12.7 Why Study Nonverbal Communication?

One obvious reason to study nonverbal communication is to increase your awareness of what can be expressed nonverbally, and how to interpret nonverbal signals. There is ample research proving that infants are good at interpreting some nonverbals, but that doesn’t mean they know everything, or that college students (or professors) do either. No matter what form of communication you’re looking at, a large vocabulary is useful, and just as learning new words is a fun and potentially useful hobby (see Box 10.2), expanding the ways you can express yourself nonverbally will probably pay off. Learning about how people interpret nonverbals may also help you avoid sending unintended messages and clear up misunderstandings.

One problem here is captured in the expression “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” A beginning student of nonverbal communication can easily get overconfident in their abilities, creating misunderstandings instead of clearing them up. Interpreting meaningless signals as flirting, for instance, can get you slapped or worse, and being too confident that you can spot a liar from nonverbals leads to false accusations (see below). This is why increased awareness must be tempered with a level of humility: don’t get too sure of yourself, and always stay open to the possibility that you are reading things wrong.

As nonverbal communication teacher Amy Joyer explains, it’s helpful to think of nonverbal behaviors in terms of a bell curve: nonverbal messages can often be interpreted in similar ways, but there are common exceptions to these interpretations, represented by the “tails” of bell curves. A person might not be aware of the nonverbal signals they’re sending, or what they want to be communicating. In Joyer’s words, “We are often displaying nonverbal behaviors without a conscious thought; we’re not always ‘deciding’ our nonverbal behaviors, they can be subconscious or at least somewhat automated.”^[1]

It’s thus useful to think of nonverbal behaviors in terms of layers: the surface layer is not the only thing going on, and the first interpretation of nonverbal behavior may not be the best one. In the “crossed arms” example discussed earlier, I suggested six different interpretations of that nonverbal signal, but the implication was still that one of those signals was the “correct one.” What if that person is crossing her arms because she’s cold and she’s skeptical of what you’re saying?

If a person can feel multiple emotions at the same time (without exploding), they can also use their body to express mixed emotions simultaneously. Can you think of a time when you received a gift you were disappointed by, or found out that your friend is getting an award or promotion instead of you, and you managed to conceal your disappointment and put on a delighted expression at the same time? The delight doesn’t have to be insincere: in the first scenario, you might think “I don’t like the gift, but I’m touched that they thought of me,” and in the second , you can be genuinely happy for your friend while at the same time wishing it had been you. When you are feeling conflicting emotions at the same time, you can’t always control which ones are being displayed.

These examples also reinforce the point that nonverbals can be used to conceal as well as to express; a smile can cover up disappointment as well as express joy. Concealment can take the form of manufacturing an emotion that isn’t there, replacing an expression with another one you want to convey instead, or simply “masking”: trying not to express anything. If you want to be a good poker player, for instance, you’d better learn how to put on your “poker face” and not show any reactions to the cards you’ve been dealt; otherwise your opponents can exploit you. Since card players first gave us that term, people in many other contexts have discovered the value of having an inscrutable poker face as well.

The disappointing gift / award scenarios are also a reminder that nonverbal communication is not just about expressing yourself: it’s also about maintaining relationships. These two factors — expressing yourself or working on the relationship — can work hand in hand or they can fight against each other, and when they are at odds, the question is: which one predominates? Some hugs are genuine, some are fake, and some are in between (it’s not that you love or hate the person, it’s just that you hug them because you’re supposed to, not because you feel it). Because you can’t tell from the nonverbal behavior alone, it’s good to remind yourself that you don’t really know what it means.