• decode or recognize and interpret nonverbal
• encode or act on and create nonverbal messages (harder)

1. Females do better than males, especially on body cues and negative affect. However, difference is small.

2. Skills increase with age up to approximately 20 - 30 yrs of age.

3. Good receivers tend to

• monitor their own behavior
• be better adjusted
• be less dogmatic
• be more extroverted
• be more popular and more interpersonally sensitive

4. Practice helps

5. Actors, nonverbal students and visual arts students better than clinicians, teachers, business execs.

6. Race and Intelligence make no difference

B. Situational Factors Affecting Receiving Accuracy

1. Channel of expression

• like\dislike more accurate from face than voice
• anxiety and seductiveness more accurate from vocal cues

2. Previous experience in setting increases accuracy

C. Couples and friends often dissimilar in receiving ability - complementary skills

II. Sending

A. Characteristics of Skilled Senders

1. Females do better than males, although the difference is larger as people age and overall the difference is small.

2. Good senders tend to

• monitor their own behavior
• be more extroverted
• be more attractive and popular
• be more bossy
• be more impulsive
• be less shy and lonely

3. Their messages tend to be more expressive, influential, and animated; messages are more unique, complex, and noticeable

B. Situational Factors Affecting Sending Skills

1. Low levels of arousal leads to better sending skills

2. More extreme emotions are more easily sent

II Learning of Skills

A. Nonverbal development in children

1. Innate predispositions or preferences

 

Children would rather look at faces than inanimate objects

Even get excited when they see drawings that look like faces

Children would rather listen to human sounds than sounds make by inanimate objects (dishes clanking together)

Children appear to know when they are being talked to. There are different reaction when mother talks to child or another person

Children will orient/mirror parent nonverbal leaning toward

 

2. Social interaction

 

Interpretation - child produces nonverbal behavior which parent interprets as intentional communication

Reach for object, parent brings, learn to point

Averting head becomes no

Direct teaching - waving is the earliest taught gesture

B. Adult learning

1. Social learning through feedback - Well, you don't look happy. What's wrong?

2. Facial recognition cues decrease with age.

3. Role playing and other forms or practice help

IV Effects of Skills

In general, greater social skills lead to greater personal and professional success. However, social relationships may suffer when people are too good at decoding nonverbal messages they are not intended to receive - very brief, subtle facial expressions and body cues.

Females tend to ignore those cues -- therefore they ignore or do not detect subtle deception as well.

Politeness: This is particularly true of women who are personally and socially vulnerable (low self-esteem, low social participation, low self-monitoring) But these women are also better at other, more obvious nonverbal decoding. Countries where women are oppressed, women are polite in decoding - traditionally feminine