemery, C. R., 226, 267
Lenihan, M. G., 243
Lenneberg, E., 30
Lennon, E., 73
Leonard, G., 98
LePoire, B. A., 368
Leppanen, J. M., 306
Leppard, W., 292
LeResche, L., 270, 413
Lerner, R. M., 140, 173
Lesko, W. A., 104
Lester, D., 114, 177
Lester, P. M., 418
Letzring, T. D., 75
Leuschner, H., 369
Levav, J., 241
Levenson, R. W., 56, 285, 288
Levesque, M. J., 71
Levine, L. R., 189
Levine, R., 98, 99
Levine, T. R., 43, 389, 391
Levine, W. J., 51
Levinson, S. C., 355
Levy Paluck, E., 385, 386
Lewandowski, G. W., Jr., 163
Lewis, M. D., 61, 276, 391
Lewis, R. J., 241, 249
Lewis, S. A., 156
Lewy, A. J., 113
Leyden, J. J., 181
Li, J., 142

500 NAME INDEX

Li, N. P., 190
Liebal, K., 44
Lieber, A. L., 104
Lieberman, D. A., 74
Liebler, A., 66, 192, 382
Lieblich, A. K., 261
Light, N. M., 119
Likowski, K. U., 289
Lilienfeld, S. O., 71
Liljenquist, K., 98
Lind, E. A., 338
Lindberg, T., 173, 331
Lindell, A. K., 289
Lindenberg, S., 101
Lindström, P., 181
Linklater, W. L., 174
Lipets, M. S., 78, 83
Lipowicz, A., 176
Lippa, R. A., 67, 333, 382
Lippman, L. G., 182
Lipshultz, L. I., 176
Little, A. C., 168, 300
Livant, W. P., 353
Livingstone, V., 74
Llobera, J., 128
Lockard, J., 292
Lodge, M., 404
Loehr, D., 219
Loewenstein, G., 155
Lohmann, A., 107
Lombardi, D. H., 154
Londerville, J., 106
Long, B., 372
Longo, L. C., 164
Lonsdale, D., 235
Lord, T., 180
Love, L. R., 17, 325, 385
Lucarelli, M. J., 286
Luce, G. G., 99
Luck, K. S., 334
Lumsden, J., 224
Lundberg, J. K., 193
Lundell, T. L., 338
Lundqvist, D., 278
Lundqvist, L. O., 274
Lundström, J. N., 181
Lundy, B., 290
Luo, S., 156
Lustig, M. W., 234
Lyman, S. M., 125
Lynch, M., 74
Lynch, R., 270
Lyons, P. M., 161

MacDonald, C. J., 73
MacFarlane, W. W., 102
Macintyre, S., 131
MacLean, J., 189
Macrae, C. N., 224, 228, 307
Maddux, J. E., 160
Madey, S. F., 164
Madson, L., 384

Maestripieri, D., 159
Magee, J. J., 390
Magen, E., 226
Magnusson, A. K., 33, 376
Mahl, G. E., 330
Mahl, G. F., 345
Mahoney, J. M., 243
Main, J. C., 300
Major, B., 160, 371
Makhijani, M. G., 164
Malatesta, C., 38, 285
Malloy, D., 229
Malloy, T. E., 71
Mandal, M. K., 76, 82
Mandisodza, A. N., 404
Maner, J. K., 159, 362, 381
Mann, S., 390
Mannarelli, T., 66, 107
Manning, J. T., 174
Mansell, W., 312
Manstead, A. S. R., 73, 273
Manusov, V., 28, 364, 365
Maple, T. L., 235, 249
Marberger, C., 165
Marche, T. A., 338
Marcus, D. K., 71
Marentette, P. F., 206, 222
Mares, S. H. W., 161
Maresh, M., 407
Margolin, J., 79
Margolis, C., 334
Marier, P., 341
Maringer, M., 286
Markel, N. N., 338, 340
Markham, R., 74
Markson, L., 301
Marmurek, H. H. C., 106
Marsh, A. A., 75, 77
Marsh, P., 205
Marshall, L. A., 43
Martin, A., 364, 384
Martin, L. L., 287
Martin, R., 200
Martineau, J., 320
Martins, Y., 181
Maruyama, G., 348
Marx, B. S., 118
Masataka, N., 335
Masiak, M., 344
Masip, J., 390
Maslow, A. H., 23, 106
Mason, M. F., 307
Mason, M. J., 131
Mast, J. F., 18, 60, 72, 73, 112, 256, 264,

296, 299, 325, 369, 371, 372, 412
Matarazzo, J. D., 354
Mathews, A., 312
Mathie, V. A., 167
Matsumoto, D., 56, 67, 69, 262, 272, 273,

276, 277, 286, 287, 289
Mattes, K., 404
Matthews, G., 59

Matthews, J. L., 292
Mattila, A. S., 292
Mauritzen, J. H., 106
Maxwell, L. E., 97, 131
Mayer, J. D., 6, 59
Mazloff, D., 339
Mazur, A., 370
McAndrew, F. T., 112
McArthur, L. Z., 168
McBrayer, D., 255
McBride, G., 128
McBurney, D. H., 174
McCabe, M. P., 177
McCallister, L., 386
McCarthy, A., 316
McClave, E., 200
McClearn, G. E., 43
McClelland, A., 174
McClintock, M. K., 180
McClure, E. B., 73, 75
McCormick, N. B., 360
McCornack, S. A., 389, 391
McCown, E. J., 113
McCreary, D. R., 175
McCroskey, J. C., 147, 148
McCullough, K. E., 17
McCune, K., 354
McDaniel, E., 234, 236, 409
McDowall, J. J., 229
McGee, G., 77, 127, 405, 412, 413
McGeehan, P., 127
McGehee, F., 331
McGuire, T. W., 417
McIntosh, D. N., 242
McKeegan, A. M., 192
McKendrick, J., 112
McLarney-Vesotski, A. R., 74
McLaughlin, F. J., 180
McLean, I., 411
McLear, P. M., 174
McNeill, D., 14, 17, 201, 212, 221, 222
Mears, C., 61
Meeker, F. B., 307
Meer, J., 113
Mefferd, A. S., 340
Mehrabian, A., 15, 17, 28, 81, 97, 122, 307,

324, 348, 364, 365, 370
Meier, J. A., 336
Meineri, S., 243
Meisels, M., 141, 173
Meissner, K., 99
Meissner, M., 202
Melby, C., 363
Mellor, D., 177
Meltzoff, A. N., 39, 40, 93
Mendel, L. L., 113
Mendelsohn, G. A., 157
Mennis, J., 131
Menon, E., 37
Merlo, S., 352
Mermillod, M., 286
Merten, J., 73

