Nonverbal Behavior Analysis

My partner for this exercise was my roommate, Brianne. Our plan for the day was to go to Gwinn (for late lunch and dinner), to hang out with friends, and to go get Boba. Before we began the experiment, I was concerned because we normally don’t have a whole lot of time to hang out outside of just sleeping in the same room. I hypothesized that throughout the night, as time went on, our communication skills would start to deteriorate. I predicted that we would start to probably just want the exercise to end. As a nanny for a two year old, I know just how long 8 hours can seem, even if it is with a really great person. After we completed the project, my beliefs that relationships need to have a balance between separation and togetherness was confirmed.

I did not learn about her grumpiness and tiredness because she told me about it-- rather I observed it in the way she was acting, and how her nonverbal behavior changed. The first thing I noticed was that she slowly began to talk less. When we started the day, at Gwinn as well as at Boba, we all were very talkative. On the bus ride home, however, she merely sat and looked out the window. Her posture was slumped and face and eyes averted away from people, which, because I know her so well, I interpreted as sleepiness. Other ways I could tell she was tired was through paralanguage--the way messages are spoken. As she got more tired, her vocal rate slowed down and the volume of her voice lowered. We were also able to see other’s nonverbal reactions to seeing us tied together. There was one man (in the background of the picture above), who kept giving us weird looks and extensively staring. His body movement implied that he was curious about why we were tied together. His eyebrows were furrowed as he looked at us, and he had a questioning look in his eyes-- behavior which we received from several different people, giving us all a good