01 Intro + nonverbal
The significance of interpersonal communication
- IPC processes determine mutual understanding, (dis)agreement, mutual relationships,
achievements and goals
- People with good interpersonal skills have less stress, higher self-efficacy, more satisfaction in
intimate relationships, more friends, less depression/loneliness/anxiety
Learning objectives in IPC
1. First, learning about theories and research in the field of IPC
2. Second, learning to look at interpersonal interactions in an analytical way, challenged by
various ways to link the theory to actual everyday conversations
3. Attention to the influence of media in IPC
Fundamental aspects of interpersonal communication
The source-receiver model deals with one message from A to B
The transactional model works with collaboration, ongoing processes and creating mutual
meaning, where messages are sent from A to B constantly
- Has a lot to do with interpretation, which plays a role in relationship development
- Misinterpretations: unintentional touch/eye contact, sexual overperception bias (the
tendency to believe that others are more sexually interested in you than they are)
- We understand intentions by the context, the other’s behaviour and through the medium
Context dimensions
- Set induction (situations differ in how an interaction starts, coming with starting
expectations)
- Physical environment (coffee bar/club)
- Temporal factors (2am/11am, or the timing of the behaviour (after silence/eye
contact))
- Social psychological factors (interpersonal relationship (roles, status, history) and
communication history (common ground))
- Culture (in some it’s normal to touch more/less)
- Type of situation (scripts)
How do we understand each other?
It’s a misperception that language has to do with words and what they mean. It doesn’t. it has
primarily to do with people and what they mean. It is essentially about speakers’ intentions
Behaviour and mutual understanding:
- Nonverbal behaviour: haptics, kinesics, posture, gaze etc
- (Non)verbal dominance shown in turn taking (interrupting, silences)
- Questioning (open vs closed, leaning, probing)
- Response styles: assertiveness vs aggression
Medium and mutual understanding → medium determines which (interactive) behaviour is
possible, which signals go back and forth → topics:
- Media richness
- Social presence
- Constraints and affordances of different media
Purposes of nonverbal communication
- Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
- Regulating conversations
, - Expressing emotions and interpersonal attitudes
- Negotiating relationships
Nonverbal communication
Purposes of nonverbal communication:
- Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
- Regulating conversations
- Expressing emotions and interpersonal attitudes
- Conveying personal and social identity
- Negotiating relationships
Mimicry
Nonconscious mimicry
- Facial mimicry (imitation of facial expression)
- Speech: linguistic style matching
- Emotion/mood contagion
- Behaviour matching (the Chameleon effect)
Nonverbal mimicry
- Mimicry occurs automatically (unconscious, unaware, unintentional, uncontrollable)
- With more mimicry, interaction is experienced as more pleasant and the interaction
partner is judged as nicer
- Communication accommodation theory
- Neurological explanation: mirror neurons → perceiving an action activates motor
cortex, which means the motor is ready to perform the same action
Nonverbal complementarity
- Dominant body postures take up a lot of space (postural expansion)
- Submissive body postures take up little space (postural constriction)
- Research shows that people usually take the complementing body posture, which is
experienced as nicer, because it’s unpleasant when people have the same body posture in
an interaction
Negotiating hierarchy
- Nonverbal status position
- Submissive: hesitations, tag questions (am I right?), higher
vocal pitch, low volume, not interrupting, diver eye gaze
- Interpersonal circumplex model
, 02 Nonverbal behaviour and deception
Purpose of nonverbal communication: conveying personal and social identity → we leave
impressions on other (unconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable)
Attractiveness bias: symmetrical and average faces judged as more likeable, socially competent,
outgoing, intelligent and healthy
Hallo effect: initial positive evaluation of a person induces mote positive evaluations of other
characteristics
Baby-face bias: round face, large eyes, small jawbones, high forehead, small chin → rated as more
naïve, sweet, weak, honest, helpless, kind, less competent, less dominant
Facial appearance and social judgement
Unconscious
- Facial appearance → linked to personality judgement and discrimination + social
categorization and stereotyping because of prejudices based these facial features
- Judgements are made very quickly (< 0.10 sec)
- A first impression can be (mis)leading for how we behave in an interpersonal
interaction
- Perceptions reflect stereotypes, not real personality characteristics (the judgement is
likely not correct) → facial features not linked to personality (physiognomy), yet some
studies suggest some accuracy in personality judgements from face alone
- Physically attractive → higher grades, more successful when applying for a job, lower
punishment in lawsuits, receive more help quickly, more likely elected (politics)
- Baby-face → more innocent in lawsuits, but not when it comes to negligence
Shooting bias experiment (stereotype): participants with stronger stereotypes (aggression,
violence, danger) show more extreme bias → but with training, biases can be reduced
Results of the VR research (personal distance): people show more distance and produce
more sweat towards Moroccan appearing people than Dutch looking people
Conscious
- People use their facial features to get away with crimes, leave certain impressions or
when they want to win something as the elections, or as salesperson
Deception = a conscious attempt to make someone else believe something of which the deceiver
knows it is not true
Lying
- In truth vs lie detection research, accuracy rates range from 45-55%
- Assumed that when a person is lying, there is more physical stress (arousal), more/other
emotions (fear, guilt), more cognitive effort (lying is harder than telling the truth) and an
attempt to control own behaviour, which is also stressful
Deception cues
- Indicate that deception is taking place pupil dilation, viewing direction, pitch,
speech rate, hesitations, degree of movement, pauses, response time
- Results depend on: severity of the lie, type of lie, psychological tension, ability to
control nonverbal communication (was lying self-chosen/ request of experimenter)
- When people are told to lie, they make more smiles during the deceptive
Leakage cues
- Reveal what the liar is trying to hide through micro-expressions, created by 44
muscles, allowing more than 10.000 expressions
- Paul Ekman: facial action coding system (Duchenne smile out of real emotion)