NAME INDEX 501

Mertz, T., 401
Messaris, P., 418
Messick, D., 310
Miceli, R., 32, 35
Michael, G., 174, 201, 380
Michel, G., 38
Middlemist, R. D., 128
Mileff, M., 200
Miles, L. K., 224, 228
Miller, A. L., 291
Miller, E. H. A., 51
Miller, L. H., 385
Miller, N., 348
Miller, R. D., 181
Miller, R. E., 61, 67, 80, 81, 285
Miller, R. J., 354
Miller, S. L., 362
Miller, T. A., 408
Mills, J., 160
Milmoe, S., 343
Mintz, N. L., 23, 106
Mirsky, I. A., 61
Miserandino, M., 298
Mitani, J., 44
Mitchell, J., 75
Mitchell, P. B., 314
Mitchell, W. J., 418
Mitchell, Z., 218
Miwa, Y., 113
Miyake, K., 335
Mobbs, N., 311
Modigliani, A., 316
Mogg, K., 312
Moll, K. L., 332
Molzow, I., 312
Monahan, P. J., 337
Monetta, L., 325
Monin, B., 300
Monk, R., 114, 116
Montagne-Miller, Y., 363
Montagre, M., 106
Montagu, M. F. A., 24, 233
Monteleone, G. T., 391
Montepare, J. M., 199
Moore, C. H., 160
Moore, C. I., 245
Moore, J. D., 180
Moore, M. K., 39, 40, 61
Moore, M. M., 53, 360, 362
Moore-Schoenmakers, K., 335
Moreault, D., 175
Moreland, R. L., 163
Morgan, C. J. A., 78
Morgan, M. J., 302
Morrel-Samuels, P., 221
Morrier, M., 412, 413
Morris, D., 201, 205, 231, 237, 238, 240, 253
Morris, M. E., 66, 107
Morris, P., 189
Morris, T. L., 191
Morrison, K., 391
Morrow, B., 186, 331

Morsella, E., 337
Mortezaie, M., 363
Morton, J. B., 325
Mostow, A., 75, 76
Moszkowski, R. J., 233
Motowidlo, S. J., 349
Mottet, T. P., 408
Motyka, S., 362
Mouton, J., 189
Mowat, D., 74
Moyer, C. A., 246
Mueser, K. T., 76
Mühlberger, A., 289
Mulac, A., 336, 338
Mulick, J. A., 250
Mullen, B., 289, 401
Mullett, J., 16, 226, 267
Munn, N. L., 277
Murnen, S. K., 184
Murphy, J. D., 311, 372
Murphy, N. A., 60, 71, 72, 73, 256, 264,

296, 382
Murphy, S. T., 293, 366
Murray, L. K., 109
Muscanell, N. L., 189
Must, A., 173
Myers, M. B., 26
Myers, P. N., 178
Myrick, R., 118

Naccari, N., 160
Nadeau, J., 173
Nadig, A., 314
Nagel, L., 38
Nannberg, J. C., 243
Napieralski, L. P., 310
Narvaez, M., 409
Nations, C., 363
Naumann, L. P., 66, 192
Neidenthal, P. M., 286
Nelson, N. L., 344
Nesdale, D., 66
Neta, M., 277
Netzley, S. B., 398
Neumann, R., 288, 342
Nevid, J. S., 158
Nevill, D., 370
Newlands, A., 299
Newman, J. P., 42, 77
Nezlek, J., 157
Ng, Z., 325, 417
Nguyen, M. L., 249, 250
Nguyen, N., 337
Nguyen, T. D., 249, 250
Nicholls, M. E. R., 289
Niedenthal, P., 79, 99, 286, 366
Nielsen, G., 361
Niesta, D., 51, 108, 110
Niit, T., 55
Nilolaou, V., 344
Nilsen, W. J., 244
Nind, L. K., 228

Nip, I. S. B., 340
Nisbett, R. E., 397
Nishitani, M., 411
Nishitani, S., 37
Nocera, C. C., 250
Nohara, M., 338
Noll, R. B., 175
Noller, P., 67, 82, 309, 387
North, A. C., 111, 112
Notarius, C. I., 285
Nowicki, S., 62, 63, 68, 74, 75, 76, 80, 82,

344, 400
Nuessle, W., 310
Nurmoja, M., 168

O’Brien, C. E., 387
O’Brien, T. P., 390
O’Connell, D. C., 353
O’Connell, D. M., 284
O’Connell, M., 189
O’Connor, J. J. M., 341
O’Hair, D., 363
O’Nan, B. A., 164
O’Neal, E. C., 140
O’Shaughnessy, M., 205
O’Sullivan, L. F., 362
O’Sullivan, M., 271, 274, 388, 390
Ober, C., 180
Ochsner, K. N., 286
Ogletree, S. M., 292
Ogston, W. D., 219
Okdie, B. M., 189
Okubo, M., 142
Older, J., 245
Olivola, C. Y., 404, 405
Olp, J. J., 181
Olson, J. M., 384
Olson, K., 339
Olson, M. A., 255
Orr, D. B., 348
Oskamp, S., 175
Ost, J., 291
Oster, H., 38, 55, 261
Ostwald, P. F., 414
Otero, S. C., 319
Ounsted, C., 313
Oveis, C., 71
Overbeek, G., 158
Owen, J., 250
Owen, P. M., 233
Owen, R. C., 51
Ozcaliskan, S., 222
Ozonoff, S., 314

Pack, S. J., 386
Paepke, A. J., 181
Pandey, R., 76, 82
Pansu, P., 274
Papesh, M. H., 319
Papsin, B. C., 36
Parish, A., 173, 184
Park, H. S., 389, 391, 409

502 NAME INDEX

Parker, J., 325
Parks, M. R., 392
Parmley, M., 366
Parr, L. A., 51
Partala, T., 319
Pascalis, O., 37
Paterson, K. B., 301
Patrick, C. J., 71, 270, 413
Patterson, A. H., 132
Patterson, M. L., 24, 28, 83, 128, 141, 243,

308, 360, 367, 369, 370
Pattison, J. E., 241
Pattison, P. E., 76
Pauker, K., 317, 399
Pauli, P., 289, 312
Paulmann, S., 325
Pause, B. M., 181
Pawlowski, B., 176, 334, 336
Peace, V., 224
Pear, T. H., 337
Pearson, J. C., 338
Pearson, N. O., 153
Pedersen, N. L., 43
Peery, C., 299
Pell, M. D., 325, 341
Pelligrini, R. F., 108
Pendell, S. D., 402
Penke, L., 360
Penn, D. L., 76
Pennebaker, J. W., 80, 164
Penton-Voak, I. S., 158, 167, 168
Perdue, V. P., 233
Perez, J. E., 412
Perilloux, C., 190
Perks, T., 175
Perper, T., 360, 362
Perrett, D. I., 158, 168
Perrin, J. N., 173
Perron, M., 74, 273
Persico, N., 177
Pertschuk, M., 156, 174, 177, 178
Peskin, S. H., 26
Peters, M., 341
Peterson, A. M., 246
Peterson, C., 338
Peterson, R. T., 400
Petitto, L. A., 222
Petrovich, S. B., 319
Petty, R. E., 360, 397
Pfau, M., 348, 360
Pflug, J., 410
Pfungst, O., 252
Phelps, F. G., 301
Philhower, G. L., 167, 411
Philippot, P., 77, 395, 405, 412
Phillips, B., 74, 216
Phillips, L. H., 74
Phillips, R. D., 74
Phillips, S. T., 105
Philpott, S. B., 202
Phinney, M., 108
Pickens, J., 290

