Nonverbal Communication

Critically discuss non-verbal communication as a means that could influence social perception

Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people (how we see each other) .To learn about other people they rely on information from their physical appearances and verbal and non-verbal communications. Social perceptions takes place by means of the processes of impression formation and attribution. Attributions also affect social perception.

Communication need not to be verbal (written or spoken word) in order to convey a message. A glance, a stare, a smile, a frown, a provocative body movement they all convey meaning. This example illustrates that no discussion of communication would be complete without a discussion of nonverbal communication whereby anyone who has ever been to a singles bar or a nightclub is aware that communication doesn’t need to be verbal at all times to send out a message. This includes body movements, the intonations or emphasis we give to words, facial expressions and the physical distance between the sender and receiver. The academic study of body motions has been labeled kinesics. It refers to gestures, facial configurations and other movements of the body.

There can be ways in which people communicate without words including through facial expressions, tone of voice, body position and movement, touch and gaze. Charles Darwin believed that human emotional expressions are universal that all human express and interpret expressions in the same way. Modern research suggests that Darwin was right, for the six major emotional expressions, anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust and sadness. They help people make inferences about why others behave the way they...

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... communicating so that people will be able to understand what is being conveyed. The perceptions of the people do matter to a great extent because that will be the impression that they are receiving which last longer. From the image which is a non-verbal communication most will take the image as a contradicting image because they have the knowledge that it’s a men’s work and now that they can see it’s also done by women they will respond with verbal or non-verbal communication. Some can see it as reinforcing a stereotype. Therefore social perception is also affected/ influenced by non-verbal communication to a greater extent as to whether will the people be able to understand the message or not due to the way of communication used (non-verbal). If the incorrect or improper non-verbal communication people will interpret the image differently and some wrong some good.