The Interaction of Sex,Verbal, and Nonverbal Cues in Same-Sex First Encounters

This experiment examined sex differences in responses to various combinations of verbal and nonverbal content during a same-sex interaction. Fifty men and thirty women participated in a same-sex interview task with a confederate posing as another participant. Confederates disclosed either superficial or emotional information, and they faced away from or toward the participant, when answering questions. Results revealed that men attended to verbal information to evaluate the appropriateness of their own personal disclosure, whereas women attended to both verbal and nonverbal cues to evaluate the conversation partner and the appropriateness of their own personal disclosure.     

Synchronization of Nonverbal Behaviors in Detecting Mediated and Non-mediated Deception

Videoconferencing (VC) is changing the way people communicate in a variety of fields including education, medicine, business, and even interpersonal relationships. In this study, we investigate the effects of the modality of communication, whether through face-to-face (FtF) or VC, on the ability of interactants to develop and maintain nonverbal synchrony. This study is an analysis of 101 interviews between students and professional interviewers in which some of the participants were induced to cheat on a task with a confederate. The results revealed that the VC modality hampered the interactional synchrony of the dyads, especially during the phases of questioning when suspicion-inducing or accusatory questioning was used. For global ratings of synchrony, the greatest impact of modality was for participants whose lies were not sanctioned by the interviewer, suggesting that the VC modality negatively affected the most skilled deceivers. In addition, interactional synchrony improved in the final, accusatory, phase of the interview when subjects confessed, particularly in the FtF modality. The effects of the interviewer and the question type are also discussed.     

Patterns of Nonverbal Behavior and Sensivity in the Context of Attachment Relations

Nonverbal behavior and sensitivity to a relationship partner’s nonverbal behavior importantly influence the quality of interpersonal interactions and relationships, including attachment relationships. The abilities to encode, or express, and to decode, or understand, nonverbal cues are crucial to effective communication of emotions and are associated with social adjustment and relationship satisfaction. One important social context for the development and use of nonverbal encodingand decoding abilities is what Bowlby (1969/1982, Attachment and loss: Vol.1.Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books) called attachment relationships—interpersonal relationships in which one person’s emotional security depends on another person’s sensitive, responsive caregiving and support. In this paper, we present theoretical ideas, review relevant research, and propose new avenues of research dealing with associations between attachment-related processes and patterns of nonverbal behavior and sensitivity in adulthood, two domains of research that have not previously been adequately connected.     

Patterns of Nonverbal Behavior Associated with Truth and Deception: Illustrations from Three Experiments

The digital age has brought with it new and powerful computer-based methods of analyzing heretofore elusive patterns of nonverbal behavior. C-BAS (Meservy 2010) is a computer-assisted behavioral observation tool for identifying and tracking nonverbal behaviors from video. THEME (Magnusson, The hidden structure of interaction: from neurons to culture patterns, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 4–22, 2005) is a software program that discovers patterns among discrete events in time-ordered data. Together, these tools enable more precise measurement and analysis of nonverbal behavioral dynamics. Applications to three corpora derived from interpersonal deception experiments reveal unique nonverbal patterns that distinguish deceptive from nondeceptive interactions. The first and second experiments produced serial, hierarchically related patterns of behaviors that differed in length and complexity between truthful and deceptive participants during interviews about a theft and cheating, respectively. The third experiment produced differential patterns by and among group members completing a task. Deceivers were inclined toward strategic initiations and interactional control, whereas suspicious group members adopted a more passive, possibly watchful stance. Discovery of these patterns challenges the prevailing view that nonverbal behaviors are too faint and inconsistent to identify deceptive communication. Results have numerous implications regarding the following: the development of new measurement tools locating significant effects of nonverbal behaviors, support for theory that coherent and repetitive relationships exist within and among interactants’ communication, demonstration of the role of nonverbal behaviors in deceptive communication and the dynamic and strategic nature of deception.     

