Nonverbal is “body language” in a broad sense: the transmission of information through gestures, smells, taste, voice, visual signals. Nonverbal means of communication contribute to the creation of psychological contact between partners, enrich the meanings conveyed by words, and reflect the interpretation of the situation. Factors influencing the non-verbal side of communication are national characteristics, health status, professional etiquette, social status, and membership in certain age groups.
Means of nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication what is it in psychology
Nonverbal communication is a type of communication without the use of words (through images, intonation, gestures, facial expressions). The tools for influencing a person are:
- sight;
- interpersonal space;
- optical-kinesthetic signals (facial expressions, appearance of the interlocutor, pantomime);
- peri-speech factors – vocal range, vocal qualities, timbre;
- extra-speech (laughter, speech rate, pauses).
For your information. Nonverbal methods of communication improve mutual understanding between people, allow you to predict the mood and attitude of the interlocutor towards the individual, and predict your own communication model.
Hand gestures when talking
Hand gestures can tell in sufficient detail about the general mood of the interlocutor’s conversation. The richness of a person’s speech and gestures adds bright colors to the conversation. At the same time, overly active gestures or periodically repeated gestures can indicate self-doubt and the presence of internal tension. In general, hand gestures can be divided into open and closed:
Closed hand gestures in almost all cases indicate some discomfort and a person’s desire to “close up.” For example, hands placed on the elbows and “clasped” indicate the interlocutor’s unpreparedness for a direct conversation and making a decision at the moment. If a person has a ring on his finger, and he periodically touches and scrolls it, then this gesture indicates nervous tension. If the interlocutor, while at the table, raises his hand to his lips, then most likely he wants to hide certain information or deceive. You should also pay attention to the gesture when the interlocutor touches his ear with his fingers, as it means a desire to stop the conversation.
The Origin of Nonverbal Communication
Perception - what is it in psychology
Nonverbal language has two types of origin: biological evolution and culture. Biologists have found that facial expressions when expressing emotions, most gestures and body movements in people are innate and serve as a signal for feedback. The biological nature of nonverbal communication is confirmed by elements not controlled subconsciously:
- paleness or redness;
- enlarged pupils;
- curvature of the lips;
- blinking.
Based on intentional and unintentional communication, there are 3 nonverbal means of communication:
- Behavioral factors. Caused by a physiological reaction: sweating from excitement, trembling in case of cold or fear.
- Unintentional means. Associated with people's habits (scratching temples, swinging legs, biting lips).
- Communication signals. Conveys brief information about an object, event, or state.
There are also universal signals known to everyone that are characteristic of a particular culture. Vivid examples are the style of behavior, dress code, and conventional signs of greeting and farewell.
Common “body signs”
Psychology of Gestures
Alan Pease, a famous psychologist, is called "Mr. Body Language." The author has published his works in millions of copies. Alana Pease set out to not only teach the reader to “decipher” body language, but also to apply the acquired knowledge in practice. Even the slightest changes do not escape his attention, up to the dilation of the pupils and the closing of the eyelids.
The author, analyzing the smallest details, identifies 2 important priorities.
Firstly, there is an opportunity to establish communications.
Secondly, it is possible with a high degree of probability to calculate a person’s further actions.
From the standpoint of psychological knowledge, Alan focuses on the distinctive features of behavior and gestures in women and men.
In addition to gender differences, the body movements of managers and subordinates differ sharply. Watching a conversation, you can record the rapid change of emotions.
Communication nonverbal communication
Personality development - what is it in psychology
Nonverbal means of communication are a system of signs that complement, enhance or replace speech:
- Akulesika. Messages are conveyed through glances. They depend on the frequency and duration, intensity of contact (closely or sliding). The gaze reduces psychological distance or is perceived as a threat.
- Kinesics. Combines looks, facial expressions, postures, gestures, movements of sociocultural and physiological origin.
- Tactile behavior. The communication method is based on touch (ritual, love, professional, friendly) to strengthen or weaken communication processes.
