Introduction to Applications of Nonverbal Communication

Introduction to Applications of Nonverbal Communication

Few topics encompass such a rich and broad area of investigation as nonverbal communication. Researchers in fields as diverse as psy­chology, ethology, communication studies, sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience have all made important contributions to our under-standing of the way that humans communicate nonverbally.

Yet frequently the applied implications of such research have gone ignored, unstated, or unelaborated. In part, this lack of attention to ap­plications is a function of the kind of work carried out by nonverbal communication researchers. Such work is often very precise and ex-acting, employing a 'microscopic' approach to studying human social behavior that is driven by theoretical questions. For example, to a non-verbal researcher, a smile is not necessarily a smile, as work on the distinction between felt, or Duchenne, smiles and feigned smiles has illustrated so compellingly (Woodzicka & LaFrance, chap. 7, this vol­ume). Likewise, the nonverbal communication scholars who have made use of Paul Ekman's FACS, facial coding system (Ekman 1978), are able to determine that a particular photograph does or does not contain a genuine, felt expression of anger or sadness.

Although this concern with precision has produced an extensive body of significant findings, it has a downside. Specifically, scholars of nonverbal behavior are often reluctant to generalize their typically lab­oratory-based research findings to real-world, everyday behavior. However, it is the precision of their work that also makes nonverbal communication research so valuable-both to researchers in related areas, and to practitioners.

Similarly, although the recent surge of research on emotion has led to significant increases in our understanding of the phenomenon, emotion researchers have not always made the connection between their work and the role played by nonverbal behavior in their commu­nication. And even when emotions researchers venture into applied territory-such as the work on emotional intelligence, or EQ-they may not make the connection to basic research on nonverbal commu­nication of emotion.

The other side of the coin is the willingness of non-researchers to make claims and offer pronouncements that have little, if any, connec tion to the research on nonverbal communication. For example, some authors have claimed that they will teach you How to Read a Person Like a Book (Nierenberg & Calero, 1991), to Never Be Lied to Again (Lieberman, 1998), and How to Understand People and Predict Their Behavior Anytime, Anyplace (Dimitrius & Mazzarella, 1999). Such claims are often wildly exaggerated. Research shows that nonverbal behavior is far too complex to make such blanket statements, and we simply do not yet know enough to be able to do any of these things very accurately and consistently.

Yet, the dissemination of unsupported 'facts' about the practice of nonverbal communication is widespread, despite the lack of a firm re search foundation for the suggestions found in the popular literature. Communication professionals abound who will train politicians to be more effective and charismatic, who will use nonverbal cues to select sympathetic jurors or prepare witnesses to appear more credible. There is an entire industry around the nonverbal detection of lies, and physicians and business managers are taught to focus on nonverbal communication in order to make them more empathic. At the process level, clinicians realize that nonverbal behavior is useful in both diag­nosing, and to some extent, in treating troubled marriages and family relationships, although their work may not have firm empirically-grounded support.

The sheer magnitude of work involving nonverbal behavior in every-day life-even if much of this work is not supported by research-sug­gests the importance of identifying research-based solutions to everyday problems. This book is intended to help bridge the gap be­tween the research conducted by scholars of nonverbal communica­tion and those who seek to use nonverbal communication in practice.