Gendered, Nonverbal Communication: Gender Differences

Nonverbal Communication has a broad definition encompassing many different forms of communication that contrast that of verbal communication. Verbal communication represents the use of sounds or spoken language in order to express one’s self. In contrast, Verbal Communication represents itself through the use of gestures, movements of hands, facial features, or essentially any movement of the body in collateral with verbal. The enthuse or volume of a word can make a huge impact on the way something is communicated within an interaction. In addition, one’s physical appearance and even environmental factors can contribute to the comprehension of interplay between individuals. Environmental factors may include time of day and especially the location …show more content…
There have even been studies that argue verbal communication commands only 7 percent of an interaction (Mehrabian, 1981). However, this was a misconstrued study that led to the assumption that all situations must apply to this – while it was merely only a study on salesmen and their interactions. Nonverbal communication even differentiates based on gender – which is what this essay will be discussing: gendered, Nonverbal communication. The first study examined was done in 2010 by a number of scholars (Sally D. Farley, Amie M. Ashcraft, Mark F. Stasson, and Rebecca L. Nusbaum) with 150 participants. They were paired with one of four partners and randomly assigned an interruption or control condition. It examined the Complementarity Theory, which argues that “our behavior repertoire is, to a certain extent, constrained by our partners’ responses along two orthogonal dimensions: control and affiliation.” (J Nonverbal Behav). This theory …show more content…
The friendly to hostile nonverbal communications represent affiliation while the behaviors connected to status, hierarchies, and power are reflecting control or as this study calls verticality. They also analyze the Mimicry Paradigm: a model that predicts that because similarity communicates a connection, humans have a tendency to mimic the behaviors of individuals around them despite the intensity of the behavior. Both ideas show a use of reciprocation. Another study that this study capitalized on found that participants reacted to friendly interactions with more eye contact, smiling and nodding than that of a hostile interaction (that which was responded to with a frown or shaking of the head). The conflicting predictions of the two models deal with the vertical dimensions. The authoritative behavior should emit a dominant response in return when associated with mimicry, while compliance behaviors are the reciprocal in association with the complementarity theory. There were two hypotheses within this design: first being that