Nonverbal Communication Essay

Human interaction is a significant component in everyday life. With the increase of technology and the ease of connecting with the majority of the world, people are rapidly connecting with others. Due to the technological advantage to reach people from all over the world, it is becoming increasingly crucial that different cultures understand how to properly interact with each other. Each group of people has a specific culture, leading to other uses of nonverbal communication which in turn has the ability to affect interpersonal relationships.

Nonverbal communication is the unspoken dialogue that occurs during an interaction with other people. “Omnipresent, multifunctional, universal language, distinguishing factor between misunderstanding

The United States, for example, has a very diverse population due to the variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. A diverse population can lead to greater variation of nonverbal communication but would lack the traditions that some cultures have that date back thousands of years. This collaboration of different culture also adds to the ever-complex nature of trying to understand and relate to other cultures (Burgoon, et al., 2016). A diverse culture makes nonverbal communication more complex because the gestures are not drawn from one background but rather intertwined with

These are immediate behaviors that include smiling, touching, eye contact, body position, proximity and tone (Gudykunst, 2003). In close, interpersonal relationships, the other party typically mimics the nonverbal signals as a sign of engagement. However, if two people are from different cultures, then what one individual might be communicating as warm and attentiveness may come across as cold and disinterested to the other. There is a varying degree of how high or low contact a culture is. High contact cultures prefer a lot of sensory input, whereas low contact cultures prefer less sensory input. This in turn may affect interpersonal relationships if a high contact culture doesn’t understand that a low contact culture is not disinterested due to the lack of contact (Gudykunst,