- Chronemics. Use of time in nonverbal communication. For example, in the United States being late is considered disrespectful, but in Latin America this situation is common.
- Proxemics. Relationships are built taking into account distances and territorial locations.
- Sensory. The attitude towards an individual is based on perception by the senses (sensation of sound, taste, warmth of the interlocutor).
- Paraverbal communication is determined by vocal timbre, rhythm, and intonation when transmitting information.
Important! Specialists in nonverbal psychology combine the listed types of communication into various forms of information transmission: sign-symbolic, optical-kinetic, tactical and phonation (sound).
How to learn sign language
You don't have to be an experienced psychologist to read body language. When talking, people give many almost imperceptible but significant signals that contain a lot of information. If you decide to learn how to “read” people, you need to know that the interpretation of body movements is influenced by the situation and the essence of the issue. Residents of different countries have different gestures and interpret them differently.
People who chew on pens and pencils need not worry. This is just a small bad habit.
Why is it important to understand body language? Once you become familiar with the body's signals, interpreting the information will become easy. Having basic knowledge and carefully observing a person, you can adjust your behavior to achieve your goals.
By understanding the psychology of gestures and nonverbal signs during a dialogue with a stranger, you can “read” his thoughts and understand how he perceived the information. Having knowledge in the field of the human subconscious and adjusting your behavior, you can always achieve the desired outcome.
From the video you will learn how to understand that a person likes you by body language signs
Types of nonverbal communication
Gestures
Placebo effect - what is it in psychology
Nonverbal gestures include pronounced movements of the head, hands, fingers, accompanying statements and thoughts. If people need to pay attention to objects, they will need the help of pointing gestures. Emphasizing gestures reinforce statements. A demonstrative movement of the brush explains the state of affairs. Touching a partner helps to establish social contact or receive a sign of attention, weakening the significance of information. Gestures are performed in voluntary and involuntary forms.
Pose
Postures must follow the rules of etiquette. Open poses of a sitting girl in Europe and America have neutral meanings; in Japan they are considered immoral. The squatting position of adults in most countries has an indecent definition; in South America and Africa, many peoples rest in a similar form. Using a chair is assessed as aggression.
Poses of strength and weakness
Postures during a public address or business conversation should express openness: arms unclasped, legs uncrossed, back straight. If you lean forward a little, your posture will be perceived as interest in an understandable topic. Slouching communicates uncertainty, while wide-set legs and arms indicate dominance. Tapping with a hand or foot is a manifestation of boredom, lack of time, impatience. The interlocutor took a closed posture - this may mean that the person does not believe or does not perceive the information well. The legs are turned towards the exit, the person wants to leave. The head is tilted forward, the interlocutor listens carefully and analyzes.
Facial expressions
Facial expressions are commonly called expressive movements of the facial muscles in order to express certain feelings of an individual. The types of facial expressions correspond to the functions of the psyche: mental acts are expressed by the muscles around the eyes, the perioral muscles are associated with acts of will. Feelings are emphasized by the general muscles of the face, changing in conscious and involuntary forms.
Various forms of facial complexes are possible:
- Amymia is the absence of visible facial changes.
- Tension can be indicated by a tight closure of the mouth and a petrified state of the upper part of the face.
- Interest can be easily recognized by a slight raising or lowering of the eyebrows, a slight widening and narrowing of the eyelids. The field of view increases, the focusing of the eyes becomes sharper.
- A smile can refer to calming or distracting from aggressive behavior, and is used when greeting.
Facial expressions convey basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust), provided by innate neural programs, as well as false information.
Facial display of emotions
Distance
The norms of approach between two people are defined in science by four intervals:
- Intimate. A length of 0...45 cm is considered optimal for communication between close people.
- Personal. A gap of 45...120 cm is maintained when communicating with familiar people.
- Social. A distance of 120...400 cm is recommended for official negotiations and conversations with strangers.
- Public. At a distance of 400...750 cm, it is not considered rude to exchange a couple of phrases; this interval is observed when speaking in front of an audience.
