How Body Language Affects Communication
Body language is a kind of special language behavior in human social activities, and it’s the quiet, secret and most powerful language of all. According to Albert Mehrabian as cited by A. Pease and B. Pease (2016), “The total impact of a message is about 7 percent verbal (words only) and 38 percent vocal (including tone of voice, inflection, and other sounds) and 55 percent nonverbal” (para. 2). It reveals that body language, a type of nonverbal languages which express meaning or feeling without words affects communication the most. Even the same statement may cover various kinds of expressions through using different body languages. For example, when people speak with frowning face, dangling of
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Every expression could be a valuable key of the emotion that people may feel during the communication. Based on Goodenough and Tinker research cited by Ekman and Rosenberg (2005) claims that, “… people could consistently recognize emotion in the face” (p. 11). It means people can always read the information through the facial expression during the face-to-face interaction. Eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, and tongue are the face elements that can communicate the state of minds such as anger, happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust and neutral emotions etc. The speaker's thoughts can be ascertained by looking at his or her facial expression. Although people commonly show congruence facial expression and content while interpreting emotions; however, some people may convey incongruent expression with their statements, and it would lead different comprehension. For instance, praising other with gleaming eyes or with harried eyebrows could stand for two different implications: One is a compliment said from the bottom of one’s heart, and the other is a kind of taunt. Two fine expressions can still make a great difference. Facial expressions carry meanings and that can impact on the …show more content…
Although everyone has his own habit about the body movement and different interpretation of other’s posture, it cannot be denied that body movement is likely to carry meaning. People could “read” someone through his or her signals and that could affect their communication. As Meijer (1989) says, “People in fact possess some knowledge base concerning movement-content relationships. This is likely to influence their perceptions of others and subsequent behavioral reactions” (p. 266). Even though a small difference in the body posture means a lot, it could be comprehended as assertive body language, bored body language, defensive body language, trustworthy body language etc. By observing the speaker’s body movements, people can know the state of the speaker and also the information that he or she wants to express. For example, a person sits still on the chair with body leaning forward and nodding head while having conversation with other, it could imply he or she is relaxed and has listened carefully. On the other hand, a person crosses the arms and legs and looks like there are ants in his or her pants during the talk, it may imply he or she feels impatient and wants to finish the conversation; namely, part of the messages in the face-to-face conversation could be detected through body
In this video, Ann Washburn talks about how body language is a key to access our subconscious. Body language is something that demonstrates and determines who we are as a person because we send messages to others and to ourselves with our body language. For example, if a person stands with crossed arms while putting his weight on one leg, it sends out a message that the person is weak. On the other hand, if the same person stands with his hands on the side keeping the weight on both the legs, it sends a message of being confident to his subconscious and signals others that he is a strong person. Another example in the video is about our reaction to the compliments given by others to us. If a person says thank you after hearing the compliment
Joe Navarro, a former FBI profiler with 25 years of experience in analyzing non-verbal language, writes about the significance of being able to read nonverbal communication in his essay “Every Body’s Talking.” He makes a convincing argument to whether or not nonverbals, such as body language, play a role in everyday conversations.
While communicating with another human being, one only has to examine the other’s face in order to comprehend what is being said on a much deeper level. It is said that up to 55 percent of a message’s meaning can be derived from facial expression (Subramani, 2010). These facial manipulations allow thoughts to be expressed in ways that are often difficult to articulate verbally, with the face demonstrating “the thoughts of the mind, and the feelings of the heart” (Singla). Many expressions are said to universal, particularly those showing happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and...
The face is the reserve of emotion. A smile implies happiness, a frown signifies anger or sadness, and a quick rolling of the eyes indicates someone is annoyed. What one is thinking or feeling can be clearly displayed in one’s facial expressions. Paul Ekman decided to study people’s facial expressions, down to the micro expressions that flash across the face and those are what give one away. He developed the facial action coding system (FACS) after many years of researching how people’s facial expressions reveal their inner emotions (Blink 204). He has even worked with Gottman and his “Love Lab” and the FACS has helped him to predict the longevity of certain relationships. While some people believe that their true feelings are not reflected by their facial expressions, they are unaware that a simple change in emotions is displayed on their face, revealing their true feelings. Emotions simply cannot be hidden, because they are clearly displayed on the face.
