Summary

• There are several key distinctions between verbal and nonverbal communication.
  • Nonverbal communication uses multiple channels simultaneously—auditory, visual, and tactile—whereas verbal communication relies solely on the auditory channel.
  • Nonverbal meanings are more flexible and ambiguous than verbal meanings.
  • Nonverbal communication has fewer rules, and most of these rules are informal norms.
  • Nonverbal communication has more meaning because we deduce more information from nonverbal behavior than we do from verbal communication, particularly when people display mixed messages—verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey contradictory meanings.
• Nonverbal communication is influenced by culture.
  • The tight link between culture and nonverbal communication makes cross-cultural communication difficult to master.
  • Years of immersion are required for someone to truly understand a foreign culture’s nonverbal communication style.
• Nonverbal communication is influenced by gender.
  • Many stereotypes exist about how men and women communicate nonverbally
  • Psychologist Judith Hill suggests four consistent patterns related to gender and nonverbal communication: (1) Women are better than men at both sending and receiving nonverbal messages; (2) Women show greater facial expressiveness and smile more than men; (3) Women gaze more at others during interpersonal interaction, particularly during same-gender conversations; and (4) Men are more territorial than women, maintaining more physical space between themselves and others during encounters.
• Nonverbal communication is liberated through technology, because now we can choose various media (e.g., Skype, YouTube, etc.) for interaction and use these media to better maintain intimate, long-distance relationships.
• Nonverbal and verbal acts combine to create communication.--Both are needed to communicate effectively.

• Kinesics involves visible body movements, including facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and posture.
  • Facial expressions are used to communicate an endless stream of emotions, and we make judgments about what others are feeling by assessing their facial expressions. (In online communication, emoticons may serve this purpose.)
  • Eye contact serves many purposes, such as emotions and interest, but one form of eye contact—prolonged staring—is considered aggressive.
  • Important categories of gestures include: (1) emblems, which represent specific verbal meanings (e.g., angrily displaying one’s middle finger); (2) illustrators, which accent or illustrate verbal messages; (3) regulators, which control the exchange of conversational turns; and (4) adaptors, which are forms of touching that serve a physical or psychological purpose.
  • Posture communicates two primary messages—immediacy, the degree to which you find someone interesting and attractive, and power, the ability to influence or control other people or events.
• Vocalics are vocal characteristics we use to communicate nonverbal messages. Voices are a combination of four characteristics.
  • Tone, which involves a combination of richness and breathiness, is the most complex of human vocalic characteristics.
  • Pitch, whether high or low, shapes others’ impressions of a speaker.
  • Loudness can alter meaning, as seem by the differences wrought by emphasizing different words in the same sentence (“WILL John leave the room?” versus “Will JOHN leave the room?”).
• Speech rate affects the ability of the listener to hear the message. Talking at a moderate and steady rate is often considered a critical technique for effective speaking. Haptics, which involves touch, varies by duration, placement, and strength. Touch can be categorized as functional-professional, social-polite, friendship-warmth, love-intimacy, sexual-arousal, or aggressive-hostile.
  • Cultural upbringing has a strong impact on how people use and perceive touching, as do the personal preferences of individuals.
• Proxemics involves nonverbal communication through the use of physical distance. Scholars have identified four communication distances: (1) intimate space, (2) personal space, (3) social space, and (4) public space.
  • Territoriality is the tendency to claim physical spaces as our own and to define certain locations as areas we don’t want others to invade without permission.
  • Definitions of acceptable physical distances vary across cultures.
• Chronemics is the way we use time to communicate during interpersonal interactions.
  • People with M-time (monochronic) orientation value time as a resource and focus on time management and scheduling.
  • People with P-time (polychronic) orientation do not regard time as a resource to be spent, wasted, or saved.
• Physical appearance–-visible attributes such as hair, clothing, body type, and other physical features—profoundly influences all of our interpersonal encounters. For example, we gravitate toward those we find attractive, and we react respectfully toward those we find professional in their self-presentation.
• Artifacts are personal objects or possessions that influence how others see us.
• Our environment, the physical features of our surroundings, envelops us, shapes our communication, and implies certain things about us to others. Environment comprises fixed features, which are unchanging (e.g., the size of a room), and semifixed features, which are impermanent (e.g., the items on a desk).

• Conveying meaning, either directly or indirectly, which can be done in the following ways: reiterating, contradicting, enhancing, replacing, and spotlighting.
• Expressing emotion through affect displays, which are intentional or unintentional nonverbal behaviors that display actual or feigned emotions.
  • Vocalics are also used to convey emotions.
• Presenting different aspects of our selves to others by using codes and shifting our approach, depending on the situation (e.g., participating in “casual Friday” at your office even if you prefer to dress formally when working).
• Managing interactions through regulating and reading others’ nonverbal communication.
• Defining relationships by creating intimacy and by displaying dominance or submissiveness.
  • Intimacy—the feeling of closeness and “union” that exists between us and our partners—involves physical closeness, shared gaze, soft voices, relaxed postures, sharing of personal objects, and spending time together.
  • Dominance refers to the interpersonal behaviors we use to exert power and influence over others, whereas submissiveness is the willingness to allow others to exert power over us.