The development of nonverbal communication of emotion: A functionalist perspective

A functionalist perspective on the development of nonverbal communication of emotion is presented. This perspective is distinguished from other current conceptualizations by the following features: (a) Emphasis is placed on the functional implications of emotion-relevant movements for social regulation (communication), intrapersonal (internal) regulation, and behavior regulation. (b) Emotions are viewed as “members of families of emotions.” Emotion families are composed of emotion processes with similar functional relationships to the environment, which also differ in particular communicative features as a function of contextual demands, socialization history, and developmental abilities of the organism. (c) Facial movements are treated as only one of many forms of communication of emotion, rather than as having special status as “the” clearcut indicators of emotion. (d) Communication of emotion always is embedded in a context: There are no movements that can be considered clearcut, context-free expressions of emotion, at any period of development. (e) The role of socialization in the development of emotion and emotion communication is emphasized. (f) The multiple influences on communicative behavior, and the implications of such multicausality for clearcut communication, are acknowledged.     

Individual differences in the nonverbal communication of affect: The diagnostic analysis of nonverbal accuracy scale

The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) was designed to measure individual differences in the accurate sending and receiving of nonverbal social information. The DANVA consists of four receptive and three expressive subtests that measure nonverbal processing accuracy in children from 6 to 10 years of age. Four propositions were offered to guide the gathering of construct validity data for the DANVA. In support of the propositions, researchers found that DANVA accuracy scores increased with age, were internally consistent and reliable over time, and snowed significant relationships with indices of personal and social adjustment and academic achievement but were not related to IQ. Evidence for construct validity was stronger for receptive, as compared to expressive, subtests. Future research should include additional populations of subjects and study of the impact of intensity of emotion being sent or received.     

Effects of alcohol on the nonverbal communication of anxiety: The impact of beliefs on nonverbal behavior

Three male and three female raters were shown videotapes of 29 male subjects who were speaking to a silent female confederate. Raters were asked to make 10 judgments about the subjects' behavior. The subjects had been assigned to one of two expectancy conditions in which they were led to believe the drink they consumed prior to meeting the confederate contained alcohol and tonic or tonic only. Actually, half of the subjects in each expectancy condition received alcohol and half received tonic only. Judgments of the female raters viewing the videotapes were congruent with physiological measures of the subjects' anxiety. Those subjects who believed they received alcohol were perceived by female raters as more relaxed, less anxious, less inhibited, and more dominant than subjects who believed they received tonic. The actual content of the drink had no significant effects on the raters' judgements of the subjects' behavior. Male raters were unable to discriminate among the experimental conditions. Implications for possible gender of rater effects in behavioral assessment procedures as well as for the impact of beliefs on nonverbal communication are discussed.     

FROM TEXT TO GESTURE ONLINE: A microethnographic analysis of nonverbal communication in the Second Life virtual environment

A transition from text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) to online interaction that includes both textual and nonverbal discourse represents a new development in online communication and a significant challenge to prevailing models for the analysis of CMC. This paper presents results of a six-month-long ethnographic research of nonverbal communication (NVC) in the Second Life (SL) virtual environment. A set of 108 SL locations selected in a non-structured manner provided a wide range of communicative contexts for the analysis of naturally occurring user interaction. The study was focused on the analysis of proxemic and kinesic cues. The results have pointed to a significant difference between user-defined and predefined nonverbal cues, indicating that user-defined NVC has stronger potential to enhance online interaction.     

Accuracy of nonverbal communication as determinant of interpersonal expectancy effects

The person perception paradigm was used to address the effects of experimenters' ability to encode nonverbal cues and subjects' ability to decode nonverbal cues on magnitude of expectancy effects. Greater expectancy effects were obtained when experimenters were better encoders and subjects were better decoders of nonverbal cues and the separate contributions of experimenter's and subject's nonverbal skills were of similar magnitudes.The authors wish to express their thanks to Rena Baskin for her help.Preparation of this article and the research described was facilitated by a grant [GS-3942] from the Division of Social Sciences of the National Science Foundation to Robert Rosenthal.     