Pickett, C. L., 75
Pika, S., 44, 206
Pike, K. M., 385
Pillsworth, E. G., 362, 363
Pine, K. J., 216, 218, 221
Ping, R., 218
Pinheiro, A. P., 328
Pinker, S., 30
Piper, J., 164
Piqueras-Fiszman, B., 108
Pitcairn, T. K., 32, 34, 51
Pitner, R. O., 101
Pittam, J., 341, 344, 346
Pitterman, H., 63
Piven, J., 313
Place, S. S., 360
Plank, S. B., 101
Platt, B., 78
Platt, M. L., 51
Plax, T. G., 191, 319, 364
Plomin, R., 40, 43
Ploutz-Snyder, R., 68
Plumb, I., 313
Poggi, I., 205
Poliet, T. V., 176
Pölkki, M., 184
Pollak, S. D., 76, 325
Polt, J. M., 318
Pomerantz, S. D., 326
Pönkänen, L. M., 306
Popelka, G. R., 218
Porter, N., 143
Porter, R. H., 37, 180
Porter, S., 390
Portnoy, E. J., 173
Pöschl, S., 416
Postlewaite, A., 177
Postmes, T., 355
Pound, N., 168
Powell, J. L., 243, 403
Powers, S. R., 32, 52
Poyatos, F., 327, 330
Prasad, A. B., 76, 82
Prebor, L. D., 338
Preti, G., 181
Preuschoft, S., 49
Prince, L. M., 81
Prinsen, T. J., 398
Prkachin, K. M., 38, 39, 270, 413
Prososki, A. R., 325
Pryor, B., 26
Puccinelli, N. M., 262
Purvis, J. A., 311
Putnam, L. L., 386
Putnam, P., 312

Quitkin, F., 253

Ragsdale, J. D., 410
Rampey, M. S., 105
Ramsey, J. L., 154
Ramsey, S. L., 312

Rand, C. S., 17, 343
Randall, D., 405
Rankin-Williams, E., 398
Ransberger, V. M., 102
Rantala, L. M., 124
Rantala, M. J., 184
Rapson, R. L., 226, 288
Raskin, A., 400
Raste, Y., 313
Rauscher, F. H., 217, 353
Ravina, B., 353
Ravizza, S. M., 353
Rawdon, V. A., 409
Ray, C., 236
Ray, G. B., 364
Reardon, K. K., 389
Reby, D., 334
Redding, W. C., 175
Redican, W. K., 47, 261
Reed, C. L., 242
Reed, L. I., 290
Reeves, D. L., 233
Regan, P. C., 409
Reich, A. R., 332
Reid, A., 186
Reimer, H. M., 29, 75
Reingen, P. H., 160
Reinhard, M.-A., 390
Reis, H. T., 157, 371
Reiss, M., 143
Rejskind, F. G., 313
Remland, M. S., 138, 235
Rempala, D., 74
Renner, B., 200
Renninger, L. A., 361
Reno, R. R., 101
Rentfrow, P. J., 66, 192
Reznick, J. S., 228
Rhodes, B. C., 154
Rhodes, G., 31, 159, 165, 166, 167, 168,

149, 341, 411
Ricciardelli, L. A., 177
Ricciardelli, R., 184
Ricci-Bitti, P. E., 32, 35, 55
Richards, J. M., 80
Richardson, D., 300
Richardson, M. J., 224
Richardson, S. A., 155, 173
Richeson, J. A., 62, 65, 67, 71, 79, 276
Richmond, V. P., 406
Riddell, R. P., 411
Riding, D., 335
Rifkin, A., 253
Rigato, S., 37
Riggio, H. R., 72, 404, 405
Riggio, R. E., 25, 72, 80, 81, 82, 163, 259,

404, 405, 412
Rigo, T. G., 74
Rima, B. N., 177
Rimer, S., 116
Rinck, C. M., 233
Rinn, W. E., 259, 268, 289

NAME INDEX 503

Riordan, M. A., 416
Ritter, J. M., 154
Ritter, K., 403
Roach, K. D., 191
Roberts, A., 178
Roberts, J. V., 175
Roberts, K. P., 390
Roberts, R. D., 59
Roberts, S. C., 51
Roberts, T.-A., 399
Robertson, D. A., 301
Robertson, T., 142
Roberts-Wilbur, J., 301
Robinson, J. D., 412
Robinson, L. F., 371
Robinson, S. L., 125
Robinson, W. P., 391
Robnett, R. D., 338
Robson, S. K. A., 142
Rochester, S. R., 351
Rockquemore, K. A., 191
Rodriguez, J. L., 364
Roe, L., 214
Roesch, E. B., 273
Roese, N. J., 384
Rogalski, K., 218
Rogan, R. G., 17
Rogers, P. L., 17, 59, 343
Rogers, R. W., 160
Rogers, W. T., 218
Roggman, L. A., 154, 165
Rohe, W., 132
Rohleder, L., 77
Rohles, R. H., Jr., 96
Rohner, J., 312
Roman, L. A., 390
Romantshik, O., 37
Ronald, L., 155
Roney, J. R., 159
Rosa, E., 246, 370
Rosa, L., 246
Rosen, B. K., 78
Rosenbaum, R., 22
Rosenberg, A., 296
Rosenberg, E. L., 413
Rosenblum, L. A., 61
Rosenfeld, H. M., 141, 143, 223, 229, 235,

350, 378
Rosenfeld, J. P., 39
Rosenfeld, L. B., 191, 236
Rosenthal, N. E., 71, 72, 113
Rosenthal, R., 17, 23, 27, 28, 59, 63, 65, 67,

68, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83,
222, 228, 276, 290, 343, 344, 388,
390, 393, 406, 407, 412

Rosip, J. C., 68, 72
Rosse, R. B., 313
Roter, D. L., 17, 71, 328, 343, 385, 414
Roth, V., 116
Rothman, H., 339
Rotter, A., 81
Rotter, G. S., 73

