A social relations analysis of nonverbal communication accuracy in married couples

This paper presents a reanalysis of a study (Sabatelli, Buck, & Drever, 1982) that related nonverbal communication accuracy in married couples to marital complaints, using the social relations model developed by Kenny and his colleagues The social relations model allows for the analysis of the communication process in a new and more complete way where, for the first time, the relative contributions of sender, receiver, and unique relationship effects to overall nonverbal communication accuracy can be assessed In addition, each of these factors can be related to marital complaints and the patterns of communication within dyads can be examined for the presence of complementarity/similarity and reciprocity/compensation The overwhelming percentage of variance in communication accuracy was accounted for by sender and unique relationship effects while little variance in communication accuracy was accounted for bv receiver effects In addition, no evidence of complementarity/similarity and only weak support for reciprocity/compensation in the communication abilities of wife and husband was found With regard to marital complaints, the most striking result was the negative correlation between wives' sending ability and husbands' complaints, a finding consistent with the previous report In addition, and consistent with the former analysis, the wives' unique abilities to decode their husbands' expressions were found to correlate negatively with the wives' marital complaints     

The growing field of nonverbal behaviour: A review of twelve books on nonverbal behaviour and nonverbal communication

This book review covers two monographs and ten edited books, mostly psychological in orientation and centered on current research questions about nonverbal behaviour or nonverbal communication. The edited books comprised 213 contributors. In each case, the reader is informed about the origin of the book, its main emphasis, the kind of topics covered, the nature of the material presented (whether theoretical discussions, reviews of research, research reports…), its general interest, and the type of readers who would mostly benefit of it. The material has been organized into five classes: Books of readings, introductory books, books on methods, specific dimensions, and specific topics.     

Comprehension of nonverbal communication: A reexamination of the social competencies of learning-disabled children

This study was designed to determine whether learning-disabled (LD) children differed from nondisabled (NLD) children in their ability to comprehend nonverbal communication when potential attentional differences between the groups were controlled. In addition, the relationship between nonverbal comprehension and social competence was assessed. Thirty LD and 30 NLD boys between 9 and 12 years of age were administered a short form of the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS) to assess nonverbal comprehension; social competence measures included teachers' ratings of aggressive and withdrawn behaviors using the Behavior Problem Checklist, and blind judges' ratings of performance on a role-play of friendshipmaking skills. Under attention-incentive conditions, no performance differences between LD and NLD children were found on the PONS; however, LD children were judged to be more withdrawn and less socially skilled. While PONS scores were not related to other social competence measures, hey were associated with academic achievement and IQ. Results emphasize the importance of considering the presence of attentional problems in LD children that may interfere with an accurate assessment of their skills.     

Sex roles and nonverbal communication skills

As a step toward understanding sex differences in nonverbal decoding and encoding abilities, the hypothesis that sex-role variables are related to these communication abilities was tested. An analysis was undertaken of 11 studies on the relationship of encoding and decoding abilities to sex roles, including several masculinity and femininity scales, a measure of attitudes toward women, and a questionnaire on sex roles in the home. Although the relationships of the masculinity and femininity measures to decoding were generally weak, more masculine people tended to be better decoders. Patterns also emerged showing that the magnitude of the correlations varied with age group, sex, sex-role scale, and channel of communication. In addition, among women, those who were more liberated according to several indices were better decoders, at least of a woman stimulus person. Differences between the sexes in encoding and decoding abilities were unaffected by partialling out the masculinity and femininity measures. A hypothesis concerning the adaptive uses of nonverbal sensitivity is advanced, as well as a hypothesis concerning overall sex differences in nonverbal communication skills.Part of this research was conducted while the authors held National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships, and was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Award to the first author and by a grant from the Biomedical Research Support Program, National Institutes of Health, to The Johns Hopkins University. This paper could not have been prepared without the generosity of several colleagues and students who made their unpublished results available. These people are (alphabetically): Bella M. DePaulo, Karen I. Fischer, Judith Harackiewicz, Leonard A. Kusnitz, Carol J. Mills, James G. Simmons, Ann L. Weber, and Miron Zuckerman. In addition, Bert F. Green, Jr., Bella M. DePaulo, and Marylee C. Taylor provided many appreciated suggestions and criticisms on an earlier draft.     

Effects of nonverbal behavior on perceptions of a female employee's power bases

The authors extended a previous examination of the effects of nonverbal behavior on perceptions of a male employee's power bases (H. Aguinis, M. M. Simonsen, & C. A. Pierce, 1998) by examining the effects of nonverbal behavior on perceptions of a female employee's power bases. U.S. undergraduates read vignettes describing a female employee engaging in 3 types of nonverbal behavior (i.e., eye contact, facial expression, body posture) and rated their perceptions of the woman's power bases (i.e., reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert, credibility). As predicted, (a) direct eye contact increased perceptions of coercive power, and (b) a relaxed facial expression decreased perceptions of all 6 power bases. Also as predicted, the present results differed markedly from those of Aguinis et al. (1998) regarding a male employee. The authors discuss implications for theory, future research, and the advancement of female employees.     

