Applications of Nonverbal Behavioral Theories and Research

Robert S. Feldman

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317782650
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book is intended to accomplish several goals. First, it is designed to provide a broad overview of the major areas of application of theory and research relating to nonverbal behavior. Second, individual chapters emphasize how the applications have been drawn from underlying theories and empirical bases, thereby making the link between theory, research, and applications apparent. Finally, the volume links individual chapter contributions, demonstrating how theoretical progress over the last few decades has led to important applied advances.

The contributors to this book consider a wide variety of settings and topics. Their common thread, however, is a shared conviction that an understanding of nonverbal behavior can bring about an improvement in the human condition. Each of the authors has made suggestions regarding future directions for both research and practice -- and their ideas offer real promise.

I

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

1

Social Interaction Skills and Nonverbal Behavior

RONALD E. RIGGIO

California State University, Fullerton

The past three decades have seen tremendous advancement in our knowledge of nonverbal communication. However, much of this work has focused on the structure of nonverbal communication, or on the nonverbal communication process. By comparison, there has been relatively little attention given to skill in nonverbal communication. The concept of nonverbal communication skill focuses on peoples’ abilities to communicate through nonverbal channels. As such, it is an “individual differences” approach to studying nonverbal communication.

In their more basic form, nonverbal skills include such things as abilities to encode and decode cues of emotion, ability to control and regulate emotional displays, and skill in the nonverbal management of conversations. In their more complex form, nonverbal skills can involve abilities to initiate and maintain intimate relationships, abilities to deceive and detect deception, empathic skill, and the establishment of interpersonal rapport. These nonverbal skills represent some of the critical elements for success in everyday social interaction. Moreover, possession of key nonverbal skills is likely a prerequisite for adequate psychosocial adjustment (see, e.g., Argyle, 1981; Phillips, 1978; Trower, Bryant, & Argyle, 1978).

The skill approach to the study of nonverbal communication has received its greatest impetus from the work of Rosenthal and his colleagues (e.g., Rosenthal, 1979; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979). However, there is a small but growing number of social scientists who are becoming interested in this nonverbal skill approach. Researchers in the field of communication are beginning to study nonverbal communication from an individual differences perspective (see, e.g., McCroskey & Daly, 1987). Developmental psychologists have explored the relationships between nonverbal abilities in children and the development of social skills and social competence (e.g., Feldman, White, & Lobato, 1982; Flavell, Botkin, Fry, Wright, & Jarvis, 1968; Matson & Ollendick, 1988; Rubin & Ross, 1982). And, clinical/counseling psychologists and psychiatrists have begun to realize that competence in nonverbal communication is an important component of adequate psychosocial adjustment and social competence (e.g., Hollin & Trower, 1986; Phillips, 1978; Wine & Smye, 1981). They join the personality and social psychologists who are also beginning to give greater attention to individual differences in interaction skills in general, and nonverbal skills, in particular.

Friedman (1979) outlined some of the advantages of studying nonverbal communication from this skill approach for social and personality psychologists. For example, because much of nonverbal communication involves the communication of emotion, there is a shift in focus from studying cognitive-verbal aspects of social life to a renewal of interest in the study of emotion. Also, the nonverbal skill approach advocates viewing individual differences in terms of “abilities” rather than traits, and, Friedman asserted, approaching the measurement of personality in terms of abilities will likely prove a more reliable and valid approach than the traditional assessment of traits, because the assessment of abilities implies that there are “correct” and “incorrect” answers to measures of nonverbal skill, unlike the traditional self-report assessments of personality traits. Therefore, besides being a different theoretical perspective to studying nonverbal communication, the skill approach also represents a methodological innovation for researchers studying social interaction processes. In other words, rather than focusing on how certain personality traits affect social outcomes, researchers operating from this skill approach will focus instead on the nonverbal skills that represent the counterparts of these traits. For example, the trait of “extraversion” may be viewed as a combination of nonverbal and verbal expressive skills. The possession of “empathy” might be represented as certain emotional or nonverbal decoding skills. And, because nonverbal skills may be more objectively measured (and ultimately, more finely measured) than these personality traits, we may develop a better understanding of the links between personality and social behavior.

