Printed Page 213

Nonverbal Communication Has More Meaning

When we interact with others, we often deduce more meaning from people’s nonverbal communication than from their verbal, and we convey more meaning to them through our nonverbal than through our verbal. Suppose you meet someone new at a party and find yourself intrigued. To assess the person’s attractiveness, you probably gather a lot more information from his or her facial expressions, eye contact, posture, gestures, vocal tone, clothing, and other nonverbal signals than you do from the person’s words. This is because during first encounters, nonverbal communication has a greater impact on our overall impressions of attractiveness than does verbal communication (Zuckerman, Miyake, & Hodgins, 1991).

Our reliance on nonverbal communication escalates even higher when people display mixed messages, verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey contradictory meanings (Burgoon & Hoobler, 2002). A friend says she “isn’t sad,” but her slumped shoulders and downturned mouth suggest otherwise. In such cases, we almost always trust the nonverbal messages over the verbal ones. In contrast, when verbal and nonverbal messages align (“Yes, I’m sad” coupled with slumped shoulders and frown), the amount of attention we pay to verbal communication rises (Burgoon & Hoobler, 2002).