Content-masking methods as determinants of results of studies of nonverbal communication

The present study was designed to determine whether the technique used to control the semantic content of emotional communications might influence the results of research on the effects of gender, age, and particular affects on accuracy of decoding tone of voice. Male and female college and elementary school students decoded a 48-item audio tape-recording of emotional expressions encoded by two children and two college students. Six emotions — anger, fear, happiness, jealousy, pride and sadness — were expressed in two types of content-standard messages, namely letters of the alphabet and an affectively neutral sentence. The results of the study indicate that different methods for controlling content can indeed influence the results of studies of determinants of decoding performance. Overall, subjects demonstrated greater accuracy when decoding emotions expressed in the standard sentence than when decoding emotions embedded in letters of the alphabet. A technique by emotion interaction, however, revealed that this was especially true for the purer emotions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness. Subjects identified the less pure emotions of jealousy and pride relatively more accurately when these emotions were embedded in the alphabet technique. The implications of these results for research concerning the vocal communication of affect are briefly discussed.Preparation of this article was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.     

Interpersonal deception: III. Effects of deceit on perceived communication and nonverbal behavior dynamics

Much past research on deception has examined it individually and noninteractively. Here we argue for broadening our understanding of deception by examining it as a dyadic and interactive event. Assumptions of an interpersonal perspective, articulated in Interpersonal Deception Theory, are advanced. These include recognizing the agency of both parties to interpersonal exchanges, examining such exchanges at multiple levels, incorporating measures of communicationrelated perceptions and interpretations as well as behaviors, recognizing that behaviors may be strategic as well as nonstrategic, and viewing such behavior as dynamic rather than static. An experiment reflecting this orientation is presented in which pairs of participants, half friends and half strangers, conducted interviews during which interviewees (EEs) either lied or told the truth to interviewers (ERs) who were induced to be highly, moderately, or not suspicious. Dependent measures included participant (EE and ER) perceptions, interpretations, and evaluations of EE behaviors and trained coders' ratings of actual nonverbal behaviors. Consistent with the theory, deceivers were more uncertain and vague, more nonimmediate and reticent, showed more negative affect, displayed more arousal and non-composure, and generally made a poorer impression than truthtellers. Their behaviors also connoted greater formality and submissiveness. Also consistent with the theory's premise that deceptive interactions are dynamic, deceivers' kinesic relaxation and pleasantness changed over time, in line with a behavior and image management interpretation, and degree of reciprocity between EE and ER nonverbal behaviors was affected by the presence of deception and suspicion.Portions of this paper were presented to the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, May 1989. This project was funded by the U.S. Army Research Institute (Contract #MDA903-90-K-0113). The views, opinions, and/or findings in this report are those of the authors and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision.     

Intentionality behind nonverbal messages: A perceiver's perspective

This paper examines the ways in which people decide whether or not a nonverbal message is intentional. It was predicted that judgments of intentionality would be biased by an interactant's desire to protect his or her self image. Participants (N=163) in the study went to banks and discussed new accounts with an employee. They were then asked by a confederate to discuss the nonverbal messages perceived to be sent by the employee. The results indicated that respondents reported messages accompanied by attributions of intent at a rate greater than chance. In addition, positively labeled nonverbal messages usually received interpretations of intentionality. Negative messages were viewed most often as unintentional. In those instances where negative messages were seen as intentional, participants said that the employee had strong external pressures to act in a negative manner.The authors wish to thank reviewers Michael Motley and Patricia Noller for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth to children,foreigners, and retarded adults

The verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth was examined in a study in which undergraduate women taught a block design task to a listener who was either a six-year-old child, a retarded adult, a peer who spoke English as a second language (foreigner), or a peer who was a native speaker of English. The degree of warmth conveyed by the speakers differed only minimally across different categories of listeners. However, these communications did vary systematically within each category, in accord with the levels of cognitive and linguistic sophistication of each particular listener. Speakers tended to fine-tune communications by conveying more warmth to the more sophisticated children and foreigners than to the less sophisticated members of these categories. To the more sophisticated retarded persons, however, they conveyed—nonverbally—less warmth than to the less sophisticated retarded persons. The relevance of these findings to the communication of expectancy effects and to the social psychology of stigma is discussed.This paper was written while the first author was visiting at the University of Florida. We thank John Neil Bohannon, Linda Caporael, Margaret Clark, William Cooper, Monica Harris, Harry Levin, and Carol Sigelman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. For their help in conducting this research, we thank Ann Ashworth, Pamela Brown, Linda Douglas, Susan Finkelstein, Tamara Harper, Robin Johnson, Susan Kirdendol, Sheila Larkin, Sue Limber, Jose Macaranas, Ashook Nimgade, Maria Papetti, Maurice Perry, Lester Pretlow, Carissa Smith, Laura Taswell, Tina Tedeschi, Charles Valadez, and all of our listener-subjects. We also thank the students, faculty, and administration of Dunmore High School, Dunmore, Pennslyvania, for their participation and cooperation. Support from NSF, NIMH, the National Academy of Education, and a Rackham Faculty Grant was invaluable. Most importantly, we thank Roger Brown and Robert Rosenthal for their wisdom and inspiration.     