According to the teachings of social science, the rules vary for people of different ages, gender, and social status. For example, children and old people stay closer to their interlocutor, compared to teenagers. Men occupy distant positions, unlike women. A calm person gets as close as possible, an unbalanced person stays further. People address interlocutors of higher status at a great distance. Nationality also plays a role. Asians interact over shorter periods than Europeans, city dwellers are closer to settlers in sparsely populated areas.
Intonation
Prosody (voice tone, timbre, sound intensity, pauses) regulates the flow of speech, complements or replaces statements, and expresses the emotional state. It is important to be able to hear the intonation structure of speech, evaluate the strength and tone of voice, speed of speech, expressing the feelings and thoughts of the interlocutor:
- excitement is manifested by a low tone of voice, fast, abrupt speech;
- enthusiasm is demonstrated by a loud voice and clear, confident speech;
- fatigue can be easily determined by a low tone of voice, weakening of intonation towards the end of a sentence;
- signs of arrogance can be slow speech, even monotonous intonation;
- uncertainty is felt by interlocutors who make mistakes in words, frequent pauses, and nervous coughing.
The voice contains a lot of information about the owner. Experienced voice specialists are able to study the age, place of residence, character and temperament of the owner. People who have the ability to dramatically change the pitch of their voice are more sociable, more confident and pleasant than monotone or uncertain interlocutors.
Clothes speak about a person
Cloth
When forming an image, a person tries on a role in society and internal positions. The key characteristic is not fashion, but the style direction and color scheme. Extroverts rely on bright, rich colors. Introverts choose dark tones, nondescript, halftones, black, bed, beige, gray. Bright and large jewelry can also be a means of demonstrating a person’s egocentrism and high status (or the individual himself desires it).
Leg position when communicating
- Focus position
: Open pose with feet together and toes slightly apart. This position indicates neutral human behavior. - The position in which the legs are apart is most typical for the male half of humanity
, since it is a certain signal of dominance. At the same time, this position indicates confidence; the person stands firmly on his feet. - If one of the interlocutor's legs is placed in front of the other
, then this gesture can reveal his intentions regarding the conversation. If a person’s toe is pointed to the side when talking to you, this means that he is not averse to leaving quickly. And, on the contrary, when the toe is pointed towards the interlocutor, the person is engaged in the conversation.
Variations of crossed legs
All crossed leg positions indicate a closed and defensive attitude. Often, a person takes this position of the legs, experiencing discomfort and stress. In combination with crossed arms (most often in the chest area), the pose speaks of a person’s desire to isolate himself from what is happening and the inability to perceive information. A position called “leg hooking,” which is common among women, signifies fear, discomfort, and constriction.
Features of nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication is a situational reflection of people’s personal characteristics: mood, emotional background, attitude towards others and the topic. This communication is involuntary and spontaneous, it is difficult to divide it into individual elements (postures, facial expressions, olfactonics), this is the key feature of nonverbalism. Gestures, intonation, gaze are difficult to study or edit; it will take years and decades. But even trained people can be caught lying when one part of communication does not match another. Sign language is trusted more; it is perceived at the level of intuition.
Open posture in negotiations
Nonverbalism is an important element of communication, carrying 60-80% of information with the body, only 20-40% of communication is realized in words. It is worth closing your eyes and hiding your hands if you need to hide insincerity - this was the conclusion of one observant English court official.
The meaning of some poses and gestures
Almost every day a person comes into contact with other people, communication arises between them.
As you know, communication is divided into verbal and non-verbal. Methods of nonverbal communication can include everything except speech, that is, facial expressions, gestures, intonation, postures, and more. Let's look at the most popular postures for nonverbal communication below:
- If a person hides his hands behind his back, most likely he wants to deceive you. Widely open hands, palms up, indicate that the interlocutor is friendly and inclined to communicate. If your counterpart has his arms crossed on his chest, it means that he is experiencing discomfort and does not want to continue the dialogue. While concentrating on a serious issue, a person will involuntarily rub his chin or pinch the bridge of his nose. If, while listening to you, a person constantly covers his mouth with his hand, then you are not speaking convincingly enough. If the interlocutor is bored, he rests his head on his hand. An energetic handshake, accompanied by a joyful verbal greeting, speaks of the person’s sincere intentions. If your counterpart cannot grasp the essence of the conversation, he will scratch his ear or neck.
