Nonverbal Communication And Stereotypes

Unlike Wood’s descriptions of typical gendered kinesics and proxemics behavior, I found that females used larger motions when interacting than males did. Females generally used a lot of hand gestures to accompany their verbal messages and tended to perform those gestures at the same level as their head. I found it interesting that the majority of these gestures were performed right at the upper body level because I found it to be rather intrusive to the other people in the conversation. It can also come off as distracting because some females constantly used hand gestures so it would put on quite a show right next to their faces when talking. Males typically had a more relaxed posture than females, but there were many instances where males …show more content…
Woods identifies the three primary dimensions of relationship-level meaning are responsiveness, liking, and power. Responsiveness is defined as showing attentiveness to others and interest in what they say and do. This was exemplified through the communicators’ use of eye contact (124). Females and males who used more eye contact appeared to be genuinely interested in what was going on in the interaction. There were some people who were multi-tasking and would make eye contact sparingly in the conversation, but the attempt to show attentiveness communicates that the person multi-tasking does care about the other person because they don’t want them to think they are not interested. In addition to responsiveness, the level of liking was displayed but harder to interpret. In the case of eye contact, liking was easier to identify because if you didn’t like someone or are not interested in the conversation, you simply would not look at the other person in order to display your disinterest. Liking was also obvious in an interaction between a male and a female. They were sitting next to each other at a table and their legs were touching underneath the table. These two were in each other’s personal space and were acting like they were in a relationship, but this was solidified when they walked away from the table holding hands. Their choice of seating arrangement and personal space usage showed how much they do like each other. On the other hand, there was another interaction between a male and female who appeared to be friends. When they sat down at a table, they sat diagonally rather than sitting directly across from each other. I found this to be very odd, but it was clear that the level of liking here could be unsure. Choosing to sit diagonally reveals the possibility that maybe these two don’t know or like each other