L10- NVC - Lecture notes including: Slides provided by the lecturer, notes taken in lectures PDF

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L10- Non verbal communicationEveryone involves in NVC, in many careers it is important to have sensitivity towards NVC, both your own and what is emitted to others.-Are women better at reading non-verbal cues?-Some elements (for example of the face) can give more information than others when express...

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L10- Non verbal communication

Everyone involves in NVC, in many careers it is important to have sensitivity towards NVC, both your own and what is emitted to others. -Are women better at reading non-verbal cues? -Some elements (for example of the face) can give more information than others when expressing certain emotions for example. Eyes give away a genuine smile and other emotions. - Ekman as one of the most influential psychologists on NVC. Functions of NVC: Patterson (1988) -

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To provide information to others: To deliberately show other people affection for example, or any other type of information such as moving away when someone approaches you. To regulate interaction (e.g. turn-taking): Conversations have many non-linguistic noises that keep conversations going. To express intimacy (e.g. liking) To attempt to exert social control: Parent imposing control over child (eg: waving finger), body language to show that power. Or politicians trying to win a debate, using body language to show that power. Presentation: Deliberate presentation of our preferred self or identity. Eg: Taking care of your hair, using perfume. Affect management: Management of emotion, how we communicate how we are feeling and how others are feeling. Facilitating service or task goals: NVC can be used to facilitate service tasks ; eg: retail, doctors when calming nerves.

Evolutionary approaches (e.g. Ekman’s work on expression of emotion – draws upon Darwin, 1872) – “Duchenne smile”: The innate natural non-posed smile, smile extents to eyes. -

Based on Darwin: Aspects of NVC based on evolutionary reasons. Children born blind will smile and laugh, even though they have never seen it. Smile and laughter are genetically encoded. NVC are important to communicate things fast.

Patterson (1995, 1998, 2001) Parallel-processing model of NVC. 4 ‘classes’ of factors: Factors about how we give off NV cues and about how we understand them. -

Determinants (biology, culture, gender, personality): NVC is not just human, happens in all animal kingdom. Social environment (partner, setting): The impact of the setting cannot be ignored, it impacts how we decode and send out NVC. Cognitive-affective mediators (expectancies, goals, dispositions, cognitive resources, attention focus, schemas, stereotypes)

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Person-perception and behavioural processes (impression formation, actor behaviour): Biases in the way we look at people.

Many ‘automatic’ judgements may be biologically based. First time you meet a stranger, you automatically are interpreting the NVC from that person, even before they speak., you are already forming your first impression. e.g. reactions to NVC of babies: If you are a heterosexual female under 30, if you stare at a baby it will have an automatic impact on you, an automatic reponse. Babies have a lot of NVC, we need to understand their needs from this since they cannot talk. Channels of NVC -

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Facial expression: We think we are good at controlling and reading others, but often we are only good at looking at faces. Gaze and pupil dilation: Gestures, body movements and posture: Depressed people tend to have a specific posture, giving away they have LSE. Posture also reflects interest. Touch/bodily contact Spatial behaviour (‘proxemics’): How close we stand to people when we talk to them. Formal meeting vs date. Clothing: A method of communicating something about you, advertising a product, banned T-shirts, people communicate how they want you to see them. Non-linguistic aspects of speech: Speak tone for example. People with mental health issues tend to speak more monotonous. General enthusiasm can be communicated through tone. Smell (e.g. use of perfumes): We manipulate smell, the effect of pheromones on attraction for example.

Differences in sensitivity We are all different in our sensitivity to body language. Some clinical disturbances affect nonverbal encoding and decoding (e.g. Schizophrenia, ASD) Children with ASD display unusual NVC, NVC that are normally considered inappropriate, eg: Don’t engage in turn-taking, they display emotion more obviously and extremely, they are not embarrassed to express them, other people choose to mask emotions. They often don´t decode NV cues as accurately. Overall, women are more sensitive to non-verbal cues and decode them more accurately than men. Why? Nature, evolutionary perspective: Women have tended to be the primary caregiver, children do not have language so it is important to be sensitive to NVC. -

Strong cross-cultural evidence for this, apart from one exception which we will discuss later. (e.g. Hall, 1979; Rosenthal & DePaulo, 1979; Rosip & Hall, 2004)

The older we get the worse we get at decoding non-verbal cues. -

Older individuals (e.g. aged 70+) are worse at lying and at detecting deception. General cognitive decline as an explanation.