Intonation
The speaker conveys the following information to the listener.
First, we find out what (what?) the person is saying. This is logical, or semantic, information. It is conveyed by the choice of semantic content, words, their order and syntactic structures.
The second is who speaks, thanks to the pronounced individuality of each person’s voice. This is identifying information. By the voice one can determine the physical and psycho-emotional state of a person, his intentions and some character traits. It is thanks to the voice that what is said often becomes what is said, significantly complementing or even replacing the verbal content of speech.
Many linguists talk about the existence of identifying information. Thus, E. Sapir stated that “the phonetic appearance of speech, the speed and relative smoothness of pronunciation, the length and structure of sentences, the nature and range of vocabulary... - All this is only a small part of complex personality indicators.” For example, everyone has their own favorite techniques for emphasizing especially important words. These methods are often referred to as "speech recognition". For example, actor O. Tabakov has the ability to create accentuation by stretching the word with dynamic pressure.
The voice, as a set of sounds of varying height, strength and timbre, produced by a person using the vocal apparatus, has a different range, expressiveness and endurance.
Emotions influence the control of verbal communication, which is manifested in a number of features of an individual’s speech utterance: tone of voice, intonation pattern, etc.
This connection is most obvious when analyzing the difficulties of controlling the sound of one’s own voice:
Anxious state. The predominance of high frequencies, and the voice is perceived by ear as sharp, piercing, energetic and attention-grabbing.
Helplessness, depression and apathy. Very uniform energy distribution in the spectrum.
Fear. The pattern of a “falling” energy distribution curve and the sounds are shrill, lifeless, “empty”.
Excitement. A simultaneous type of energy distribution characterized by a certain sonority and volume.
The voice is an individual “tool” of a person, like a fingerprint. Skillful use of our voice makes our speech more effective. The fundamental characteristic of the voice is its timbre. Timbre is a very subtle and expressive characteristic of a speaker.
The term "intonation" has two meanings - narrow and broad. In a narrow sense, it is used to describe melodic, tonal movement. In a broad sense, in addition to intonation, this term includes stress, pauses, tempo, rhythm, that is, a set of components of spoken speech acting together. Although an oral text is created according to the laws of speech, it is a speech work in the true sense of the word. The intonation structure consists of intonational features of phrases and super-phrase units and is additionally characterized by such features of the whole as the general tone, tempo, volume of pronunciation, determined by the semantic and emotional content of the text, as well as the situation of its pronunciation [10, p. 79].
MM. Bakhtin O.
Visual contact gaze
Eye contact is an undeniably important communication process. As you already know, a person receives about 80% of impressions from all senses through vision. With the help of the eyes, we can convey a wide variety of expressions; thanks to them, we can control the course of the conversation and provide feedback on human behavior. The gaze helps in the exchange of remarks, since most statements without the participation of the eyes would be meaningless.
Remember how urgently interlocutors on the Internet need a variety of emoticons, which are a replacement for such means of non-verbal communication as the exchange of glances and facial expressions. After all, without seeing each other, it is much more difficult to convey the feelings experienced. Developers of instant messaging programs, improving their software characteristics, are trying to include and expand the function of eye expression, general facial expressions and various hand gestures. And, as practice shows, the demand for such programs like ICQ is very high. People crave meaningful communication on the Internet. And the emergence of the video calling function in cell phones and the installation of video equipment on the computer, which allows you to communicate interactively, contemplating each other, is precisely the answer to the need for live communication at a remote distance.
The gaze also takes part in the expression of intimacy and frankness. With it, you can set the degree of proximity to a person.