The Social Psychophysics of Cooperation: Nonverbal Communication in a Public Goods Game

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that cooperation in a social dilemma context could be facilitated by inducing participants to emit social psychophysical cues, information in the perceptual array that affords meaningful and consequential social inferences. In particular, participants were asked to engage in mutual eye gaze, to touch one another gently, to communicate in a virtual chat room, or to tap out rhythms in synchrony. All but the last of these manipulations increased contributions to a public good in all-male but not all-female groups. These results suggest the inference systems that are engaged when individuals make decisions about whether or not to cooperate in a group context are responsive to relatively low level nonverbal behavioral cues.     

Emotional Expressivity and Trustworthiness: The Role of Nonverbal Behavior in the Evolution of Cooperation

Previous research has found that high emotional expressivity contributes to interpersonal attraction independently of and on par with the contributions of physical attractiveness. Using an evolutionary perspective, we argue that emotional expressivity can act as a marker for cooperative behavior or trustworthiness. Theoretical and empirical work from social dilemma research pointing to the advantages of having a signal for cooperation is considered, as well as research from the limited number of studies that have looked at expressive behavior within a social exchange context. We also argue that we need to inject nonverbal emotional behavior into the social dilemma paradigm, which has downplayed or ignored its role in the communication processes associated with cooperation. Finally, we offer an outline for testing our theory and expanding the role of nonverbal emotional processes within research on cooperation and social exchange.     

Nonverbal Social Sensing in Action: Unobtrusive Recording and Extracting of Nonverbal Behavior in Social Interactions Illustrated with a Research Example

Nonverbal behavior coding is typically conducted by “hand”. To remedy this time and resource intensive undertaking, we illustrate how nonverbal social sensing, defined as the automated recording and extracting of nonverbal behavior via ubiquitous social sensing platforms, can be achieved. More precisely, we show how and what kind of nonverbal cues can be extracted and to what extent automated extracted nonverbal cues can be validly obtained with an illustrative research example. In a job interview, the applicant’s vocal and visual nonverbal immediacy behavior was automatically sensed and extracted. Results show that the applicant’s nonverbal behavior can be validly extracted. Moreover, both visual and vocal applicant nonverbal behavior predict recruiter hiring decision, which is in line with previous findings on manually coded applicant nonverbal behavior. Finally, applicant average turn duration, tempo variation, and gazing best predict recruiter hiring decision. Results and implications of such a nonverbal social sensing for future research are discussed.     

The Emotional Dance of Attachment

Conceptualized as an emotional dance between the child and the primary caregiver, this article summarizes the primary principles of attachment theory as they pertain to clinical practice. The development of the attachment relationship goes smoothly in a secure attachment because the caregiver and child are effectively attuned to one another’s needs. Insecure attachment, on the other hand, occurs when the emotional dance goes awry leaving both the caregiver and the child with an emotional void. The article summarizes current treatment models geared specifically toward helping parent–child dyads resolve attachment problems.     

The Child Advocate Attorney—The Mental Health Professional: A Current "Courtship"

In this paper, the history and philosophy of the Child Advocacy Unit in Philadelphia are described. The authors discuss the collaborative venture of attorneys and mental health professionals who have teamed up together to advocate on behalf of the best interest of their child clients, while maintaining a family orientation.     

The Extraction of Nonverbal Behaviors: Using Video Images and Speech-Signal Analysis in Dyadic Conversation

This study examined the validity and possible utility of a new procedure for the extraction of nonverbal behaviors from dyadic conversation. Three methods were used to extract nonverbal behaviors (i.e., hand gestures, adaptors, and utterances). A novel automated method employing video images and speech-signal analysis software programs was compared to the more traditional coding and behavioral rating methods. The automated and coding methods provided an objective count of how many times a target behavior occurred, while behavioral ratings were based on more subjective impressions. Although there was no difference between the automated and coding methods for hand gestures, the coding method using an event recorder yielded marginally significantly more instances of adaptors and utterances as compared to the software programs. Measures of each nonverbal behavior were positively correlated across the different methods. In addition, interpersonal impressions of each speaker were rated by both observers and conversational partners. Although R ² was lower than for the coding/behavioral rating methods, nonverbal behaviors extracted using the software programs significantly predicted familiarity and activeness ratings from both observer and partner points of view. These results support the validity and possible utility of the software-based automated extraction procedure.     