Training can improve sensitivity, but getting better at NVC is more complex than that.

The Spatial channel - Proxemics How we use the space around us, sometimes we control it other times we do not. Eg: Job interview: We can be faced with a lot of space between us and the interviewer, that creates a certain atmosphere, more distant. How the room is organized can impact how the candidate feels. -

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Spatial metaphors are common in language, which shows the impact space has in communication. We for example use expressions such as growing closer vs growing apart. Reflects that our use of space links to how we feel about other people Space can convey liking/disliking Space can convey power and control: e.g. Kane (1971) - violent prisoners and personal space, they tended to command the most personal space that other prisoners respected. Eg: In canteen. Hall (1966) - in different settings we are comfortable with different distances. NV cues mean different things in different contexts, you cannot make generalizations. Culture and proxemics (Hall, 1966): In different cultures NV cues mean different things. Business people get trained in intercultural awareness. Eg: In Arabic cultures pointing feet at people is disrespectful. Eg: In some countries when you talk you stand very close; in others you stand far away. This may create uncomfortableness.

Touch- as a channel Extremely powerful – linked with emotion and relationships. Even fleeting, incidental touches can have marked effects and be very influential: -

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Crusco & Wetzel (1984) – larger tips if touched on hand by waitress. If you touch the hand of a client, you get more tips. People giving tips are unaware, subconscious reaction. Greater liking for librarian and library if touched on hand by librarian (Fisher, Rytting, & Heslin, 1976)- but only female Ps affected, but in general it is not gender specific. Library rated higher if librarian had touched your hand.

Unless you are particularly disgusted by something you tend to like it more if you touch it. For deception to be easier, reduce the amount of channels available. Facial expression as a channel -

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Important for conveying emotion, very expressive. We are evolving to put facial expression into our texting. Ekman et al (1972) -looking at emotion, he established that there is a set of core emotions that seem to be expressed in the face the same way wherever you are in the world. Happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust - expressed the same throughout the world: It is biological, evolutionary, innate. Very robust findings. He showed people some photographs expressing emotions, most people can recognize the 6 emotions. This is evolutionary functional, important to recognize these emotions for us to survive in the environment. Gender differences - women attend to faces > men do. Seems to be innate, evolutionary, associated with being the primary care-giver.

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There are also short facial expressions: ‘Micro-expressions’ of < 2/5ths second (Haggard & Issacs, 1966). Many of us are influenced by these, even if they happen outside of awareness. Very important when thinking about deception. Face is very important for communicating emotion. • Recognising emotion is apparently part of emotional intelligence, being sensitive towards other´s emotions. We vary individually on this.

Gaze (1) People tend to prefer dilated pupils; we automatically respond more positively to pupil dilation. Eyes are an important element of NVC. Eg: Heterosexual women looking at a baby when under 30 dilated their pupils. Eye tracking studies show that when we look at someone´s face we focus more on eyes and mouth, we have an inner understanding that the eyes and mouth are particularly informative in NV cues. Very powerful and often automatic; e.g. pupil dilation and blink rate. -

Observers pay much attention to eyes. Sometimes a ‘leaky’ channel: They are more likely to give away attempts of deception, we are not fully able to control things such as pupil dilation Gaze can be used to exert dominance: In animal kingdom, gaze used as a threat signal, if you stare into animals eyes they interpret it as a threat. Gaze as a threat signal (Exline & Yellin, 1969; Marsh et al., 1978): Studied behaviour of football hooligans, they discovered that massive fights between 2 teams could be caused simply by one fan looking at a fan of the opposite side. Similar studies with primates.