In communication, the gaze, as a rule, carries out an information search, for example, the listener looks at the speaker, and if he pauses, silently awaits continuation without breaking eye contact; gives a signal about a free communication channel, for example, the speaker indicates with an eye sign that the conversation is over; helps establish and maintain social relationships when we seek a person's gaze to engage in conversation.
In psychology, there are several types of looks, each of which carries very significant information about a person’s thoughts: 1. Business look - when we look at the forehead and eyes of the interlocutor. We often behave this way when meeting unfamiliar people, managers and bosses. 2. Social gaze – when we direct our eyes to the area of a person’s face in the area of the mouth, nose and eyes. It is typical in situations of casual communication with friends and acquaintances. 3. Intimate gaze - passes through the line of the interlocutor’s eyes and drops to a level below the chin, neck and other parts of the body. There may be dilation of the pupils, as an anticipation of pleasure.
We have already mentioned the fact that it is more difficult for men to deceive their wives and girlfriends, since women can expose a lie much faster by reading their eyes. How do they do this? First of all, by characteristic changes in the eyes due to contraction of the eye muscles. When trying to deceive, it is difficult for a person to withstand the gaze; he blinks and looks away. These signs may also be present with sadness, shame, and disgust. If he experiences suffering, tears flow from his eyes, but they also appear with laughter and joy. In any case, to correctly interpret nonverbal gestures, we take into account the surrounding environment and the context of circumstances. One thing is definitely certain: the dilation or constriction of the pupils, which occurs as a response to excitement, occurs involuntarily, without taking into account consciousness, and the autonomic nervous system is involved in this. If the direction of gaze can still be controlled somehow, then changing the pupils is beyond our control. When we talk about a person: “he has expressive eyes”, “she has an evil look”, “she cast the evil eye on me”, we mean precisely the information obtained through non-verbal communication when observing a person’s pupils. Children abandoned by their parents have a dry, distant look, filled with the pain of loneliness, which gives them an adult expression. On the contrary, loved and caressed babies look at the world completely differently.
The length of the gaze may indicate the degree of interest. A close, persistent person will tell you about his intention to extract some information from you or force you to obey. For couples in love, such a look serves as a signal to begin active courtship. If you look closely at a sleeping person, he may subconsciously experience anxiety and even wake up. It is interesting that in the animal world, a gaze serves as a signal for an impending attack, so it is not surprising when, sensing a similar signal from an unfamiliar person, you experience anxiety and a desire to hide. With peripheral (lateral) vision, we are able to see objects and the situation around us and analyze the degree of danger. Serial killers and maniacs have a very different view from the view of an ordinary person. All previous behavior of a person up to a given point in time, the situations that he solves and the methods he uses to eliminate problems - everything leaves an imprint on the expression of his eyes. A tired mother after a sleepless night with a baby, a pensioner living on crumbs, a student who did not receive the scholarship he was counting on - everyone has a peculiar expression in their eyes. If, for example, you are in close relationships with such people, you will definitely understand the reason for this look.
Microexpressions and involuntary nonverbal cues
Involuntary nonverbal behavior is those contractions of the muscles of the body and face that a person is unable to control.
Consciously telling a lie, trying to hide feelings, a person is nevertheless unable to control the so-called micro-expressions flashing on the face. These are tools of non-verbal behavior that help a specialist psychologist or simply a very observant interlocutor to recognize deception, an attempt to hide information or emotions, since it is impossible to consciously keep muscles from contracting such muscles.
Representatives of certain professions, for which the ability to recognize deception is very important, are taught this ability, or they look for people who are initially predisposed to reading microexpressions. Thus, the ability to detect a lie is extremely important for customs officials, security services, and investigators.
To correctly recognize facial microexpressions, it is important to remember that facial expressions do not express the subject’s thoughts, but feelings, and if disgust flashes on the face for a moment, this does not mean that it is caused by the subject of the conversation - perhaps the person simply has an unpleasant association.