The next logical step in this skill approach is to focus on the finer nonverbal behaviors and cues that are involved in the use of a particular nonverbal encoding or decoding skill. It is likely that as we isolate and are able to measure more and more of these specific communication skills, that the skill approach to studying social interaction will become more common-place.

This chapter presents a brief overview of research on nonverbal skills, with a particular emphasis on the role of nonverbal skills in social interaction. We begin with a breakdown of the basic categories of nonverbal skill and how these skills are measured. The use of nonverbal interaction skills in everyday social encounters is discussed, as is the role that nonverbal skills play in relationship formation and development.

BASIC DIMENSIONS OF NONVERBAL SKILL

An important first step is to examine the basic dimensions of skill in nonverbal communication. These basic skills are of three types: skill in sending nonverbal messages (encoding skill), skill in receiving nonverbal messages (decoding skill), and skill in regulating or controlling nonverbal communication (see Riggio, 1986, 1989). These three nonverbal communication skills are the basic “building blocks” of more complex nonverbal interaction skills.

A term commonly used in the literature for nonverbal sending, or encoding, skill is expressiveness (see Friedman, Prince, Riggio, & DiMatteo, 1980). Basic nonverbal sending skill, or expressiveness, is dominated by the communication of emotional messages. Indeed, a large body of literature is concerned with the nonverbal expression of emotions, through facial expressions (Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972), tone of voice and other paralinguistic cues (Scherer, 1979; Zuckerman, Larrance, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1979), and/or posture and body movements (Ekman, 1965; Ekman, Friesen, O’Sullivan, & Scherer, 1980). Although much of nonverbal expressiveness involves ability to express felt emotional states, other aspects include the nonverbal communication of attitudes and the sending of cues of interpersonal orientation (e.g., dominance).

The second basic nonverbal skill is the ability to decode nonverbal cues, which is often referred to as sensitivity to nonverbal behavior (see Rosenthal et al., 1979). This is general skill in receiving and decoding the nonverbal displays of others. There have been hundreds of published investigations of nonverbal decoding skill. For example, Hall (1985) has found 120 studies alone that deal with gender differences in nonverbal decoding skill (we discuss gender differences in nonverbal skill later). Nonverbal sensitivity is hypothesized to be a key component of empathy (Riggio, Tucker, & Coffaro, 1989), and some researchers believe that nonverbal decoding skill is at the core of social intelligence (Archer, 1980; see also Sternberg & Smith, 1985).

The third basic nonverbal skill, and the one that has received the least amount of research attention, is the ability to regulate or control the flow of nonverbal messages. The two lines of research that hint at this ability to control nonverbal behavior are the work of Snyder (1974, 1979, 1987) on self-monitoring, and research on deception ability (DePaulo, Stone, & Lassiter, 1985; Ekman & Friesen, 1969, 1974; Riggio, Tucker, & Throckmorton, 1987, see also, Shennum & Bugental, 1982). According to Snyder, self-monitoring is, in part, the ability to control behavioral displays. High self-monitors are able to stifle the display of cues of felt emotions, and are good nonverbal “actors”—able to control nonverbal behavior in order to “fit in” to various social situations. Similarly, successful deception depends on the ability to control the nonverbal “leakage” of the truth, or control nonverbal cues (e.g., nervousness) that may clue the observer that an individual is not telling the truth (Ekman & Friesen, 1969). Nonverbal control seems to be the basic skill underlying the more complex abilities of the high self-monitor and the successful deceiver. More recently, it was hypothesized that nonverbal control is an important part of successful encoding of posed emotional expressions (Tucker & Riggio, 1988).