Ideas from Morris (1982) -

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Pupil dilation symbolizes attraction, makes you more attractive - Deadly Nightshade plant once used in Italy to affect dilation (atropine), to make themselves attractive. Size of pupils acts as a mood signal. Distaste leads to constriction: Nowadays everyone tries to be politically correct, answers on questionnaires tend to show no prejudice. Therefore, to test prejudice attitudes researchers look at pupil response, pupils constrict when we experience disgust and distaste, outside of our control. If you are racially prejudiced you experience disgust when seeing an interracial kiss, and we measure this with pupil constriction. Excitement leads to expansion. Pupil ‘signals’ are sub-consciously sent and processed.

Culture and NVC Several cultural differences in NVC, important due to very multicultural environments. -

Example: touch (Jourard, 1966). Some cultures are “contact” cultures. Study observed the interaction between couples of different cultures. They measured the number of times in an hour that couples touched. Couples in San Juan (Puerto Rico), over a 100 Paris, 20 times and London, 0. Some cultures use touch more than others.

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‘Display rules’ differ cross-culturally: These are cultural norms about the display of NVC. Eg: In Britain, there is a norm that in English funerals everyone should be sad. In other cultures, funerals are about celebrating life, happy events, it is appropriate to display NVC associated with happiness. Same NV acts can mean different things in different cultures – e.g. finger move across throat = threat signal in UK but “I love you” in Swaziland! NVC meanings are dependent on culture.

Culture: Decoding emotion Cultural display rules in Japan which discourage the display of negative emotion in public. Do they have an impact on the ability of Japanese people to decode NVC? Are they worse at recognizing it since they don’t normally see it? Matsumoto (1992) - compared U.S. and Japanese participants on recognition of 6 emotions -

Americans were better at identifying negative emotions; anger, disgust, fear and sadness No differences on happiness and surprise, since the cultural display rules are not that restrictive with positive emotions.

Matsumoto (2002;2008): It is not a biological difference, Japanese people just adhere to their norms. -

Perhaps events eliciting emotion differ culturally, but facial muscle movements relatively universal

Masuda et al (2008): -

Japanese look at expressions of others in the social context more than Americans when decoding facial expressions. To understand NV behaviour, Japanese look more into the setting, the importance of social groups is more valued. Individualism vs Collectivism.

Other studies: The Italian hand gesture: -

In Italy: It means what are you trying to say In Tunisia: Slow down In England: Nothing In Malta: You may seem good, but you are really bad.

Eg: Putting the hand to someone´s face as in don’t talk to me, comes from people punishing people by putting faeces on their face which they spread with their hand. Coco the gorilla: Research of sign-language. He was asked why he had destroyed something, he said it had been the cat, he was trying to deceive. Deception is not uniquely human. The complexity of NVC -

The same non-verbal acts can mean different things in different situations. Meaning of closeness is different when you are trying to find a date than when you are in the subway. Or waiting in airports, seats are angled away from each other so you are sat away from someone.

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We need to understand and appreciate the context of communication: We are not that good, we do not give people the benefit of the doubt, we make fundamental attribution error. For example - seating arrangements for an interview can impact on eye contact, proximity, imply power and status, etc...

The influence of setting and role -

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Rozelle, Druckman & Baxter (1975) - police officers and citizens. Police officers are pretty naïve when understanding the impact of the context where suspects were being interviewed. Did not take into account that being questioned creates anxiety and stress, which create similar cues to the ones that give away deception. Actor-observer (A-O) divergence: An actor engaging in a behaviour has a different perspective than an observer. They often arrive at different conclusion on why the behaviour occurred. Rozelle et al (1986) - employment interviews are often affected by A-O divergences. Employers tend to base their entire opinion on you based on one interview. You are normally not given the benefit of the doubt, they do not take the context into account, they just assume you are anxious and unstable. A-O divergences lead us to make inaccurate conclusions, which we make very fast and only based on initial NV cues. Zajonc (1980) - evaluations based on NVC made within first few seconds of an encounter.