Research on deception in marketing communications: Its relevance to the study of nonverbal behavior

Marketing researchers have used a variety of approaches in studies of deception and related subjects. This literature is selectively reviewed here, with emphasis on findings relevant to the study of nonverbal behavior. Topics covered include: (a) deception-detection experiments involving advertising, bargaining, and selling; (b) ways of deceiving by implication, while avoiding literal falsehoods; (c) cues conveying the impression of truthfulness, as predicted by attribution and economic theories; (d) circumstances under which lower credibility may be associated with stronger persuasion; (e) individual differences in disbelief in marketing communications; and (f) corporate analogies to individual nonverbal behavior.I would like to thank Jacob Jacoby for serving as guest editor for this paper and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

A model of nonverbal exchange in physician-patient expectations for patient involvement

This paper reviews the literature on the nonverbal aspects of physician-patient interaction, focusing on how expectations about patient involvement are conveyed and negotiated by physicians and patients. Important outcomes of this process, such as satisfaction, adherence, and patient health, are examined. A model of physician-patient negotiation involving four interaction styles is presented to examine the negotiation process and the effects of patient involvement on outcomes.We would like to thank Valerian Derlega and the two reviewers, Debra L. Roter and Richard L. Street, for their helpful comments.     

The exchange of nonverbal intimacy: A critical review of dyadic models

This article examines six different theoretical approaches that attempt to explain the exchange of dyadic immediacy, intimacy, or involvement cues. Affiliative conflict or equilibrium theory, two expectancy norm models, an arousal-labeling model, an arousal valence model, a discrepancy-arousal model, and a sequential functional model are summarized. Advantages and limitations of each of these approaches are discussed, and empirical support for each of these approaches is summarized.     

The quest for legitimacy and the communication of strategic cross-sectoral partnership on Facebook: A big data study

Nowadays, many wicked problems such as environmental issues require organizations from multiple sectors to form cross-sectoral alliances. Cross-sectoral alliance networks can transfer resources and signal affiliations and value alignment between strategic partners. The communication of cross-sectoral alliances is a form of CSR communication that serves organizations’ strategic goals and objectives. Drawing on the literature on digital CSR communication and legitimacy theory, this article examines which legitimacy needs shape the formation of cross-sectoral ties on Facebook in addressing environmental and sustainable development issues in the United States. Combining data-mining, text-mining, social network analysis, and exponential graph modeling, this research investigates the structure of a network among 3071 organizations across multiple sectors. Findings show that organizations’ cross-sectoral tie formation is mainly driven by social legitimacy and alliance legitimacy needs.     

Specification of nonverbal behaviors for clinical assessment

Nine categories of nonverbal behavior (extremity movements, self-manipulations, facial expression, posture, orienting, gestures, voice quality/tone, speech rate/pressure, and sense of timing) were tested in a standardized role play situation of social skills. Each category was judged using a new midi-level system of assessment which permitted specification of component behaviors but allowed observers to make single ratings at the ends of videotaped episodes. The midi-level measurements were as reliable and practical as more traditional global measures of social skill and social anxiety. Midis were superior to globals (i.e., single overall ratings of skill and anxiety) in terms of predicting physiological indices of social anxiety. Voice quality/tone and sense of timing appeared to be the best predictors of criterion social skill measures and self-manipulations, extremity movements, and gestures had the highest weights in predicting criterion measures of social anxiety.     

Media preferences of digital natives’ internal communication: A pilot study

Contemporary generations of employees are living in a completely different environment than previous generations, shaped by easier information gathering and access to knowledge. For employers, it raises an important question: what media preferences do digital natives have regarding internal communication channels? This study revealed that employees still favor traditional internal channels, in spite of a strong preference for social media in their private lives.     

Nonverbal decoding skill and attention to nonverbal cues: A research note

A measure of differential preference for attending to three channels of nonverbal communication was developed, with which scores for differential attention to face, body, and voice tone were generated for 17 college subjects. These scores were correlated with subjects' nonverbal decoding accuracy in the same three channels as measured by a standard test of decoding nonverbal cues. Significant positive relationships between channel preference and accuracy were found for the two video channels; no relationship was found for the audio channel.This research was conducted while both authors held National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships at Harvard University. They wish to thank Robert Rosenthal for advice, Peter L. Rogers for technical assistance and Myron Wish for valuable criticisms of an earlier draft.