Rotter, N. G., 73
Rottmann, L., 156
Rotton, J., 102, 104
Rounds, J., 246
Rowland-Morin, P. A., 317
Rozin, P., 178
Ruback, R. B., 126
Rubenstein, A. J., 154
Rubešová, A., 296
Rubin, Z., 307
Rudd, J. E., 43
Ruesch, J., 22, 28, 91
Ruffini, G., 128
Ruffman, T., 74
Ruiz-Belda, M., 266, 267, 268
Rumbough, T., 417
Russell, B. L., 385
Russell, F., 180
Russell, J. A., 57, 266, 268, 278, 282, 344
Russell, M. J., 181
Russell, R. L., 77
Russo, N., 128, 129, 144
Rutherford, M. D., 77, 344
Rutter, D. R., 296, 299
Ryan, A., 391
Ryan, S., 113
Rytting, M., 231, 243

Sabbagh, M. A., 79
Sacco, D. F., 273, 300
Sachau, D., 108
Sachs, G. A., 412
Sacks, D., 253
Sacks, O., 77
Saeed, L., 176
Saitta, M. B., 398
Saitz, R. L., 205
Sakkalou, E., 328
Saks, M. J., 27
Saladin, M., 162
Salinas, C., 163
Salmon, K., 218
Salovey, P., 59
Saltuklaroglu, T., 310
Sandalla, E., 107
Sandberg, D. E., 175
Sander, L. W., 228
Sanders, C., 192
Sanders, J. L., 138
Sandvik, E., 385
Sandy, C. J., 107
Santschi, C., 289
Saper, Z., 162
Sarner, L., 246
Saruwatari, L. F., 160
Saslow, G., 354
Sasson, N. J., 276
Sato, W., 274
Sauter, D. A., 53, 341, 342, 344
Savic, I., 181
Savitsky, J. C., 291
Saxe, L., 157, 318

Sayette, M. A., 290
Schachter, S., 120, 353
Schafer, J. A., 104
Schauss, A. G., 108
Scheflen, A. E., 23, 24, 220, 363
Schelde, T., 313
Schellenberg, E. G., 63
Scherber, C., 165
Scherer, K. R., 28, 32, 35, 80, 273, 326, 328,

341, 342, 344, 345, 346, 414
Scherer, S. E., 139
Schertler, E., 390
Schiavenato, M., 39
Schick, V. R., 177
Schiefenhövel, W., 53
Schiffenbauer, A., 79, 369
Schiffrin, D., 375
Schlenker, B. R., 105
Schlenker, D. R., 105
Schlösser, S., 181
Schmid Mast, M., 18, 60, 72, 73, 256, 264,

296, 299, 325, 369, 371, 372, 412
Schmidt, J. M., 289
Schmidt, S., 32, 35
Schmukle, S. C., 192, 255
Schnall, S., 255, 285
Schneider, F. W., 104
Schneider, K., 229
Scholte, R. H. J., 161
Schrodt, P., 407
Schroeder, C., 173
Schroeder, J. L., 301
Schultz, D., 75, 76
Schulz, R., 140
Schulze, G., 330
Schumann, D., 397
Schupp, H. T., 200
Schutte, J. G., 119
Schwartz, A. A., 250
Schwartz, B., 105
Schwartz, P., 371
Schwartz, W., 308
Schwarz, N., 398
Schyns, P. G., 282
Scott, C., 74
Scott, M. B., 125
Scott, S. K., 53, 341, 342, 344
Scovanner, P., 39
Searcy, M., 27
Seatriz, V., Jr., 249
Sebanz, N., 300
Secord, P. F., 258
Seebeck, T., 181
Segal, N. L., 42, 43
Segall, D. O., 81, 82
Segers, E., 142
Segrin, C., 235, 250
Seibt, B., 289
Seifer, R., 291
Seiter, J. S., 160
Seligman, C., 162
Seltzer, A. L., 318

504 NAME INDEX

Seltzer, L. J., 325
Senghas, A., 286
Senju, A., 313
Sephton, S. E., 102
Serota, K. B., 391
Seyfarth, R. M., 341
Shackelford, T. K., 156, 167, 312
Shaffer, D. R., 349
Shankar, A., 241
Shannon, M. L., 184
Shapiro, J. G., 18
Shariff, A. F., 369
Shawn, T., 21
Sheehan, D., 177
Sheehan, E. P., 193
Sheldon, W. H., 22
Shelton, J. N., 65
Shepard, G. H., Jr., 174
Shepherd, S. V., 51
Sherzer, J., 204
Shih, Y.-N., 112
Shilcock, A., 111
Shimoda, K., 55, 174
Shindel, A. W., 176
Shiota, M. N., 274
Shlien, J. M., 318
Shores, A. L., 384
Shovelton, H., 218
Shreve, E. G., 255
Shrivastav, R., 339
Shulman, G. M., 21, 377, 378
Shulman, H. C., 391
Shuter, R., 138, 409
Sideman, L. A., 292
Siegel, A. E., 18
Siegel, B., 170
Siegel, J., 417, 418
Siegle, G. J., 320
Siegman, A. W., 333, 335, 345, 353, 360
Sigler, E., 406
Simmons, L. W., 341
Simo, M., 164
Simpson, D. M., 102
Simpson, J. A., 363
Singer, J. E., 112
Singer, M., 234
Singh, D., 173, 174
Singh, L., 314
Sinha, P., 76
Sini, B., 32, 35
Skinner, M., 289
Skirving, C. J., 218
Skowronski, J. J., 25
Skuse, D. H., 313
Slater, A., 154
Slater, M., 128
Sloan, D. M., 274
Slovacek, C., 417
Smith LeBeau, L., 68, 236, 307, 334, 371, 387
Smith, C. A., 224
Smith, D. E., 235
Smith, E. W. L., 246

Smith, E., 109
Smith, J., 267
Smith, J. F., 176
Smith, M., 253
Smith, S. M., 349
Smith, S. S., 391
Smith, W. J., 261
Smolak, L., 184
Smythe, M.-J., 407
Snodgrass, S. E., 67, 68
Snyder, J., 336
Snyder, M., 81, 311, 393
Snyder, R. A., 370
So, W. C., 217
Sobol, A. M., 173
Solomon, D., 18
Solomon, H., 292
Solomon, L. Z., 292
Sommer, R., 91, 92, 93, 128, 135, 136,