Nonverbal behavior of teachers: Some empirical findings

The effects of systematically varied verbal and nonverbal components of teachers' evaluative behavior upon children's perceptions and attitudes were studied within an experimental classroom. Subjects were 126 sixth-grade students who were removed from their classrooms to participate in a vocabulary lesson. Within each experimental condition a teacher employed one of four evaluative styles: (a) verbally and nonverbally positive, (b) verbally positive and nonverbally negative, (c) verbally negative and nonverbally positive, or (d) verbally and nonverbally negative. The data analysis indicated that teachers' verbal behavior influenced student perception and attraction. Nonverbal behavior influenced student perception and attraction, but only when the teacher was female. The implications of these findings for the study of the adult-child interaction are discussed.     

Role-Taking Accuracy in Medical Encounters: A Test of two Theories

Abstract

This paper tests five hypotheses derived from two contrasting theoretical perspectives on role-taking accuracy: a social contact theory and an institutional resource theory. We investigate how well doctors and patients perceive one another's perspectives in a medical encounter. The cumulative weight of the data supports the proposed social contact theory. Increased contact between residents and patients, as reflected in physician's year in residency, contributes to more accurate role-taking on the part of physicians. Conditions of social compatibility between doctors and patients vis a vis gender or race lead to more accurate role-taking. Finally, personal characteristics are better predictors of role-taking accuracy than institutional status variables such as type of residency training program or doctor's year in residency status.     

Shame and Worker Activism: Emotional Dynamics in Face-to-Face Encounters

Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.

Nonverbal response patterns in physician-patient interactions: A functional analysis

In this paper, we examined physician-patient interactions in terms of the communicative functions accomplished during these encounters. Specifically, the nonverbal communicative exchanges of 38 physician-patient interactions in a family practice clinic were investigated. Two distinctive communicative patterns characterized these interactions. First, physicians nonverbally exerted greater dominance and control by employing longer speaking turns, more social touch, and more pauses while speaking than did the patients. Secondly, physicians and patients tended to reciprocate nonverbal behaviors signalling affiliation including gaze, response latencies, body orientations, and gestures. Consistent with previous research, there was a strong positive relationship between patients' satisfaction with health care and perceptions of the physicians' affiliativeness. Although there were few significant effects, physicians perceived less affiliative tended to be more vocally and gesturally active relative to the patients' nonverbal behavior styles. Finally, there were positive relationships between patients' perceptions of physicians' dominance and the physicians' use of task touch, and the extent to which physicians produced more interruptions and maintained more indirect body orientations relative to the patients' performances of these behaviors. The results are discussed in terms of the communicative functions of nonverbal behavior in physician-patient interactions and of patients' preferences for physicians' nonverbal expressiveness.The authors wish to thank Joe Cappella, Howard Waitzkin, Martha Davis, and William B. Stiles for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

Nonverbal dominance in the communication of affect: A myth?

The claim that nonverbal signals are more important than verbal signals in the communication of affect is widely accepted and has had considerable impact on therapy, counselling, and education. In a typical experiment, subjects are presented with a long series of artificially constructed inconsistent messages (messages in which the verbal and nonverbal components are opposite in valence) and asked to judge the strength of the emotion felt by the encoder. In such studies little attempt is made to camouflage the nature of the stimuli or the intent of the experimenter. In this study, it is argued that the absence of camouflage (defined as naturally occurring consistent messages) may bias the results in favour of the nonverbal dominance effect, so that as the level of camouflage is increased, the size of the nonverbal dominance effect is decreased. Four groups of subjects (34 subjects per group) were required to rate a series of audiovisually presented messages. The level of camouflage varied between groups: 0% (all messages presented were inconsistent), 50% (half of the messages presented were consistent and half were inconsistent), 83% (the majority of messages presented were consistent), and 94%. The results clearly demonstrated that the nonverbal dominance effect was present when the level of camouflage was low, and disappeared when the level of camouflage was high. The implications of these findings for the nonverbal dominance hypothesis are discussed.This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Grants Scheme (Reference No. A78515618).