According to a model proposed by Riggio (1986, 1989), these three nonverbal skills have verbal counterparts. In other words, the basic verbal skills are the corresponding verbal sending, verbal receiving, and verbal regulatory skills. Verbal sending skills involve the abilities to express oneself verbally and to engage others in social interaction. Verbal receiving skills include ability to decode verbal communications and a sensitivity to, and understanding of, social norms and the “rules” of social interaction. The skill of control of verbal communication involves the ability to regulate verbal expression, and skill in playing various social roles. As might be expected, each of these categories of basic communication skill—both nonverbal and verbal skills—are quite complex and may themselves be composed of more basic communication abilities. However, the framework is useful for organizing the general categories of communication skill for researchers interested in approaching communication from an individual differences perspective. And, with the exception of the addition of skill in control over communication processes, this framework is compatible with the general communication model used by communication researchers and social psychologists in studying the process of face-to-face communication.

Although this communication skill framework separates skills in verbal and nonverbal communication, in reality, verbal and nonverbal skills are complexly intertwined. Skill in social interaction is a combination of the words we choose to say and how we say them. Moreover, it may sometimes be dangerous and misleading to try to isolate only the verbal or nonverbal aspects of a social behavior and to draw sweeping conclusions about how either alone influences the process and outcomes of social interaction. Such was the folly of some early approaches to the study of nonverbal communication that tried to determine what percentage of information conveyed in social interaction was nonverbal versus verbal (e.g., see Mehrabian, 1968, 1971; Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967). Although this review focuses primarily on nonverbal skills in social interaction, it is important to bear in mind that interaction skills are complex and take many forms. Often it is impossible (or at least “unnatural”) to talk about nonverbal interaction skills without considering their verbal skill counterparts.

Measuring Nonverbal Skills

Because the measurement of nonverbal skills often involves the recording of multiple samples of subtle nonverbal behaviors, it is no coincidence that research on nonverbal skill did not flourish until the advent of low-cost videotape technology in the 1970s. The assessment of nonverbal skill has mainly focused on measuring individual differences in ability to encode or decode filmed or videotaped emotional expressions. For example, to measure emotional encoding skill, subjects are typically asked to pose basic emotional expressions on cue. Groups of judges then view the subjects’ enactments and attempt to recognize the emotions that subjects are trying to portray. Scores on emotional encoding ability (i.e., emotional expressiveness) are the percentage of judges who accurately identify the emotion(s) portrayed for each subject (Thompson & Meltzer, 1964; Zaidel & Mehrabian, 1969; Zuckerman, Lipets, Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1975).

A similar method is used to assess spontaneous nonverbal expressiveness. In one paradigm, developed by Buck (1978; Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972), subjects are videotaped while being shown slides designed to elicit emotional arousal (e.g., disgust, interest). Judges then view and then attempt to decode the spontaneous emotional reactions in subjects’ facial expressions, resulting in a score for spontaneous emotional expressiveness.

Nonverbal decoding skill is also obtained through the judgment procedures described earlier. Judges’ accuracy scores across subjects/actors can be used as an assessment of judges’ emotional decoding skill (see Buck, 1976, 1983). Other measures of nonverbal decoding skill (i.e., sensitivity) are more standardized. For example, the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS; Rosenthal, Hall, Archer, DiMatteo, & Rogers, 1979) is a 220-item videotape test of nonverbal decoding skill. In the PONS, an actress poses various brief, nonverbal messages, including the expression of basic emotions, attitudes, and cues of dominance and interpersonal orientation. The nonverbal messages are presented in a variety of channels: visual only (body and/or face), audio only (with verbal content masked or filtered out), and both visual and auditory channels combined. Subjects are exposed to each videotape segment and then choose between two alternative descriptions. The PONS yields a variety of nonverbal decoding skill scores for each channel, and a total accuracy score across all channels.

Another standardized measure of nonverbal decoding skill is the Social Interpretations Test (SIT; Archer & Akert, 1977). The SIT is similar to th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I: SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
• PART II: BUSINESS AND THE LAW
• PART III: HEALTH
• PART IV: EDUCATION
• PART V: SOCIETY AND CULTURE
• Author Index
• Subject Index