139, 144
Sommers, S. R., 23, 383
Son, J. Y., 277
Sondheimer, S. J., 181
Sorenson, E. R., 278
Soroker, N., 8
Soskins, M., 391
Soussignan, R., 287
Spanlang, B., 128
Sparhawk, C. M., 205
Sparks, W., 95, 175
Sparrow, B., 251
Spence, C., 108
Spezio, M. L., 313
Spiegel, N. H., 390
Spielman, D. A., 76
Spilka, B., 270
Spitz, H. H., 250, 251, 252, 393
Spitzberg, B. H., 363
Spörrle, M., 159
Sprecher, S., 154, 161
Sproull, L., 417
Stabler, B., 175
Stack, D. M., 233
Staffieri, J. R., 173
Stafford, L. D., 113, 239
Stamp, G., 84
Stamper, J. L., 71
Staneski, R. A., 177, 307
Staples, B., 107
Stark, C. P., 184
Stass, J. W., 320
Steg, L., 101
Steidtmann, D., 320
Steimke, R., 313
Stein, M. I., 26
Stein, S., 160
Stein, T. S., 414
Stenberg, C. R., 38
Stephen, I. D., 192
Stephenson, G. M., 299
Stepper, S., 287, 288
Stern, D. N., 299

Stern, K., 181
Stern, L. A., 368
Sternberg, R., 59
Stevanoni, E., 218
Stevens, K., 345
Stewart, D. W., 25
Stewart, J. E., 161
Stewart, S. H., 174
Stewart-Brown, S., 233
Stier, D. S., 236, 384
Stiff, J. B., 17
Stillman, T. F., 381
Stinson, L., 71
Stokes, J., 77
Storck, J., 417
Stouffer, S. A., 119
Stouten, J., 291
Strack, F., 287, 288, 342
Strauss, N., 360
Streeck, J., 24, 200, 211, 221
Street, R. L., Jr., 348
Streeter, S. A., 174
Strenta, A. C., 140
Streri, A., 37
Sturman, E. D., 369
Suarez, I., 345
Sullivan, J., 38
Summerfield, A. B., 78
Summers, J. O., 348
Surakka, V., 271, 288, 319
Surguladze, S. A., 77, 276
Sutker, L. W., 370
Swami, V., 174
Swenson, J., 63
Szalma, J. L., 112

Tamarit, L., 273
Tamer, R., 200
Tan, H. H., 75
Tang, J., 390
Tang, R., 246
Tanke, E. D., 393
Taranta, A., 414
Tarrant, M., 111
Tassinary, L. G., 174
Tatkow, E. P., 307
Taylor, D. M., 336
Taylor, L. S., 157
Taylor, S. E., 143
Taylor, V. L., 141
Tcherkassof, A., 274
Tegeler, C., 246
Templer, D. I., 26
Termine, N. T., 61
Terpstra, D. E., 159
Terranova, S., 75, 400
Thayer, S., 370
Theeuwes, J., 298
Theune, K. E., 163
Thibaut, J., 316
Thiel, D. L., 155
Thingujam, N. S., 344

NAME INDEX 505

Thirer, J., 105
Thomas, A. P., 164
Thompson, D. E., 139
Thompson, E. H., 242
Thompson, N. S., 340
Thompson, T. L., 310
Thompson, W. F., 63
Thornhill, R., 167, 174, 181
Thorpe, W. H., 44
Thunberg, M., 293
Tickle, J. J., 390
Tickle-Degnen, L., 65
Tidd, K., 292
Tidwell, L. C., 416, 417
Tiemens, R. K., 401, 403
Tillmann, V., 37
Ting-Toomey, S., 408
Tinti, C., 32, 35
Tipper, S. P., 300
Tipples, J., 283, 284, 300
Titone, D., 325
Titus, J., 335
Todd, P. M., 360
Todd, R. M., 276
Todorov, A., 404, 405
Todt, D., 378
Tojo, Y., 313
Toma, C. L., 156
Tomasello, M., 44, 51, 300
Tomhave, J. A., 292
Tomkins, S. S., 303
Tooby, J., 31
Toosi, N. R., 383
Tourangeau, R., 287
Tracy, J. L., 53, 284, 306, 369
Trager, G. L., 22, 330
Trainor, L. J., 339, 340
Treasure, J., 344
Trees, A. R., 364
Trehub, S. E., 325
Triandis, H. C., 409
Trimboli, C., 214, 296
Trisdorfer, A., 156, 174, 177, 178
Trivers, R. L., 174
Trope, Y., 167
Tross, S. A., 235, 249
Trout, D. L., 223
Troutwine, R., 140
Trower, P., 63
Trupin, C. M., 205
Tsuji, A. A., 249
Tucker, J. S., 80, 163
Turner, L. H., 338
Tusing, K. J., 334
Tybur, J. M., 181

Udry, J. R., 165
Underwood, L., 175
Utzinger, V. A., 347

Valins, S., 117
Valla, J. M., 167

Valone, K., 348
Valsiner, J., 55
van Amelsvoort, A. G., 331
Van Baaren, R. B., 222
Van Borsel, J., 334
Van den Berg, Y. H. M., 142
van der Pasch, M., 300
van der Schalk, J., 222
van der Steen, J., 102
van Dulmen, A. M., 300
van Honk, J., 312
van Hooff, J. A. R. A. M., 44, 48, 49
van Lancker, D., 331
Van Straaten, I., 307
Vancil, D. L., 402
Vande Creek, L., 18
VanderDrift, L. E., 250
Vanicelli, M., 343
VanLear, A., 9
Vannier, S. A., 362
Varano, S. P., 104
Varendi, H., 37
Vauclair, J., 212
Vaughn, L. S., 154
Vazire, S., 66, 107, 192
Veccia, E. M., 235, 385
Venning, J., 140, 173
Venuti, P., 289
Verhaak, P. F. M., 300
Verhulst, B., 404
Verkamp, J. M., 232
Verser, R., 402
Vervoort, T., 267
Vettin, J., 378
Vig, P. S., 288
Viken, R. J., 43
Vinall, J., 411
Vinsel, A., 108
Viscovich, N., 337
Vital-Durand, F., 154
Vogel, T., 160
Vogt, D. S., 75
Vogt, E. Z., 251
Volkmar, F. R., 18
von Cranach, M., 33, 35, 36, 269, 296
Vorauer, J. D., 417
Vrana, S. R., 244
Vranic, A., 141
Vrij, A., 102, 390, 391
Vrugt, A., 386

Wade, A., 214
Wade, T. J., 361
Wagner, H. L., 73, 81, 267, 275
Wagner, H., 82, 268
Wagner, M., 205
Wagner, S. H., 74
Walker, A. S., 82
Walker, M. B., 214, 296
Walker, R. N., 173
Walker-Andrews, A. S., 73
Wallbott, H. G., 21, 80, 341, 346

