Touch: An Important Form Of Nonverbal Communication

Chapter Journal Communication is very important to our daily life, but sometimes people will not say what they mean, in stead, their body movements and gestures tell the truth. Nonverbal communication is the “study of communication systems that do not involve words” (Trenholm, 99). These nonverbal messages may be more important than verbal messages because what we do often conveys more meanings than what we say. Touch is “an important form of nonverbal communication, and its study is sometimes called haptics” (Trenholm, 120). Touch can conveys a lot of different meanings to the people around us and also each culture has their own regulation of “how and how often their members touch” (Trenholm, 120). I found a good example of this concept from one of my sister’s interpersonal communication textbook called the Interplay by Ronald B. Adler, Lawrence B. Rosenfeld, and Russell F. Proctor II. The short article is about how is touching related to career success. One short story from the article is about the benefits for both the patients and the physicians when the physicians give a slight touch when prescribing. The touch can reveal more “self-disclosure, client self-acceptance, and better client-therapist relationships” (Adler, Rosenfeld, Proctor II, 193). Touch can also increase success in sales and marketing. One research showed that customers who are touch by a greeter in the store are willing to spent more time shopping and end up buying more than needed. As the example mentioned in the article states that when an offer to try samples of a certain product is “accompanied by a touch”, then the chance of the customers trying the product would increase, therefore also increase the chance of the customers buying the product (Adler, Rosenfeld, Proctor II, 193). The last example showed in the article is about a study, which the National Basketball Association did in order to find out the relationship between touch and success. As a result, they found out that the team with more touch has more successful record than the team that touch each other the least. From the article mentioned above, we learned that touch convey a number of messages, for example, “how we feel about others and defines a given relationship as …show more content…
This kind of feeling may caused by the environment I lived in. In my family, touching is not used as common as most American families, and I can clearly count the number of times my mom and dad hug or touch me when I was still a children. When I was in China, my Elementary School teacher always tells us that there is a huge difference between male and female students, and it is very inappropriate when a male or female student touches each other. I am not sure if it is still the same in China, but in the textbook it stated, “people deprived of touch may develop physical, mental, and social disorders” (Trenholm, 120). This context is very important to communication because most of the time, the words we say may not express the correct feeling due to varieties of reason, but a simple touch can let others feel the same thing as you are feeling too. If the meaning of touch is understood correctly, then the message is correctly understand by the receiver. The message also achieves the intended effects physically, mentally, and emotionally. Lastly, if one party or another does not force the act of touch, the message is considered to be