Topic Subtopic Professional Communication Skills Understanding Nonverbal Communication Course Guidebook Professor Mark G. Frank University at Buffalo, The State University of New York PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2016 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Mark G. Frank, Ph.D. Professor and Department Chair, Department of Communication; Director, Communication Science Center University at Buffalo, The State University of New York D r. Mark G. Frank is a Professor and the Department Chair of the Department of Communication, as well as the Director of the Communication Science Center at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Dr. Frank received his B.A. in Psychology from the University at Buffalo in 1983 and received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Cornell University in 1989. Following postdoctoral work in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School, he taught and researched at the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales and in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University before returning to the University at Buffalo. Dr. Frank’s work has examined the behaviors associated with real versus falsified emotions, behaviors that occur when people lie, and the factors that make people better or worse judges of emotion and deception. His work has been funded by The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the intelligence community. He has used these findings to lecture, consult with, and train U.S. federal law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, local and state agencies, and selected foreign agencies, such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Australian Federal Police, and London’s Metropolitan Police Service. He has presented briefings on deception and counterterrorism to the U.S. Congress and the National Academies of Sciences. He is also one of the original members and a Senior Fellow of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s Terrorism Research and Analysis Project. i In 2005, Dr. Frank won The Rutgers College Class of 1962 Presidential Public Service Award for his work with law enforcement and other professionals. He has also won a Visionary Innovator Award from the University at Buffalo for being a co-inventor of patented software that reads facial expressions in real time. Dr. Frank has also received a National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Frank has published numerous research papers emphasizing deception, facial expressions, emotion, and violence in real-world contexts. He has also coedited two books: Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications and the APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication. He has appeared more than 100 times in print, radio, and television outlets, including The New Yorker, TIME, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS Evening News, CNN, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC, among many others. ii Understanding Nonverbal Communication Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Professor Biography......................................... i Scope .....................................................1 LECTURE GUIDES Lecture 1 The Science of Nonverbal Communication.....................3 Lecture 2 The Meaning of Personal Space.............................10 Lecture 3 Space, Color, and Mood ....................................18 Lecture 4 What Body Type Doesn’t Tell You........................... 26 Lecture 5 Evolution’s Role in Nonverbal Communication................ 35 Lecture 6 Secrets in Facial Expressions............................... 44 Lecture 7 Hidden Clues in Vocal Tones............................... 52 Lecture 8 Cues from Gestures and Gait............................... 60 iii Lecture 9 Interpreting Nonverbal Communication.......................... 67 Lecture 10 Cultural Differences in Nonverbal Communication ................ 75 Lecture 11 Spotting Nonverbal Deception .................................82 Lecture 12 Communicating Attraction .....................................90 SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Bibliography..................................................98 Image Credits ............................................... 109 iv Understanding Nonverbal Communication UNDERSTANDING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION N onverbal communication is a ubiquitous part of everyday life. We see it in the way people move, how they relate to each other, and even in the design of spaces. This course is designed to explore the science of nonverbal communication by examining what we do and why we do it. The course has three main segments. In the first segment, we will examine how nonverbal communication relates to communication in general. Nonverbal communication adheres to various rules and principles that are often invisible to us, yet become visible once someone violates a rule. Then we’ll widen our focus to examine nonverbal communication in the social world by seeing how the deliberate use of space, objects, and color affects our perceptions and interactions with other people. In the second segment, we zero in on what we tend to think of as body language. We’ll examine how your facial and body features affect not only the perceptions of you, but can often reflect some truisms about our lives. We’ll also examine how our history as a species may have created these appearance and expressive behaviors. With that, we’ll also look at our facial expressions: what they convey, how they appear, and why, at times, you might have a hard time stifling a laugh or a cry. This section also covers the eyes, the voice, and body movements. Finally, this segment covers the questions: How good are we at spotting these nonverbal signals, and are there ways to be better? The third segment will examine how culture affects nonverbal communication, how nonverbal communication relates to deception, and how nonverbal communication can be useful in interpersonal relationships ranging from professional to romantic life. 1 By the end of this course, what was previously invisible will become visible thanks to science. You’ll gain an appreciation of just how important nonverbal communication is for all aspects of life, and how it reflects our common humanity. 2 Understanding Nonverbal Communication The Science of L E C Nonverbal Communication T U R E 1 T his lecture sets the stage for our course, which will focus on the role of nonverbal communication in understanding people. Nonverbal communication can give clues on how people see their worlds and how they react to their worlds. We’ll focus on the science of nonverbal communication, but with an eye toward the practical uses of it. This lecture starts out with a description of an important study that raised nonverbal communication’s profile in the scientific community. Then it moves on to some traits of nonverbal communication, and what exactly makes it so important. NINETY-THREE PERCENT ⊲ The “fact” that 93 percent of our communication is nonverbal is not really true, but it has become a cultural meme. That number was based on a single study done by Albert Mehrabian in the late 1960s. ⊲ He examined one particular experimental situation in which an experimenter read words with different intonations and body language. He then asked the judges to indicate what this person really meant. ⊲ Their judgments tended to agree with what the body language reflected 55 percent of the time, what the voice tone reflected 38 percent of the time, and what the words spoken by the person reflected only 7 percent of the time. Therefore, 55 percent plus 38 percent led to the finding that 93 percent of the time, people chose to believe the nonverbal over the verbal information. Mehrabian never said all communication is 93 percent nonverbal. 3 ⊲ To his credit, Mehrabian never said all communication is 93 percent nonverbal. Being a good scientist, he only claimed it accounted for those behaviors within that single situation he studied. However, popular books and magazine articles have run with this number and allege that all communication is 93 percent nonverbal. ⊲ Mehrabian’s finding at least dragged the importance of nonverbal communication out of the shadows and into the consciousness of people. It revealed that nonverbal communication was not just underappreciated, but was essential to fully understanding the human communication process. That study, in fact, was one of the key studies that steered scientists toward studying nonverbal communication extensively, to the point that it is its own area of study today. ROLES OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION ⊲ Nonverbal communication does three things within communication. First, it sets the stage for what sorts of communication is expected in a situation. For example, imagine a church versus a nightclub. The colors, fabrics, sounds, and lights, all connote what sort of communication is expected—they are all nonverbal communication. 4 Understanding Nonverbal Communication