Wallen, E., 292
Waller, B. M., 51
Walster, E. H., 154, 156, 157, 164
Walters, A. S., 313
Walther, J. B., 416, 417, 418
Wang, J. T. Y., 318
Wang, S.-H., 348
Wapner, W., 221
Ward, C., 144
Ward, T. B., 189
Warden, J., 191
Ward-Hull, C. I., 174
Wardle, M., 333
Warner, R. M., 229
Warnock, H., 301
Warren, B. L., 176
Warren, G., 390
Wasserman, R. H., 245
Waters, L. T., 337
Watkins, J. T., 18
Watson, B., 162
Watson, M., 190
Watson, O. M., 138
Waxer, P. H., 253, 412
Weaver, J. C., 334
Webb, A., 308
Weber, K., 407
Weber, M. J., 125
Wedekind, C., 181
Weekes, B. S., 319
Wegner, D. M., 251
Wehrle, T., 273
Weigert, A., 16
Weikum, W. M., 40
Weinberger, A., 301
Weinstein, E., 264
Weinstein, H., 138
Weinstein, N. D., 113
Weis, D. L., 360
Weisbuch, M., 317
Weissbecker, I., 102
Weisz, J., 301
Weiten, W., 161
Wells, D., 246
Wells, W., 170
Wendin, K., 270
Wenkert-Olenik, D., 8
Werner, C. M., 98, 107
Wero, J. L., 167
Westfall, J. E., 99
Wetzel, C. G., 243
Wexner, L. B., 109
Weyers, P., 289
Whalen, P. J., 277
Wheeler, L., 157
Wheeless, L. R., 407
Wheeless, V. E., 407
Wheelwright, S., 77, 303, 304, 313, 344
Whitcher, S. J., 249
White, A. G., 114
White, J., 75
White, M., 285

506 NAME INDEX

White, P. A., 299
White, S. E., 187
Whitehead, W. E., 244
Whitens, A., 255
Whitt, K., 175
Whitty, M. T., 362
Wickens, T. D., 331
Wicks, R. H., 402
Widaman, K. F., 81, 163
Widen, S. C., 282
Widgery, R. N., 160
Wiener, M., 324
Wiens, A. N., 354
Wieser, M. J., 312
Wiggins, J. S., 174
Wiggins, N. H., 174, 365
Wilbur, M. P., 301
Wilder, B., 229
Wilke, W., 336
Wilkin, K., 222
Wilkins, R., 441
Wilkowski, B. M., 293
Williams, C. E., 345
Williams, C., 249
Williams, K. D., 300
Williams, M., 317, 348
Williams, S. L., 343
Williams, W. M., 167
Willingham, B., 272
Willis, F. N., 138, 201, 232, 233, 235, 320,

385, 409
Wilson, C. E., 320
Wilson, E. M., 340
Wilson, J. Q., 101
Wilson, K., 344
Wilson, L., 413
Wilson, T. D., 397
Wilson, T. P., 376
Wilson, V., 102
Wing, A. M., 245
Winograd, C. H., 290
Winstead, B. A., 178
Winterbotham, M., 81
Winters, L., 307

Wirth, J. H., 300
Witt, P. L., 407
Wittmann, M., 99
Wohlrab, S., 193
Wolf, I., 343
Wolf, N., 177
Wolff, E., 99
Wolfgang, B. J., 289
Wollin, D. D., 106
Wolsic, B., 161
Woodall, W. G., 218, 349
Woodmansee, J. J., 319
Woodson, R., 39, 41, 61
Woodward, B., 401
Woodzicka, J. A., 25
Woolbert, C., 347
Woolfolk, A., 17
Woolfolk, A. E., 405
Woolfolk, R. L., 407
Word, C. O., 318, 383
Wuensch, K. L., 160
Wyatt, R. J., 313
Wyer, M. M., 388
Wyland, C. L., 317
Wylie, L., 205
Wysocki, C. J., 181

Xu, F., 131
Xu, X., 218

Yabar, Y., 224
Yaguchi, K., 313
Yap, A. J., 199
Yarbrough, A. E., 241
Yecker, S. A., 289
Yee, N., 418
Yener, C., 109
Yiend, J., 312
Yip, T. K., 218
Yoo, S. H., 262
Yoon, J. M., 314
Yopchick, J. E., 25, 72, 75, 415
Yoshikawa, S., 274, 411

Yoshioka, G. A., 120
Young, C., 246, 400
Young, H., 101
Young, J., 155
Young, M., 190
Young, S. G., 282
Youngstrom, E., 75, 76
Yu, C., 325
Yu, D. W., 174
Yu, M., 101
Yun, D., 408
Yunusova, Y., 340

Zagoory, O., 234
Zagoory-Sharon, O., 340
Zaidel, S., 81
Zajac, D. J., 335
Zajonc, R. B., 163, 288, 293, 366
Zanna, M. P., 154, 318, 383, 386
Zebrowitz, L. A., 31, 80, 168, 169, 199,

339, 405
Zebrowitz-McArthur, L., 199
Zeidner, M., 59
Zelano, B., 180
Zelmanova, Y., 99
Zhang, F., 366
Zhang, G., 156–157
Zhang, S., 410
Zhong, C. B., 98
Zhou, P., 178
Ziegler, T. E., 325
Zilliacus, E., 417
Zimbardo, P. G., 99, 122
Zimmerman, D. H., 376
Zimmermann, F., 301, 306, 307
Zimring, L., 253
Zormeier, M. M., 363
Zucker, A. N., 177
Zuckerman, M., 72, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 286,

292, 298, 326, 334, 335, 388, 390, 398
Zumbach, J., 301, 306, 307
Zurif, E., 221
Zweigenhaft, R., 66, 114

NAME INDEX 507

SUBJECT INDEX

Note: The concept of emotion, and individual emotion names, are integral to many chapters. To avoid an overabundance of page references, these
terms are not included as primary headings in the index. For the same reason, specific personality trait terms and many specific nonverbal
behaviors are not individually indexed.

abuse, 26
accents/dialects, 336–337
accuracy in perceiving nonverbal cues

age, 73–74, 339
criteria for scoring accuracy, 66–68
domains, 65–66
gaze behavior, 313
in development, 37, 61–64, 344
lie detection, 389
measurement, 66–68, 274–278
noticing/recalling, 60
personal correlates, 71–78, 83
relation to sending accuracy, 82–83
task correlates, 78–79
training/improvement, 63–64
verbal cues, 60
vocal cues, 36, 341, 344

adaptors, 253, 255–256; see also self-touch
advertising, 396–400
affect blends, 264–265
Affective Communication Test (ACT), 80–81
animal communication, 51, 129–130, 252,

341; see also primates
architectural design, see environment
artifacts, see clothing
assault, 26; see also sexual harassment
attractiveness

baby face, 168–169
body, 169–185
culture, 155–156, 173
dating/relationships, 156–159
face/eyes, 165–169, 320–321
hair, 182–185
height, 174–177
in development, 154–155, 173
persuasion, 160–161
physical attractiveness stereotype, 155
self-esteem, 161
social impact, 161–165
voice, 334–335
workplace, 159–160

autism, 78, 289, 313–315, 320, 344
automaticity, 10, 293
awareness of nonverbal cues, 10, 23–24,

