DIFFERENT CHANNELS OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

 DIFFERENT CHANNELS OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION : Nonverbal communication is one of the many interesting topics studied by social psychology. Social psychologists view it as an essential element of social perception. Although there are many other forms of nonverbal communication, the term usually means conveying thoughts and/or feelings without words using body language or sounds as the medium. Nonverbal communication can be defined as the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. The main channels of nonverbal communication are facial expressions, eye contact, body movements, posture and touching. 40 Nonverbal communication takes place in every social setting, though often it is not recognized for what it is or for what it means. It makes up a substantial portion of our communicative experience. Much research has been undertaken in recent years to analyze different kinds of nonverbal communication, and much of this research has addressed issues of interpersonal and intergender communication, addressing questions of interpersonal attraction, flirting, interactions in business situations, comparisons of male versus female interpretations of nonverbal behavior, and so on. Many of us associate facial expression and gestures with nonverbal communication, but these are not the only two types involved. There are, in fact, eight different types of nonverbal communication 

1)Facial Expression This makes up the largest proportion of nonverbal communication. Large amounts of information can be conveyed through a smile or frown. The facial expressions for happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are similar across cultures throughout the world. 

2)2) Gestures Common gestures include pointing, waving, and using fingers, etc. You can tell a person's attitude by the way they walk or by the way they stand. Same goes for gestures. 

3)Paralinguistics This includes factors such as tone of voice, loudness, inflection, and pitch. Tone of voice can be powerful. The same sentence said in different tones can convey different messages. A strong tone of voice may indicate approval or enthusiasm, whereas the same sentence said with a hesitant tone of voice may convey disapproval or lack of interest. Vocal Behaviors such as pitch, inflection, volume, rate, filler words, pronunication, articulation, accent, and silence, often reveal considerable information about others. 

4)Body Language and Posture A person’s posture and movement can also convey a great deal of information. Arm crossing or leg-crossing conveys different meanings depending on the context and the person interpreting them. Body language is very subtle, and may not be very definitive. 

5)Proxemics This refers to personal space. The amount of space a person requires depends on each individual’s preference, but also depends on the situation and other people involved in the situation. -The Use of Space- The only time you really notice this one is when we particularly need the space. For instance, being in a crowded elvator or being in a overly crowded house 41 party. A lot of times when a person is upset they just need their space to calm down.   

6)Eye Gaze Looking, staring, and blinking are all considered types of eye gaze. Looking at another person can indicate a range of emotions including hostility, interest, or attraction. - Eye behaviors- plays a role in several important types of relational interaction. 

7)Haptics This refers to communicating through touch. Haptics is especially important in infancy and early childhood. -Touch is one of our five senses, but, every touch has a different kind of meaning to it and when nonverbally communicating - its something you need to know. Five major areas of touching is : affectionate touch, caregiving touch, power and control touch, aggressive touch, ritualistic touch. 

8)Appearance Our choice of color, clothing, hairstyles, and other factors affecting our appearance are considered a means of nonverbal communication. Even Chronemics which implies the way we use time or the way we give time to others makes for a nonverbal behavior. It is indicative of two important relational messages, one concerning value and the other concerning power. Culture and the Channels of Nonverbal Communication Paul Ekman and his colleagues have studied the influence of culture on the facial display of emotions. They have concluded that display rules are particular to each culture and dictate what kinds of emotional expressions people are supposed to show. Eye contact and gaze are also powerful nonverbal cues. The use of personal space is a nonverbal behavior with wide cultural variations. Emblems are nonverbal gestures of the hands and arms that have well-understood definitions within a given culture. 

Multichannel Nonverbal Communication : In everyday life, we usually receive information from multiple channels simultaneously. The Social Interpretation Task (SIT), which uses videotaped naturally occurring interactions as stimuli, reveals that people are able to interpret such cues fairly accurately by making use of multiple cues. Research with the SIT indicates that extroverts may be better decoders than introverts. Gender and Nonverbal Communication : Women are better than men at both decoding and encoding nonverbal behavior, with respect to whether people are telling the 42 truth. Men, however, are better at detecting lies. This finding can be explained by social-role theory, which claims that sex differences in social behavior are due to society’s division of labor between the sexes. Supportive evidence for this interpretation is provided by Hall (1979), who found that women’s “nonverbal politeness” or attending to nonverbal cues that convey what people want others to see and ignoring nonverbal cues that leak people’s true feelings. It has also been found that decoding is correlated with the degree of oppression of women in the culture. Thus, it is seen that nonverbal behavior is used to express emotion, convey attitudes, communicate personality traits, and facilitate or modify verbal communication. Among the various channels of nonverbal communication much research has been done on facial expressions. In the following section we will discuss Darwin;s theory of universal facial expressions of emotion.