77). We all express or encode a feeling with an outward facial expression such as smile or frown, and we decode or interpret these features the same across the board (Aronson, 2013, p.77). According to Aronson (2013) a study was done in New Guinea with a small tribe that had little to no contact with Westerners and when told particular stories had the same six facial expressions as Westerners. It’s interesting because verbal language is vastly diverse between cultures, but that in order for us to understand each other better we have a nonverbal form of communication such as facial
When we think about communication, we think about interactions. So what is your body language communicating to me? This are the words that Amy Cuddy a social physiologist, uses when she start up her talk about body language. Cuddy’s talk “how body language shapes who you are” explains how body language can identify how much power one is feeling just by observing someone’s body language. Amy Cuddy states that when one expands one is feeling power, and when the opposite is done which is shrinking one is feeling powerless.
Any communication interaction involves two major components in terms of how people are perceived: verbal, or what words are spoken and nonverbal, the cues such as facial expressions, posture, verbal intonations, and other body gestures. Many people believe it is their words that convey the primary messages but it is really their nonverbal cues. The hypothesis for this research paper was: facial expressions directly impact how a person is perceived. A brief literature search confirmed this hypothesis.
All of us are trained in the use of speech, to communicate what we mean in a way that other people will understand. And most of the time, others understand what we mean. In a telephone conversation, we communicate through speech alone. In a face-to-face meeting, part of the communication is carried in a non-verbal form, what is often called “body language” or “body movement”. In the next paragraphs, I am going to show what are the positive and negative of “body language” and why it is important to us.
“When we think of nonverbals we think of how we judge others, how they judge us, and what the outcomes are… we are also influenced by our nonverbals, our thoughts, and our feelings, and our physiology” (paragraph 6). Amy Cuddy is a respected women, known for her compassion and care to inspire other to better their lives. In the beginning of her speech Your body language shapes who you are published in 2012 on Tedglobal, she offers her “life hack” to the audience, assuring them if they improve their non verbals and body language it will improve their life in many ways. Cuddy begins building her trustworthiness and credibility with the audience by quoting respectable sources, giving convincing facts and statistics, and successfully employing
How we present ourselves and communicate with others aside from talking is by our body language. Our body language speaks more than words which then logically accounts for a bigger percentage of our communication skills. Therefore our eyes speaks volumes about us and how we communicate.
Nonverbal communication can be defined as the transfer of messages without the use of words. It uses physical movement; such as hand gestures and body language, and also facial expressions; for example, eye contact, frowning, and smiling. Marta Dynel defines nonverbal (NVC) communication as:
Nonverbal communication is defined as "the conscious and unconscious reactions, movements, and utterances that people use in addition to the words and symbols associated with language." Nonverbal communication is very important since 50 percent or more of the message were trying to get across is conveyed by verbal communication. The first verbal message to be aware of is facial expressions. The face is what people first focus on so it's obviously important to be aware of what message were giving off with our face. Suspicion and anger are often shown by tightness along the jaw. Smiles are proof of agreement and interest, but don't bite your lip because that signals uncertainty.
There are different types of communication (verbal, nonverbal, paralinguistic). Verbal communication is communicating with words. For instance, an individual speaks to another at a business meeting regarding profit margins. Second, nonverbal communication is communicating without the use of words but through gesture, body language, facial expression and eye contact (Baron, Branscombe, Byrne). Also these physical expressions can provide powerful and valuable information about others’ current feelings and reactions without the need of words. Lastly paralinguistic is defined as the use of emotional expression, gestures, and the location of the body in relation to the other's body, eye contact, and level of voice instead of verbally expressing these cues (Triandis). Additionally, paralinguistic is also known as paralanguage as a way to modify or nuance meaning, or convey emotion, with the use of pitch, volume, and intonation (Triandis). For instance, as described by Triandis’ article Culture and Communication, “in Bulgaria and south India a nod means "no,” and a shake of the head, means "yes".” It’s interesting how Triandis describes the amount of difficulty it was to compre...
...tention to how people react to one another’s comments, guessing the relationship between the people and guessing how each feels about what is being said. This can inform individuals to better understand the use of body language when conversing with other people. It is also important to take into account individual differences. Different cultures use different non-verbal gestures. Frequently, when observing these gestures alone the observer can get the wrong impression, for instance, the listener can subconsciously cross their arms. This does not mean that they are bored or annoyed with the speaker; it can be a gesture that they are comfortable with. Viewing gestures as a whole will prevent these misunderstandings. Non-verbal gestures are not only physical, for example; the tone of voice addressing a child will be different from the way it is addressed to an adult.
When we communicate, we can say a lot without speaking, through our body, our posture, tone of voice and the expression on our face all display a message. If our feelings don’t fit with our words, it is often the body language that gets heard and believed. Nonverbal communication is a rapidly flowing interactive process. Being aware and understanding the cues you may be sending along with the cues others send and pick up from your body language, may not be showing what you are really trying to communicate to others at that moment.