250–252, 264, 318, 397; see also
intentionality

baby face, 168–169, 405
back channels, 260, 298–299, 354, 377–378

behavioral ecology theory, 267–268
blind/deaf individuals, 32–36
blinking, 296
body movement, 12; see also gesture
brain activity, 9–10, 43, 200, 301, 400
brain damage, 9, 289
Brunswik lens model, 381–382

chameleon effect, see mimicry
clinician-patient interaction, 81, 245–246,

289–290, 316–317, 328–330, 343,
371–372, 411–415; see also mental
disorders

clothing, 11–12, 186–194, 363
cognitive ability, 74; see also intelligence
color, 51, 108–111
computer-mediated communication,

416–418
conflicting messages, 15–18
context effects, 4–7, 60, 249–250, 277–278,

291–292, 395–396
content masking, 67, 342–343
courtrooms, 26–27, 161–162, 168, 291
courtship, 53, 307–308, 360–363; see also

flirtation; see also attractiveness;
see also quasi-courtship

culture, 52–57, 78, 317–318, 341–342,
408–411; see also race and ethnicity;
see also universality; see also
display rules

decor, 105–108; see also environment
density and crowding, 129–133
depression, see mental disorders
development, see subheads under specific

index terms; see also education; see also
infants

Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy
(DANVA), 69, 72

Differential Emotions Theory, 38
display rules, 81, 262–266
distance, interpersonal

correlates, 137–142
culture/ethnicity, 138–139
in development, 133, 137–138
zones of interaction, 133
violations, 125–129, 136
walking, 135; see also reciprocity and

compensation

dominance, see power/dominance
Duchenne smile, 270–273

educational settings, 91–94, 114–115,
405–408

email, 416–418
emblems, see gestures
emotion recognition, see accuracy in

perceiving nonverbal cues
emotional contagion, 226, 288, 342
emotional intelligence, 59, 344
empathic accuracy paradigm, 70–71
empathy, 414
encoding accuracy, see sending accuracy
environment, 11

architectural design and movable objects,
105–108, 114–121

broken windows theory, 101
classrooms, 91–94
color, 108–111
dimensions of perception, 94–98
home team advantage, 105
lighting, 111–113
natural environment, 100–104
proximity, 119–121
sounds, 111–113
temperature, 101–104

ethnicity, see race and ethnicity; see culture
evolution, 31–32, 44–52
expectations, 252
eyebrow flash, 21, 53–55, 82
eye color, 296
eye flash, 296
eye tracking, 303, 318, 320

face-ism, 292
Facial Action Coding System (FACS), 32,

268–274, 413
facial behavior, 13

and emotion, 261–275, 278–285
and health, 285
blind/deaf individuals, 32–36
facial feedback, 286–289
impact of, 289–293
in development, 267, 272–273, 291
measurement, 268–274; see also display

rules
facial appearance, 404–405; see also

attractiveness

508

facilitated communication, 250–251
FACS, see Facial Action Coding System
family expressiveness, 83
feedback, 286–289
flirtation, 53, 360–361, 363; see also courtship

gait, see walking
gaze, 13

and personality, 310–313
blind/deaf individuals, 34
correlates, 309–318
and emotions, 301–306
flirtation, 361
functions, 297–311
gaze-cuing, 299–300, 312; see also power/

dominance; see also visual dominance ratio
gaze-cuing, 299–300, 312
gender/gender differences, 73, 81, 137,

145–147, 236–237, 292, 300, 312–313,
337–339, 361, 384–387, 397–399;
see also attractiveness

genetics, 31, 38, 40–42, 51–52
gestures

culture, 200–211
functions, 200–201
in development, 202, 221–222
speech independent, 12, 201–211
speech related, 12, 201, 211–219

greetings and good-byes, 21, 51–53, 373–375

haptics, see touch, interpersonal; see
self-touch

health care, see clinician-patient interaction
history of nonverbal communication studies,

21–25

identity, 377–381
illustrators, see gestures
immediacy, 15, 364–365, 368, 401, 406–408
infants, 37–40, 232, 290, 308, 313, 413
intelligence, 382
intentionality, 10; see also awareness of

nonverbal cues
interactional synchrony, 222–229; see also

mimicry
Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT), 69–71
interpersonal sensitivity, see accuracy in

perceiving nonverbal cues
internalizer-externalizer dimension, 285
interruptions, 338–339, 371
interviews, see workplace
intimacy, 360–368; see also courtship;

see also flirtation; see also marriage
intimacy equilibrium, see reciprocity and

compensation

Japanese and Caucasian Brief Affect
Recognition Test (JACBART), 69

leadership, 26, 143–144
leakage, 345
lying/lie detection, 62, 262–263, 316,

387–392

marriage, 82, 309; see also relationships
masking, 262–263, 271
media, 25; see also politics/politicians; see also

technology
mental disorders, 76–77, 82, 100, 104,

113–114, 131, 289–290, 312–315, 320,
329, 411–414

microexpressions, 265–266
mimicry, 222–229, 267, 288–289, 364
music, 342

nature-nurture, 29–57; see also genetics

odors, 37, 98, 179–182

pain, 38–39, 267, 413
parallel process model, 83
pauses, 345, 348–352
personal space, see distance, interpersonal
personality

decoding and encoding, 66, 380–382
gaze, 310–313, 316
judgments of the face, 258–259
vocal behavior, 333–336; see also

Brunswik lens model
persuasion, 160–161, 317, 348–349
physiognomy, 80
physiology, 56, 127–128, 244, 285–289, 293,

309, 326–327, 362, 400; see also brain
activity

politics/politicians, 205, 207, 213, 225, 227,
231, 244, 247, 263, 401–405

popular books, 23–24, 364
posed expressions, versus spontaneous, 67,

78–79, 266–267; see also sending
accuracy

posture, 12, 128, 372, 377, 402, 406
power/dominance, 15, 26, 144, 175–176,

199–200, 306–308, 310–311, 334, 339,
369–372, 404

prejudice, 65
primates, 44–52, 54, 234
Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS),