Explicit and implicit affiliation motives predict verbal and nonverbal social behavior in sports competition

ObjectivesThe present study investigated the predictive value of the explicit and implicit affiliation motive for social behavior in sport competitions. From an information processing perspective, an explicit motive is linked to verbal cues and respondent behavior. The implicit motive in turn is linked to nonverbal stimuli and operant behavior (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989; Schultheiss, 2008). Both respondent affiliative behavior (e.g., verbal interactions with teammates) and operant nonverbal social behavior (e.g., pleasant to opponents) can be observed in racquet sports team competitions.Design & MethodsFifty-two male racquet sportsmen completed the Personality Research Form (explicit affiliation motive) and the Operant Motive Test (implicit affiliation motive). Motive measures were used to predict social behavior during competitions using multiple regression analyses. To this aim real competitive matches were videotaped and analyzed.ResultsResults show that the explicit affiliation motive is associated with time spent in verbal team contact. The implicit affiliation motive, by contrast, is linked to pleasant nonverbal behavior shown toward opponents.ConclusionsFindings suggest that implicit and explicit affiliation motives predict different kinds of social behavior in sports competition respectively. Indirect motive measures may be of additional predictive value for different behavior in real sports settings.     

Effects of relative immobilization on the speaker's nonverbal behavior and on the dialogue imagery level

People generally display an important amount of gestural and motoric activity when speaking. Since recent data have shown the limits of an explanation of this activity in terms of nonverbal or bodily communication, the present study attempted to explore what would happen if subjects were impeded from making the principal movements they normally perform during a conversation. Subjects were led to hold a 50-minute conversation while sitting in an armchair devised to restrain their movements of the head, arms, hands, legs, and feet during part of the experiment. The main dependent variables consisted of nonverbal activity in body zones that remained free to vary: eyebrows, eyes, mouth, and fingers. During the phase of movement restriction, highly significant increases in activity were recorded in these zones, with subsequent return to base levels when the subject recovered free movements. Also, significant interactions of conditions of movements and subject's conversational role (speaker vs. listener) were observed for most of the variables. Samples of dialogues submitted to a computerized technique of content analysis revealed a significant decrease in the vividness of imagery during movement restriction.     

Effects of serotonin-mimetic drugs on mouse-killing behavior

Muricidal behavior induced in rats by social isolation or by olfactory bulb ablation was blocked following IP administration of serotonin (5–HT) agonist 8-OH-DPAT and 5-MeODM and by 5-HT uptake inhibitors, fluoxetine and indalpine. Among uptake inhibitors, although fluoxetine has a higher IC₅₀ and a higher Ki, it is apparently more efficient than indalpine. The 5-HT agonist, 8-OH-DPAT, acting at a putative 5-HT_1A receptor, appears more efficient on muricidal inhibition than 5-MeODM, at a much lower dosage. It is highly probable that 5-HT_1A receptor rather than 5-HT_1B is involved in the antimuricidal effect of serotonin-mimetic drugs. Since 5-HT mimetic drugs blocked mouse-killing behavior of bulbectomized rats, we suggest that in the sequence of events in muricidal inhibition 5-HT circuits participate after gabaergic modulation from olfactory bulbs.     

Beliefs about female and male nonverbal communication

Participants (N= 441) rated from 1 to 10 how frequently or well they believed hypothetical women and men performed each of twenty nonverbal behaviors or skills. Women were believed to use more expressive and involved nonverbal behaviors than men, and to be more skilled at sending and receiving nonverbal messages. Men were believed to be louder and more interruptive, and to display more nervous, dysfluent behaviors. Ratings given to females by females were higher than were ratings in the other gender combinations for over half the variables, which may accurately describe female—female interaction. Perceived gender differences correlated positively with differences reported in observational studies, indicating that beliefs about nonverbal gender differences were generally accurate. The authors wish to thank Tom Leahy for his assistance in data collection.     

The Moro reaction: More than a reflex,a ritualized behavior of nonverbal communication

ObjectiveTo propose a phylogenetic significance to the Moro reflex which remains unexplained since its publication in 1918 because both hands are free at the end of the gesture.MethodAmong the 75 videos of healthy term newborns we have filmed in a research project on antenatal education to parenthood, we describe a sequence that clearly showed the successive movements of the Moro reflex and we report the occurrence of this reflex in the videos that were recorded from Time 0 of birth defined as the moment that lies between the birth of the thorax and the pelvis of the infant.ResultsThe selected sequence showed the following succession of the newborn’s actions: quick extension-adduction of both arms, the orientation of the body, head and eyes towards a human person, and full extension-abduction of both arms with spreading of the fingers, crying and a distressed face. There were 13 Moro reflexes between 2 and 14 s from Time 0 of birth. We found a significant association between the occurrence of the Moro reflex and the placement of the newborn at birth in supine position on the mother’s abdomen (p = 0.002).DiscussionThe quick extension-adduction of both arms which started the sequence may be considered as a startle reflex controlled by the neural fear system and the arm extension-adduction which followed as a Moro reflex. The characteristics of all Moro reflexes were those of ritualization: amplitude, duration, stereotype of the gestures. This evolutionary process turns a physiological behavior, grasping in this case, to a non-verbal communicative behavior whose meaning is a request to be picked up in the arms. The gestures associated with the Moro reflex: crying and orientation of the body, head, and eyes towards a human person, are gestures of intention to communicate which support our hypothesis. The neural mechanism of the Moro reaction probably involves both the fear and the separation-distress systems.ConclusionThis paper proposes for the first time a phylogenetic significance to the Moro reflex: a ritualized behavior of nonverbal communication. Professionals should avoid stimulating the newborns’ fear system by unnecessarily triggering Moro reflexes. Antenatal education should teach parents to respond to the Moro reflexes of their newborn infant by picking her up in their arms with mother talk.     

Some referents and measures of nonverbal behavior

This paper summarizes some of the measures of nonverbal behavior that have been found to be significant indicators of a communicator’s attitude toward, status relative to, and responsiveness to his addressee. The nonverbal cues considered include posture, position, movement, facial, and implicit verbal cues. In addition to providing criteria for the scoring of these cues, experimental findings that relate to the various cues are summarized.