Non-verbal enthusiasm Some people are more enthusiastic. Some jobs require more enthusiastic NVC. Clients tend to respond more positively to more enthusiastic NVC, for example in therapy. -

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Washburn & Hakel (1973) - gazing, gesturing, smiling in an interview Keenan (1976) - non-verbal approval is reflected in the interviewee. If the panel has a positive NV style, the interviewee performs better. It is a circular process, kind of outside of awareness. If you give bad NVC they impact the interviewer, and same the other way around. Strong et al (1971) - counsellors with expressive NVC styles are judged more positively by their clients and may be more effective (see also Bourget, 1977 and Claiborn, 1979)

Deception Can we detect lies? -

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Functional that we are not great at detecting lies?! What would the world be like if noone lied? Lying is essential for the functioning of the world, and not detecting lies so well compliments to this. World would be worse if everyone detected lies. Eg: Your essay was not that bad, it had good things. Even when we are correct, we can’t tell what the truth is or how to get there (DePaulo et al, 1985) ‘Leakage hierarchy’ (Ekman & Friesen, 1969): face least ‘leaky’, body and vocal cues most ‘leaky’. Some channels are more difficult to control, the face is the least leaky, it is easier to deceive with the face. Vocal cues and body movements are some of the most leaky, easier to deceive with these.

Detecting lies (part 2) -

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Stiff & Miller (1984) - judges rely too much on stereotypical beliefs about lying that are often misleading. Any awkward or non-fluent behaviour is often misinterpreted as signifying lying. Problem: Mental health challenges make your VC non-fluent and awkward, or simply people that are shy. Ekman & O’Sullivan (1991) - most of us perform no better than chance at detecting lies. They tested different groups: Police officers, citizens, airport staff, security, only one group performed above average: American secret service.

Detecting Lies (part 3) -

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Easier to become a better liar than a better decoder of lies. Problematic: ‘Secret tests’ in relationships (Baxter & Wilmot, 1984): We tend to try and check if our partner is as committed to the relationship as we are. These tests rely on the idea that we can tell if someone is deceiving us, when we cannot, we are not good at detecting lies. Women are worse at detecting lies than men! (Rosenthal & DePaulo, 1979) Women tend to be better at detecting NV cues, except for detecting lies, women tend to be more trusting- but not in all cultures (Hall, 1979), in non-industrialized cultures this effect not seen.

Detecting lies (part 4) -

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Situational constraints (Morris, 1982). Lying is easier when available cues for observers are reduced, reducing the amount of channels available and that you need to control. Eg: Deception easier in court room because you can´t see the lower body of the suspect (they are sitting down) Give-aways of lying include: hand to face contacts; body shifts; ‘micro-expressions’: Of disgust, anger… We are not very good at detecting these micro-expressions. But the same signs can indicate stress, discomfort, etc… Levine et al (2005) – training doesn’t really help. If you give people false training, their accuracy improves- Placebo effect- people are now simply paying more attention. Bond & DePaulo (2008) – no evidence for individual differences in lie detection ability. Personality does not seem to determine whether you are better decoding lies, although yes for successfully deceiving.

Vrij, Edward, Roberts, & Bull (2000) -

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Vrij (2000): How police officers perform: Found a 67% accuracy rate for detecting truths and a 44% accuracy rate for detecting lies. ‘Truth-bias’: People’s tendency to judge other’s messages as being truthful (Levine, Park, & McCornack,1999; Vrij, 2000). Vrij and Semin (1996) found that 75% of professional lie detectors (police officers, customs officers and so on) believe that liars look away, although gaze aversion has not been found to be a reliable indicator of deception (DePaulo et al., 1985; Vrij, 2000; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). They do not look at the right cues. Liars may experience high levels of emotion and cognitive load and these may be detectable – this may be why high stake lies are easier to detect (DePaulo, Kirkendol,

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Tang, & O’Brien, 1988) If liars put in situations with high emotional load, they leak more, it is easier to detect their lies. Ps put in high-stake lies ( there is a lot to loose), which puts people under cognitive load. Ps watched a film of a theft in a hospital and some asked to tell truth about it, others to lie. High cognitive load because liars had to devise their lies immediately after seeing the film. Their verbal content and body language were coded by observers. High cognitive load is associated with: a longer latency period (took longer before they spoke), more ‘ah’, speech disturbances, a slower speech rate and fewer illustrators and hand/finger movements Accuracy WAS higher than chance.

ten Brinke & Porter, 2012 Looked at people who went on TV and made pleas. They took cases were they 100% knew whether person was guilty or not, they comp...