Paper Topic:

Social Psychology

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Nonverbal communication is defined as a process to send and receive wordless messages , through gestures , body language , facial expression eye contact , object communication and sometimes even through architecture and symbols . It also includes communication through paralinguistic features , such as voice quality and speaking style Researchers believe that the nonverbal communication can occur through any sensory channel including smell , touch and taste . Darwin did the first scientific study of non-verbal communication in 1872 . In his book Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872 , he argues that not

only humans but mammals also express their emotions through their facial gestures . The additional features of nonverbal communication include nonverbal cues such as tone of voice , facial expression gestures , eye rolling , shoulder shrugging . Some times nonverbal communications are added additionally with verbal communication to rein- enforce the idea or some specific message

The most common form of nonverbal communication is clothing . The kind of clothes people wear normally determines the personality of the person Even though it is considered stereotyping , however a good example of clothing , which expresses the personality of person is uniform . Another way of non-verbal communication is Haptics which is done by touching Such touch can include handshakes , holding hands , kissing , back slap or shoulder slap , brushing arms etc . All of these nonverbal messages portray feelings of a person . For example in Middle East hugging among male friends is show of warm feelings , in the Western only handshake is used before talking among Chinese no handshake or touching place with foreigners

Another way of nonverbal communication is Oculesics where people role their eyes to indicate their interest or use eye contact for communicating some idea or feeling . For example teacher often use eye contact during their lecture . Same is the case in police investigation where eye contact is done to check the true intentions of a criminal Eye rolling is also used to show amazement especially common among women and children

Human beings also use voice (low or high pitch tone ) to communicate some thing nonverbally . Such nonverbal communication provides information about an individual mood that may change from culture to culture Suprasegmentals is way of nonverbal communicaiton where an individual stress , his /her tone to makeup a word and express an idea or feeling

Another form of non-verbal communication is head bobble , where an individual shakes his head to acknowledge some thing , but meaning may differ from country to country . For example in India (South India ) the head shake is from left to right which means , I understand or fine , but the same head shake in Pakistan can mean , I don 't understand . Instead in Pakistan the headshake is upside down to convey the message I understand . In Western culture there is also a slight headshake up side down , which means okay , fine or I understand A common form of nonverbal communication is shrugging shoulder which is often done by lifting both shoulders to show I don 't know anything or don 't know the answer...

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