When Mike and his friends visited a beach in Qingdao, China, they were surprised to see a woman emerge from the sea wearing gloves, a wetsuit, and a neon-orange ski mask. Another mask-wearing bather told them, “A woman should always have fair skin; otherwise people will think she is a peasant” (Levin, 2012). The tanning booths and self-tanning creams popular in the United States are clearly not important to beach lovers in China because different cultures view physical appearance differently. Relatedly, if you’ve ever traveled abroad, you may have been advised that certain nonverbal gestures that are entirely acceptable and quite positive in the United States (for example, “A-OK” or “thumbs up”) are deeply insulting and crude in other parts of the world (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013).

As these examples illustrate, nonverbal communication is highly influenced by culture. Culture affects everything from touch to facial expressions including time orientation and notions of physical attractiveness (see Chapter 5). For example, in the United States, people tend to make direct eye contact when speaking to someone, whether a colleague, a supervisor, or a professor. Similarly, in the Middle East, engaging in long and direct eye contact with your speaking partner shows interest and helps you assess the sincerity and truth of the other person’s words (Samovar, Porter, & Stefani, 1998). However, in Latin America, Japan, and the Caribbean, such sustained eye behavior is a sign of disrespect.

Similarly, culture affects the use of touch. Some cultures are contact cultures (for example, Italy) (Williams & Hughes, 2005) and depend on touch as an important form of communication. Other cultures are noncontact cultures and are touch-sensitive or even tend to avoid touch. Latin American, Mediterranean, and Eastern European cultures, for example, rely on touch much more than Scandinavian cultures do. Public touch, linked to the type of interpersonal relationship that exists and the culture in which it occurs, affects both the amount of touch and the area of the body that is appropriate to touch (Avtgis & Rancer, 2003; DiBiase & Gunnoe, 2004; McDaniel & Andersen, 1998). Social-polite touch, for example, involves a handshake between American men but a kiss between Arabic men. And some religions prohibit opposite-sex touch between unmarried or unrelated individuals.

Sex and gender also influence nonverbal communication. Women usually pay more attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues when evaluating their partners and deciding how much of themselves they should reveal to those partners, whereas men attend more to verbal information (Gore, 2009). Women also engage in more eye contact, initiate touch more often, and smile more than men (Hall, 1998; Stewart, Cooper, & Steward, 2003).

Such differences are not necessarily biologically based. For example, mothers may use more varied facial expressions with their daughters because they believe that women are supposed to be more expressive than men or because their childhood environment presented them with more opportunities to develop nonverbal skills (Hall, Carter, & Hogan, 2000). Adult gender roles may also play a part. Since women are expected to look out for the welfare of others, smiling—as well as other affirming nonverbal behaviors—may help women meet situational, gendered expectations (Hall et al., 2000). This may also help explain why women exhibit greater sensitivity to nonverbal messages. They tend to exhibit more signs of interest (such as head tilts and paralinguistic encouragers like “uh-huh” and “ah”) and also decode others’ nonverbal behaviors more accurately, particularly those involving the face (Burgoon & Bacue, 2003).