68–69, 72–74, 76–79
proxemics, see distance, interpersonal; see

culture; see gender; see seating/spacing
in small groups; see territoriality; see
touch, interpersonal

psychotherapy, see clinician-patient interaction
pupil size, 318–321

quasi-courtship, 363–364

race and ethnicity, 75–76, 255, 317–318,
382–384, 397, 399, 409; see also
culture

rapport, 65
readout, 266
receiving accuracy, see accuracy in perceiving

nonverbal cues
reciprocity and compensation, 292, 308–310,

367–369

regulation
interpersonal, 19–21, 259–260,

298–300, 306, 349–355, 373–379
in development, 20
self, 19–20; see also self-synchrony

relationships, 119–121, 364–367; see also
courtship; see also flirtation; see also
marriage

rituals, 31

schizophrenia, see mental illness
seating/spacing in small groups, 142–149
self-fulfilling prophecy, 23, 383, 406; see also

expectations
self-presentation, 80, 263, 289; see also

identity; see also personality
self-synchrony, 19–20, 219–222
self-touch, 12–13, 253–256
sending accuracy, 344

correlates, 79–83
in development, 80
measurement, 66–68

sensory deprivation, see blind/deaf
individuals

sexual attraction, 51; see also courtship
sexual harassment, 311, 363, 372
sexual orientation, 65, 334, 362
sign language, 202
smiling, 259–261, 263–267, 270–273, 277,

284, 286–292, 298–299, 307–308, 313,
361–362, 366–367, 370–372, 374–375,
377–379, 384–389, 398, 400, 406–407,
412–414, 416

felt smiles, 263–268, 289, 333–334;
see also Duchenne smiling; see also
flirtation; see also immediacy

social competence, 59–60
social status, see power/dominance
speech disturbances, 345
spontaneous cues, see posed cues
stereotypes, 155, 258–259, 336, 396–397
substance abuse, 77–78

teacher behavior, see educational settings
technology, 414–418
territoriality, 123–129
Test of Nonverbal Cue Knowledge

(TONCK), 72
thin slices, 67, 71–72
time, perceptions of, 98–99
touch, interpersonal

compliance, 243
correlates, 234–237
functions, 241–249
in development, 232–234
social influence, 231–232, 243–244
types of touch, 237–241; see also

proxemics
turn-taking, see regulation, interpersonal
twins, 40–43

universality, 52–57; see also culture

SUBJECT INDEX 509

verbal behavior, relation to nonverbal
behavior, 8–9, 14–21, 219–222,
260–261, 323–324, 373–379, 416

visual dominance ratio, 306–307, 372
vocal behavior, 13–14

back channels, 260, 298–299, 354
comprehension, 348
correlates, 333–336

culture, 341–342
and emotion, 341–346, 355
judgments of groups, 336–339
measurement, 326–330
pauses, 345, 348–352
persuasion, 348–349
production, 326–330
relation to other nonverbal cues, 324–326

speaker recognition, 330–332
speech disturbances, 345; see also

regulation, interpersonal

walking, 135, 199
weather, 101–104
workplace, 25–26, 75, 114–117,

159–160

510 SUBJECT INDEX

Cover

Half Title

Title

Statement

Brief Contents

Contents

Preface

Part I: An Introduction to the Study of Nonverbal Communication

Introduction

Ch 1: Nonverbal Communication: Basic Perspectives

Introduction

Perspective 1: Defining Nonverbal Communication

Perspective 2: Classifying Nonverbal Behavior

Perspective 3: Nonverbal Communication in the Total Communication Process

Perspective 4: Historical Trends in Nonverbal Research

Perspective 5: Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Life

Summary

Ch 2: The Roots of Nonverbal Behavior

Introduction

The Development of Nonverbal Behavior across Evolutionary Time

Summary

Ch 3: The Ability to Receive and Send Nonverbal Signals

Introduction

Development and Improvement of Nonverbal Skills

Is It Good to Have More Accurate Knowledge of Nonverbal Communication?

Measuring the Accuracy of Decoding and Encoding Nonverbal Cues

Personal Factors Influencing the Accuracy of Decoding Nonverbal Cues

Task Factors Affecting Nonverbal Decoding Accuracy

Characteristics of Accurate Nonverbal Senders

On Being an Observer of Nonverbal Communication

Summary

Part II: The Communication Environment

Introduction

Ch 4: The Effects of the Environment on Human Communication

Introduction

Perceptions of Our Surroundings

Reacting to Environments

Perceptions of Time

The Natural Environment

Other People in the Environment

Architectural Design and Movable Objects

Regulating Environments and Communication

Summary

Ch 5: The Effects of Territory and Personal Space on Human Communication

Introduction

The Concept of Territoriality

Territoriality: Invasion and Defense

Density and Crowding

Conversational Distance

Seating Behavior and Spatial Arrangements in Small Groups

Summary

Part III: The Communicators

Introduction

Ch 6: The Effects of Physical Characteristics on Human Communication

Introduction

Our Body: Its General Attractiveness

The Power of Physical Attractiveness: Some Important Qualifications

Our Body: Its Specific Features

Our Body: Clothes and Other Artifacts

Summary

Part IV: The Communicators’ Behavior

Introduction

Ch 7: The Effects of Gesture and Posture on Human Communication

Introduction

Speech-Independent Gestures

Speech-Related Gestures

Gesture Frequency

The Coordination of Gesture, Posture, and Speech

Summary

Ch 8: The Effects of Touch on Human Communication

Introduction

Touching and Human Development

Who Touches Whom, Where, When, and How Much?

Different Types of Touching Behavior

The Meanings and Impact of Interpersonal Touch

Contextual Factors in the Meaning of Interpersonal Touch

Touch Can Be a Powerful Nonconscious Force in Interaction

Self-Touching

Summary

Ch 9: The Effects of the Face on Human Communication

Introduction

The Face and Personality Judgments

The Face and Interaction Management

The Face and Expressions of Emotion

Physiology and the Face

The Social Impact of Facial Expressions

Summary

Ch 10: The Effects of Eye Behavior on Human Communication

Introduction

Gaze and Mutual Gaze

Functions of Gazing

Communicating the Nature of the Interpersonal Relationship

Conditions Influencing Gazing Patterns

Pupil Dilation and Constriction

Summary

Ch 11: The Effects of Vocal Cues That Accompany Spoken Words

Introduction

The Relative Importance of Channels

The Ingredients and Methods of Studying Paralanguage

Vocal Cues and Speaker Recognition

Vocal Cues and Personality

Vocal Cues and Group Perceptions

Vocal Cues and Judgments of Sociodemographic Characteristics

Vocal Cues and Emotion

Vocal Cues, Comprehension, and Persuasion

Vocal Cues and Turn Taking in Conversations

Hesitations, Pauses, Silence, and Speech

Summary

Part V: Communicating Important Messages

Introduction

Ch 12: Using Nonverbal Behavior in Daily Interaction

Introduction

Communicating Intimacy

Communicating Dominance and Status

Managing the Interaction

Communicating Our Identity

Deceiving Others

A Perspective for Communicators

Summary

Ch 13: Nonverbal Messages in Special Contexts

Introduction

Advertising Messages

Political Messages

Teacher–Student Messages

Cultural Messages

Therapeutic Settings

Technology and Nonverbal Messages

Summary

References

Name Index

Subject Index

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